Keeping Civ4Col alive

[Hrvoje193]

As I see it Colonization is very good game, but never achieved status it should.Mods made it even better, but unfortunately there are only few moders, working separately.
In rare occasions when they worked together results were brilliant, good example is making R&R many features in relatively short time.
It would be great if remaining moders would be willing to combine forces and work together.

 

[raystuttgart]

As I see it Colonization is very good game, but never achieved status it should.

I guess we all agree on that.

Mods made it even better, but unfortunately there are only few moders, working separately.

Well, actually most of the remaining modders have formed small teams.
And most of us are cooperating (by sharing features and knowledge or simply giving advice).

In rare occasions when they worked together results were brilliant, good example is making R&R many features in relatively short time.

If you succeed bringing several skilled (and some experienced) modders together and to organize them into a well functioning team, you can truly "shake the modding world".

It would be great if remaining moders would be willing to combine forces and work together.

That is what I keep trying to tell all the time.
(see here)

Big modding teams are awesome if they work well.
(They are horrible if they don't.)

But it is not as easy as one might believe to build up a big and well working team.
(Actually it is very hard to build up a big modding team and keep it motivated over a long time.)

A big project needs:

1) a common vision to bring and keep the team together
2) a common (modding) philosophie to avoid trouble in the team
3) good organisation and structure to work efficiently
4) good quality control or you will just end with a mess of bugs

 

[PatriotNorwood]

I would gladly join a modding team doing whatever I could (Map Making, Very Simple XML, etc.), but sometimes people would rather go it alone, or don't need help from inexperienced people like me.
However; if someone reading this does want my help let me know!

 

[Hrvoje193]

If you succeed bringing several skilled (and some experienced) modders together and to organize them into a well functioning team, you can truly "shake the modding world".

Truth is, I meant specifically on Kailric, Night and you.Kailric is currently working on M:C, Night on both M:C and his version of R&R and you are partially occupied by R&R.My guess is there are more passive moders who don't have time or skill to work alone.
Wouldn't be better that all of you work together, both mods have great features?
At the start of R&R there were many enthusiastic fans who playtested it and were giving feedback.I know how I was excited with development.Later things went slower and so did the support.Even better example is M:C, where development went slower, and so support quickly faded, despite the fact it has some unique and exotic features.Sometimes I have a feeling it will never be finished, so I don't have a will to play it.
My point is there are still some casual fans and moders who would love to see and help one clearly defined mod, which has good chance for relatively fast development(no one wants to wait for years) and even more important which would be finished.Last, but not least important, it would attract some old players, as well as new ones.

 

[raystuttgart]

Truth is, I meant specifically on Kailric, Night and you.

Well, there are a few more that I would still list, like Schmiddie and orlanth.

There are many more experienced modders still lurking around.
They are simply not "highly active" anymore.

Actually that is the biggest part of the problem from my point of view.
The highly skilled and highly experienced modders that are still continuously active have become extremely rare.

Kailric is currently working on M:C, Night on both M:C and his version of R&R and you are partially occupied by R&R.

Well, that is the way things are.

My guess is there are more passive moders who don't have time or skill to work alone.

I am modding this game many years already but I still don't feel that I have the skills to create a huge mod all alone.

It would simply be too much effort.
(And I have much less time and motivation left for modding than I used to have a few years ago.)

Without Schmiddie as RaR team member I would not be working on RaR any more.
Without support from our partners progress would also be much much slower.

Wouldn't be better that all of you work together, both mods have great features?

We do cooperate and share knowledge, ideas and features.

I don't believe however that we will form a real modding team.
Our visions and modding philosophies are simply too different.

M:C is doing things that we (Schmiddie and myself) would not agree to.
And probably RaR is doing things that Kailric or Nightinggale would not agree to.

But that is great.
A modding community also needs diversity for new ideas to evolve.

At the start of R&R there were many enthusiastic fans who playtested it and were giving feedback.I know how I was excited with development.

I know, it was a cool time.

But it was also a massive amount of work which I probably could not handle any more today because of lack of time.
All the organisation, long discussions, support for new modders, bugfixing, ...

Even better example is M:C, where development went slower, and so support quickly faded, despite the fact it has some unique and exotic features.Sometimes I have a feeling it will never be finished, so I don't have a will to play it.

Actually there are still many people interested in M:C and also supporting the project.
Also M:C is still in the middle of its development.

Modding takes time, so community needs to be patient.
Just give the mod some time.

RaR (and TAC which it is built on) took years of development and RaR is also not "finished" yet.

My point is there are still some casual fans and moders who would love to see and help one clearly defined mod, which has good chance for relatively fast development(no one wants to wait for years) and even more important which would be finished.

A few weeks ago somebody came up with "Wizards and Monkeys".

So I will try to use that example to explain.
(I really don't want to offend anybody.)

--------------

A well working modding project does not need "1000 Monkeys".
Simply because they will cause chaos (long useless discussions) and trouble (bad quality work and bugs) that the "Wizards" will need to clean up afterwards.
And even more problematic is that the "Wizards" will waste most of their time on taking care of the "Monkeys" instead of doing their magic or teaching their "Apprentices".

A modding project needs:

1. Experienced "Wizards" to do the tough magic and take care of difficult situations that "Apprentices" could not yet handle and to teach the "Apprentices"
2. Motivated, reliable and skilled "Apprentices" to do easier task the "Wizards" don't have time for and to continuously learn from the "Wizards" and build up their knowledge

The more "Wizards" you have, the more "Apprentices" you can teach / build up to become new "Wizards".

The truth is though, that getting from "Apprentice" to "Wizard" takes time.
And many really skilled "Apprentices" simply are not patient enough and want to be "Wizards" right away which usually results in failure (abandoned projects).
Other "Apprentices" are simply not motivated enough and thus never succeed becoming "Wizards".

On the other hand you also cannot force "Wizards" in the same tower that do not work well together. (sharing vision and philosophy)
They will probably start throwing fire balls at each other and destroy the whole tower.

If you have great Wizards and good Apprentices, then - just for the fun of it - you might keep one or two "Monkeys" as pets, simply because you like their funny craziness.
But I personally don't have time for pets, since I am often not at home (here in the forum) during the week.

If you have some "Loyal Servants" (people that are not modding but giving support like hosting a wiki or testing and reporting bugs) that is of course very valuable as well.

I really hope nobody feels offended by this example (Wizards, Apprentices, Monkeys, Servants) but it is very useful for explanation.
And somebody else came up with this before me.

--------------

Problem 1: We currently have only very few "Wizards" left to teach "Apprentices".
Problem 2: We currently have only very few "Apprentices" that show the qualities (skills, motivation, reliability and patience) to become "Wizards".

 

[Kailric]

Truth is, I meant specifically on Kailric, Night and you.Kailric is currently working on M:C, Night on both M:C and his version of R&R and you are partially occupied by R&R.My guess is there are more passive moders who don't have time or skill to work alone.
Wouldn't be better that all of you work together, both mods have great features?
At the start of R&R there were many enthusiastic fans who playtested it and were giving feedback.I know how I was excited with development.Later things went slower and so did the support.Even better example is M:C, where development went slower, and so support quickly faded, despite the fact it has some unique and exotic features.Sometimes I have a feeling it will never be finished, so I don't have a will to play it.
My point is there are still some casual fans and moders who would love to see and help one clearly defined mod, which has good chance for relatively fast development(no one wants to wait for years) and even more important which would be finished.Last, but not least important, it would attract some old players, as well as new ones.

Well, I feel things are moving quite well at M:C. We just released a huge update, which ported the Civics screen from Civ4 among a bunch of other things, and it has got plenty of feedback so things are moving forward on to the next version.

I will be concentrating on M:C for some time now, so cannot really be much of any help to any other mod. I have much to juggle with real life also. Anyway, you talk about joining forces, joining forces to do what?

M:C is always welcoming more help. You talk about things moving slow, well you can help speed it up

I would gladly join a modding team doing whatever I could (Map Making, Very Simple XML, etc.), but sometimes people would rather go it alone, or don't need help from inexperienced people like me.
However; if someone reading this does want my help let me know!

We at M:C want your help!

Apply here http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=483

 

[Nightinggale]

unfortunately there are only few moders, working separately.

The modders are currently divided into 3 teams.

• Religion & Revolution
• Medieval Conquest
• Dawn of a New Era

These are 3 totally different mods and "joining forces" makes little sense.

Medieval Conquest has become Colonization Mod Collection where the code (python and DLL) is shared across multiple mods. I think this is partly what you are asking for because coding a new feature or fixing a bug in one mod there will automatically apply to all mods in the collection. As a result, programming speed per mod is really fast even through there are only two people writing code (more would always be welcome). It also mean that it is possible to make a mod without any programmers and still use a maintained source code.

Night on both M:C and his version of R&R and you are partially occupied by R&R.

Not entirely true. RaRE died when RaR 1.6 "stole" all the improvements from it and it is a dead mod. I have been thinking of removing it from my signature. It's a very important mod as it was not only a platform for improving RaR, it also gave me experience in handling multiple source codes and why that isn't working. I'm not sure I would have worked hard on using a shared source code if I didn't try this first and the shared code is far more efficient.

However it is true that I have added a great deal of code to RaR. This is mainly bugfixes and performance upgrades. The latter are often also used in M:C. I do not really develop new stuff for anything other than M:C.


I don't think we can get people to team up on the same task more than we already do. While it would be great if everybody worked on the same mod, it will not work because people mod because they want to and they have a vision of what their mod should be like. If they are told to make something, which conflicts with that vision, then they just quit modding instead.

 

[PatriotNorwood]

Yes Nightingale, I agree with you that there should be many branches of mods each with a different interest to catch different people in their many likes. What we need are more things for the smaller mods like shared DLL, which is what you and Kailric are doing, it is the way to go in my opinion. But, enough confusing people, I am done rambling...

 

[Nightinggale]

What we need are more things for the smaller mods like shared DLL, which is what you and Kailric are doing, it is the way to go in my opinion.

The story behind the shared DLL is this: I noticed that Colonization 2071 had severe DLL issues and orlanth (the creator) said he considered ditching the DLL and copy the one from R&R or M:C. Assuming such a copy would suffer the same fate as the previous one I came up with the idea to share the DLL code. Kailric and orlanth agreed (alot!) to this idea and then I spent a few months fixing the code to allow this. In this process we realized it would open up for more mods and indeed they started appearing once the DLL became generic enough.

Later I changed the git setup to the current with submodules where the source code is truly shared. You don't have to download M:C anymore to get the source code. Also python code is also shared now (it wasn't until quite recently).

I wouldn't say Kailric did nothing. He moves hardcoded setups into XML setups when touching the code anyway. However the shared concept is my brainchild.

In fact I would say that most stuff regarding the DLL is handled by just one person. While we agree on goals, we rarely code on the same features meaning we make the DLL together, but each area in the DLL often has just one name to it.

 

[Kailric]

The story behind the shared DLL is this:

Let's hope its a never ending story, or its at least a happy ending

Nightinggale's vision is really what has inspired me to concentrate on M:C and keep things moving forward. When you have such high class help its kind of imperative to take advantage of the moment

Each addition we make we attempt to make it modder friendly, with XML settings to adjust or turn off features. One recent addition is with an xml change you can have the King appear on the map, with several cities, and more diplomatic options.