New Player, Mod Questions, and Question about these forums/users

[mupetmower]

Hey everyone. So.. I will start off my first question with this: I do see that there are some current posts here, in these forums, so I know this place isnt completely dead. What I am wondering, though, is whether the modders are still active here? I see lots of mods where some, links are dead, or they are no longer supported.

I have gotten a few mods to work, including the mod loader, and the camera remapping improvement. However, I cannot seem to get the bulk of the mods to work. Such as loading new blocks, the "MoreBlocks" one.. etc.

I am sure some of this is probably my fault.

But another question - I am not 100% certain what version of Besiege the current one is, and i literally just found this game like 3 days ago, but are some of these mods that are still in the "Master List" not supported with the current version?

An example is the three "groups" of mods, where the zip contains a few different mods.. I couldnt get those to work, and even when i put the .dlls and other resource type files in myself, i still couldnt get them to work. Another example would be the moon mod.

I am not entirely new to modding, as I play Skyrim with mods. when i look into the console, and the output file after i close the game, it shows that the majority of the mos didnt load properly. But, im not entirely sure why. I am also not completely new to Unity programming. I have created a few 2D games in Unity. I also program applications in C#, VB, Java, so Im definitely not new to coding.

anyways.. shit.. sorry, I suck at explaining stuff and my mind jumps around.. hopefully you guys can kinda see what im asking.

also, though, one of my BIG curiosities is whether or not the Besiege dev team is actually still working with this game, and creating new content anymore? Anyone know? IT would seem, from most of my few searches, that they havent added anything, or talked about anything for quite a while..

But yeah, TL;DR: 1: main problem with the mods are that I cannot get many of the modded/new block mods to work/load, except the "improved laser cannon", which is the only one that will show up in the mod blocks list(which also changes the spike wep on the list to the laser cannon img, but when you place the spike in the scene it appears normally), and most gameplay mods wont work, except mod loader(not sure if the block loader in it works though) and improved camera controls.. 2: main question about this forum is how active it stil is, and how active the modders here still are. 3: main question about game is if devs are still making new blocks/content/etc.

Thanks all. Sorry for my babbling..

 

[mupetmower]

So, I decided to just go ahead and wipe the whole mod folder and restart. I started with what I knew worked. Loaded the mod loader and the enhanced camera totally fine. Then added the Flamethrower Thrusters and Color one, worked fine. Then tried to load the MoreBlocks one. didnt work. here is the console, right after I started the sandbox:

I couldnt post it as an image for whatever reason... so I uploaded it.. basically it throws a ReflectionTypeLoadException which I am honestly not familiar with.. And I dont know why it wouldnt load, which caused this to be thrown.

but, essentially, this is what almost all of the mods i couldnt get to work did on load.

 

[ITR]

Most mods aren't up to date with the newest version, you'll have to look at the version marked in the title of the mod + test if it works (some old mods still work, even when not up to date)

The master mod-list is not up to date either @Von

 

[ITR]

As for your other points, people are sometimes active, sometimes not (though I'm usually active), and the game is still being updated with new stuff added (last update wasn't that long ago).

There are more people active on Reddit and Discord + Steam Workshop (Should show up if you search for it)

 

[mupetmower]

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly! I am glad to hear that this place is still active. And yeah, reddit is actually where i first saw a gif of this game, unmodded, and i knew i had to get it haha. and at 8 dollars, i bought it literally 10 mins after i saw the gif =p

and thats really great to know, that the devs are still updating the game.

if it wouldnt be to much trouble, which mods do you use currently, that still work? also, so I am assuming there are more newer mods that work that are not on the master list? i havent looked yet, but hopefully that is true =]
are there also mods out there worth getting that are not on this site?
and one last thing: if a link to a mod is dead, should I just assume that the mod is unsupported, and wouldnt work anyways?

Again, thank you so much for responding so fast. This game is soooo much fun haha.. I still suck really bad, but im getting there. about to go check out some of the machine building tutorials on here and other places.

 

[ITR]

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly! I am glad to hear that this place is still active. And yeah, reddit is actually where i first saw a gif of this game, unmodded, and i knew i had to get it haha. and at 8 dollars, i bought it literally 10 mins after i saw the gif =p

and thats really great to know, that the devs are still updating the game.

if it wouldnt be to much trouble, which mods do you use currently, that still work? also, so I am assuming there are more newer mods that work that are not on the master list? i havent looked yet, but hopefully that is true =]
are there also mods out there worth getting that are not on this site?
and one last thing: if a link to a mod is dead, should I just assume that the mod is unsupported, and wouldnt work anyways?

Again, thank you so much for responding so fast. This game is soooo much fun haha.. I still suck really bad, but im getting there. about to go check out some of the machine building tutorials on here and other places.

All in my signature work, though the ones the most people use are Building Tools, PBP2, No Bounds and Easy Scale

If you check the modding subforum, you can just check which titles contain the current version, and you try checking the newest posts on the thread
The easiest is just trying yourself with only that mod installed.

 

[mupetmower]

thanks man. i really appreciate it =]

 

[mupetmower]

oh, one more quick thing. you probably know the answer to this. and i cant seem to find a direct answer on the actual mod's page.

so with the building tools mod, you know how wasd move the camera in a slightly different way than the original setting of besiege? well, i use enhanced camera controls to change the original camera controls to num pad, or just something other than wsad. is there a way to change the controls for camera for building tools? and to change how w selects translate selection(or something), etc?

in other games modding, there are ini files that you can change in notepad, is there anything like that with this? or possibly an in game way? maybe with console? idk.

 

[ITR]

oh, one more quick thing. you probably know the answer to this. and i cant seem to find a direct answer on the actual mod's page.

so with the building tools mod, you know how wasd move the camera in a slightly different way than the original setting of besiege? well, i use enhanced camera controls to change the original camera controls to num pad, or just something other than wsad. is there a way to change the controls for camera for building tools? and to change how w selects translate selection(or something), etc?

in other games modding, there are ini files that you can change in notepad, is there anything like that with this? or possibly an in game way? maybe with console? idk.

Some mods let you change keys with ctrl+j

Forgot to answer your dead link question: that's due to one of the forum migrations, so what they link to is still somewhere on the forum, it just uses a different format

 

[mupetmower]

gotcha. i guess the building tools doesnt allow you to change any of those keys then, since it's not in the ctrl+j menu.

but, right now i am actually trying to get one of your mods to work =p

the keep camera rotation. when i use the dll it throws lots of problems in console. then i noticed you said that it was integrated into spaars mod load.(i think thats what you meant?) and to use the command: ToggleKeepCameraRotation

when i do this, it says there is no such command.. also, if i try to, then press tab, it will not auto fill it in. is there more to the command that im missing? such as parameters or something?

btw, sorry for all the questions.. you guys get so many stupid questions.. and i know most all of this crap is user error. so i know its prolly super annoying. so, again, sorry. i just would really love some of these mods =]

 

[mupetmower]

just realized that i needed to keep the actual dll file for the KeepCaeraRotation, and then KeepCamerRotation is actually a real comand in the consle =p

stupid me.

however, im assuming this mod just no longer works, right? when i toggle it on(or if i just start the level) it will output MissingFieldException: Field '.AddPiece.isSimulating' not found. in the console, over and over again.



EDIT - wow... im so stupid.. i guess with the camera block this is no longer necessary.. man im dumb. sorry man.

I do wish all of those mods that add new blocks would still work though.. i cant seem to find much of anything that is up to date. but thanks again man. sorry, too =p

 

[ITR]

just realized that i needed to keep the actual dll file for the KeepCaeraRotation, and then KeepCamerRotation is actually a real comand in the consle =p

stupid me.

however, im assuming this mod just no longer works, right? when i toggle it on(or if i just start the level) it will output MissingFieldException: Field '.AddPiece.isSimulating' not found. in the console, over and over again.



EDIT - wow... im so stupid.. i guess with the camera block this is no longer necessary.. man im dumb. sorry man.

I do wish all of those mods that add new blocks would still work though.. i cant seem to find much of anything that is up to date. but thanks again man. sorry, too =p

yeah

 

[Pixali]

@mupetmower here's a list of mods that work, and some that probably work.

Spoiler: Working for v0.42b

Easy Scale
Vector Thrusters
Building Tools
Level Creator
Collider Displayer
Improved Lasers
Advanced Anchor
Advanced Controls
Pilot Panel Block
Precision Building Project 2 (PBP2)
Lench's Scripter

Spoiler: Probably working

Block Statistics
Clouds & Ground Texture
Water Mod
Variable Weight Block
Warhead Block
Cloak Field Generator
Exploding Cannonballs
Invasion Mod
Tracking Computer Block
NoBounds
Voxel Destructible Terrain
Better COM
Analyzation Mod (trails)

 

[stuChris]

@mupetmower as to mods which arent on the forum that i would recommend, definitely check out "customscene" which is often brought up on the discord, or ill post the dropbox link here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5v23a8ybh9poaym/BesiegeCustomScene9.8beta.rar?dl=0
the mod allows you to have modified terrain which is great for astetics and scenes, and requires spaars modloader.
i use it all the time, and i often edit the files for personalization, however i would copy everything and put it in a seperate folder first if i wer you and were doing such.

 

[mupetmower]

wow, thanks guys!

as for in the probably work section, I can confirm that the Clouds and Ground Texture does work for sure. It does throw one error in console, and I am not sure why(mostly because I cannot figure out how to open freaking dll's in Visual Studio to see what the code looks like... but also prolly wouldnt help much anyways, since I am new to modding and dont really know what the code for Besiege itself is like)..

but anyways, yeah, I really appreciate the list and responses =]

EDIT - OH, i actually forgot to mention: The improved laser mod works and actually does put the laser block into my mod blocks list. However, it changes the spike block(the thumbnail of it in the block list, not the actual spike itself, when placed) to that of the laser block thumbnail. Not even remotely sure why. This happen for anyone else?

 

[Pixali]

@mupetmower I personally use Telerik JustDecompile for looking at compiled code, but there's a bunch of other tools around that should work just as well (eg. ILSpy). If you're interested in getting into modding, or at least want to know how stuff works, you can join the unofficial Discord and ask questions in #modding.

As for modded blocks overriding the spike's thumbnail, I have no idea why that happens and I don't think anyone else does either. The blockloader works in mysterious ways...

 

[mupetmower]

thanks for the info. Ill give some tools a try. I had read that it was possible to open dlls some way in Visual Studio(which is the IDE i use most for programming(i use it for C# with Unity for simple 2D games, and also C# and VB for application programming), along with netbeans for Java stuff..), but when i tried to download one fo the required things to open them in VS, the link to it was dead. cant rememeber exactly where it was, either, now.. haha. oh well.

Ill check out the Telerik one when i can though. I mostly just would like to see whats going on inside these dlls.

I am definitely interested in modding, though.. my only problem is that when i look at creating 3D objects and textures, etc from scratch, it makes me feel retarded haha. coding is definitely my strength. 3D modelling is not. this is why i only create simple 2D games in Unity.. for now.. I just dont have the time to devote to learning 3D stuff right now, either.

but yeah.. im rambling..

 

[Pixali]

@mupetmower Same here! My Vector Thruster's model is actually the exact same cube + texture that I use for all my block mods (except Advanced Lasers, which used the model from the original laser mod), but it instantiates the metal blade and powered gear models and animates them to make it look like it's not just a cube. As for 3D stuff, it's really just the same thing as 2D but with another number attached to everything. Apart from which set of helper functions you use, it's really not that different or difficult to learn.

I'd be happy to help you learn how to mod the game if you join the Discord; traditional forums like this one really aren't suited for teaching someone how to do stuff.

 

[mupetmower]

that about it being similar is a good point. I guess it's just that in my head, it seems like it would be exponentially harder haha. Like, I have looked at the code, methods, classes for 3D stuff in Unity, and most of it is easy enough to understand, relative to the 2D stuff. and then, sure the math gets a little more complex, but thats not much of a difficulty for me, either.

They real problem really is the whole 3D modelling part. Especially for stuff like a character or some other polygon type thing where you have to create their textures, shaders, materials, meshes, topology(not exactly sure what it is referred to at the moment, but like mapping the texture to the curves of the object, and all that kind-of stuff), and etc.. and then you gotta make sure all of those things will render the correct way when animating, etc.. just seems soooo difficult for a non-graphically-adept person like me, haha. like i said: im for sure more of a get-the-code-to-do-what-it-needs-to-do person.. =p

and sure, ill join there. not sure when ill have enough time to give modding a deep look-at, but it will happen. at any rate, i better stop rambling.. man im bad at that.

 

[Signur]

i'd say you need

Easy Scale > should be added to the game imho
No bound > should be added to the game imho
TGYD building tools > should be added to the game imho
Clouds & Ground Texture > remove the walls and ice barrier > FREEEDDDDOOOMMM

as default.

Then :
Better COM > The Center Of Mass will move in real time
Pilot Panel Bloc > provide a bloc that give stats like speed and such
Block Statistics > do the same without a block (shift click the bloc you want to analyze)
Collider Displayer > show the hitboxes..

these are really usefull for advanced building

then those add block and work :
Improved Lasers
Advanced Anchor
Variable Weight Block
Vector Thrusters