"Bring Back Removed Content" Mod

[VIVIT]

First let me say that I don’t want this to be taken as bitchposting. I’m not trying to change the course of the game’s development or gripe about the direction it’s currently headed. I’m just here to propose what I think is a very reasonable compromise: instead of removing content, move it from the main content pack to a mod.

I’ve started to hack around with the JSON a bit and I was wondering what I should do for a mod. The first thing that came to mind was to consolidate all the removed content into a single “Bring everything back!” mod*, but then I thought, “How has nobody already done this, and how is it not already being shipped with the game?” I’d be happy to work on consolidating the old removed content—the fact the game has a public github should make this pretty easy—but I’d like to know if the developers would be willing to start doing this for new removals as well.

*This is something I wanted to do with Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup before realizing that that game’s codebase is a hideous and incomprehensible monstrosity, and this is coming from someone who has written patches for NetHack. Cataclysm’s JSON raws are a godsend.

[DeWolf]

The immediate things I can thing of that cannot be done with a simple json mod would be the charge rifle and the fusion engine.

[mlangsdorf]

I don’t think the developers are going to move content to your mod for you. It’s easy to revert content, harder to rearrange it.

However, if you want to maintain a “removed content mod”, I think that would be fine. See https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/wiki/Guide-to-adding-new-content-to-CDDA-for-first-time-modders if you haven’t read it already.

[mlangsdorf]

You can add engines in a mod; steam turbines, for instance, only exist in the Vehicles Addition Pack.

[Esther]

(Happy birthday, mlangsdorf!)

I actually have a personal mod I use to restore a lot of this content to mainline to play with. I don’t know if it’d be rejected from GitHub, but I could try if there’s enough interest.

Right now I have bionic recipes, mininuke recipes, and battery recipes restored, plus the Solar Panels CBM and the recipes for bone armor.

[mlangsdorf]

So Kevin has said he would accept a “total conversion to science fantasy mod” into the CleverRaven repo, but no one has volunteered to submit it and maintain it. Want to give it a try?

(edit: also, thanks!)

[Esther]

I thought Bright Nights already filled that purpose?

[dissociativity]

but it doesn’t account for the 2 people that used bone armour?

[dpwb]

Bright Nights dosnt do a lot at the moment.
It’s purpose is apparently to move the sci-fi elements of the game into a separate mod as they get phased out of main.
Currently I think it has craftable plutonium and some battery stuff?

[John_Candlebury]

Brightnights is supposed to be a cyberpunk total conversion centered on game elemets balance instead of realism balance.

That said, the mod has no active contributors anymore, only Coolthulhu and I ever worked on it. Coolthulhu, who starded the mod, has been gone for about a year; and I no longer have the intention to contribute to the game, mostly because I want to focus into making my own games.

So If anyone wants to pick it up and develop it feel free to do so.

[Wardenn]

something in the vein of “cutting room floor” for Skyrim would be pretty neat here. I say go for it if you’re capable of remaking old content to fit the new builds.