Modding Tools located

[Galacticat42]

@ lemmy
I tried doing this yesterday and it turns out that you need the Civ5Mod compressed folder from MB to get the contents to load into the game. As it turns out, yes the game may recognize your mod, but you need a legit number from installing the mod through the game via the Civ5Mod compressed folder. You can still download it from any sight and put it into the correct folder, but the game needs to install it itself for the contents to be updated into the game.

 

[jpinard]

Dale, I know I complained in the QT3 thread, but as I mentioned I'm having a change of heart (still think there is data left out of the game critical to players).

But to the mods - I created a mod, used the directory structure for mods, created file checksums etc. I used the existing .modinfo gleaned from the mods you and Kael posted to make sure all entries were exactly as needed and once again, they have proper checksums generated and listed. It shows up as installable, but doesn't seem to activate in game. I can probably change the real game files in my Steamapps dir but I kind of wanted to release this for general consumption. My Uncle for one would like to run it as a mod, and I know there are quite a few people out there that would use it even if they have to download it from my own site.

Is it possible, "added" entries will not work without the mod tools you mentioned?

Thanks.

 

[Valkrionn]

Dale, I know I complained in the QT3 thread, but as I mentioned I'm having a change of heart (still think there is data left out of the game critical to players).

But to the mods - I created a mod, used the directory structure for mods, created file checksums etc. I used the existing .modinfo gleaned from the mods you and Kael posted to make sure all entries were exactly as needed and once again, they have proper checksums generated and listed. It shows up as installable, but doesn't seem to activate in game. I can probably change the real game files in my Steamapps dir but I kind of wanted to release this for general consumption. My Uncle for one would like to run it as a mod, and I know there are quite a few people out there that would use it even if they have to download it from my own site.

Is it possible, "added" entries will not work without the mod tools you mentioned?

Thanks.

From what others have said, it has to be compiled by modbuddy to work in that manner, even if shows as selectable in game.

If you'd like, PM me your files and I'll build it. Done it for several other people now, figure it's something I can do to 'give back' to the community; I mean, really, testers get the game and the tools early, it's the least I can do.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I did it! Modded in my usual personal custom civ.

The Spartan way too, without modding tools. Well, I did get a tiny bit of assistance from Valkrionn to get the correct mod ID (and other small yet admittedly vital stuff). But then I tweaked along, generating MD5 hashes using ExactFile as I refined the civilization icon, and here's the result...

Spoiler :

This mod adds the Wingardian civilization, based off the Democratic States of Wingarde from NationStates, to Sid Meier's Civilization V. Wingarde's led by Konrad II, whose trait is temporarily Oda Nobunaga's, Bushido (unit attack and defense strengths always at maximum). This civ has two Unique Units: the Jaeger, which replaces the Rifleman and ignores terrain movement costs, and the Guardian, a stronger version of Modern Armor.

 

[Ekmek]

nice job. did you use valkrionn's Iceni mod asa base? attache the file?

 

[Valkrionn]

nice job. did you use valkrionn's Iceni mod asa base? attache the file?

Wait what? My Iceni mod? That would be Kael's.

All I did was package it and clean up the files a bit.

 

[smeagolheart]

Why is game so restrictive for mod tools? It is way more locked down than it needs to be to encourage people to get into this game invest time modding it. Seems like a bad decision to me to get people into it when I can do change everything I could want to with Civ 4.

 

[Dale]

*cough* I think you guys are looking for this:

http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/ent...eart-is-through-his-modinfo-and-civ5mod-files.

 

[Lord Shadow]

Why is game so restrictive for mod tools? It is way more locked down than it needs to be to encourage people to get into this game invest time modding it. Seems like a bad decision to me to get people into it when I can do change everything I could want to with Civ 4.

I think the only restrictive parts when doing things manually are the MD5 hash updates and mod ID generation. The rest is XML modding similar to Civ4's, at least as far as my field of 'expertise' is concerned.

Given we're mostly expected to do the modding through the tools (which I assume will make the whole experience quite more user-friendly than it was in Civ4) and the new method of mod distribution, the implementation of MD5 hashes is actually a sensible choice, since said codes are responsible for checking the integrity of the whole package after it's been downloaded/updated. Without them, bad downloads could cause all sorts of issues because corruption could potentially be anywhere and remain undetected till the affected files came into play. At which point the game would behave unexpectedly and/or crash, and leave the player completely mystified as to the reason behind such event(s).

And as far as the complicated mod IDs are concerned, I'm guessing they wanted to take no chances and reduce the possibility of ID conflicts, once mods start piling up, to an absolute minimum. The more intricate the ID, the smaller the probability of conflict.

Once the tools are released, presumably this week according to someone, uh, somewhere around here, both these concerns should become a non-issue.

nice job. did you use valkrionn's Iceni mod asa base? attache the file?

Kael's Queen of the Iceni mod, yes. And attach which file? That mod or mine? There's not much of a difference, structurally, aside from the extra, non-Celtic stuff he added, which I kept out of my package.

And Dale, on that blog entry you just posted, you mentioned we can generate our own mod IDs with an hexadecimal number generator. However, which parameters should we use for such generation: the ID doesn't seem to be just a number, given the dashes and all.

 

[Dale]

And Dale, on that blog entry you just posted, you mentioned we can generate our own mod IDs with an hexadecimal number generator. However, which parameters should we use for such generation: the ID doesn't seem to be just a number, given the dashes and all.

Leave the dashes where they are, but all the other characters are hexadecimal. It's a key, like a serial number.

 

[LoneGamer]

This is all very good news. I've read all the posts here and I can't wait until the release.

What kind of changes can we make with these tools?

One thing has been bothering me and I just want to know if I will be able to fix it myself. Research Agreement(RA), it seems that if you go to war with someone you have a RA with you get that free tech right away. Also applies for the AI, I want to be able to sabotage the RA by forcing an AI to go to war with another.

Also is it possible to add spies? I know this is off topic but I am excited about the possibilities these tools can provide.

 

[CrazyAce]

One thing I noticed with these generators they don't include any dashes in the number sequence. I have poked around other working mods and noticed a pattern. There is a set pattern sequence with these dashes. The first are 8 characters followed by “-“ then 4 by 4 by 4 and then 12 characters resulting in a 32bit md5 hash.

So seeing as how these generators don’t provide the “-“ would manually putting them in break the SQL readout of the hash number?

 

[Lord Shadow]

One thing I noticed with these generators they don't include any dashes in the number sequence. I have poked around other working mods and noticed a pattern. There is a set pattern sequence with these dashes. The first are 8 characters followed by “-“ then 4 by 4 by 4 and then 12 characters resulting in a 32bit md5 hash.

So seeing as how these generators don’t provide the “-“ would manually putting them in break the SQL readout of the hash number?

Man. Dale just answered that.

Leave the dashes where they are, but all the other characters are hexadecimal. It's a key, like a serial number.

 

[CrazyAce]

Man. Dale just answered that.

Yeah and I am defining it as with asking a question in regards. So...

 

[dexter_inside]

One thing I noticed with these generators they don't include any dashes in the number sequence. I have poked around other working mods and noticed a pattern. There is a set pattern sequence with these dashes. The first are 8 characters followed by “-“ then 4 by 4 by 4 and then 12 characters resulting in a 32bit md5 hash.

So seeing as how these generators don’t provide the “-“ would manually putting them in break the SQL readout of the hash number?

I think those are called GUIDs (globally unique identifiers)