Víos, an upcoming fantasy mod for Civ5

[jmelnick]

Víos

You are cold. Alone. Your tribe has abandoned you all to yourself, to be eaten by the griffins. You soon become strong, ready to defeat all that comes your way. All you need is people, settled estates, and resources. Many are at your side, but many are not. You must create an estate that is strong, centralized, focused, but lastly, you must create a civilization that will stand the test of time.

Hello CivFanatics! Today I bring to you a revolutionary idea that will change Civ5 modding forever! ☺ This will take a lot of work, and I will need a lot of people to help me. This mod is called Víos, and it is a full conversion fantasy modpack. I, being am not a strong modder so I will need some help in finding resources that can help me code Lua and XML and SQL correctly, for things to be executed. This is different from last time, because now I will TRY to make the mod on my own, but I would really love some help from people for resources.

There is still a lot of planning to be done, and I will be releasing large information about the mod weekly, to start speculation and discussion.

 

[The Little One]

This looks good, but it also looks complex. I'm fairly sure that a lot of this would require access to the source code, which we don't have

 

[jmelnick]

lots of my ideas are complex, this is true. which ideas do you think we would not be able to create?

 

[Pazyryk]

Possibly needs DLL, but I don't think that's the main difficulty here.

Attracting coders to a project before release is very likely not realistic. I don't think there is a single example here on the forums. This looks similar in ambition to my Éa mod, which is 3000+ lines of Lua code. That's a lot of hours of work to do without pay. Some are crazy enough to do that for their own ideas. I don't know if anyone is crazy enough to do it for someone else's ideas.

Edit: I'm not trying to discourage. You have some very interesting idea there.

Edit2: I made a post kind of like this in April 2010 (in anticipation of Civ5). Not asking for help but expressing something that I thought was a very good modding idea. Got one response. So I went quiet for 2 years and went to work.

 

[jmelnick]

See the thing is, I have no modding materials to use because I don't have SDK and I have never made such a large-scale mod. I'm putting these ideas out there for anyone who wants to possibly help me in growing this into a mod.

 

[Gedemon]

The SDK is not mandatory to make a mod.

Excepting maybe the Live Tuner to save a lot of time for debugging.

 

[jmelnick]

I also don't really have experience in what to do or how to make changes. This is why I posted this thread to get my ideas out there and ask for help. This thread is really for critiquing my ideas and seeing if anyone is interested.

 

[jmelnick]

Anyone who is now viewing this thread, please disregard the first comments, because I initially released info about this mod looking for people to do this for me, now I am going to try myself but need resources.

So for the first info post of Víos!

Civilization Determination

There will be 25 different Civs that you choose by technological advancement, rather than blind choice at the beginning of the game. Due to the fact that you do not start out as a distinguished civilization, there will be no special abilities, but there will be certain advantages AND disadvantages, depending on what tech tree route you decide to take.

Settlers

Many people are imperialistic, or “settler-happy.” In (Short Name), you can only get Settlers by gift, rather than producing them, like in Vanilla Civ5. To get a settler, you must complete landmarks in the game, like becoming more advanced than a tribe (becoming a Civ), founding a religion, etc.

 

[PawelS]

Civilization Determination

There will be 25 different Civs that you choose by technological advancement, rather than blind choice at the beginning of the game. Due to the fact that you do not start out as a distinguished civilization, there will be no special abilities, but there will be certain advantages AND disadvantages, depending on what tech tree route you decide to take.

This sounds similar to Pazyryk's mod idea...

Settlers

Many people are imperialistic, or “settler-happy.” In (Short Name), you can only get Settlers by gift, rather than producing them, like in Vanilla Civ5. To get a settler, you must complete landmarks in the game, like becoming more advanced than a tribe (becoming a Civ), founding a religion, etc.

While this sounds similar to mine (actually in my mod you need to accumulate enough happiness to get a settler, but there is some similarity in our ideas)

 

[jmelnick]

This sounds similar to Pazyryk's mod idea...

It does, I might have to look at his Lua coding and do something similar!
However in Éa, there are multiple races (Man and Heldeofol). In my mod, there is just "Man" but the concept is similar.

While this sounds similar to mine (actually in my mod you need to accumulate enough happiness to get a settler, but there is some similarity in our ideas)

I was looking actually at both of your mod's threads for a couple of starter sparks.... but I had not seen this. This was an idea that I guess we both came up with but you're right, it is similar!

 

[jmelnick]

The Tech Tree

I have written out the Tech tree on paper, I just don't know how to create in ModBuddy. I will look at resources like SmarterTechTree Pipes and try and find a tutorial on how to create it.

Away from the technicals, the tech tree of Víos will include about 65 new techs at release, most of which will be used to define your civilization name. In difference to Civ5 where almost all Victories come from completing the Tech Tree, you can only use the Tech Tree for one victory in Víos. Also in difference to Civ5, there are 8 beginning branches to choose from, rather than the standard 4 in Civ5 (Mining, Archery, Pottery, Animal Husbandry).

Once I figure out how to make the Tech Tree on ModBuddy, I will release a screenshot and info about the Techs.

For now, if anyone knows any good resources, that would be great.

 

[albie_123]

You can have all the ambition in the world, and that's great, but you simply cannot make a large scale mod with the Lead Dev being the 'ideas guy'.

I've been in several large modding projects. One, which had a team of 5 men, all very hard working but where the lead dev himself didn't know how to code and instead thought he could make a mod using his graphic design skills and making numerous threads requesting help, failed miserably and was completely burned out by the fifth week. (That lead dev happened to be me, four years ago.)

Another, where the lead dev did almost everything himself for a year until a few months before final release, and THEN privately asked a few regulars of the GSC Modding forum - including myself - for some additional help, has had over 60,000 downloads on ModDB and is possibly the most successful STALKER: SoC mod ever made.

I strongly suggest you read this:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?28537-So-You-Want-to-Make-a-Mod

Remember, the cold hard truth is: EVERYONE has great ideas. Chances are, yours - no matter what it is - aren't that exceptional. It's the work that goes into making a good mod that sets you apart.

Another thing to remember that I have learned and relearned the hard way several times in my own experience is to start off small. Don't spend too much time planning intricate and exciting when you haven't got the groundwork covered.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

albie_123 is absolutely correct; take it from me (I've been modding since Civ II was the new up-and-coming game). Anno Domini started out as an idea for Civ III back in January 2005 - I thought everything would be done in a month; instead, it was about 2008 before I released a version I could be proud of. Countless weekends, nights, holidays lost to making it how I wanted, perseverance being the key. If I didn't know how to do a part, then I downloaded another mod and worked out what they'd done. Whilst Anno Domini for Civ V seems like a large project, it's only viable because I've been working on various iterations for Civ III (and therefore know my scope and direction - and have numerous civiliopedia entries already written!) but also because I'm willing to continue to download other mods and reverse-engineer. The artwork for the project comes after more than 8 years of working with Poser 5 and all the trials and tribulations - and valuable lessons - that the time has given me.

 

[albie_123]

Also, I hope I didn't come off mean or negative: I only hope the best for you, and I can see this mod definitely going places! I'm just warning you of what you're in for: Being part of a long development project will probably one of the most frustrating experiences of your life, but it's worth it in the end.

 

[Pazyryk]

Sometimes it's better not to know the true difficulty of a project, else we would despair before starting...

But if you want some cold, hard reality, just download any of the larger mods (including my pre-alpha) and look at the size and complexity of the code. That should discourage you. On the other hand, I learned how to program (for the most part) making a Modmod for FFH and then applied that knowledge very successfully in my professional life. So if your ideas inspire you to learn some programming, great!

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Again echoing what albie_123 said, I didn't want to come over as negative either. I think that if you're finding your feet modding in Civ 5 it's probably better to start small, do some basic stuff then build up to a larger mod. You can do it; I wouldn't like to see you getting frustrated, so please heed my advice and remember that Rome most certainly wasn't built in a day.

 

[jmelnick]

Thanks, guys. I know that you all aren't meaning to be negative, just trying enstill veteran modder advice on a junior (Literally speaking, because I know I'm younger than all of you). I know it will be really difficult, especially for me (I don't know how to program yet but I will try to learn and I'm only 13), but I'm going to first try and see what I can do. I may send out help and try to recruit people to help me, but I'm not really sure where to do that or exactly what to do (I don't really ask people for help a lot), but it will be in the future because first I want to plan out some ideas on paper.

 

[Lachlan]

Why do not just making an very good and unique map for Civ 5 ?

It should be to you very easy to making an original map, if done well is very popular...

 

[jmelnick]

This is going to be a fantasy modpack.... not really anything to do with the map.

 

[jmelnick]

Ok.... so tech tree creation has begun... slowly but surely!!!

The list of 25 civilizations is also ready.... but will not be released yet, not until after the tech tree is released.