Well thought I would ask
- Thread starter Talon500
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Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
This sort of question has been answered a few times in this forum (the Search feature is your friend!), but since it's been a while since the last one, I'll help you out. There are three main issues right now.
On one hand, the sort of intricate modding necessary for something like FfH is just not possible with the SDK tools we've been given. Without DLL access, we're limited to those XML and Lua stubs the developers have provided for us, and there are just too few things we can do with that. Many current mods try to make the most out of this, and there IS a lot you can still do, but it's not open-ended enough to do the types of total conversions seen in earlier games, or to add intricate systems involving governments, religions, etc. (see the DUCKS thread for more discussion on this).
On the other hand, there are some technical issues with how the game handles asset files. This makes it hard to add new sounds or 3D artwork, which obviously limits the extent of these sorts of content mods. There are some workarounds for this, but they're not easy, so most modders don't bother. This obviously discourages large-scale content mods. The fact that it's not trivial to import Civ4 art assets makes it worse; if there was a quick-n-dirty conversion tool that'd allow us to use the vast library of fan-made Civ4 assets with minimal effort, then things would be MUCH better.
And on the gripping hand, the people behind many of Civ4's most popular mods apparently have no intention of repeating their efforts for the newer game, either because of real-life things that preclude the level of effort needed, or in some cases disdain of Civ5 in general.
FfH was made by Kael, who wrote the excellent modding tutorial for Civ5 and has since been hired at Stardock (yay!) to work as lead producer on Elemental: War of Magic. As a result, he hasn't posted at Civfanatics since January. So I don't see him putting a lot of time into a mod at this point.
On one hand, the sort of intricate modding necessary for something like FfH is just not possible with the SDK tools we've been given. Without DLL access, we're limited to those XML and Lua stubs the developers have provided for us, and there are just too few things we can do with that. Many current mods try to make the most out of this, and there IS a lot you can still do, but it's not open-ended enough to do the types of total conversions seen in earlier games, or to add intricate systems involving governments, religions, etc. (see the DUCKS thread for more discussion on this).
On the other hand, there are some technical issues with how the game handles asset files. This makes it hard to add new sounds or 3D artwork, which obviously limits the extent of these sorts of content mods. There are some workarounds for this, but they're not easy, so most modders don't bother. This obviously discourages large-scale content mods. The fact that it's not trivial to import Civ4 art assets makes it worse; if there was a quick-n-dirty conversion tool that'd allow us to use the vast library of fan-made Civ4 assets with minimal effort, then things would be MUCH better.
And on the gripping hand, the people behind many of Civ4's most popular mods apparently have no intention of repeating their efforts for the newer game, either because of real-life things that preclude the level of effort needed, or in some cases disdain of Civ5 in general.
FfH was made by Kael, who wrote the excellent modding tutorial for Civ5 and has since been hired at Stardock (yay!) to work as lead producer on Elemental: War of Magic. As a result, he hasn't posted at Civfanatics since January. So I don't see him putting a lot of time into a mod at this point.
Ahhh I thank you for all the good info, I have been gone for a long time due to my military shenanigans of late so I am way out of the loop. I do believe that the issues of "dead" modding for Civ 5 will be resolved in time however.
Shiggs713
Immortal
this pretty much sums up my thoughts on why civ5 modding is basically dead
yes we have all the little mods that add a new unit or a new notification, but it'll be a very long time coming before any serious mods are around.
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
While I'm not saying that the mods we've been coming out with are anywhere close to FfH in terms of complete overhaul, don't trivialize the existing work as just one more unit or notification. And don't try to quote my own text and use it to explain why modding is dead, because that's not what I said at all.
There is a LOT you can do with Lua. It's not completely open-ended, so you still have to work around the limitations of the structure we've been provided, but there's many new things you can add. In my own mod, for instance, I've added:
> A unit that steals promotions from the units it faces, growing through combat instead of the normal XP-based process.
> A series of units that adjust their strength based on the strength of their opponents, so that it's almost always an even fight.
> A Great Wall-like wonder that gives a custom negative promotion to any enemy unit in your territory (reducing their visibility and range), a wonder (Space Elevator) that gives an "orbital drop" promotion to any unit starting the turn in its city and then removes it afterwards, a wonder that warns you when and where another empire is getting close to completing a Wonder, and a wonder that gives +1 movement to any of your units that start the turn within your territory (meaning it really helps workers).
> Terraforming, to plant forests, jungles, create new strategic resource deposits, adjust terrain types, etc.
> Wonders that steal techs from your opponents, with the chance of success depending on how many civs have the tech in question and the current game speed.
> A tech that's not researchable normally, but is auto-awarded when you build the spaceship and can randomly gained if you take too long after someone else builds their own ship.
> Barbarian camp-like units that spawn randomly in controlled territory, and then create new barbarian units each turn if you don't destroy the "camp" as quickly as possible. Oh, and all of the units in question regenerate health each turn...
> A new victory condition that involves a 20-turn timer where your cities slowly wither away while every other empire goes to war to stop you from winning.
And a lot more, but you get the idea. The point is, while the current mechanisms don't allow for the unfettered modding we'd need to create FfH-style total conversions, it IS enough to add a wide variety of new features that go far beyond a single unit or new tech. There's also a lot that can be done just in XML, because there ARE a few stubs that were never used by the official code but which still work just fine (like adding an SDI project for nuke interception, hint hint), but what I listed above are all primarily Lua-based mods.
Total conversions are simply extensive amounts of assets achievable within SDK limitations.
What Nexus didn't offer, you can't find in WorldBuilder or ModBuddy for reasons;
-- DOCUMENTED (from Firaxis or 2K, btw) evidence of **all** LUA calls or events.
-- MODs activation principles (sic-EntryPoints)
-- Runtime components validation within *pre_provided* functions.
-- Proprietary variations in "Standard" files such as GR2 modeling.
Right now, the main culprit is that allocated (or necessary, in fact) time to produce giga-contexts is beyond personal attempts (barring some Re-Balancing Gameplay offers we've been witnessing).
Another hurdle is resources intensive. Given the lack of a coherent (if you prefer - complex) "Toolset" for Modders, anyone must tackle the whole mystery on their own.
Unless we get full control immediately or soon (DLL source being a fraction of what is really needed), noboby will ever bother to persist hitting a wall of multiple obstacles.
The point with Modding is that it's either easy or purposely difficult enough to prevent ideas & some skills from triggering into action. Essentially, they dumped limited capacities into our hands & indirectly left us struggling with a mess of unknown factors that began as a switch between Python & Lua encoding.
In my case, see ya in a year or (somehow) less. Since FrontEnd'ing can't pull a bunch of DB slots from where they should; valid processing on more than just VFS or folders SQL'ing. And that's not talking about UI preloads or InGame layers undefined.
What Nexus didn't offer, you can't find in WorldBuilder or ModBuddy for reasons;
-- DOCUMENTED (from Firaxis or 2K, btw) evidence of **all** LUA calls or events.
-- MODs activation principles (sic-EntryPoints)
-- Runtime components validation within *pre_provided* functions.
-- Proprietary variations in "Standard" files such as GR2 modeling.
Right now, the main culprit is that allocated (or necessary, in fact) time to produce giga-contexts is beyond personal attempts (barring some Re-Balancing Gameplay offers we've been witnessing).
Another hurdle is resources intensive. Given the lack of a coherent (if you prefer - complex) "Toolset" for Modders, anyone must tackle the whole mystery on their own.
Unless we get full control immediately or soon (DLL source being a fraction of what is really needed), noboby will ever bother to persist hitting a wall of multiple obstacles.
The point with Modding is that it's either easy or purposely difficult enough to prevent ideas & some skills from triggering into action. Essentially, they dumped limited capacities into our hands & indirectly left us struggling with a mess of unknown factors that began as a switch between Python & Lua encoding.
In my case, see ya in a year or (somehow) less. Since FrontEnd'ing can't pull a bunch of DB slots from where they should; valid processing on more than just VFS or folders SQL'ing. And that's not talking about UI preloads or InGame layers undefined.
Shiggs713
Immortal
not trying to belittle anyones work.... just in comparison to mods like FFH for example, I doubt we'll be seeing mods that deep for some time, perhaps a year or two at least. And thats assuming the source gets released somewhat soon, and there are still enough modders around to actually form development teams, because the man hours required would be pretty steep I'd imagine from what I've seen.
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