I've done my research on .PCK files and it all looks really interesting but I have no idea how difficult it is to get everything working from the end user perspective. Now I'm somebody who really wants to get modding into my games as early as possible if necessary and I'm going to give my playerbase full access to whatever they like because that's always great fun and it massively extends the life of a game if a dev stops work on a title. What's a quick and dirty way of doing this though? Or am I better off picking another method?

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/export/exporting_pcks.html

The developer uses Godot to build a GUI tool for adding their exact API content to a project. This Godot tool must either run on a tools-enabled build of the engine or have access to one (distributed alongside or perhaps in the original game's files). The tool can then use the Godot executable to export a PCK file from the command line with OS.execute(). The game itself shouldn't use a tool-build of the engine (for security), so it's best to keep the modding tool and game separate.

The documentation here is pretty good I think, ideally I'd like to use a GUI and have things like Skyrim where you just click the mod and activating it, it's only the modders who are ever going to want to touch the back end stuff and it should be as painless as possible. My biggest concern I think is project compatibility however I guess if I can just copy and paste a .PCK file into the appropriate folder and the game automatically scans for it that would be fine too.

  • I haven't tested it but I think it should be possible to just have a directory you scan for godot .tscn's that can be loaded and instantiated. The caveat is that your modders will have to learn to understand and use godot engine/editor. That's simple in concept but it probably won't be any easier to implement than the PCK method.

    TL;DR: making a modable game is always going to be somewhat challenging, I don't think there really can be an easy way to do something like this. It's a huge architectural thing that has to take your specific games architectural makeup into account.

I haven't tested it but I think it should be possible to just have a directory you scan for godot .tscn's that can be loaded and instantiated. The caveat is that your modders will have to learn to understand and use godot engine/editor. That's simple in concept but it probably won't be any easier to implement than the PCK method.

TL;DR: making a modable game is always going to be somewhat challenging, I don't think there really can be an easy way to do something like this. It's a huge architectural thing that has to take your specific games architectural makeup into account.

    Megalomaniak That's actually fantastic if that's the case, at the very least I can implement barebones modding relatively quickly. I did some research out of curiosity and considering the absolute mess that Fallout 4's creation kit is Godot will probably be a blessing for most modders to mess around in lol, thanks for that information. I have no problem generally making my project available and so on which should make the life of modders a hell of a lot easier if I absolutely have to do that, but it will be worth experimenting with.