[BtS Mod] World of Civilization - Discussion

We have worked through alot of the structure for WoC....let me share some of our thoughts and ideas so all of you can hopefully see our logic and want to join in the concept.


The WoC is meant to be an umbrella of most Civ4 BtS mods with full user selectable options. We hope to establish a standard to make Modular XML Loading easy and smart for both the modder and player. The idea is to NOT have individual mod directories, where numerous files are duplicates to other mods, but to have directories setup like Civ, Improvements, Civics, Unit Categories, etc. This way we minimize the hard drive space/download time while maximizing the gaming options. Within the group directory Civ for example, would be one modular XML file for each new Civ/Leader added to the game. We are really just taking the established ideas and standards set forth by Firaxis and putting it in a mod on top of BtS.


The beauty and key component of this setup will be the Front-End program. This program will be the launching point for WoC instead of the BtS icon. In this program will be default mod setups so you can play FfH or TR or ViSa or whatever.....then you have custom options to tweak the individual gaming experience. Now you can customize any mod to your liking and even create 'mods' by simply making a 'default mod file' that loads custom options. You can think of this as a 'Custom Game' screen before BtS loads.


Now I now all of this sounds ambitious and it is, and it won't happen over night....but the benefit for the entire Civ4 BtS modding community is HUGE. We have 3+ strong Civ coders in the project already as well as a couple other professional programmers....so we are assembling the resources required to make this reality.

I'm not a coder but an organizer/QA person, and of course I'm primarily interested in applying your fine idea to the MP community, as we need a way to make mod loading more user friendly as well, and this all looks very interesting. I'll register at your forums although my participation will likely be in the area of ideas for now.

CS

I'm more of a graphics guy than a coder, but I'm here.

That sounds good FireHawk, but do you any concepts of how to deal applying the modular XML and front end system to playing these mods in MP? What happens with your front end once you load your prefered mod but then want to enter the lobby?

CS

TheBladeRoden said:

I'm more of a graphics guy than a coder, but I'm here.

Click to expand...

We need EVERYBODY, so any and all graphics help is welcome on our WoC forum.

CanuckSoldier said:

That sounds good FireHawk, but do you any concepts of how to deal applying the modular XML and front end system to playing these mods in MP? What happens with your front end once you load your prefered mod but then want to enter the lobby?

CS

Click to expand...

First we must get to single player games.....but you certainly would be able to have each player setup the game the same and then MP. I doubt that we see anything about choosing options after getting in the MP lobby....at least not major options.

WoC will be MP compatible.

TheBladeRoden said:

I'm more of a graphics guy than a coder, but I'm here.

Click to expand...

I konw for one that WoC is in need of graphics people

UPDATE

We have a new website working along with our own forum....and here is a snippit:

About Us
The idea of collaboration of teams was made by Impaler[WrG]

Why collaboration
Firaxis give us the Idea to use modular loading of XML files. We're still not sure if we use the proposed loading of XML's or if we're going to do it completely different by writing our own XML routine to cache the objects, but the idea of Firaxis was the reason to extend the idea of Impaler[WrG] (SDK collaboration) to a complete collaboration!

Initial thoughts
1 Single development project to share expertise, share objects, artist, programming skills, and most of all, fun!
Give total power to the players of our modifications to civilization with the ability to extend our mods the way they want without knowing the complete structure(either SDK or XML) of what we did.

this will be really great once its done. Can't wait to get started.

UPDATE

Please go to the new link for WoC in my sig.....we have the Bug Tracker working for everybody to interact with in posting ideas/suggestions.

Just like we used in ViSa, the Mantis Bug Tracker is AMAZING software for tracking and controlling a project like this....

UPDATE​

We are getting close to defining the next version of the XML Modular Loading format.....the BtS version needed upgrading to reduce the duplicate tags from multiple modules overwriting each other.

Once we get the bugs worked out and 'standard templates' on the SourceForge.net SVN, then we will be VERY close to releasing WoC v1.0 as well as giving the entire Civ4 BtS modding community a new and easier standard way to mod.

It has been since July 22 since I first started this thread....and the project nearly died.

mrgenie has gotten most of the coding done for TRUE modular loading, which this project needs to survive.

More will be coming in detail in the next week, but I have attached here two XML files for the modding community to compare. They are both for the Inquisition mod and the smaller file is using the new WoC xml modular loading and the larger is what is required for the Firaxis/Impaler xml "modular" loading. Besides file size, if a later module needs to update the same xml then it OVERWRITES the Inquisition file, but that is fixed now in the WoC too.

While we have our own Forum site and Bug Report site and General Website already....I will probably be asking for a Dev area here on CFC as well.

Either way, we want every mod/module/etc made for BtS in the WoC project, using the new modular xml loading standard....the World of Civilization is NOT a mod itself, but a NEW way to mod.

The discussion here has moved....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=247968

Please use this new thread, thanks.