Post by stew on Jul 11, 2018 3:41:23 GMT
Earning your black cloak
Okay, so you've learned how to install a modded Journey. I'm sure it took some trial-and-error. Mistakes were made. Tears were shed. But you've played it and you've seen things. Now you want to make your own things.
We're here to help.
See, modding isn't "hard", but it is tedious and error-prone. It takes trial-and-error to learn how to make the game do what you want it to. And that's the fun -- seeing the goofy mistakes and happy accidents. And many many game crashes.
But when it works, it's magic.
I want to make more magic, and less mistakes. So I made a project to automate as much as I can. I really started it to automate custom eboot files, which are a total pain in the ass. I also wanted one tool that could handle all of the other kinds of mods, and could extract all of the data into a format that's easy to read and safe to change.
So without further ado: github.com/retropercolator/journey-modder
Currently it works for custom eboot files, and custom decoration mesh instances. I'd like to add the hulls, sounds, models, and animations when I (or maybe alexdolly!) has time. There's also the possibility of hosting this on a website, where you would upload/download files, if getting the tool set up at home becomes too much a trouble for people.
Let me thank all the other modders, current and past, it takes a lot of tinkering and sharing and learning for something like this to come together.
Installing PHP 7.1
If you are running Windows, download PHP from here:
Then, once you've opened that, copy the contents to C:\php
Do not put it in C:\program files\php
Once that's done, open up Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced > Environment Variables. in the Path variable, add this:
C:\php
C:\php
Now, download this php.ini file courtesy of ava:
***i don't have this file :p***
And place this file into C:\php
WE'RE FINALLY DONE!
To confirm that PHP is installed, open up a command prompt and type:
php -v
It should print out the installed php version and copyright info. If it doesn't, ask for help.If you're on a Mac, open up a Terminal window and copy/paste this, and hit enter:
curl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 7.0
Yes, it's that easy.If you're on something else, maybe ask in the discord modding channel.
Connecting the modding tool to your journey package
So first thing, if you're going to start modding, be prepared to make mistakes. Mistakes are easy to fix, as long as you keep a backup. Always keep a backup of the game files in their original state. After a while of adding mods on mods on mods, you'll want or need to reset things.
Also, before you make any changes to a file, make a backup of the file. Always. This is just good practice. Only it can save you from the eternal anguish of realizing that you just made a build that won't boot and you don't know how to get several hours of changes back.
Okay, so now you have a journey package that is safe to modify. My folder is called "journey-in-progress" or something. We're going to call this folder our "journey package" and the modding tool you downloaded at the start of this is the "modding tool". On my system these two folders are side-by-side.
Now our end goal is to be inside of the journey package, and launch our modding tool. We're going to accomplish this by creating a symlink.
On Windows, open a command prompt and write this, and be sure to replace the file path with the REAL one on your computer. Be sure you include the "mklink" part.
mklink C:\path\to\journey-package\launch.php C:\path\to\journey-modder\launch.php
On Mac, open a terminal window and write this. Note that the modding tool comes first.
ln -s /path/to/journey-modder/launch.php /path/to/journey-package/launch.php
And we should be all set! To launch the tool, you'll need to use the command prompt.
On Windows:
php C:\path\to\journey-package\launch.php
On Mac: php /path/to/journey-package/launch.php
and away we go!
I'll add more instructions on how to use the tool, and explain my workflow with it, but after seeing how much trouble it was to get it running on Windows, I wanted to start by documenting that process.