The Most Moddable Civilization ever....apparently isn't that moddable.

Sorry, but this is overreacting. Firaxis stated at the point of launch that there was a lot more to do in the area of modding and they are working to improve it.

You found some bugs and rough spots; not surprising. But it's way too early to start claiming they hate us all and the game won't be truly moddable.

Yep. There's still a bunch of stuff left to be released (such as the DLL SDK, whatever that is), and while it's a bit disappointing it all hasn't come out yet, I do think that eventually this'll be an extremely moddable game. The game as a whole is incomplete, so I'm perfectly fine with their working on that before servicing the modding community.

Heck, just the existence of Modbuddy has gotten alot of people who wouldn't normally be into modding (like me) to give it a shot.
 
Listen, when someone advertises a product, and says it has certain traits, it is pretty natural to assume that when you buy the product it will have those traits. If you bought a ham and cheese sandwhich, and there wasn't cheese on it, would you:

A) Ask for your cheese.
B) Assume that a chef would be out any minute to hand it to you
C) Tell everyone you didn't actually want cheese.

If they tell you the cheese is not completely prepared before the meal actually comes out, do you get angry when you find out your sandwich has no cheese even though you were warned, or do you grow up and act like the mature person you claim to be and wait?
 
If they tell you the cheese is not completely prepared before the meal actually comes out, do you get angry when you find out your sandwich has no cheese even though you were warned, or do you grow up and act like the mature person you claim to be and wait?

So you are saying that no cheese was ever promised? You want to back that up with a citation, because currently we have the OP's quote where cheese was promised.

And no, having them renege on the cheese at the last second doesn't count, not the era of pre-orders.
 
Listen, when someone advertises a product, and says it has certain traits, it is pretty natural to assume that when you buy the product it will have those traits. If you bought a ham and cheese sandwhich, and there wasn't cheese on it, would you:

A) Ask for your cheese.
B) Assume that a chef would be out any minute to hand it to you
C) Tell everyone you didn't actually want cheese.

At which point has a Civilization game ever launched with all of the mod tools fully ready?

What reference do you have to prove that Firaxis promised that everything would be ready at launch?

Sorry, but your sandwich analogies are 99 pence short of filling.
 
So you are saying that no cheese was ever promised? You want to back that up with a citation, because currently we have the OP's quote where cheese was promised.

And no, having them renege on the cheese at the last second doesn't count, not the era of pre-orders.

You're the one making claims; you have to back them up. Not us.
 
I don't want to be too dismissive, but I'm wondering how many people commenting here are actually modders. Screaming at your computer, and lamenting on the message boards, is actually a standard part of the mod process. :) The documentation is not all there yet, but the design core seems to basically be provided. And the way the game handles code and source files (particularly the use of SQL to reduce the difficulty of changing common values) has dramatically changed the modding picture and made some things that would have taken hours to do previously now take less than 30 seconds. Case in point, I recently increased the cost of all Techs by 20% of their base value. Time spent: about 15 seconds to change the SQL. In Civ IV it would have required editing every tech cost directly or finding some way to reduce global tech values, which off the top of my head I'm not even sure you could have done. Long story short, don't let modders frustrations trouble just yet. If January rolls around and we still don't have those tools, it may be more of an issue then.
 
Yeah, I've made a couple of personal mods just for the sake of my own gameplay using Modbuddy and then the documentation Kael posted + reading threads over in the mod section of these forums.

If I'm going to play a Huge Marathon Deity map, it might as well be with a civilization I've created for myself, and some tweaks that I like.

I admit, I haven't done anything REALLY complicated, and there are clear limits right now on what you can do, but as people said, there's still a lot of tools unreleased/being worked on like the DLLs and such.
 
The fact that it isn't modifiable much yet, does not bother me. I have just finished my Civ 4 Mod, and I finally get a chance to play it. I was planning to do a re-write for Civ 5, but this will probably wait until a few years away. By then, the game may be better.
 
Spoiler :
This same thing is going on with Elemental. There are some really odd parallels between it and Civ5, including those roller coaster rides Clement is talking about. It's like you are on the edge of a cliff. The view is breathtaking, but if you make that leap, you're not sure if you are going to fly or not.

I'll remain optimistic. Strategy games, when released, is the one genre that really is about potential at first. Would I love a fully polished game right away? Of course. I just don't know how truly realistic this is for any design team. There are just too many variables that need to be taken into consideration.

It's not an excuse. I just understand that it can be mind-numbingly difficult to get it all right the first time.

No, Elemental is getting better and better, and you have chances to communicate with their designers/programmers.
Each time Stardock pre-listed a patch, finally did it, which bring me hopes.
While 2k, when patches out, it hurt me once more.
 
A quick attempt of putting the broken modding tools into context:

1. While mods do increase the long-term sales of a game, they have little impact on its initial sales. Therefore, modding tools are on extremely low priority prior to release. The general lack of polish in Civ5 shows clearly that the game has been rushed to meet its release date. Focusing on modding tools in this situation would have been madness.

2. As a result of that, modding tools are often buggy, defective, or lacking, especially at the beginning of game's lifecycle.

3. However, for some years now, the quality of modding tools in several franchises has actually decreased. This causes some concern. I'll give an example:

Morrowind shipped with its Construction Set in the box, had video tutorials on how to use it, and a massive helpfile that explained not only the editor's functions, but also the game's scripting language, it documented the functions and their parameters and even gave examples. The Construction Set is and was by no means perfect, but the way it was handled makes clear that the publisher tried to get modders involved, to help them and support them. Morrowind's successor, Oblivion, had its Construction Set released with a delay, scarce documentation, and even some crucial data missing. Scripting functions weren't even accessible by their names, they were just a list of numbers. Obviously this crippled the tool, and it was also obvious that the game developers must have had the function names available when they built the game. Hence, many modders suspected that the modding tools were intentionally crippled. Another difference between Morrowind and Oblivion is that Morrowind had some "official" mods, made by the game developers, which were distributed for free, as a demonstration of the capabilities of the game's modding tools. Oblivion, on the other hand, had all official mods distributed as DLC which had to be bought.

This documents a change in the industry from seeing modders as an asset (free content to increase the game's customer base and lifecycle) to seeing them also as competition, at least as long as DLC is released.

In such a situation, it doesn't make sense to smash Firaxis for not having the modding tools in perfect order at release date. It's definitely very frustrating for the modders, but it's understandable that the priorities are elsewhere right now. However, it also doesn't make sense to give Firaxis/2K a carte blanche. A critical look on what can be expected, and what's actually there, is warranted imho.

In that vein, I think that the request at Firaxis to release their LUA documentation quickly is in order. They obviously do have such a documentation, and even if it's a WIP it'd still help the modders a lot, while not causing more work for Firaxis.
 
In such a situation, it doesn't make sense to smash Firaxis for not having the modding tools in perfect order at release date. It's definitely very frustrating for the modders, but it's understandable that the priorities are elsewhere right now. However, it also doesn't make sense to give Firaxis/2K a carte blanche. A critical look on what can be expected, and what's actually there, is warranted imho.

Agreed, 100%.
 
just the existence of Modbuddy
Just the name "Modbuddy" makes me cringe. Seriously, "Modbuddy"? :eek: WTH. Thought experiment...applying for a job...programming experience (resume)...Modbuddy?...nah just stick to Visual Studio. :)
 
Seems to me since we had the horrible TW Empire everythings been heading this way.. However Firaxis have pushed the idea this is moddable quite heavily so lets give them a little more time before we start screaming at them... Theres already some excellent work appearing even with the limits of the tools..

One thing that doesnt help though I agree is Firaxis's lack of commmunication on anything now that the product is released
 
No, Elemental is getting better and better, and you have chances to communicate with their designers/programmers.
Each time Stardock pre-listed a patch, finally did it, which bring me hopes.
While 2k, when patches out, it hurt me once more.

Exactly how does this disqualify my post?

Yes, I know things are getting better in Elemental. I was very active on their boards until Civ5 came out and decided to shelf it until 1.1 came out. But it's direction has nothing to do with my post, including the deficiencies in their modding tools and documentation of those tools.

I brought up some of the odd parallels, nothing more. I never said they were exactly the same on every level.
 
In my mind, they're still in scramble mode from a rushed release, and I can understand not having time for a dev to spare to document functions that may not be formally documented internally very well, since they can do a debug build and use introspection.

When the code stabilizes and the DLL sources are released, and they say they're done: if there is still no lua docs, and broken art tools, etc, raise pitchforks. I think they're still crunching after a release Firaxis would have pushed back if their parent company would let them. Remember, there's not that many people working on Civ 5 who can actually make the changes modders need, and they're busy fixing other things.

Yes, i'm sure that is a good point of view, but i fear the fact that, if they do not support the mod community now, they lost one of the biggest weapon civ has... If mods become disaffected (or at least the most creative ones, like Lemmy who undertook the religion project) the new modders, the ones that have to learn "to do", will have even more difficulties to grasp the game logic....

I think that if they not release what the modding community need to work for several months, probably they will not have a modding community to give them...

Or, alt least, a very little community, that is like several other games, not like a civ game until now....

I'm disappointed, because, as i stated elsewhere, i was pinning my hopes more in the modding community than in the developers.... That's like an blow of an axe on my neck... Bloody and deadly....:(

Sorry, but this is overreacting. Firaxis stated at the point of launch that there was a lot more to do in the area of modding and they are working to improve it.

You found some bugs and rough spots; not surprising. But it's way too early to start claiming they hate us all and the game won't be truly moddable.

You don't understand the point, that the best modders are refusing to work without a good support from Firaxis...

That's the problem, not the support itself.. If the modders think that now it is not worth of their work, it's a tragedy, because we will see only half baked, mini mods, that change little of the game, or that are not too complex to be implemented... And the worst thing is that the modders can learn little or nothing for now, if they don't search by themselves, a stressing work for sure...
 
That's the problem, not the support itself.. If the modders think that now it is not worth of their work, it's a tragedy, because we will see only half baked, mini mods, that change little of the game, or that are not too complex to be implemented... And the worst thing is that the modders can learn little or nothing for now, if they don't search by themselves, a stressing work for sure...

Any modder that gives up on modding a game because the mod tools are not perfect at launch quite simply isn't really a modder. And honestly, I haven't seen one person claim that they were giving up, but I have seen a lot of people claim that they're done until the C++ SDK and/or Lua documentation come out. This is pretty standard in every game, and certainly every Civ game. And you've only seen "half baked, mini mods" because the games only been out a month, and those epic mods like RFC and FFH can take upwards of a year to make. I agree with whoever earlier claimed that most of the people complaining are not modders. It seems like a lot of fans heard "most moddable Civ ever" and expected to have a bunch of mods that were better than the best of CIV immediately, which is just ridiculous. Can anyone point to a single, substantial mod for any game ever that was out within a month of release?
 
My first civ5 mod and of course ton of roadblocks. Dear Firaxis if you still want call Civ5 the most modable game from the serries make that all the custom 3d graphics work in your game. there is no way to add 3D graphic of a wonder right now. And if not work of brilliant peoplo from community like lemmy101, CaptainBinky and Deliverator probably we wouldn't add units to the game also. That's a shame! :thumbsdown::aargh: Trying to figure out why the city graphics dissapears yesterday and model doesn't appear was quite frustrating :badcomp:. The mod contains graphics (simple reskin of Hagia Sofia), but the 3d graphics won't appear on the map.

And this from a well known Civ4 modder and 3D artist.
 
I really can't stand these haters anymore. If you want modding to work then go back to Civ4.

Moderator Action: Let's keep things civil please.
 
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