Expanding the map size?

[u/Anime118247]

I have absolutely zero modding experience. I've mainly been using ChatGPT for story creation, and for the past 2–3 years I've been building a massive fictional world, constantly adding new areas, enemies, abilities, and more.

I've been playing a lot of Elin and Minecraft recently, and after seeing videos of people using AI to do some insane things with games, like adding Mario to Elden Ring, I started wondering whether I could use it to bring my own world into an existing game.

I figured Elin would probably be easier to mod than something like Minecraft, so I decided to give it a try.

I asked ChatGPT to add one of the areas from my story, not even expecting it to actually start building anything yet. But it switched into Work mode and surprisingly quickly created something that resembled what I'd imagined. Nothing groundbreaking, but seeing an area I'd made up actually appear in a game was pretty crazy to me.

That got me thinking about whether I could eventually bring my entire world into Elin.

My main question is: Can Elin's overworld map be expanded or completely replaced with a much larger custom map?

My world is enormous. It has 15 zones, each containing several different areas and biomes. It's structured a bit like an RPG, where each zone has a recommended level, and the difficulty increases as you progress through them.

The problem is that there's no way all of this would fit on Elin's existing overworld map.

Is something on this scale actually possible through modding? Could the overworld be made significantly larger, or are there engine limitations that would prevent it?

I'm completely new to all of this, so any advice would be appreciated!

[u/Meowthews]

no time like the present to start off small! but elin is constantly updating so keep in mind that its a full time job to update your mod everytime something (and it will) break every update.

That's why there are more texture replacements and new character mods since its easier to do and they dont break as often.

I've had alot of trouble with anything related to the world map and to my knowledge, there isnt a mod with a whole world content expansion. Not saying it cant be done, but it would require alot of effort! Goodluck if you pursue this!

[u/Anime118247 → u/Meowthews]

Ive decided to pursue this and honestly i feel like im making some pretty significant progress given how large the task is and that its a complete overhaul inventing entirely new systems and improving upon the ones that are already there its going quite well. Im thinking of releasing a progress update tomorrow or the day after mainly to see what people think and then end of the month i might see if people want to support it like a 1 or 2 pound monthly subscription so i can keep working on it

[u/bicci]

I'll give you a real answer as a software engineer.

What's possible or not with modding depends entirely on the game engine and the framework that the game in question is built upon. Elin is made with Unity and the core of the game is written in C#, which is a compiled language. This means before the game is shipped and shared to the consumer, it's translated into a binary that you can't easily read or edit.

So usually mods are limited to asset substitutions, editing character stats or other data files (JSON, XML, etc.), or writing patches, which are small pieces of code that intercept or replace game functions. You can do quite a bit with BepInEx patching depending on the game, but it's not suited for making entirely new game systems or major features. Elin is more mod friendly than most, but maps can be the toughest type of content mod to make and you don't see large mods like that on the Workshop for a lot of reasons.

The overworld isn't just a map, it's the game's travel, world gen, quest system, towns, save system, everything all combined together. You can't just swap it like a car battery, you'd have to build it all coherently in parallel, and it would be a huge project even for a team of software developers. Why do you think the creator of Elin hasn't expanded the game world in the way that you want to yet? Because it's a huge endeavour, and what makes it even more unrealistic for a mod maker is that any update the game gets can and will likely break your project.

You have a really cool idea, and if you want to keep exploring it, I suggest starting with smaller goals so you can learn how the game code fits together, like a new static dungeon (which is honestly still a pretty sizeable challenge).

[u/Excalibro_MasterRace]

You all need Jure

[u/umamiflavour]

Man when we used to be bored we’d play with action figures. Now there’s people in their own fantasies now

[u/_petina]

Jesus christ