For those interested in my original work, illustrated short stories, and Games, I will be releasing more of that and updating when I will release some free backgrounds for streaming, on substack with links to a buymeacoffee page for things like short stories and pdfs.

First mod up on Thunderstore! From what I know you have to be playing offline for these to work. But it's a good way to sync your current time if you are a few hours off.

I will try to share these as they come out, hopefully we will have several mods for Linux soon too.

ASTR (Atomenangetrieben Stratosphäretechniker Replika Unit, Atomic-powered stratosphere technician- or 'Atom')

One of the newest Empire-made Replikas. ASTR is one unit who's neural pattern is entirely [REDACTED: synthetic]. ASTR helps in repair, retrieval, and search and rescue. Currently assigned assistant to Dr. Ochanomizu. Since their original neural pattern was lost, they are to be sent on missions sparingly. At 173cm they are capable of repair tasks in tight areas and of nuclear engines and facilities that other units may not be able to get to. The extreme environmental stabilization of their suit allow for almost a minute of survival in a vacuum, though this should not be done and can severely damage the Replika.

Book of travels is now 5.99 USD on Steam and is well worth it even if you only engage with current live content.

But now modding is allowed! There are no formal mods yet but hopefully this will open it up to a community who may want to explore a lot of the unused game code. These are early edits and it's important to run these on an offline downloaded character. Especially since data corruption could hurt your game. Always back up files to a separate machine or hard drive when possible.

Current community projects: -adding cooking -adding in the forms that were unreleased (with full art) My wishlist projects: -setting up co-op mode if possible (networking issues) -figuring out community servers -bring back old combat (imporved if possible) -add a non-combat mode -more readable text (high contrast mode) -add in already coded new dialogue and levels FIRST

Save your characters for offline using the download button. if you have more than 4 characters you will need to make multiple save files, move them to a different drive, then open the game and delete the data.save file and save new characters:

If you have more than 4 you'd like to save, "Download" 4 to fill the slots, backup your save file, then start a new one to fill to 4 again as many times as you'd like, so each save would be a collection of 4 to keep swapping out

The save file is located in \AppData\LocalLow\MightAndDelight\BookOfTravels\data.sav on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/MightAndDelight/BookOfTravels/data.sav on MacOS, and ~/.config/unity3d/MightAndDelight/BookOfTravels/data.sav on Linux.

*please label a separat folder to keep all the data.sav info in from these folders. These are the early goals that we think are feasible/most important. If you would like to contribute to mods please join the Discord as several artists are also working on bringing the unreleased forms to life among other things!

Mods (all credit to scarab and others in the Discord who contributed to explanations of how to see and edit the game's code/start making mods) Directly from a modder on the Book of Travels Discord Community-

Option for modding on Linux: https://github.com/FatigueDev/BoT_Modding_Example

-by Crona

Setup

Navigate to your Book of Travels installation directory.

Follow the installation instructions for BepInEx 5.4.23.4 (Effectively, drag + drop into the root game folder).

If you use Linux, Add a new, non-steam game to your library with the following settings:

Target: BookOfTravels.exe

Start In: "/home/some_username/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Book of Travels/" (I.e. Full path to Book of Travels install directory)

Launch Options: WINEPREFIX="/home/some_username/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1152340/pfx/" WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command% (WINEPREFIX may be optional, but I would rather be safe than sorry considering Proton may use a 'new' prefix when we want to use the existing prefix but modded).

To enable debugging with BepInEx, it's quite simple. Just open doorstop_config.ini in the root Book of Travels game directory provided by BepInEx and set debug_enabled = true.

In order to use Unity Explorer, simply drag and drop it into steamapps/common/Book Of Travels/BepInEx/plugins/. Remember to read it's documentation.

Only use it when playing in Offline mode; don't be silly with it on a live server.

Building your plugin

Open BoT_Modding_Example.csproj

Set the  key to the full path of your Book of Travels install.

Set the  key to bin/(Name of your mod)

Run dotnet restore

Run dotnet build

This should have copied the result of your build from the local project to Book Of Travels/BepInEx/plugins/(Name of your mod), saving you a bit of time having to copy and paste it every time you make some changes.

Start Book of Travels, quickly press F5 (debug) in VS Code.

If all went well, you should hit a breakpoint and be able to debug your code without any problems. If not, look over .vscode/launch.json in this modding example and ensure that the address and port match those within doorstop_config.ini in your Book of Travels installation directory.

You can also set debug_suspend = true in doorstop_config.ini, which will cause BepInEx to hold the process hostage until you attach a debugger. I personally don't prefer to do this, though; it slows down development.

How to mod on Windows currently:

One of the best ways to look at data and begin messing with code in-game is to use UnityExplorer + (MelonLoader/BepInEx).

Windows: I use MelonLoader because it possibly plays nicer with UnityExplorer and mostly because it's really easy to install, play modded, uninstall, play online - without having to always be dragging & dropping files around.

Linux: must use BepInEx for Unity Explorer support. (main files of interest Years.General.General.Assembly.dll)

Windows: MelonLoader: https://melonloader.co/download.html, When you run the exe, point it at your Book of Travels installation, and install version 0.5.7, Click on the "folder" icon next to the game's path to open up the game's install directory in prep for the next step, From UnityExplorer here, download the UnityExplorer.MelonLoader.Mono.zip and extract it, Copy the two folders inside the zip into your game folder alongside the BookOfTravels.exe file, Load the game; you should see a terminal window showing the MelonLoader logs; you might see 4 red errors & then you should see "1 mod loaded", Linux: See instructions here, General Notes:, By default UnityExplorer is initialized; you can hit F7 to close it. Whether or not you need to load into the game (only use offline mode) depends on what data you're trying to look at; some things require being loaded into a scene (eg events). For things like items, you can use the Object Search at the menu screen.

There's a lot of stuff you can do with UnityExplorer - I've primarily been using the Object Search to look for specific items or NPCs and inspect them, as well as using the C# Console to write code that interacts with the Unity classes/objects, prints stuff to the log file as I'm messing about, and export data out.

So you want to write a mod ref

On Linux (to be tested)

BepInEx 5.4.x: https://github.com/bepinex/bepinex/releases, Download the BepInEx_linux_x64_5.4.x.zip (assuming you're on a 64 bit computer), Extract the zip above; copy the contents of the archive into the game folder game should be at ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Book of Travels/ (you can also open Steam > right-click on game > manage > browse local files), note that the game is a native linux game and does not run through proton, when you're done you should have a BepInEx folder alongside the BookOfTravels_Data folder, & a run_bepinex.sh file alongside the BookOfTravels.x86_64 file., , Follow steps 2-4 in this guide: https://docs.bepinex.dev/articles/advanced/steam_interop.html, From UnityExplorer here, download the UnityExplorer.BepInEx5.Mono.zip and extract it, Navigate into the …/common/Book of Travels/BepInEx/ folder and copy the contents of the UnityExplorer zip into this folder (should end up with …/common/Book of Travels/BepInEx/plugins/sinai-dev-UnityExplorer/), Load the game; there probably won't be a BepInEx window but you'll see the logs in …/common/Book of Travels/BepInEx/LogOutput.log; UnityExplorer should be initialized when the game finishes loading.

->

Enable Dev Debug Mode / Menu

Install UnityExplorer (⁠[Tool/Unity] UnityExplorer + (M…), Load the game with UnityExplorer active, Hit F7 to hide the UnityExplorer screens for now, Click "Play Offline", Load whichever character you want, After loading, press F7 and click on the "C# Console" button at the top in the UnityExplorer toolbar, Copy & paste the code below into the console window and click "Compile", You should instantly see some red debug text appear; hit F7 again to close UnityExplorer, Press Right Alt to cycle through all dev debug screens, With the inventory/backpack open, press 0 at the top of your keyboard or - on a numpad to open the item debug menu,

BE VERY CAREFUL with this!! (and only use it offline!) - on the Local Settings debug screen, there's buttons that can clear steam achievements and steam stats; the "Initiate Oppulence" might trigger achievements accidentally as it gives lots of items & XP & skill books to your character instantly.

var player = PlayerBase.LocalPlayer; var field = typeof(PlayerBase).GetField("accountUnlocks", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic); field.SetValue(player, (AccountUnlocks)6); // this is a combined enum value, combines Admin and Dev; we're setting it directly here rather than in the save file. PersistentTools.Instance.DebugTextOn = 3; // this turns on the full debug UI, use Right Alt to cycle through screens

So as most of you know, The servers for Book of Travels will shut down on July 31st. I am sad to see the company drop such an amazing game. Though I understand why. There were so many people who put their heart and soul into that, and I am going to look to preserve that as much as I can. BoT Dev AMA As such me, and several other people, are planning on setting up mods for the game as well as hosting. While nothing is centralized yet I figured, considering that this blog does a lot of art and lore theory on games, I wanted to include an update for this. I still think the game is wonderful and has a wonderful story to tell. Even if it feels incomplete, it is something worth remembering that not all endings need to be. And also that the game is being kept in an offline version is so reassuring to me. Anothing reassuring thing is a lore AMA coming out soon from the company, as well as the fact that now we can look into the game files to see some of the text for items that may be unused. So yes, expect more Book of Travels art and content to come, because now, we have so much more to talk about and work on! Safe Travels~

Tools for Modders BoT 2D archive

Game Text

BoT Story guide from the Devs

BoT Designer Albin on combat and levels

Larger look at unused levels

Sky Two Embers As Link

Playing through the fourth Two Embers quest as Link really hit hard. Thinking about how other video games treat children as protagonists without any help from adults... but here we have Scarred Sentry

Playing through this also wearing Wounded Warrior and Teabrewer's items just made me think of the fact that during the flashback it was unlikely this was Scarred Sentry's first war. And that's just heartbreaking. The fact that we need to make people empathize with situations like this in a game in order to get even the vaguest idea of what people go through irl is also heartbreaking. But that is a rant for later. Right now I am just thankful that artists are still making relevant topical art. I need to go think about this quest and I hope others are doing so too.

There are a few ways I would improve this, but for now this is the simplest outfit I think that gets the feel across.

I will put up the full video of how long it took me to even start to get the timing down. But you can block with the shield! (Video link below)

Quest 3 for Sky cotl Two Embers Season! Going to have to try the Elder mask after this because getting the shield to work was a pain.

Link and the Isle of Dawn

Eventually I may actually do videos with someone else but for right now it's just me with lore for newbies and funny stuff.

But if your curious if the new Sentry's shield in Sky works:

Oh no I have started to have Art ideas thanks to the AURORA concert