No Modding Tools, Please!

[Takhisis]

Afforess, your reasoning is, after all, a bit elitist. Anything that can be used by us laymen is 'noob' and not worthy of you uber-pro haxxor skillz. I still don't understand why n editor can't be good for the game, as long as they release the code as well (SDK, Python format, XMLs, whatever) for advanced users.

I'd prefer having both: tools for the advanced modders, and tools for the layman.

My argument: Huge-scale mods like Fall From Heaven 2 and so many others have been brilliant. I would definitely want similar massive mods to play in Civ5. However, I also like to dabble in a bit of tinkering myself, but don't find enjoyment in having to learn programming languages to be able to do it.

Case in point: With Civ3 I used to make maps all the time, and enjoyed fiddling around with units/governments/etc in the limited but easy-to-use editor. With Civ4 I haven't done any of that because the WorldBuilder was too slow for making maps, and I never got comfortable with the 3rd party programs that tried to make it easier. And I could never get my head around editing units/civics/etc.

So from my perspective, a limited basic editor for the layman would certainly be appreciated.

Same here.

 

[Afforess]

Afforess, your reasoning is, after all, a bit elitist. Anything that can be used by us laymen is 'noob' and not worthy of you uber-pro haxxor skillz. I still don't understand why n editor can't be good for the game, as long as they release the code as well (SDK, Python format, XMLs, whatever) for advanced users.

Reality has a well documented elitist bias.

 

[Adler17]

With Anti-Aforess I wanted to make an analogy to Frederick the Great's Antimacchiavell. And that was not meant flaming. Unfortunately this analogy wasn't seen.
Anyway, my point is still valid: Civ IV has no modding tools to be used by people, who have not much knowing of programming. Civ IV is lacking to have these tools to be used by the ordinary player. Although I agree in so far, that the possibilities with civ iv are much more comparing to civ 3, this is in so far futile as it is not usable by everyone. And that's exactly the point. All shall have the possibilities to make scenarios and so on without the use of programming skills. Otherwise only the hardcore programmers are able to make mods. And that's not the sense. That's why there should be editor tools to mod the game.

Adler

 

[cephalo]

Civ4 has been the most moddable game in history. It would be foolish to deviate from this formula. The only thing that may have been lacking is some documentation, as it did take the community a long time to get up to speed. The results have been spectacular though.

 

[Afforess]

With Anti-Aforess I wanted to make an analogy to Frederick the Great's Antimacchiavell. And that was not meant flaming. Unfortunately this analogy wasn't seen.
Anyway, my point is still valid: Civ IV has no modding tools to be used by people, who have not much knowing of programming. Civ IV is lacking to have these tools to be used by the ordinary player. Although I agree in so far, that the possibilities with civ iv are much more comparing to civ 3, this is in so far futile as it is not usable by everyone. And that's exactly the point. All shall have the possibilities to make scenarios and so on without the use of programming skills. Otherwise only the hardcore programmers are able to make mods. And that's not the sense. That's why there should be editor tools to mod the game.

Adler

Have you managed to completely ignore the entire discussion?

What we have here is a dichotomy, either we get easy to use modding tools OR access to all of the advanced files that comprise Civ (SDK). Not both.

Civ3 chose option 1. Civ4 chose option 2. Guess which has better mods?

 

[The_J]

What we have here is a dichotomy, either we get easy to use modding tools OR access to all of the advanced files that comprise Civ (SDK). Not both.

This is sure not true.
Like already said, there's no real reason, why there can't be both.
It could maybe take a bit longer to develop a game with full accessible core files and a good editor, but also this not sure.

 

[Yakk]

Note that we can have easier to use moding tools than Civ4s.

And yes, with enough effort, you can even have quite easy to use modding tools for Civ4.

And if they can make the business case for it (or some programmer at Firaxis does it off the books), it is even possible that they could ship easy to use modding tools.

Note that easy to use modding tools for Civ4 would mean they could more cheaply put out interesting mod packs -- but, the point where "developer investment in making them easy to use" crosses "designer investment in using hard to use modding tools" is far, far, far, far, far away from the point where people who want "easy to use modding tools" expect the tools to work at.

What people are used to in polished consumer UI takes a lot of QA and a lot of iterations and a lot of polish on the part of developers. That makes sense, because thousands or millions of consumers are losing time if it isn't polished, while one developer has to spend time fixing it.

Hence the fact that internal tools don't need polish to anywhere near the level of external tools. Internal tools that crash and burn when you do something weird to them is acceptable.

You can see this in the XML used by Civ4 -- it is clearly an internal toolset exposed for non-internal people to use. When it fails, you get load-time errors in Civ4. This isn't a hard problem for someone who isn't afraid of two-phase development, but to someone used to highly polished UI and consumer level interfaces and has no history of using tool chains to solve problems... it panics them and makes them think that it is actually hard to make simple changes in Civ4.

Polished UI generally either (A) requires that the data it is representing be limited, as the informational bandwidth of something like a Civ4 XML file is ridiculously higher than any polished UI would ever allow a user to see, or (B) only works on a limited set of data.

Ie: polish is a waste of time on the scale of "making mods professionally at Firaxis". Polish is less of a waste of time when you want to expose the stuff to users to make mods.

 

[Afforess]

This is sure not true.
Like already said, there's no real reason, why there can't be both.
It could maybe take a bit longer to develop a game with full accessible core files and a good editor, but also this not sure.

Time = Money. And Civ5 won't make much (if any) extra sales because of "modding tools". Fact is, 99.9% of consumers don't care. You are the .1%.

Oh, and This->

Note that we can have easier to use moding tools than Civ4s.

And yes, with enough effort, you can even have quite easy to use modding tools for Civ4.

And if they can make the business case for it (or some programmer at Firaxis does it off the books), it is even possible that they could ship easy to use modding tools.

Note that easy to use modding tools for Civ4 would mean they could more cheaply put out interesting mod packs -- but, the point where "developer investment in making them easy to use" crosses "designer investment in using hard to use modding tools" is far, far, far, far, far away from the point where people who want "easy to use modding tools" expect the tools to work at.

What people are used to in polished consumer UI takes a lot of QA and a lot of iterations and a lot of polish on the part of developers. That makes sense, because thousands or millions of consumers are losing time if it isn't polished, while one developer has to spend time fixing it.

Hence the fact that internal tools don't need polish to anywhere near the level of external tools. Internal tools that crash and burn when you do something weird to them is acceptable.

You can see this in the XML used by Civ4 -- it is clearly an internal toolset exposed for non-internal people to use. When it fails, you get load-time errors in Civ4. This isn't a hard problem for someone who isn't afraid of two-phase development, but to someone used to highly polished UI and consumer level interfaces and has no history of using tool chains to solve problems... it panics them and makes them think that it is actually hard to make simple changes in Civ4.

Polished UI generally either (A) requires that the data it is representing be limited, as the informational bandwidth of something like a Civ4 XML file is ridiculously higher than any polished UI would ever allow a user to see, or (B) only works on a limited set of data.

Ie: polish is a waste of time on the scale of "making mods professionally at Firaxis". Polish is less of a waste of time when you want to expose the stuff to users to make mods.

Good Summary Yakk.

 

[Adler17]

Have you managed to completely ignore the entire discussion?

What we have here is a dichotomy, either we get easy to use modding tools OR access to all of the advanced files that comprise Civ (SDK). Not both.

Civ3 chose option 1. Civ4 chose option 2. Guess which has better mods?

Civ 3! As it has the tools available to use for everyone.

Adler

 

[Afforess]

Civ 3! As it has the tools available to use for everyone.

Adler

You are willing to sacrifice Fall From Heaven 2, Rhye's and Fall of Civ, Dale's Mods, Revolutions, etc... on the alter of Civ3?

On a purely unrelated note, the Pitchforks of America corp stocks doubled.

 

[Dale]

I hope to get both. There's many many MANY games that have great modding tools and source code accessibility. It has almost become the norm in some genres.

And the "time == money" argument is bogus. If they wanted to have modding tools it would've been budgeted for at the start of the project, meaning the time AND money were allocated before the production schedule began. You don't just suddenly say, 12-18 months and $3 million into production say "Oh let's see if we squeeze in some modding tools". That's when producers get angry at you.

 

[TC01]

Civ 3! As it has the tools available to use for everyone.

Adler

As someone who has played both Civ 3 and Civ 4 and mods for both, I must say Civ 4, in my opinion, has better mods.

I'm not saying that all mods for Civ 3 are bad and all mods for Civ 4 are good (neither are true), but Civ 4, overall, has better mods in my opinion.

"Modding is easier, therefore individual mods will be better", does not logically follow.

 

[LDiCesare]

I'd like to point out again that I disagree with those who think a WB isn't a modding tool. It is. A carefully created map, and even, more so a map with cities and units placed that couldn't have been built in the first place, are mods.

Although I agree in so far, that the possibilities with civ iv are much more comparing to civ 3, this is in so far futile as it is not usable by everyone. And that's exactly the point. All shall have the possibilities to make scenarios and so on without the use of programming skills. Otherwise only the hardcore programmers are able to make mods. And that's not the sense. That's why there should be editor tools to mod the game.

It is not futile because everyone can't use it.
It's all a question of what you try to achieve. Adding a new map or civ should be straightforward and available to as many people as possible.
Creating a new combat system, devising new algorithms for terrain generation or setting up a spell system in a game which lacks one, all require programming skills. These aren't futile.
What Dale and others, myself included, keep saying, is that there's no dichotomy between having access to tools and having access to powerful modding tools (data files, scripts, api). Even if the tools are only externalised internal tools.

 

[EdCase]

You are willing to sacrifice Fall From Heaven 2, Rhye's and Fall of Civ, Dale's Mods, Revolutions, etc... on the alter of Civ3?

On a purely unrelated note, the Pitchforks of America corp stocks doubled.

Did it ever occur to you that upon seeing the success of the mod scene for 4 the developers decided to show it more love with 5 ?
It does not have to be an all or nothing scenario, sometimes the glass is simply ready to be refilled..

 

[Afforess]

Did it ever occur to you that upon seeing the success of the mod scene for 4 the developers decided to show it more love with 5 ?

You're implying that modders were not a consideration with Civ4; which is a pretty big insult to Soren Johnson and the other dev's.

I would be more inclined to believe they've seen Civ4's success and duplicated the modding abilities; after all, why fix what isn't broken?

 

[Dale]

Polished UI generally either (A) requires that the data it is representing be limited, as the informational bandwidth of something like a Civ4 XML file is ridiculously higher than any polished UI would ever allow a user to see, or (B) only works on a limited set of data.

Ie: polish is a waste of time on the scale of "making mods professionally at Firaxis". Polish is less of a waste of time when you want to expose the stuff to users to make mods.

Oh my GOD this is so far from the truth it's not even in the same galaxy! A polished UI has NOTHING to do with limiting the data set. Utter BULLOCKS!

99% of people who would use the tool would not be adding new fields in the files. That's advanced modding. So it will be a static set of fields in the DB tables. It couldn't be more EASIER to make a polished UI for that.

 

[Dale]

You're implying that modders were not a consideration with Civ4; which is a pretty big insult to Soren Johnson and the other dev's.

Very true. They took a very hard long look at Call to Power 2's modding successes and expanded on it. Soren wanted to ensure that all data was exposed in flat files, and easily adjusted. I think me and Locutus gave him an initial set of 250 python triggers we wanted exposed. The final number was not near that, but most were not necessary (as we could get to the SDK).

I would be more inclined to believe they've seen Civ4's success and duplicated the modding abilities; after all, why fix what isn't broken?

Maybe they expanded it. Why is it so hard to accept that it's possible for both GUI and source modding?

 

[Afforess]

Maybe they expanded it. Why is it so hard to accept that it's possible for both GUI and source modding?

GUI modding tools would be great, except we live in an imperfect world, where Companies care about their bottom lines, games have time constraints, and unicorns don't exist.

 

[Dale]

GUI modding tools would be great, except we live in an imperfect world, where Companies care about their bottom lines, games have time constraints, and unicorns don't exist.

Then how do you explain the increasing number of games and companies offering both GUI tools AND source access over the last 5 years?

 

[Bandobras Took]

and unicorns don't exist.

I'd like to see you prove that last point.