As if we needed ANOTHER thread like this. But a few things deserve special comment.
No DLL Access (Civ4 had the DLL source code at this stage already. It's APRIL folks!)
When, exactly did the Civ4 DLL source code get released to the public? Are you sure it was within six months of release? I was under the impression that it was considerably later than that before the FULL toolkit was out.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with the Civ5 post-release support. Two huge patches, each of which broke most pre-existing mods, with nothing in between. Many bugs (not unimplemented features, but actual "not working as intended" bugs) that still haven't been fixed. A game whose balance is still hopelessly out of whack without major rebalancing in mods. And DLC is a whole other discussion. Then there's documentation. When your only source for information on what various functions do is a horribly incomplete Wiki, and most questions about argument lists are resolved by
asking other modders, then there's a major failure involved.
The existing Civ5 setup might be FAR more capable than we're currently taking advantage of, but we'll never know if none of it is documented. For instance, it's now been a couple months since the GameEvents system was implemented, and most of us don't have a CLUE what it actually can be used for. The Events page lists a couple hundred different Lua events to trigger off of, and yet it seems like the only ones anyone ever uses are the StartTurn, EndTurn, and various Serial events. And the most complete explanation of how to mod is a PDF tutorial made when the game was released, many parts of which are now out of date.
A couple modders suggested No I/O access was a good thing, for safety. If you can't trust modders, who can you trust?
I'd hope that you were joking here, but obviously you're not based on your comments in the previous thread. Here, I'll rewrite it for you:
"If you can't the future of your commercial product to people on the Internet you've never met, who can you trust?"
Modders are not some inherently noble group. They're people trying to make some additional fun out of a game, and "fun" means different things to different people, sometimes malicious. Allowing unfettered access to a user's machine is a BAD idea, no matter how many disclaimers you stick on the Mods menu.
Inputs are fine as long as they're HEAVILY sanitized. Basically, like the XML is now; the game parses a formatted text file into a more machine-usable language before doing anything with it. Given that, I'd love to see some sort of standardized data file format implemented by the devs, allowing us to save and load variables across a wider variety of situations. But that's NOT the same as open I/O access.
(Incidentally, remember how SaveData and LoadData were removed in the December patch before being restored in a hotfix? The devs' stated logic at the time was that they were in the process of implementing a superior system and so didn't think it was necessary to keep those functions around anymore. So where's that superior system? If it's in place, already, then we probably don't NEED that kind of I/O.)
I'd personally just be happy with being able to edit more of the things we DO have access to right now. Like gaining the ability to add new sound and art assets without jumping through a ton of hoops or replacing vanilla assets. Or a few simple utility Lua functions, like "redraw the map" or "play this movie file", that can be easily triggered in any existing function.
(Note: Before you flame me, I had the highest hopes for Civ5.)
Maybe so, but I think you've got a very unrealistic expectation of where the game should be by now, and I also think you (and many other Civ4 enthusiasts) remember the early days of Civ4 modding a bit... differently. I remember, at the time, how singularly unimpressed I was with most of what was being posted to the modding forums on this site, how it wasn't until at least a year after release that the truly good mods and components started appearing.
So I'm not ready to write an obituary for Civ5 yet; in my view, the critical point is going to be whenever the first true (non-DLC) expansion is released. That's the point where a lot of people who played the game when it first released but then stopped out of boredom will come back and see what's been done in the interim. If the mods are complete enough at that point, then all will be well with the world, but if we're still hacking together minor XML tweaks and a few new civilizations here and there, then yes, I'd agree.
