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

[LDiCesare]

To me the problem is not power, it's more that certain areas have been made unnecessarily complex and incompatibilities have crept up here and there. I hope some of those mistakes will vanish with patches and/or the C++ release. Stuff like having to change the .ini to get static leaderheads is just not acceptable so static leaderheads are technically feasible right now but the resulting mod would not be user-friendly at all in terms of installation.
There are also problems with maps: Map generation is now totally in lua instead of partly in xml, which means any mod adding resources now has to rewrite part of the mapscripts. Which means if you want to balance players positions but not resources, you're going to run into incompatibility issues with other mods. I'm really concerned about this one because it's a misguided implementation choice that looks like it has been criticised internally but the lead designer insisted on doing it that way no matter what he might have been told.
It's a pity because on the other hand, Firaxis tried to make mods more compatible. The whole point of having mods adding new stuff and therefore having to remove the civs you don't want for total conversions was done to help modders. (It will even help total conversion mods as modmods will be easier to do.)

 

[SevenSpirits]

Because as advertised the gamecore code won't be released till later. What's the point of arguing moddability of Civ5 when 75% of the moddability hasn't been released yet? In fact, if you look at Civ4 2 months after release, it was LESS moddable than Civ5 is NOW.

I've only said anything because someone else said that Civ5 was extremely moddable right now. In addition, the post that you responded to was also merely countering that opinion, just as mine was. (Note, I didn't say this was bad, or complain about it being worse than previous civs. I just said that right now it's not very moddable.)

You'd think we wouldn't have to argue that Civ5 is not very moddable right now, but there are people saying the opposite, so there you are. Sorry if I added to the confusion.

 

[smellymummy]

Trust me. I've been into the modding ability of Civ5 much much MUCH deeper than anyone else on this forum (except maybe the silent lurkers from Firaxis, may their names not be uttered Sorry BW & SS, couldn't resist ).

You can mod everything in Civ5, except for the two aforementioned components which have separate licensing.

do you know a way to change, create, delete diplomatic deals?

 

[Generals3]

Heh, look up some archive threads and old posts from Civ 4 launch days and see for yourself.

I briefly checked and no this isn't true. Civ IV was welcomed much better than Civ V . Sure there were complaints, as there always are when a new game is released but it isn't nearly as bad as the amount of complaints about Civ V.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

This being said, it is clear that the graphics (art) are clearly a big problem and some various successful Civ IV modders are having a difficult time, which means I have not even attempted to start thinking about approaching graphics...

If i may --

The Art is totally configurable straight from the Resource/DX9 folder itself, as of now.

It's pretty simple, in fact;

-- The UITextures.fpk file contains a huge amount of perfectly editable graphics.
-- To extract what you need from it... you'll need Dragon Unpacker 5.6.0 with the Civ5 newest plugin integrated.
-- To further edit the indexed items (most of the icons are built around such tricky DDS-RGB1A format)... you'll need something found right here at CF, DDSUnpacker. All that's missing is a ""DDSRepacker'' program at the moment to recreate the new files. Although i've seen some new Leader tag symbols done (Nazi for Germans comes to mind, can't recall who & where - search is your friend!).

All you need next -- is imagination & patience.

Even more so, Get Gimp *now* (and not Photoshoppy illegal www-junk, btw), learn how to use filters, Google away at bazillions worth of whatever pics are available...

and finally, have a good look at this thread about Era screens & plain just me doing my gig at modding.

The fact is -- graphics are moddable.

 

[smellymummy]

The fact is -- graphics are moddable.

and much of everything else in the game mechanics. patience and imagination^^

i would like to know how diplomacy is changed, although im starting to think its one of those wait for source things because as i see it now, you can't affect diplomacy (asides from war decs, and minor civ stuff and one other thing i cant recall atm) at all without it first being done in the diplomacy leader discussion screens

 

[Slowpoke]

actually, there's a lua file in world view called trade logic that has just about everything. I suck at lua, so I personally don't know what to do with it.

Edit: (sorry thought you meant diplomatic trades). Yeah diplomacy, as we've said before is fixable, just hat the devs are handling it as we speak so not much point.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Nexus may be a bit faulty at the moment, the documentation non-existent and the lua hooks may not be ideal, but I have no doubt it will get there and what is there is massively indicative that Civ 5 will be by far the most moddable Civ ever.

Agree, 100++%.
But, no thanks to a "rushed" release we're stuck with dreams & expectations for awhile. Sadly enough, we may cope with workaround solutions but it ain't the --buddy way to do proper stuff.
I'll gladly pinch in the pot if need be knowing very well the future is bright & the present is populated by brilliant guys such as you.

BUG mod (for BTS) icons (rejected by EmperorFool, i think) & UI greyscale changes for it never made the cut last winter from me for an extremely simple reason; Mobo blew up along with 500gigs worth of data on the C:\drive in early May.
Stupid me, i had forgotten to create backups of all that work.
Lost, Gone, Forever.

Naaa -- i step fastforward into CiV today and --cross fingers--, i'll reach my goals if anything.
I suspect many modders will. Rather easily.

 

[smellymummy]

even though firaxis is going to address diplomacy in the patch doesnt mean theres no reason to look at it. being able to make deals is important, if someone wants to make a scenario and have preset defense treaties, resource trades, coop and secrecy pacts, it's not evident how to set these up. best i've uncovered so far is coop/secrecy pacts set to active but it needs the diplohead stuff to popup (the part where the leader says im glad we agree) and thats just not perfect enough. its all out of tradelogic btw, which is completely UI based.

doing it behind the scenes is what im talking about

 

[poncratias]

The fact is -- graphics are moddable.

No they are not.

Welll, yes, you can edit the Dx9 folder stuff, but you CAN'T make a mod that picks this changes up!

You can only upload those edited files and tell people to overwrite the old ones!
(In fact, this is what I did with my "Tradingposts - Recolored" mod)

But this is not the nice clean way it should be!


aargh people, please try it out to the finish before you think you know anything....

 

[Meeber]

this thread is a sham

whatever page 50,000 is about you all need to understand that modding is OPEN

(almost) anything you want to do is available
*current limitations: diplomacy deals

anything else, learn to use the live tuner and type in the code, TADA

and here's a bit of news: if you can type the code in the tuner, you can have the game automaticaly type it in for you! wow! civ5 is so amazingly open who would believe it.

Really? then explain to me why the Babarian camps that we place on a map don't generate barbarians.

 

[smellymummy]

Really? then explain to me why the Babarian camps that we place on a map don't generate barbarians.

i dont know why but you can add your own script to plop barbarians at the not working camps

 

[deanej]

I'll just say this on the matter: the reason that civ5 is less moddable than civ4 is the difference in how they approached modding. In civ4, the idea was "let's let the modders do just about everything we can do". The result was that, other than a couple python files for the worldbuilder and loading from customAssets and mod folders, they didn't have to write a single line of code related to modding. Meanwhile, the civ5 idea is "let's give the modders tools that will allow them to alter our work". They had to write a LOT of code for modding in civ5, so it's no surprise that it's buggy and limiting. Modding is always limited when the developers have to write tools for it.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

No they are not.

Welll, yes, you can edit the Dx9 folder stuff, but you CAN'T make a mod that picks this changes up!

If i haven't made it clear enough initially, i'm sorry. So, here...

We certainly can create a DDS file bearing the same name as those found in the FPK, dump it right into the Resource/DX9 folder and the game will *auto-replace* the default-vanilla file with the one we just copied there. I know it works since this is exactly how i managed to change the Advisors pics for each three current Era-Periods implemented while using Roger Bolsius Mod (to show them all 3, btw).
This Z-Advisors--TruePeople.rar file is still in the Moderation Queue for approval, in fact.

As to *forcing* a MOD to recognize whatever files we provide in whichever ways or locations we wish to use that's a whole different beast, i'll have to agree - for now. I doubt ModBuddy would forget to give us such an important (heck, even essential) feature though -- eventually, probably, in any upcoming releases or patches.

Even the "Welcome to.. Era" new screens i've made already *DO* show up within game as they should.

It may not be the most elegant & noble way to supply graphics to users, but as they say -- the end justifies the means when one works at it hard enough.

 

[Dale]

No they are not.

Welll, yes, you can edit the Dx9 folder stuff, but you CAN'T make a mod that picks this changes up!

*cough*BULL*cough*

You don't need to dx9 folder if you redirect the graphics path definition in the XML. Hell, you can even redirect it via lua if you wanted.

I've made heaps of mods that added new graphics, and wait, what's this? The graphics are in my mod's folder and they work? Oh dear, maybe YOU should try it to the end before commenting.

 

[Dale]

Meanwhile, the civ5 idea is "let's give the modders tools that will allow them to alter our work". They had to write a LOT of code for modding in civ5, so it's no surprise that it's buggy and limiting. Modding is always limited when the developers have to write tools for it.

Actually, except for the mod browser, the modding codebase is Civ4's. The tools are only there for the "simple modder". The advanced modders like you and me need to wait for the full SDK which will be out later.

If you actually look at the design and understand it, you'll actually realise that Civ5 is INFINITELY more moddable than Civ4. They just haven't released the codebase yet because they're still changing it for patches.

 

[deanej]

Well, in civ4 you could make it so that the base game assets never existed as far as the game is concerned... you can't in civ5. If you can't tell, I prefer monolithic mods to modular ones. Plus you need modbuddy at least for telling the game where your files are (sure, you can do it manually, but it's MUCH harder than civ4's "just copy the file over and preserve directory structure").

 

[Dale]

Well, in civ4 you could make it so that the base game assets never existed as far as the game is concerned... you can't in civ5. If you can't tell, I prefer monolithic mods to modular ones.

Thanks due to the nature of SQL rather than Civ5 itself. I'd prefer the many additional bonuses of moving to an SQL DB over this one minor pitfall.

Plus you need modbuddy at least for telling the game where your files are (sure, you can do it manually, but it's MUCH harder than civ4's "just copy the file over and preserve directory structure").

No you don't actually. You can manually write a .modinfo file and then use 7zip to compress it. Voila!

 

[deanej]

I don't believe the question of "what do I make a MD5 hash of" was ever answered.

 

[Dale]

I don't believe the question of "what do I make a MD5 hash of" was ever answered.

Yeah I answered that one in the first week after release I believe: http://www.whitsoftdev.com/md5/