Modding characters without tampering with any PK3s

I wanted to change up the behaviors of the different default characters to give them a completely new set of abilities. I tried asking a popular AI on Character.AI, but it kept saying that I need to tamper with the .pk3 file that the character is compiled from. Is there a way to modify the character's abilities by compiling the code in a separate .lua file instead of tampering with the .pk3 file?

ShadowWolf2279 said:

I tried asking a popular AI on Character.AI

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why
it's a language model, not a real person that actually knows how the game works

ShadowWolf2279 said:

Is there a way to modify the character's abilities by compiling the code in a separate .lua file instead of tampering with the .pk3 file?

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It's not really necessary.
If you want to give the characters a different vanilla ability, it's just a matter of patching the skin with a P_SKIN lump. No Lua needed, and no touching base game files needed either (that would just make your game stop working lol).

If you want to give them custom coded abilities, then yes, you need to make a Lua script that specifically looks for the default skins and do stuff from there.

amperbee said:

why
it's a language model, not a real person that actually knows how the game works

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Good question...

amperbee said:

If you want to give them custom coded abilities, then yes, you need to make a Lua script that specifically looks for the default skins and do stuff from there.

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Thanks! I'll be sure to keep that in mind!