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Writing Mods

Right now, the only available method of modding Borderlands 3 in a way that resembles BL2/TPS modding is through hotfix injection. This poses a number of challenges to even get it working, and once you've gotten that far, it's not nearly as mature as BLCMM-based BL2/TPS modding is.

For the modder who's already familiar with modding BL2/TPS, there are many similarities between the two. BLCMM abstracts a lot of the details when writing mods, but in the end you can think of BL3 hotfixes as just a collection of weird-looking set statements (though you'll never actually see the word set in the hotfixes). But past experience in dealing with BL2/TPS arrays, and knowing how to dive into attributes using hotfix syntax, etc, will definitely make the transition to BL3 hotfix modding much easier.

The main resource for getting used to writing these kind of hotfix mods is the main BLCMods Wiki. The Borderlands 3 links are near the bottom of the main page. Here's some of the main pages you'll want to look into:

  • Accessing BL3 Data - Since we don't have something like BLCMM for BL3 modding, one of the bigger challenges is having game data to work with. This page details all of our currently-known ways of pulling information from the game, which will be a great help in figuring out what to change in the game.
  • Borderlands 3 Hotfixes - For this style of modding, you're basically writing raw hotfixes, so knowing how they're laid out and how to read them is extremely useful.
  • Borderlands 3 Hotfix Modding - This page is a primer for getting used to writing BL3 hotfixes. This page is, unfortunately, written mostly from the perspective of someone who's already familiar with BL2/TPS modding. This page goes into some detail about some of the differences between modding in BL2/TPS and BL3.

One invaluable resource to look at, of course, is existing hotfixes. There's a few places to look to take a look at those:

Constructing Mods With Code

BL2/TPS modding is able to make use of BLCMM to simplify things and catch common errors, but we don't have something like that for BL3 Hotfix Modding yet. One way to make modding easier is to use programming languages to help you construct the mod files. This repo includes some Python-based scripts which serves to do that. Practically all of Apocalyptech's mods in here were constructed using these modules.

Using them does require that you install Python on your system, and get used to working in the language, but it avoids having to worry about fiddly hotfix syntax and lets you focus on just writing the hotfixes. Take, for example, this hotfix from Apocalyptech's Better Loot, which increases eridium drop chances from standard enemies:

SparkCharacterLoadedEntry,(1,1,0,MatchAll),/Game/GameData/Loot/ItemPools/ItemPoolList_StandardEnemyGunsandGear.ItemPoolList_StandardEnemyGunsandGear,ItemPools[10].PoolProbability,0,,(BaseValueConstant=0.8,DataTableValue=(DataTable=None,RowName="",ValueName=""),BaseValueAttribute=None,AttributeInitializer=None,BaseValueScale=1)

There's a lot going on there, with weird syntax, parentheses you have to keep track of, and for it to be a valid hotfix you can't make use of whitespace to make it any clearer. Writing the hotfix with code, however, lets you do this, instead:

mod.reg_hotfix(Mod.CHAR, 'MatchAll',
    '/Game/GameData/Loot/ItemPools/ItemPoolList_StandardEnemyGunsandGear',
    'ItemPools[10].PoolProbability',
    """
    (
        BaseValueConstant=0.8,
        DataTableValue=(
            DataTable=None,
            RowName="",
            ValueName=""),
        BaseValueAttribute=None,
        AttributeInitializer=None,
        BaseValueScale=1
    )
    """)

And then the mod-helper framework will convert that into a proper hotfix for you, and you can edit it in a much more intuitive way.

These helpers (and a few more examples of how to use them) can be found in the python_mod_helpers directory, and plenty of examples of using it in "real life" can be found throughout Apocalyptech's mod directory.

The code in python_mod_helpers dir is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 or later.

Contributing

If you've ever submitted mods to the BL2/TPS github area, you already know how to do so for this repo, because the procedure is identical. You can find instructions for how to do so at the BLCMods Wiki.

If you want your mods to show up on the Borderlands 3 ModCabinet wiki, which is the easiest way for users to find mods through github, you'll want to make sure to follow the ModCabinet wiki guidelines as well. The most important parts are to make sure your mod file has a .bl3hotfix extension, and contain Name: and Categories: headers at the top of the mod file.