Hello Fated Ones!
We often get this question: "Is it allowed to mod ScourgeBringer? The EULA seems to forbid it."
Let's clear this up once and for good: Yes! You can mod ScourgeBringer, to some extent.
Please check below in regard to what's possible, and what isn't.
What's up with the EULA and why did it take you so long?
There's a story behind this EULA.
At first, we were willing to publish the tools that we used to make the game, and we published this EULA to protect players because we wanted to encourage clean and safe modifications and not exe hacks. This was purely for a safety reason, like preventing anyone to download modified executables of unknown sources which could harm computers or hide stuff, or simply break their game/corrupt their save. Of course not all hacks are like this but this was our way to say "we're coming up with a safe approach".
With time, it started to be clear to us that we would hardly find the time to publish our tools (they are too tightly coupled with the base game and they require a bunch of adaptions to properly support modding).
This is still very true now, and I don't think that we'll find the time to adapt and publish them. But this might change with community efforts (please check the "What's possible?" section).
So our idea was to evolve the EULA and have some tolerance, but with clear boundaries so that anyone downloading a mod knows what's inside, with ideally us validating and promoting "safe mods". This never happened as well because we didn't find the time to gather our thoughts about this and work on a more elaborated framework.
Here we are now: an non-adapted EULA, a lack of time on our side, but will to support modding.
Our proposal: we're officially allowing modding through this statement, though the EULA will stay the same to prevent malicious uses and we are going to open it up to fair tolerance when it comes to modding. In that regard, we will only give visibility to mods that are transparently safe.
What's possible?
If you wish that your mods are promoted by us, there's a few guidelines:
- You are allowed to modify textures, as long as you own the rights to the modifications (we will not promote mods which use assets from other games, unless you remade them and are paying credits to the original creator). It is however not allowed to publicly share the readable versions of ScourgeBringer's assets.
- You are allowed to modify the content files (BossCatalog, BulletCatalog, all the "Catalog" files). These are undocumented but we plan to document them for modifications.
- You are allowed to make fan translations (but for legal reasons, we won't integrate them into the game).
- Your mod should have a disclaimer that it can break the game and that the players might loose their save. Backup is highly recommended.
- Open sourcing the mod itself is a nice plus, because it allows us to validate and thus promote it.
You can't:
- Modify the executable, unless we can track what has been modified in a transparent way, and the process shouldn't expose publicly the game's code.
- Make public any of the original data of the game.
- Temper with the game sounds and music, they are encrypted.
Please bear in mind that as-is, Skills, Blessings and Chaos are coded into the executable and can't be modified through the "Catalog" files. Everything else can.
Join the modding community!
We created a modding channel on our Discord. There you can discuss mods and possible modding strategies. Some mods are already being made!
Are you going to publish your tools?
We would like to! These tools are super powerful to make new room or worlds, new enemies, new weapons, or new bosses.
But like we noted, Our editor is super tightly coupled to the game itself and doesn't allow to made "side projects", it can only directly modify the game's core, hence possibly break the game with no way back.
BUT! The community has started working on a mod manager, ModBringer (by Squiblydoo). For now it only manages texture swapping, but this kind of manager might be the answer to our lack of time to make these adaptions to our editor. If such a tool should allow to safely backup and restore the original game files, we could think about publishing our editor to the community!
In any case, it's time for some action!
Happy modding ScourgeBringer!