No Modding Tools, Please!

[Afforess]

My point is based on circumstantial evidence that you are narcissistic and that has caused the belief in your claim. But since you now admit to being narcissistic, that means my point is no longer ad hominem, but rather FACT.

Never go into Law, you'd do terrible. Not denying something is not the same as an admittance of guilt. If someone claims I am a witch, and I don't deny it, am I witch? That kind of Logic is worthy of Glenn Beck.

Seriously though, why do you think the US Justice System uses terms like "Not Guilty"? Not Guilty isn't the same as innocence, anyone who watched OJ's trial knows that.

You obviously don't understand ad hominem then.

1. Afforess claims modding tools will ruin Civ5 modding.
2. Dale points out that Afforess's claim is based on Afforess's fear of losing modding recognition.

So what? Even IF that is true, that doesn't make my claim invalid.

 

[EdCase]

So what? Even IF that is true, that doesn't make my claim invalid.

Without evidence to the contrary, for the record Civ 3 is irrelevant as the series took the direction of being more "modder" friendly with 4, your claim has no validity.

Dale on the other hand has supplied examples of games with editors AND SDK access.

What you have is an opinion without proven,current position of the industry, basis.

To clear up something else.

Spore
The editors in the game are part of the game designed to be in the flow of the game. They also function independently of the gameflow. The intent was never to modify the game with them. It does however have mods, because, as I have said before...capable competent modders will find a way.

Modding is generally acknowledged as taking a game and changing to function outside of the developers chosen parameters. Spore's editors are most definitely not designed as modding tools.

 

[Afforess]

Without evidence to the contrary, for the record Civ 3 is irrelevant as the series took the direction of being more "modder" friendly with 4, your claim has no validity.

That's right, just start rejecting my evidence. It's not like your basis for your said rejection makes no sense...

I was going to avoid just spamming names of games with no modding tools and good mods, but if you want me to, I can.

 

[EdCase]

That's right, just start rejecting my evidence. It's not like your basis for your said rejection makes no sense...

I was going to avoid just spamming names of games with no modding tools and good mods, but if you want me to, I can.

Read your own first line digest and maybe absorb into your own critical thinking path ?

Second line makes no sense. Game has no modding tools, therefore game has better mods because of it ?

It's unprovable.
Whereas game has modding tools & mods that go beyond them has been proven.

I'm failing to see your (if there is one) point.

The discussion is becoming a collection of circular reasoning statements from you. I'm done here.

 

[Bezhukov]

Whatever the tools, Civ5 would do well to assist modders in addressing the Achilles heel of all mods to date: the AI.

 

[Afforess]

Game has no modding tools, therefore game has better mods because of it ?

Yes and No. The modding tools aren't directly related, but indirectly, they are. In general, the less modding tools, the more code the dev's release to modders. This is only for general cases, there are, of course, exceptions.

 

[mamba]

Whatever the tools, Civ5 would do well to assist modders in addressing the Achilles heel of all mods to date: the AI.

That will require source code access, I do not think there is any other way to do something about that.

 

[Rexflex]

That will require source code access, I do not think there is any other way to do something about that.

I can't think of any technical reason why the AI can't be taken out of the source code. When it comes down to it, AI is just a (complex) set of instructions about how the computer administered opponents or automated player units/cities should react to certain circumstances. That stuff could well be written in python.

 

[Adler17]

I didn't played civ3 very much because I think the game is bad. Much worse than civ2 in fact. Civ 2 had about 0 modding tools and had great mods though. I understand and can agree with the statement you make in the above quoted post. I just disagree with the "futile' statement (or wording) in your earlier post.
As for their being "forced" aside, I'd disagree. People who want can learn. If they're clever enough to make good mods, they're clever enough to mod xml or change basic python functions. They just didn't care enough for it.

To learn programming is not the main problem. That is time. Many don't have the time to do everything.
However, I think we are talking about the same thing. For me the internal editors of Civ II and IV are also modding tools. And yes, you could make great scenarios with them. However, they had, too, the problems to make it in the game and so you had even greater problems if you ran into a mistake.
But that still underlines my points: To have modding tools, including perhaps ingame editors or cheat modes and so on, easy to use for everyone. Also very nice would be a unit creation editor.

Adler

 

[Yakk]

I can't think of any technical reason why the AI can't be taken out of the source code. When it comes down to it, AI is just a (complex) set of instructions about how the computer administered opponents or automated player units/cities should react to certain circumstances. That stuff could well be written in python.

The problems are:
A> Much of what a primitive AI, like a Civ4 AI, does is combinatorial. Python is slow, which means that (given the same time) the number of combinations to be considered has to be reduced.

B> "Putting something in Python" doesn't make it simpler. If the AI is complex in the C++ code, it is also complex in Python. Python is just another programming language.

If you are only doing simple things, the relative simplicity of Python over C++ syntax can help -- but by the point you are determining the behaviour of even a primitive AI like Civ4s, the Python advantage is pretty much gone, and you are left with a language that is (by its design features) an order of magnitude or so slower than C++.

You could leverage some of the advanced Python features to implement really insanely crazy AIs that would be hard to write in C++, but at that point the complexity of the situation would be high enough that anyone who was afraid of merely downloading and installing a C++ compiler would be drowning in terror before they understood what the Python code was doing.

But that still underlines my points: To have modding tools, including perhaps ingame editors or cheat modes and so on, easy to use for everyone.

Do you mean "to have easy to use modding tools", or "to have all modding tools be easy to use by everyone"?

One is relatively easy -- you expose some massively restricted set of things that are easy to use.

The other means, practically, that they reduce what can be modded in order to make sure that everything that can be modded is easy to mod.

 

[mamba]

I can't think of any technical reason why the AI can't be taken out of the source code. When it comes down to it, AI is just a (complex) set of instructions about how the computer administered opponents or automated player units/cities should react to certain circumstances. That stuff could well be written in python.

Python too is source code. I was thinking of something more 'visual' than that given how this discussion is about the availability of modding tools for novices (or lack thereof).

I agree there is no technical reason for it to not be Python, other than possibly performance.

 

[Tecibbar]

Modding is over-rated. Most players never mod or play a mod. To satisfy the need of a few hard-core fanatics, or make more money by bringing the game out early. Not a hard choice.

 

[SJSerio]

That's right, just start rejecting my evidence. It's not like your basis for your said rejection makes no sense...

I was going to avoid just spamming names of games with no modding tools and good mods, but if you want me to, I can.

Well, the problem is that you have not provided any evidence. All you keep saying is that modding tools will suck and make things worse and that games that have both don't produce quality mods. First of all, the quality of a mod is objectional! Second of all, Dale has provided examples, yet you continue to reject his evidence. You keep referring to Spore, which is nothing like Civ and the tools provided are of different intentions.

In any case, with regards to the recent news about Civ 5, these tools need to be present more than ever! Otherwise, Civ V may go down as one of the weakest versions. That could be bad because as business goes, one weak game could spell the end of the franchise. Yes, I am basing that on what info has been released so far, and I hope that I am wrong, but as a back-up, Civ needs user friendly modding tools, period!

 

[Dale]

Modding is over-rated. Most players never mod or play a mod. To satisfy the need of a few hard-core fanatics, or make more money by bringing the game out early. Not a hard choice.

Road to War had 250,000+ downloads from all sources. That's not "a few hard-core fanatics".

Both RFC and FFH2 had many more than RtW. You should retract your statement now so as not to look completely silly.

 

[Afforess]

Modding is over-rated. Most players never mod or play a mod. To satisfy the need of a few hard-core fanatics, or make more money by bringing the game out early. Not a hard choice.

Your about to get gang-beat by both sides.

First of all, the quality of a mod is objectional!

Objectional? I think that word does not mean what you think it means.

Second of all, Dale has provided examples, yet you continue to reject his evidence.

Moddb is not evidence.

You keep referring to Spore, which is nothing like Civ and the tools provided are of different intentions.

I love how you criticize me for making unsupported claims, right before doing it yourself. How is spore not like Civ? It even has a civilization phase!

In any case, with regards to the recent news about Civ 5, these tools need to be present more than ever! Otherwise, Civ V may go down as one of the weakest versions. That could be bad because as business goes, one weak game could spell the end of the franchise. Yes, I am basing that on what info has been released so far, and I hope that I am wrong, but as a back-up, Civ needs user friendly modding tools, period!

So your rational for Civilization's success is the modding tools? Talk about unsupported claims. How was Civ4 so successful then?

 

[SJSerio]

Objectional? I think that word does not mean what you think it means.

Main Entry: objectional
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: pertaining to objection; open to objection, objectionable

As in open for debate, difference of opinion. Truly, your objection of my use of the word "objectional" is inconceivable!

Moddb is not evidence.

What is Moddb???

I love how you criticize me for making unsupported claims, right before doing it yourself. How is spore not like Civ? It even has a civilization phase!

Civilization - turn based
Spore - real time simulation

Civilization - Control an empire
Spore - control a creature

Civilization - win by conquering the world through military, diplomatic, cultural, or scientific methods
Spore - explore the galaxy (everything else in the game is a build up to that point)

The Civilization phase of Spore only holds comparison as it was worked on by the lead designer of Civ IV. It is very scaled down and has very little resemblence to a full Civilization game. The "modding" components of Spore are a key part of the gameplay. They are creators that let the player create their own models to put in the game. To me, a welcome addition to Civ (even if not as fully detailed), but if they were included, they would not be a key part of the core gameplay.

The bottom line is that the games are very different. Spore aims for the Sims audience while Civ is targeted to strategy fans. There is some overlap, but that does not make the games similar.

So your rational for Civilization's success is the modding tools? Talk about unsupported claims. How was Civ4 so successful then?

Finally, my statement was in reaction to the recent news that had been released about Civ V from the magazines (like Gamepro). I was saying that I am getting dissappointed with the news (that has been released) and, to me, if the game tends to let down its core audience with its new direction, then modding tools would be essential so that those of us that are fans of the series can reshape Civ V to make it better, freeing up time for the advanced modders who can spend more time making there improved versions for us to play. Otherwise, would it be worth playing at all, for me, probably not!

 

[hewhoknowsall]

It's success or failure will be defined by how moddable it is. If you give us less tools than we have for Civ4, I won't play it.

...

am I missing something here?

 

[Afforess]

Main Entry: objectional
Part of Speech: adj
Definition: pertaining to objection; open to objection, objectionable

As in open for debate, difference of opinion. Truly, your objection of my use of the word "objectional" is inconceivable!

Lol. I chose that wording just for you.

Civilization - turn based
Spore - real time simulation

Civilization - Control an empire
Spore - control a creature

Civilization - win by conquering the world through military, diplomatic, cultural, or scientific methods
Spore - explore the galaxy (everything else in the game is a build up to that point)

Did you just ignore the part about the civilization phase? Sure, it's fairly dissimilar to Civilization, but it's still similar enough for comparisons sake.

But I'm starting to agree with Dale on the point that we are just beating a dead horse; neither side is going to convince the other. The only good news is that history will eventually prove one of us right.

 

[warpstorm]

Did you just ignore the part about the civilization phase? Sure, it's fairly dissimilar to Civilization, but it's still similar enough for comparisons sake.

What I find interesting is the same person did both Civ 4 and the Civilization portion of Spore.

 

[The_J]

I don't think the comparison of Civ and Spore makes sense.

Like we now know, Spore is more for casual gamers than for a hardcore strategy gamer.
For these people, the spore "modding tools" are perfect.
In a group of hardcore gamers, you can also expect computer addicted people, who maybe could expect more advanced tools (or full access).
-> different target group, the comparison doesn't make sense.