A New Modder's Log (on going)

March 18th

Last night, I decided to try to make a mod. Maybe it was because I played so many games of Fall from Heaven 2, or maybe because anytime I have spare time at work, I wonder about the games I wanted to play but not invented yet. I had always wanted to make some kind of game but I never thought I could. The usual excuses were always presence in my mind; I don't know anything about programming, I don't have time, it won't be any good so what's the point? And finally I always think that I will give up long before the game or story could become anything real.

Yet despite all the reasons I give to myself, I still drift off in my daydreams and imagine about the games I want to make.

I decided to give it a try when I stumbled on Kael's video on how to make a mod. At first the XML's and things intimidated me, I didn't really understand anything written there; it was like a place I didn't belong to, and the urge to just close the file and play another round of Fall from Heaven 2 started to rise. But, then Kael's video played and the voice and the mouse pointer started to move. It was like an invisible hand telling me no it's not that bad. So I opened the files and started editing just as the video did, and it was shaky at first because I was going back and forth from the video to the files. Then I realized I didn't have notepad++ or photoshop and I didn't know how to convert dds files. It was all overwhelming, but there was something that was similar to the one more click feeling in all Civilization games. Before all those problems started to arise, I was able to follow the instructions and make a shortcut that loads the mod directly. It wasn't at all spectcular or ground breaking. I just made a shortcut! But to me, someone who has never programmed anything at all, it was something.

From there things got complicated and I had to browse the Internet for pictures so that I could just follow the video in making a static leaderhead. I chose Liu Bei from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, because that was one of the games I had always dreamt of making for the longest time but had always thought was out of my reach...

But by the end of the night at around midnight, I finished watching all the videos and I had a Shu Kingdom civilization, with a wikipedia copied civipedia of Shu Kingdom and Liu Bei, Liu Bei with his own character traits, a unique Shu kingdom diplomacy sound, and even a Shu flag with the Chinese word Shu on it!

There are no more videos now, but there are still many tutorials on the forum and elsewhere that makes me wonder if these unreachable dreams of making something good may not be as unreachable as I once thought.

So I started this thread so that I could post my progresses here. I hope that I can make or edit something everyday. It could range from making a civilization to changing city names, but I hope I could keep at it and not give up. I don't know how this story will end, but I hope that I won't give up my dreams too quickly until I really gave it my all.

March 19th

I spent last night adding a 2nd civilization, Wei with the leaderhead Cao Cao and adding music and flag to it. It took longer than I thought, but faster than my first attempt. I tried deleted all the other civilizations so that I could only select the 2 kingdoms. Everything seemed alright until I tried starting a game and getting a bunch of errors to the deleted civilizations. Luckily I made a backup before deleting everything. It's something I need to look into but maybe another time.

I spent the rest of the night just looking at tech trees and figuring how they work. I downloaded a few different mods and just spent hours just looking in their techology XML files. It gave me a headache trying to figure out how everything worked. It's just overwhelming because of the sheer number of techs there. Yet in the game it's only a few turns away and you're off to the other one. It's really humbling and how gaming is really a giant magic show with smokes and mirrors. In a way looking in the XML codes and understanding a little bit loses the magic a little. But I guess the other joy is if I want to my axeman 10 strength and 10 movements, I can.

Looking at the tech tree I realize it really is the component that defines a mod. It's like a map to how the game will begin and end. It's also a good indicator to how much work is needed. I think it's important to give player choices. Too little and there wouldn't be enough of a choice, too many and the player would be overwhelmed. I think the magic number is 4 or 5 choices per turn and that each choice should be self-evident.

One choice for war, growth, economics, defense/diplomacy, science. Players would then have the choice to either streamline to their style of playing. Go down the war path and risk economic ruin, have a great defense but lack offense capability, can be great for people who want to play as builders.

I also did some thinking about what makes a good game. I mean is it to win? I don't think it is, but rather the experience during a game. I remember in one FfH game, I was playing as the Calabim or the Vampire civilization and I was at war with the Bannors or the people who escaped from hell civilization and I was completely outnumbered. I had a group of 10 assorted units, vampires, catapults and the likes and I think they had 30 units in their city. I really did not have enough units to take the city so I had to retreat and they came after me with their huge army. I retreated to a forest passing these plains and they had to stop there. I knew that was my chance. I attacked them there and although I couldn't destroy their entire army in one turn, but the strength of their army was broken and I turned back and took their city. I still remember that experience. I don't remember if I won that game or not, but that battle I remember.

I think that is what makes a great game. Not the amount of content or features, but rather experiences. I once read an article about this professor and he said, it's not the amount of content covered in the lesson that counts, it's the amount of content uncovered that counts. The extra content would be useless if it's never seen by the player.

Anyways, that's all for today, I'll probably make Wu tonight and think about some sort of tech tree.

Great log so far. As someone who buys consoles just to play dynasty warriors looking forward to seeing how your civs turn out.

March 20th

Yesterday I was able to make the Wu Civilization along with Sun Quan as the leaderrather quickly. I really should make a checklist to remind myself which files to edit to create what. Oh well.

I put modding on hold a little bit last night after I quickly finished making Wu and started play testing other mods. I wanted to see how other mods worked and poked around in their XMLs. It's really humbling to see the work and dedication put by the MOD community for Civ4 and I feel awfully inadequate, but alas I can only try my best.

I also fiddle with python and loaded the SDK and everything that seemed difficult in XML just seem like child's play. I had no idea what was going on there so I think it would be wise to just stay away from that for now. Though something tells me in order to do the things I want to for a mod, I will one day have to venture in there. Hopefully by then I'll have learnt a little more but for now it's definitely out of reach.

Started on designing the tech tree as I said the day before. It's incomplete and only leads up to the beginning of the Medieval Age / Battle for Central Plains Era. I put alot of thought into this and figure maybe offering unique tech for the 3 kingdoms would add flavor. I have no idea how to implement any of the events or doing things like build a wonder and spawn a unit yet. Hopefully there are tutorials out there and helpful people in the community who can offer me advice when the time comes to try a hand at that.

So I guess I'll try to finish making the tech tree design by the time of my next post. I have attached the incomplete version so take a look. Any idea, encouragements are welcome

This is a cool blog, Python isn't really all that hard. It's much easier to learn than most programming languages. Try checking out TGA's Python Tutorial and this is a sample of working python code. I was wondering if you would like a partner to learn how to mod Civ4 with. I consider myself a decent programmer (C++, C#, Python) but I'm not so great with getting pojects started, my brain tends to scatter between millions of ideas. I was always a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series and I'd love to help you out and learn some myself along the way.

Bayern14 said:

This is a cool blog, Python isn't really all that hard. It's much easier to learn than most programming languages. Try checking out TGA's Python Tutorial and this is a sample of working python code. I was wondering if you would like a partner to learn how to mod Civ4 with. I consider myself a decent programmer (C++, C#, Python) but I'm not so great with getting pojects started, my brain tends to scatter between millions of ideas. I was always a fan of the Dynasty Warriors series and I'd love to help you out and learn some myself along the way.

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Hey it would be great, I don't think I'm particularly good at getting a project started especially something of this nature, but I think I'm pretty good at organizing ideas together. However I must warn you that I have zero programming background and may sound very silly with the questions I may have.

Right now I'm still designing the tech tree and balancing it. I only got the ancient to medieval part designed and putting it into XML now. I think what would be good would be a list of ideas you would like to see in this and I'll make a list of things I would like to see as well and we can tick off the ones we can do and not be overly ambitious. We'll change the tech tree accordingly to our ideas but I'll keep working on the tech tree so that we have at least a skeleton to work on. Just post here your ideas

March 21st

It's interesting how little one can be accomplished with so much time. I must have spent just hours thinking about the tech tree and staring at the Excel file and thinking what should be on there and the arrangement of things. Also the most important question in my mind is, can I do it? How can I do this?

Looking at the original Civ 4 tech tree, there were 92 unique techs in the whole game and so far I have 30 something, given I'm still at the medieval age. One thing I downplayed are the religion aspects and that it won't make an appearance until the medieval period and that they're not religions per say but rather schools of thoughts. I was reading up about the 4 Classics and the 4 major schools of thoughts in Ancient China. Taoism, Confucianism, Legalism and Mohism. All very unique perspectives to how government and society should function. That took a chunk of time as I do my research on those topics. I really want to flush out these religions and an idea of how these people in Ancient China would think.

Another part of the tech tree that I'm a bit dissatisfy with is the lack of cultural buildings. I intentionally took out monument so that new cities will look like city states in the beginning and only eventually after Yellow Turban is quell does the player have the tech to start working on culture.

I'm also thinking about how the units would work. Instead of given the ability to build swordsmen spearmen and axemen, I'm thinking that these units can only be upgraded and cannot be built. So that all units have to start as warriors, and after paying the money for training and equipment can the player have these more advance units. So that the player have to make a choice of a bigger but weaker army or a smaller but stronger army. I'm also thinking that these warriors should be created through food, just like settlers and workers because we're taking people from the general population pool. I guess I want to make it so that all units are useful and not simply become obsolete or just stronger version.

The big question is; can I make any of this work? Will the AI recognize that it must upgrade its unit with gold and not build the swordsman? What sort of exploits may come up from this? Well right now I don't have any of those answers cause I really don't have anything running yet. Just ideas of a tech tree and me converting it slowly into XML with the tech tree editor (great utility btw)

Oh well task for tomorrow, hopefully finish organizing ancient to medieval tech to XML then design the rest of the tech tree and start moving it to XML

Sweet, thanks for letting me help. Any questions you have just ask them, I'll try to answer the best I can. No question is a stupid question. I am going out of town until Sunday and I don't know if I'll have internet. If you don't hear from me, I dont lol.

Something interesting (not sure how possible it is), but perhaps limit tech tree progression to accomplishing events.

Eg. a handful of techs to build up your troops/heros (go go guan yu!) then once you defeat the yellow turbans you're given a 'stage complete' tech, that'll let you research into the next section.

Think it'd be feasible, at least the 'requiring' part. Not sure on the script giving the tech.

That's a really interesting idea Charybdis. And the unique tech for each kingdom is basically to limit progression so that at least something would happen that's close to their story would happen during that particular era. If we made a tech as a type of reward for the Yellow Turban quest, then that would be good for progression, but the question is how do we give the tech to the rest of the civilizations who can't complete the quest. I want to make a trigger so that each time a civiliation research call to arms tech, then it'll trigger a yellow turban rebellion so that the problem is wide spread. Of course we could make the quest possible for all civs too, but the question is how do one defeat the yellow turban? All the barbarians or a special unit Zhang Jiao, or destroying a city? What would be the definition of destroying the yellow turbans? And can the AI know how to complete the quest and not have a player take its kill. Just questions. I really do like the idea though of progression through events in the tech tree. Just wondering about the technical aspects. Keep your ideas coming

How feasible is that really? How big is the tech tree going to be? If it's to the level of detail of the vanilla civ4, then progressing through an event every time you research a tech is going to become a hassle and somewhat annoying. By the end of the game you could have researched 50 techs and spent time pouring time into your military, when it's your economy that really needs it.

Bayern14 said:

How feasible is that really? How big is the tech tree going to be? If it's to the level of detail of the vanilla civ4, then progressing through an event every time you research a tech is going to become a hassle and somewhat annoying. By the end of the game you could have researched 50 techs and spent time pouring time into your military, when it's your economy that really needs it.

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oh I was thinking one event per Era. Like something will happen in the Ancient era, and then another event will happen in the classical era. So that there's something that defines that era. Also these events wouldn't be all combat like the Yellow Turban, it would be beneficial such as the ability to recruit Zhao Yun or Zhou Yu.

For the length of the Tech Tree, I'm still working on it. It'll definitely not be as long as Vanilla Civ 4, and I want to make the techs more unique for each kingdom as they progress along.

Once an era is a much better idea. I'm not sure if there's a way you can make a prerequisite for a tech other than another tech. I'll do a little research on that tonight. And another thing, I wonder if there is a way to make these events in anything but a scenario.

Dknight99 said:

That's a really interesting idea Charybdis. And the unique tech for each kingdom is basically to limit progression so that at least something would happen that's close to their story would happen during that particular era. If we made a tech as a type of reward for the Yellow Turban quest, then that would be good for progression, but the question is how do we give the tech to the rest of the civilizations who can't complete the quest. I want to make a trigger so that each time a civiliation research call to arms tech, then it'll trigger a yellow turban rebellion so that the problem is wide spread. Of course we could make the quest possible for all civs too, but the question is how do one defeat the yellow turban? All the barbarians or a special unit Zhang Jiao, or destroying a city? What would be the definition of destroying the yellow turbans? And can the AI know how to complete the quest and not have a player take its kill. Just questions. I really do like the idea though of progression through events in the tech tree. Just wondering about the technical aspects. Keep your ideas coming

Click to expand...

Perhaps having a stationary zhang jiao/bao (some other names but I forget them) in a handful of yellow turban 'fortresses'. Destruction of all of them = end of the yellow turbans. Call a script to gift all active civilizations 'xyz' tech. That of course is a pre-req to get into the next set of techs.

One interesting result could be that you research to the stop and then build cash for conscripting generic troops for the upcoming seiges (since you've been alerted that the turbans are needing a good ass whooping).

The 'group' models that inevitably gets created by someone for each version of civ would be useful there as well. Having a group of 5 warriors per squad *coughdwgamereferencecough* instead of the 3 would look a lot better for mobilising an army.

March 23rd

Well things slowed down on the weekend for me; sunny day and social obligations got me out of the house and away from modding. I did go back to work on Sunday afternoon and spent the better part of the afternoon and the evening trying to finish the tech tree. I made more progress on it and just have to figure out how to make things still interesting in the last two eras. I kinda of designed it so that city management and culture is not very important in the beginning but more so after the kingdoms are more established. I also added a promotion so that the generals can grow old. The Guan Yu you get in the Yellow Turban Rebellion shouldn't be the same as the Guan Yu after Chi Bi. So I designed it so that there's a feeling of progression as the player research the techs. I'm hoping the more technical aspects wouldn't be as difficult to implement, can can be done just by editing units.

I think from the very beginning I wanted to make it so that tech progression dictates the progression on time rather than each turn passed. Anyways, I've attached the updated Tech Tree Design. It's not completed yet, but it's definitely an update. If there's anything you don't understand with the tech tree, please let me know and I'll do my best to explain why I placed that technology there or what is this or that.

I also spent some time going on youtube to find vids and songs to try to match the feel of what Romance of the Three Kingdoms is about. To me the three kingdoms isn't just about fighting, and war, but rather the very human relationship between people in very trying times. So I found a few links to the kind of music I would like to put in the mod later on.

Oath at Peach Garden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD3QUGUZFQU

Zhuge Liang leaves his Cottage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dZkyL1XFQM&feature=related

Peasants following Liu Bei
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCl371tfdQs&feature=related

In regards to age. Having first era troops with like a 1-3 attack, then guan yu with a 6-8 would make him feel young/powerful then. But by the time chi bi occured, if ground troops are 6-8, then only his promotions (ie. long years of battle experience) makes him tougher, and someone like ma chao or jiang wei could be the strong new warrior.

I had an idea for the rebellions. This would make it easier to put into skirmish games that aren't pre-made maps.

Every time the age changes, a hidden counter begins and after that counter expires, one of your cities (other than your capital) becomes a yellow turban city. You have to take it back to quash the rebellion, and they only stop coming after you research a certain tech or fulfill some other requirement.

Make it so that major villages are important. Because I am chinese and I know how horror follows a village sacking (not a ctiy) so make it so...

Bah, don't have to follow but you should have books that increase culture.