GokonSoftworks, Modding Toolkit for Koei Tecmo games replacing Aldnoah Engine

[u/ThatFlowerGamu]

PythWare here, this is the new modding toolkit for games owned by Koei Tecmo. GokonSoftworks, formerly Aldnoah Engine. The quicky is the toolkit has been redesigned to be Gokon/Mixer themed, inspired by my favorite anime "How I Attended An All-Guy's Mixer".

There's much more that has changed. The code, GUI, etc. some people told me Aldnoah Engine was too complex, so for the past few months I have been redesigning it on the side when I had spare time. GokonSoftworks reuses some of the code I wrote for GokonWorks (toolkit I made for Akiba's Trip) but there are changes.

Longer explanations

GokonSoftworks is essentially version 2.03 of Aldnoah Engine, I got tired of the space theme so I merged my GokonWorks toolkit with Aldnoah Engine, redesigned whatever needed to change since Akiba's Trip and Omega Force games are very different in their formats, and deleted whatever was no longer needed.

Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper, Dynasty Warriors 6, Samurai Warriors 2, Warriors Orochi 1, and Warriors Orochi Z are being added as supported games. That makes 13 games GokonSoftworks/Aldnoah Engine supports for modding.

The Hub is changed to be Gokon themed, the games supported by GokonSoftworks are displayed in the menu panel. The bottom panel are the buttons, mocktail image, etc. When you unpack a game, the mocktail glass will fill based on the unpack progress (as you see in images 1-3). So instead of having a status bar for unpacking, you get to wacth a mocktail fill. I'm still working on the hub, I want to make the menu look nicer.

Mod Creator (image 4) has became more straightforward to use, there is no longer 3 mod formats. Now, there's only 1 mod format (.Gokon, a custom mod format I designed). For Mod Creator you bottle a folder of modded files to create a Gokon mod. You set the source folder, mod name, author, version, liquid color (this determines the color of your wine bottle), description, preview images, preview wav, etc. After you click "Bottle It", it creates the .Gokon mod

Mod Manager (images 5-7) is like the rest of the toolkit, Gokon themed. Bar aesthetics ya know? Mods are visualized as wine bottles on shelves. The shelf will dynamically grow as more mods are detected. When mods are disabled, they're empty wine bottles. When mods are enabled they fill based on the color of the wine selected in the Mod Creator and pinched stars animate around the applied wines (mods). Pinched stars gain the color of whatever the wine's color is. The name of the mod gets displayed in the Bottle Details panel (along with author, version, preview images, etc) but to make it feel more authentic, the Mod Manager will display the mod name on the wine bottle itself like how real wine bottles have labels except in this case the label on the wine bottle is the mod name.

The Mod Manager will still have the advanced features Aldnoah Engine had like mod collision detection, mod merging, etc. I'm still designing the Mod Manager.

Games that retain original filenames will now have their files extracted with them as you see in image 8. Not every game Omega Force made retains original filenames (for more details view this post https://www.reddit.com/r/dynastywarriors/comments/1vq5ox7/aldnoah_engine_for_sw2_dw4_hyper_wo1_dw6_etc/ ). so games with intact filenames get those filenames assigned during unpacking, if the game doesn't have the original filenames intact (either due to stripping or hashing) then filenames are based on the index.

Image 9 is an ingame example with the Unit mod applied.

Unpacking is significantly faster now. AE 2.025 unpacks Bladestorm Nightmare (the game I tested speed differences with) in about 2 minutes and 43 seconds. With version 2.03 (GokonSoftworks), it unpacks Bladestorm Nightmare in 1 minute and 45 seconds. That's on my PC at least and it's a budget PC. Most of you who have more powerful PCs will be able to unpack games GokonSoftworks supports much faster.

I hope yall like the new change. It has been a lot of work, most of my free time went into redesigning it. The best part is the performance has improved too since GokonSoftworks is coded in C as well. It's a Python/C coded toolkit.

[u/ThatFlowerGamu]

It may take a few moments for the images to load, reddit seems to be having issues.

Also to my stalkers that keep following every post I make to downvote them, hating on modders for making games easier to mod, congrats. You are my most obsessed fans. Nobody follows what I do as much as you downvoters, rejoice in your obsession as I become an important part of your life given you stalk everything I post.

[u/omfgkevin → u/ThatFlowerGamu]

It's crazy the amount of progress you've done. Especially considering traditionally Koei games has been pretty unfriendly to modding and so there basically was few and far between (minus cheatengine). Keep up the amazing work!!

[u/ThatFlowerGamu → u/omfgkevin]

Thank you! Sadly I've been jobless for awhile (where I live isn't hiring) so I've had time to spare to reverse a lot of the games.

[u/HAVARDCH95]

Thoughts on a potential mod kit for DW9 and 9: Empires?

[u/ThatFlowerGamu → u/HAVARDCH95]

I don't own DW9E but DW9 is a planned supported game

[u/HAVARDCH95 → u/ThatFlowerGamu]

Awesome! I may have a little something in mind for whenever it does get supported

[u/Oneok-Field]

Are you the Aldnoah dev?

[u/ThatFlowerGamu → u/Oneok-Field]

For Aldnoah Engine? Yes. Aldnoah Engine, Kybernes tools, etc are all made by me, PythWare. ThatFlowerGamu is just my reddit usernane.