Mod survival

[fozo1655]

I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of fantasy mods comming around I, myself wish to make one.) So I wanted your thoughts.

1.Do you think any will survive
2.which one
3.Is there room for more
4. ANything else really

Answer all, none, or whatever other number you wish

 

[Tssha]

Mods need determination and stick-to-it-iveness. You need to have a vision, a plan to implement the vision, and the means to implement it. If you aren't a programmer, it's not likely you'll be making a DLL mod, so don't count on it. Not unless you're willing to learn how to program and recognize what a commitment that entails.

Teams that form before anything is released don't tend to last. It's tough, modding, and sometimes a good mod will run into a show stopping bug and someone important will give up and not finish. Then the mod will be screwed and dead.

That's the reason why the best modders tend only to join teams that have something out there, because they know that their efforts won't go to waste as there's something to contribute to (and not just an idea in someone else's head). They can also just do something and send it to the mod creator. They don't even need to join the team, even Fall from Heaven took contributions from people outside their team. The best of them got recruited when they were able to demonstrate they could contribute on a regular and reliable basis.

Lastly, it's a well known fact in the video game industry that ideas are cheap. A good idea is nothing without any idea of how to implement it. Game designers aren't idea people, they're people who take an idea and turn it into systems, gameplay and design that can, with work, result in a finished product that is functional and fun.


So you can see that I don't have much faith in threads that ask people to contribute something when even the thread starter doesn't have a design in place. I'm personally waiting for Naeralith Reborn, since they're actually hammering out a design document. The Tolkien thread might get somewhere, or it might not (it would help if someone took ownership of the idea and responsibility for its release). We'll see how either of these projects goes, however.


And yes, there's always room for more. Particularly if you've got the willpower, the patience and the free time (and are willing to commit it to modding) to release a mod yourself. I'm still waiting to see if I have what it takes myself.

 

[LDiCesare]

If you could do a full listing of those found, it might help giving an answer.

So far I'm aware of a few total conversion fantasy mods on civfanatics:

One is Eden (?), which is likely to last since it's apparently being made by a team of people who worked on FfH2 and modmods of it.

Another one is Naeralith reborn, which already existed in Civ , but which I find too unfamiliar for my taste (I miss the point of renaming horses jsut because they have feathers). I think it's likely to last.

There's A Civ of Ice and Fire too which is technically fantasy, but should be quite light on magic given the books are much more about warfare than magic (even though there are undeads and dragons).

There's probably some Tolkien-stuff out there too.

I think the Civ 4 Faerie Tale team might give a try in Civ 5, I think a map has already been made.

In the modbrowser, I couldn't find anything else worth mentioning.

If you want to do something that fits in one of the existing designs (Tolkien, G.R.R. Martin's world), then you can join them. However if you have your own ideas, by all means start your own mod. It will be hard and long, but if you tire out of it, you'd have tired out of a community project too.
As Tssha said, serious modders will only join if there's already something, and preferably more than just design documents, so start your own mod, there's surely room for it.

 

[elistor]

I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of fantasy mods comming around I, myself wish to make one.) So I wanted your thoughts.

1.Do you think any will survive
2.which one
3.Is there room for more
4. ANything else really

Answer all, none, or whatever other number you wish

1. Depends on what you mean by survive. If you mean still around and updating 5 years from now then yes probably, if you mean "Fall from Heaven" level of success then who knows it's possible but not likely. I'm personaly converting one of my original game worlds into a partial conversion high fantasy mod myself, but at this moment I'm in the design doc phase and expect I'll be in this phase for some time to come. Once I'm happy with that I'll start coding it and eventually once I have something at least playable I'll probably release it, not because I want fame or recognition, but because I want free beta testers I'm doing this because I want to play it myself, the same reason I released the two mods I have already, and couldn't care less if it gets "popular" or not. So for me yes it will survive but if someone only counts "Fall From Heaven" level of success as "survival" then no it won't because I'm not even TRYING to reach that high.

2. Random, though someone working things out and looking at the long game instead of quick release now is probably more likely to be around next year, little alone 3 years from now.

3. Always, no two people enjoy EXACTY the same thing so variaty is lovely. If nothing else you might give others ideas for adding things to there own mods and thus add to another mod you might enjoy.

4. There can be only one!... wait, no, wrong game. My bad. Seriously thouhg, if you decide to do a major mod like this make sure you're doing it because you enjoy doing it, because otherwise it WILL get tedious and frustrating when various things don't work like you think they should and if you don't know LUA, like I don't, it can add another layer of frustration either trying to figure it out or waiting for someone else to do what you want to do and hope they don't my you using there code.

 

[The_J]

I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of fantasy mods comming around I, myself wish to make one.) So I wanted your thoughts.

1.Do you think any will survive
2.which one
3.Is there room for more
4. ANything else really

1+2) That only depends on time and motivation of the modders. I don't have an overview over the existing ones, but if there's something already out, then i'd say it will "survive" (-> meaning that it will be improved over a longer time). To get the initial setup done is probably the biggest thing, because it involves most of the basic work. If this is done, everything else can be done in smaller steps, but the first is the biggest, most time consuming and needs the most movitation. Afterwards...not that a problem.
-> also for 4): You don't mod, until you mod. You can plan whatever you want, but you'll only be successful after you've begun with the work, not when you only plan.

3) Sure. But after at least one is established, the more important question is, if it's worth the time and effort.

 

[smellymummy]

1- sure as long as someone keeps up with it
2- star wars! star trek! scifi space fantasy?
3- the more the better imo

 

[Mynex]

I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of fantasy mods comming around I, myself wish to make one.) So I wanted your thoughts.

1.Do you think any will survive
2.which one
3.Is there room for more
4. ANything else really

Answer all, none, or whatever other number you wish

1 & 2. Others have covered this and pretty much echo my sentiments.

3. Always. As Elistor said, everyone has a slightly different play style.

4. Don't overplan. You can tweak and tweak and tweak your writing and eventually you'll either get overcome with details or burnt out trying to fill in the details.

there's 2 ways to approach mod design; Micro or Macro.
Micro - make a bunch of small things; tweaks to rules, units, buildings, civs, etc... Get your feet wet, get familiar with how things work...

Macro - Plan a nebulous mod - By that, write down an overview; "I want to make D&D type world that has Elves, Dwarves, Bugbears, and Flumphs as civilizations. I want three Unique Units for each, and 1 Unique Building."

That's generic enough with some direct points to ponder on.

As you progress either way, you'll discover that you'll end up combining both approaches... and alternating which you work on... Eventually the ideas and the actual making will kind of blend together until you don't even notice you're doing it.

*shrug* but again, everyone is different... some people can only micro, some can only macro... until you dive in you won't know where you excel.

 

[fozo1655]

Thanks for all the insight.

 

[Spatzimaus]

there's 2 ways to approach mod design; Micro or Macro.
Micro - make a bunch of small things; tweaks to rules, units, buildings, civs, etc... Get your feet wet, get familiar with how things work...

Macro - Plan a nebulous mod - By that, write down an overview; "I want to make D&D type world that has Elves, Dwarves, Bugbears, and Flumphs as civilizations. I want three Unique Units for each, and 1 Unique Building."

And on this note, my advice would be "start small". Even if your ultimate goal is to get a massive total conversion made, start with something that you KNOW works (like the base game) and iteratively add and subtract, testing periodically.
So if you want to add the Elf civilization, then don't wipe out all of the others first; just add them, so you'll have Elf vs. Germany vs. India to test out the basics. Then add a few new buildings, then some new units, then start deleting non-fantasy stuff, and so on. For a while you'll have something that seems ridiculous, but at least it'll be a STABLE ridiculous.

For instance, my own mod (Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri mod) made this mistake. I decided to add 45 new techs, sixty new buildings and wonders, a few dozen new units, etc., and what happened?
It didn't work.
I'd changed so much that I had no easy way to tell what, exactly, broke it. I ended up having to create a copy of the mod with everything new stripped out, and then add one bit at a time. I'd add five new units, recompile, see if they loaded, then repeat. Eventually I got it all working, but that was a lot of wasted time.


As to the original questions, I'd say that there's no easy way to tell what will survive, but that it'll all depend on a few specific things:
A> How devoted the primary modder is to keeping up with it.
A team doesn't really help so much here, you really need one person whose vision keeps it all going. And if he decides that his time is better spent adding nude hacks to Fallout 3, well, you're hosed.
This becomes especially important when large patches and expansion packs come out. If the mod isn't compatible with them, or just doesn't take advantage of their new features, then people will move on to newer mods instead. Patches are important for this; if one of the key parts of your mod is that cities heal 2 HP per turn instead of 1HP, and suddenly Firaxis decides that the default value will be 3HP, your mod no longer does what you intended it to do.
B> How good the team is at keeping all the little details straight and balanced.
Balance is REALLY hard to get right, especially if you go too far from the core gameplay. Too many fantasy/sci-fi mods I've played have ended up feeling like a jumbled mess, where there's no real "flow" to the gameplay, just sort of a "here are a bunch of cool toys!" thing instead. And if you're looking at a large content mod, then there are a LOT of little things to keep straight; is that brand-new Gravtank unit too strong, do you have too many +research buildings, and so on.
C> Whether the fans decide that the design has strayed too far, or not far enough, from the core gameplay people like.
Add too many new features and you'll make a mod that only you and a couple other people would want to touch; many of the ideas I've seen on these boards (for religions and such) sound fantastic, but if you need a massive amount of documentation to learn the system, it's not something I think the average Civ player will ever bother with. Add too few new features and you get this "why bother?" feeling, especially if the mod is just a collection of a few new units or buildings. It's a fine line, and programming ability obviously helps for the latter part at least.

Just my opinions, of course.

 

[fozo1655]

And on this note, my advice would be "start small". Even if your ultimate goal is to get a massive total conversion made, start with something that you KNOW works (like the base game) and iteratively add and subtract, testing periodically.
So if you want to add the Elf civilization, then don't wipe out all of the others first; just add them, so you'll have Elf vs. Germany vs. India to test out the basics. Then add a few new buildings, then some new units, then start deleting non-fantasy stuff, and so on. For a while you'll have something that seems ridiculous, but at least it'll be a STABLE ridiculous.

For instance, my own mod (Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri mod) made this mistake. I decided to add 45 new techs, sixty new buildings and wonders, a few dozen new units, etc., and what happened?
It didn't work.
I'd changed so much that I had no easy way to tell what, exactly, broke it. I ended up having to create a copy of the mod with everything new stripped out, and then add one bit at a time. I'd add five new units, recompile, see if they loaded, then repeat. Eventually I got it all working, but that was a lot of wasted time.


As to the original questions, I'd say that there's no easy way to tell what will survive, but that it'll all depend on a few specific things:
A> How devoted the primary modder is to keeping up with it.
A team doesn't really help so much here, you really need one person whose vision keeps it all going. And if he decides that his time is better spent adding nude hacks to Fallout 3, well, you're hosed.
This becomes especially important when large patches and expansion packs come out. If the mod isn't compatible with them, or just doesn't take advantage of their new features, then people will move on to newer mods instead. Patches are important for this; if one of the key parts of your mod is that cities heal 2 HP per turn instead of 1HP, and suddenly Firaxis decides that the default value will be 3HP, your mod no longer does what you intended it to do.
B> How good the team is at keeping all the little details straight and balanced.
Balance is REALLY hard to get right, especially if you go too far from the core gameplay. Too many fantasy/sci-fi mods I've played have ended up feeling like a jumbled mess, where there's no real "flow" to the gameplay, just sort of a "here are a bunch of cool toys!" thing instead. And if you're looking at a large content mod, then there are a LOT of little things to keep straight; is that brand-new Gravtank unit too strong, do you have too many +research buildings, and so on.
C> Whether the fans decide that the design has strayed too far, or not far enough, from the core gameplay people like.
Add too many new features and you'll make a mod that only you and a couple other people would want to touch; many of the ideas I've seen on these boards (for religions and such) sound fantastic, but if you need a massive amount of documentation to learn the system, it's not something I think the average Civ player will ever bother with. Add too few new features and you get this "why bother?" feeling, especially if the mod is just a collection of a few new units or buildings. It's a fine line, and programming ability obviously helps for the latter part at least.

Just my opinions, of course.

Excellent idea, mind if I try it?

 

[Spatzimaus]

Excellent idea, mind if I try it?

Try what?

Making a mod? You don't need anyone's permission for that. I'd suggest creating a discussion thread about the general concepts you're aiming for, to let others give you feedback, and then start with the file modding once you're sure you know what you want. There aren't a whole lot of us on here, and most of us are developing our own mods and so won't have a lot of time to spare for testing until it's at least somewhat functional, but you should be able to get some decent feedback regardless.

Trying out my mod? Feel free, it's over here, the files are at the bottom of the first post. v.0.06 is there now, v.0.07 should be done tonight and I'd suggest waiting for the new version. (I'm just trying to clean up the terraforming logic first; right now it won't work if you have any other mods that add Improvements because some bits are hard-coded.) It's still in the playtesting stages, but what's there should be pretty stable and it balances pretty well so far (assuming you can get past the idea of placeholder unit graphics). I'm then hoping to get v.0.08 by the end of the 4-day weekend, at which point it SHOULD be mostly functionally complete.

Stealing bits of my mod to use in your mod? As long as the right people get credit, this happens a lot.

Dating my daughter? No, you can't; she's too good for you. And I don't have one, anyway, so you're not changing my mind on this.

Or was it something else entirely?

 

[fozo1655]

No It was a joke, I ment your recomended way of modding. I think i'll try it

 

[Valkrionn]

I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of fantasy mods comming around I, myself wish to make one.) So I wanted your thoughts.

1.Do you think any will survive
2.which one
3.Is there room for more
4. ANything else really

Answer all, none, or whatever other number you wish

1. Certainly. Fantasy mods are always popular.
2. Noone can know at this point.
3. Always. Variety is the spice of life.
4. My recommendations for modding would be to start small, and work your way on up. Get acquainted with the modding structure.

Teams that form before anything is released don't tend to last. It's tough, modding, and sometimes a good mod will run into a show stopping bug and someone important will give up and not finish. Then the mod will be screwed and dead.

I agree with much of what you said, but would like to add an exception here: A team that coalesces out of existing teams has a good shot at surviving even without actual work.

The Eden team, for example, is made up of most of the Rise from Erebus as Fall Further teams. And has been pretty steadily planning since... Last december, actually, as we're made up of Civ5 Testers. Just waiting for DLL access.

If you could do a full listing of those found, it might help giving an answer.

So far I'm aware of a few total conversion fantasy mods on civfanatics:

One is Eden (?), which is likely to last since it's apparently being made by a team of people who worked on FfH2 and modmods of it.

Another one is Naeralith reborn, which already existed in Civ , but which I find too unfamiliar for my taste (I miss the point of renaming horses jsut because they have feathers). I think it's likely to last.

There's A Civ of Ice and Fire too which is technically fantasy, but should be quite light on magic given the books are much more about warfare than magic (even though there are undeads and dragons).

There's probably some Tolkien-stuff out there too.

I think the Civ 4 Faerie Tale team might give a try in Civ 5, I think a map has already been made.

In the modbrowser, I couldn't find anything else worth mentioning.

If you want to do something that fits in one of the existing designs (Tolkien, G.R.R. Martin's world), then you can join them. However if you have your own ideas, by all means start your own mod. It will be hard and long, but if you tire out of it, you'd have tired out of a community project too.
As Tssha said, serious modders will only join if there's already something, and preferably more than just design documents, so start your own mod, there's surely room for it.

To add to your list: Orbis2, by Ahwaric, looks to be a good one. There is also Arrow of Time by Jheral and Lemon_Jelly.

1+2) That only depends on time and motivation of the modders. I don't have an overview over the existing ones, but if there's something already out, then i'd say it will "survive" (-> meaning that it will be improved over a longer time). To get the initial setup done is probably the biggest thing, because it involves most of the basic work. If this is done, everything else can be done in smaller steps, but the first is the biggest, most time consuming and needs the most movitation. Afterwards...not that a problem.
-> also for 4): You don't mod, until you mod. You can plan whatever you want, but you'll only be successful after you've begun with the work, not when you only plan.

3) Sure. But after at least one is established, the more important question is, if it's worth the time and effort.

Very well put.

 

[alpaca]

If you want to start a mod, you have to make sure that's really, really what you want to do (this is a mistake I've made time and again, so I'm kind of resistant to learning). Otherwise, scrap it. Modding, often times, is work, you can only keep going if you have a vision of the game you want to achieve.

And you need to be the one willing to do that work, there's nobody else who will do it for you, and maybe no-one you want to let to do it for you unless you have a knack of making other people understand your vision.

My two cents

 

[Tssha]

And you need to be the one willing to do that work, there's nobody else who will do it for you, and maybe no-one you want to let to do it for you unless you have a knack of making other people understand your vision.

With that in mind, a handy reference video for your viewing pleasure.

Extra Credits - So You Want To Be A Game Designer

This is more related to designing in general, but it applies to modding as well. I find Extra Credits to be a very informative video series. I never miss an episode.