Civilization 5 Modding Dead.

[Voyhkah]

All of you are still welcome on the Civ4 C&C forums! Civ4 Modding is still GOING STRONG!

 

[SamBC]

The game data being SQL is pretty powerful, really, allowing relative changes for example. The fact that most guides and so on (not all of which come from Firaxis by any means) use the XML format confuses the issue, but I guess they think the SQL format will confuse people. You can do stuff more clearly and concisely with SQL than the XML format.

 

[Afforess]

Boring "facts" ... I played Civ 4 for about a month after it was released, got bored quickly despite being one of the few people that didn't have problems running it. I guess Civ 5 made everybody forget about MAFs even though they still haunt Civ 4. Anyway, after that first month I didn't come back to it until BtS, skipped Warlords entirely. I know that Civ 4 became something really good full of great mods but I won't lie to myself about how long it took to get there.

So... along comes Civ 5, amazingly enough, I played it for about a month before taking a break. I have no idea what version I played last but I decided to pick up Ged-somethinglongIcan'tspell's mod with an even longer name I can't remember, well except the "not" part and the funny thing was it ran fine along side a personal mod I made back in November that was never updated. Granted it wasn't a particularly fancy mod, just some SQL to change some basic combat rules, AI flavors and other simple things. But, it ran without me even opening up the mod buddy.

Anyway, the point is that Civ 5 modding is different than what most people are used to. Historically a "mod" has always involved changing game files be it xml, txt or some goofey proprietary datafile. Civ 5 uses a sequel database and saddly few gamers understand what that means. So people get upset that they can't just edit a file like they always have in the past even though they see files that look identical to what they edited for Civ 4. It's frustrating when you expect things to work like you're used to. While I don't think modding is "dead" and I disagree with many points made to that effect I certainly understand why a lot of people have given up.

Oh, and on the topic of AI, if you want to have some fun with the Civ 5 AI all you need to do is stop thinking like a strategy game developer for a little bit. For years strategy games have been tackling AI backwards and Civ 5 isn't any different. The problem is that you can't think like a person when trying to design the AI, what's easy for us to decide by simply looking at something, like a map for one example, is extremely complex to program an AI to do. Programming 101- complex != good.

You need to program and treat the AI like it's a small child, for example consider a simple situation where you have a tank close to an enemy city with some artillery nearby.

The "traditional" strategy AI approach is to have the computer player look at the tank and then look around the tank and try to evaluate everything within a set range. It's really easy for you and I to see that threat and the best place to move the tank to/flee/attack/etc, especially since we can think a few turns in advance taking terrain movement costs into account and finding a path to our goal faster than the enemy can pursue us. Now, try to come up with a way to exaplain that to the AI.

The "non-traditional" approach is to tackle the same situation from a complately different perspective. Instead of looking at a specific unit and trying to figure out what, if anything, can harm it you have each unit (and city in this example) check to see what it can harm and pass the information to the target, essentially saying "I can hit you and do about this much damage." This may sound more complicate at first but it's actually much simpler. It's also easy to extend so it includes things like medics telling nearby units "I can heal you" or a ranged unit saying "I can support you."

This is how I used to program bot AI back in the day when Quake didn't have a numbers in the name. It's effective and you can typically rely on existing methods for LoS, pathfinding, combat odds and so on. It's also efficient because you don't have to scan as often as you do when you try it the other way around. I think ideally in a game like Civ 5 each unit/city would simply "tag" their surrounding hexes at the end of their player's turn then all subsequent units would merely have to check the tags on their current hex (to avoid seeing what they shouldn't see). You could very easily handle things like basic commands to "wait here until healed" or "get away from this city because it hurts."

So when you're struggling with getting the AI to grasp your changes just take a step back, remember that the AI is like a deaf, dumb and blind kid then see if you can't come up with something that works.

As for the DLL... I'll wait for it just because I prefer C++ over LUA, I'm old and senile, if I have to learn LUA I'll have to forget something else first.

Nice work on ignoring the OP. SQL is not the problem. AI is not the problem (well, other than the fact that modders can not alter it).

 

[Seven05]

Nice work on ignoring the OP. SQL is not the problem. AI is not the problem (well, other than the fact that modders can not alter it).

I appologize for offending you, I was simply addressing the other nine pages worth of discussion including your own remarks about difficulty modding the AI for a specifc mod.

Since you're obviously the expert on all things related to Civ 5 I'll leave you to your misery in peace.

 

[GambleFish]

I appologize for offending you, I was simply addressing the other nine pages worth of discussion including your own remarks about difficulty modding the AI for a specifc mod.

Since you're obviously the expert on all things related to Civ 5 I'll leave you to your misery in peace.

Shazzam! Well said. I think civ 5 modding is dead, but it doesn't mean I will complain and rage if someone doesn't post a word-for-word agreement to the OP.

 

[Pazyryk]

I agree with every point in the OP. However, the specific phrasing Civilization 5 Modding Dead is a little gloomy.

Another interpretation, consistent with all of the facts in the OP, is that Civ5 needs a little more time to cook. It was a much more ambitious step from IV to V than any previous. If you have time or interest to play after the last two patches, you might find that it is growing into a really fabulous game (or not, I can't say for you). There is plenty of evidence that there was at least an intention that Civ5 be awesomely moddable. Clearly it wasn't and still isn't after almost a year (so no point in the "Civ4 took this long" argument... it didn't). But in any case, I hope you are still around (or come back) when/if Civ5 modding ever does shape up to be a reasonable endeavor.

 

[Sonereal]

Civ5 Modding isn't dead, it's on life support waiting for the good doctor to ubercharge it or for someone to place a merciful bullet into its temple.

 

[Lance of Llanwy]

I think it'll be very much alive once they release the DLL they're going to be beta-testing soon.

 

[Sonereal]

I think it'll be very much alive once they release the DLL they're going to be beta-testing soon.

I think it's reasonable to say the DLL will be out before the one year mark at least.

 

[KungCheops]

YES!!! (maybe)

 

[Sonereal]

YES!!! (maybe)

I would be a 100% surprised if they somehow screw that up.

 

[KungCheops]

I would be a 100% surprised if they somehow screw that up.

No, it wouldn't exactly be the first time...

 

[bitula]

Hey! I didnt read through the whole thread, but are you people saying that after 10 months since release the c++ source code of the core dll is still not available????

 

[Gedemon]

they had to fix the core game first.

 

[bitula]

they had to fix the core game first.

You mean "have to"? Well but this may last forever... They could rather publish the source and then each change for each patch. Isnt that how it went with Civ4? Any mod could then just merge the changes. I think there should be a different reason for not releasing it, for example the DLC business...?

 

[Spatzimaus]

they had to fix the core game first.

Yep. Civ 4's core game was far more stable at release than Civ 5's was, and it still took them what, 8 months to get the DLL? Given how significantly Civ 5's game balance has changed in the December, March, and June patches, I'm not surprised they've held off on the DLL. In the meantime, there are still a lot of things we can do for the game in mods, just through Lua.

 

[Gedemon]

You mean "have to"? Well but this may last forever... They could rather publish the source and then each change for each patch. Isnt that how it went with Civ4? Any mod could then just merge the changes. I think there should be a different reason for not releasing it, for example the DLC business...?

there's no need to buy the DLC to use the new events related to them in mods, so I really think that's not the case.

And except the multiplayer part, the game is fixed IMO, the devs have posted here about the DLL SDK being in test for release soon (or was about to be tested, understand *soon* as in all game development, aka a few days to some months later)

Civ5 was released at least 6 months early (or there weren't enough people involved in the project in the last phase of development, whatever, the fact is that it wasn't finished when it was released, but at least they keep working on it)

 

[bitula]

there's no need to buy the DLC to use the new events related to them in mods, so I really think that's not the case.

No, by DLC buisness I just meant, that untill DLC-s are well selling they dont want to give away the source, since that would enable creating DLC-like modules for free. But ofcourse thats just speculation from my side, its based on that the source can be released at any time, since they have it from start, and 10 months is a bit too much. But well ok, maybe it is not... Sort of dissapointing, that practically nothing happens with this game since 10 months. Or one year? I wonder when to check back? Next year, or 2013?

 

[Gedemon]

No, by DLC buisness I just meant, that untill DLC-s are well selling they dont want to give away the source, since that would enable creating DLC-like modules for free.

Except for the 3D leaderheads, we can do DLC-like modules for free. And the DLL sdk release won't allow us to make 3D leaderheads. That's another part of the modding tools (not fixed yet btw, but nothing to do with the DLL)

 

[Sneaks]

Civ V modding is certainly on life support. My biggest concern right now is that there has been such a massive exodus of those willing to try with Civ V (lemmy, Dale, alpaca, Afforess, etc) that by the time we finally get the tools we need, the community will be too comatose to save the day. As with most other communities, generally speaking people become involved if they see cool things going on. Those initial example mods with full DLL won't be what they had the potential to once be, and that could be catastrophic to the long term prospects of the game.