Were the LH's a bad move for modders?

[Kyriakos]

The Civ5 Lhs look amazing. Far better than those in the previous games.
But is this bad for modding? Do we really have enough people who can produce such animations to match the original ones? And if not, will this prove to be detrimental for mods?

 

[CaptainBinky]

LH is Leader Heads?

Yeah, they're excellent - although even on Civ IV there weren't that many custom leaders made which were entirely custom-built as opposed to being edits of existing ones using existing anims? In fact were there any? (Appologies to anyone who built really good ones, I admit to being a bit ignorant towards Civ IV mods since I only ever used two )

But yeah, it's gonna be tough to pull off new ones for Civ V. I'm sure it won't stop us trying although, let's be honest - getting even close to the standard set by Firaxis will be, well, pretty much impossible. Add to that that they're all voiced in appropriate languages and... well, eek!

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, i mean Leaderheads

Maybe there can be toned-down versions of them though, more similar to civ4/civ3. Still, make a part of the game too intricate and detailed and you end up with no modding of it. There should be some balance i think, in such areas that modding is called for.

 

[CaptainBinky]

Well, there's nothing to stop modders using simpler models and/or pulling the camera in so that the heads are more like Civ IV's in complexity. I admit that it would be a little jarring but presumably a better option than just having a static picture or something?

edit: That's not to say that I don't agree with you that had Firaxis gone with a level that was to some degree replicable it wouldn't be better for us but to be honest, even with that in mind, I still really love the new characters and I wouldn't want to lose them just for the sake of us having an easier time.

 

[cool3a2]

I'm sure that guys like Ekmek and The Capo will master the challenge of creating LHs for civ5. I can't really understand the argument that most custom LHs for civ4 were only edits. Maybe those from the earlier days where, but that's also because plugins weren't working good enough then and of course because the modders needed some training. Look at the LHs from the last year and you'll see they are much better then the ones from firaxis and also pretty unique.

The problem will rather be, that they decreased the count of leaderheads to 1 per civ. I haven't bought civ5 yet and will wait with that for a while for the following reasons:
1) No time yet, due to reallife.
2) Most things that have been changed with civ5 were a big step towards the wrong directions IMO. Just like the leaderhead thing. Next, I can't resell my game if I don't like it, because it's AFAIK connected with the steam account. Sorry, but I have to state that I could understand if there would be a movement that uses 'black copies'...
Anyways, if it's true that leaderheads still give a boni, but there's only one per civ, then why connect that boni with the leaderheads? Instead, they could have connected the boni with the civ itself, making the leaderhead only an avatar. Well, seems like that's practically the case. Now, coming back to why that's a bad idea regarding leaderhead modding: the count of custom leaderheads will decrease. There is simply no need for all those leaderheads. Besides of some motivation aspects maybe as leaderheads became less important practically (due to the said changes). For a modder like me that simply adds some civs to the game, this will also be bad. It's sometimes hard to decide which is the best leader for a civ. I made a Hungary mod for civ4 and I added 6 leaders. That's pretty much, but hey: you can choose only one and at least you'll always find a leader that's traits fit to your desires. I just really can't decide if Árpád, Stephen I., Kossuth or Corvinus should be the one... And as player I wouldn't like that idea either. If my own country is available for civ, I'd want to mostly play with that. If I'm forced to certain boni because I can't switch between leaders and hence handycaped because those traits don't meet my basic startegy, I'd become pretty angry... Rubbish.

So this is the real downside of civ5 regarding leaderhead modding IMO.

 

[CaptainBinky]

I can't really understand the argument that most custom LHs for civ4 were only edits.

Sorry, I meant no offence - I did stipulate my ignorance to this in my post.

 

[Wirapuru]

The move to single leader for each civ really was a bummer, what are they thinking I don't know either, multiple leaders for civilization worked out so great for the variety and replayability (well I guess this will never be a problem for civ games, but). I'm optimistic that this will be moddable, even if we have to wait for the C++ sdk.

As for the quality of forthcoming LHs I confess I'm a bit worried too, they'll demand way more work than in past games, and - as a 3d creator myself (and going to LH creation too) - my biggest worry will be about the voices, I guess we'll need talented - or at least pretty outgoing -people to help us on that. Besides that, after we've uncovered all the secrets of bringing in the models, lights, cameras and animation to Nexus It'll be just creativity issues =]

 

[CaptainBinky]

Just as a matter of interest, what's to stop us duplicating a Civ, and having alternate versions? So that there's the English civ with Elizabeth, the English civ with Churchill, the English civ with Victoria, etc? It's not as nice as having all those alternates available from a single English page, but it does at least mean you can set the city names to be the important cities from that era as well as any other tweaks for that particular leader..?

I guess it would mean that you'd be likely to get multiple English civs in a single game, but maybe a small mod could be written that checks the civ names and makes sure that only one of each root name was in the game..?

 

[Wirapuru]

Just as a matter of interest, what's to stop us duplicating a Civ, and having alternate versions? So that there's the English civ with Elizabeth, the English civ with Churchill, the English civ with Victoria, etc? It's not as nice as having all those alternates available from a single English page, but it does at least mean you can set the city names to be the important cities from that era as well as any other tweaks for that particular leader..?

I guess it would mean that you'd be likely to get multiple English civs in a single game, but maybe a small mod could be written that checks the civ names and makes sure that only one of each root name was in the game..?

Well thought I'm not aware of new civ restrictions or possibilities but if that's possible it would be a good workaround.

 

[CaptainBinky]

Well thought I'm not aware of new civ restrictions or possibilities but if that's possible it would be a good workaround.

It would mean that it would make sense for those of us that make new civs or alternate civs should come up with a consistent format for naming them so that the mod (should it be possible) can easily cope with any new civs that get created, and therefore any combination a user has installed.

 

[Wirapuru]

Yeah, maybe you should open a new thread to propose that, or to ask the API gurus if anything else can be done about that. If this workaround is the best we can do it's better to create that naming pattern before new civ mods start popping out.

 

[Solver]

You could of course copy a civ and make an "England 2" with Victoria or whatever you please. It would though, mean that the civs are completely distinct and thus it would be possible for you to get two Englands in a game.

 

[CaptainBinky]

Done: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=9693390#post9693390

 

[Opera]

First, using 2D leaders isn't out of the question. Fall from Heaven did it and it worked quite well.

Secondly, Civ5 is designed to not have more than one leader per civ but with DLL modding, more per civ will be available, for sure

 

[Solver]

Well, using 2D leaders is impossible for now, we'll need to wait until that becomes an option.

 

[Opera]

What about Kael's Celts? I thought Boudica was a 2D leader (not tried the mod yet). Or aren't they playable for the AI?

 

[CaptainBinky]

I believe Kael's Celt mod uses the Elizabeth leader scene at the moment. There is a custom loading picture though.

 

[Solver]

Yeah, in Kael's mod 2D Boudica appears when loading, but the leader scene is Elizabeth's.