I'm curious about the opinion of other modders about the current state and future hopes for civ7 modding.
Here is mine.
The good
- UI: one of the biggest issue from a player perspective, but, as shown by the number of mods released, it's clearly one of the best feature of civ7 modding.
- Modifiers are still there
- Assets modding is promising, as shown by the ability to load other models for Leaders already
The Bad
those are surely temporary, until the tools are released, and IMO it's part of the result of the game being released too early, I would have expected those to be possible at release, without dedicated tools.
- limited map making: no way to set rivers and elevation, will of course change when the world builder is released, question is when, knowing there are must pressing issues for the Devs.
- assets define hidden, will also surely be unlocked when the tools are out, but same question as above. I'm pretty sure it will move to the "good" then, but I'm also already convinced there won't be SQL artdef this time again. I really miss civ5 for that...
- no gameplay script. some things can be done in UI context, but a lot of exposed functions from civ6/5 are missing. See city renaming impossible for the AI for an example. there is a scenario tag to load some script files, but I didn't manage to activate that context. Quite confident this will be in, and more functions will be exposed in the future.
The Ugly
those are my main concerns, I'm afraid opening the game to so many platforms resulted in more and more technical limitations imposed by the lowest hardware supposed to run the game compared to previous versions of the game, up to civ2/3.
and I hope I'm wrong here.
- reloading between ages transition. I remember when we (modders) discussed the possibility of reloading a game for gameplay mechanisms like season changing the map as a workaround for the engine limitations, and dismissed it because of the impact on the players. And now Firaxis as made a core game mechanism on an engine that can't handle it, instead of changing the engine first. That makes me very uncomfortable about the game's evolution, remembering Gathering Storm issues.
- no tiles texture rendered on X>128 on very large maps, maybe temporary, maybe a hard limit, but as long as it's here, civ7 is the worst of the series for map sizes. Bye civ4/5/6 Giant Earth Map.
- units movement: it's all or nothing, either you pass somewhere without any movement penalty, either you stop on that plot. I can't imagine another reason than a technical limit on the weakest hardware to code movements this way.
Here is mine.
The good
- UI: one of the biggest issue from a player perspective, but, as shown by the number of mods released, it's clearly one of the best feature of civ7 modding.
- Modifiers are still there
- Assets modding is promising, as shown by the ability to load other models for Leaders already
The Bad
those are surely temporary, until the tools are released, and IMO it's part of the result of the game being released too early, I would have expected those to be possible at release, without dedicated tools.
- limited map making: no way to set rivers and elevation, will of course change when the world builder is released, question is when, knowing there are must pressing issues for the Devs.
- assets define hidden, will also surely be unlocked when the tools are out, but same question as above. I'm pretty sure it will move to the "good" then, but I'm also already convinced there won't be SQL artdef this time again. I really miss civ5 for that...
- no gameplay script. some things can be done in UI context, but a lot of exposed functions from civ6/5 are missing. See city renaming impossible for the AI for an example. there is a scenario tag to load some script files, but I didn't manage to activate that context. Quite confident this will be in, and more functions will be exposed in the future.
The Ugly
those are my main concerns, I'm afraid opening the game to so many platforms resulted in more and more technical limitations imposed by the lowest hardware supposed to run the game compared to previous versions of the game, up to civ2/3.
and I hope I'm wrong here.
- reloading between ages transition. I remember when we (modders) discussed the possibility of reloading a game for gameplay mechanisms like season changing the map as a workaround for the engine limitations, and dismissed it because of the impact on the players. And now Firaxis as made a core game mechanism on an engine that can't handle it, instead of changing the engine first. That makes me very uncomfortable about the game's evolution, remembering Gathering Storm issues.
- no tiles texture rendered on X>128 on very large maps, maybe temporary, maybe a hard limit, but as long as it's here, civ7 is the worst of the series for map sizes. Bye civ4/5/6 Giant Earth Map.
- units movement: it's all or nothing, either you pass somewhere without any movement penalty, either you stop on that plot. I can't imagine another reason than a technical limit on the weakest hardware to code movements this way.
