Mods

[PeeDub]

Is there a place (or will there be a place) where I can look to see what the allowed mods are? (Or when mods are allowed, where that list will be?)

 

[ainwood]

At the moment, no mods are officially allowed. We are investigating use of the "Hall Of Fame" mod - might allow that in GOTM 04. When we do, we'll post about it in an announcement thread, and probably use the "List of allowed and disallowed exploits and strategies" thread to keep a live list.

 

[PeeDub]

Thanks a ton! How about Blue Marble?

 

[kingjoshi]

I thought graphics mods were okay. I've been using Blue Marble for a long time now...

 

[Qitai]

I had the impression that autolog 1.2 by eotinb is allowed and thus had been using that for GOTM3. Please correct me if this is not allowed.

Also, I am currently interested to use Requies's exotic foriegn Advisor mod which displays summary information which I use a notepad to consolidate myself. I have not seen it providing information that is not obtainable so far and it provides so much information that I would have dig out myself using pen and paper.

 

[Dianthus]

I had the impression that autolog 1.2 by eotinb is allowed and thus had been using that for GOTM3. Please correct me if this is not allowed.

You need to be careful about which version of autolog you use. I believe 1.2 is based on patch 1.09, so doesn't include the changes to scoring based on difficulty. There are updated versions later in the thread. (post #278 and post #290).

 

[toller pretzl]

You need to be careful about which version of autolog you use. I believe 1.2 is based on patch 1.09, so doesn't include the changes to scoring based on difficulty. There are updated versions later in the thread.

I don't understand. To my mind autolog simply creates a handy text log, and that's that. Are you saying that it interferes with scoring ?

 

[DaveMcW]

Firaxis interfered with scoring in the last patch.

Autolog includes a copy of the scoring files (modified for logging purposes), so if you want the new scoring system to work correctly you need the newest autolog.

 

[toller pretzl]

Firaxis interfered with scoring in the last patch.

Autolog includes a copy of the scoring files (modified for logging purposes), so if you want the new scoring system to work correctly you need the newest autolog.

Hmm..I unzipped the four files from autolog v1.2.zip to CustomAssets/python. Superficially, they don't seem to be scoring files. Also, I didn't overwrite any files, so it just seemed like a harmless add-on to me. Live and learn I guess, if it turns out my score for the Civ4 GOTM3 is now flawed.

Not that I did that great, but I was very happy to have finally completed a game without any reloads.

 

[AlanH]

There are several people still using the old scoring. If you are affected, the saved game file gives us a higher score than the one you see in your personal hall of fame, which is also in your uploaded Replay file. Affected players are either running something like an old Autolog, or they have a cached copy of the 1.09 Python score code.

 

[Dianthus]

I don't understand. To my mind autolog simply creates a handy text log, and that's that. Are you saying that it interferes with scoring ?

One of those files is CvUtil.py. In 1.52 the following bold bit was added to the end of getScoreComponent:

	if bVictory:
		iScore = ((100 + gc.getDefineINT("SCORE_VICTORY_PERCENT")) * iScore) / 100

[b]	if bFinal:
		iScore = ((100 + gc.getDefineINT("SCORE_HANDICAP_PERCENT_OFFSET") + (gc.getGame().getHandicapType() * gc.getDefineINT("SCORE_HANDICAP_PERCENT_PER"))) * iScore) / 100
[/b]
	return int(iScore)

 

[solenoozerec]

There are several people still using the old scoring. If you are affected, the saved game file gives us a higher score than the one you see in your personal hall of fame, which is also in your uploaded Replay file. Affected players are either running something like an old Autolog, or they have a cached copy of the 1.09 Python score code.

So that is where this strange difference is coming from. I set up autolg on my computer before playing gotm1, it did not work and I decided that I will fix it later. Since I did not use it, I did not update it. Then in gotm3 I found out a huge difference between my score in game and on submission page. I guess this autolog is responsible for that
Should I update it? At least my score will be correct.

 

[kingjoshi]

well, I screwed up on this as well. I guess my game is also disqualified. Worse is autolog didn't even work for me. Oh well.

 

[Qitai]

So, is it allowed? Nevermind if it screws up my score in my own Hall of Fame as long as the in-game score and the score that GOTM is getting is correct.

What about the other mod I am considering - exotic foreign advisor by Requies which gives me the summary information I have been putting together today using pen and paper so far? I just want to make sure I am not violating any rules before I start using it. Thanks.

 

[solenoozerec]

I hope that it is allowed, my understanding is that this autolog simply misinforms us about our score without changing anything else.
But this is only a hope. I also hope that staff will clarify this issue further.

 

[ainwood]

Ok - to clarify....

We don't have any problem in principle with people using mods that only provide information that is already available in the game (ie. makes it easier to process) or provides information that can be readily calculated using in-game parameters. An example of this would be the autologger and some mods to the advisor screens etc. Again, some graphics mods are OK as well - blue marble is one such example.

Obviously, we don't allow any mods that provide information that is not available in the 'normal' game.

At the moment, it is difficult to control what mods can and cannot be used. We can lock-out all mods, but this causes more problems than it solves, so is far from the ideal solution.

We expect that the main problems (the 'assets protected' password problem) will be solved in an upcoming patch, and once this has been done, we will try to present a method of working with mods that is hopefully acceptable to the community, whilst still providing some basic form of protection against cheating.

By the way - whilst one goal is obviously to stop malicious cheating, the way the current set-up works, it is possible to accidentally cheat - eg. simply dump a mod into the wrong directory - we want to prevent this as well.

The current favoured option is an all-encompassing mod that takes the best elements out of a number of other mods and puts them into a single mod. It also has the option to turn on or off the various mod components, to allow the user to customise it.

This may be supported in GOTM 04, but it really depends on the patching schedule - unfortunately, who knows when the next patch will be released?

In the meantime:
*Feel free to use blue-marble terrain.
*Feel free to use the autologger.