Why not a Super-Mod-Friendly Civ5?

[Kruelgor]

**** you.

---> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395209 <---
---> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392985 <---

Such pride and ego. Thanks for proving my point. What would you have done with yourselves if my idea was fully in place. You wouldn't be able to thump your chest as you are now, would you?

 

[CaptainBinky]

We'd would have had some spare time for the last couple of months, thanks. We'd have preferred that above spending a shed load of time making free stuff for people like you.

 

[lemmy101]

Such pride and ego. Thanks for proving my point. What would you have done with yourselves if my idea was fully in place. You wouldn't be able to thump your chest as you are now, would you?

¬¬

So instead of working on our own mod with our 'elitist' skills, hording our tools and thus making a mod that would far outstrip anything anyone else could possibly be able to do, that potentially 10,000+ people would play, we instead spent the entire time making newbie friendly tools so we can be adored by a small bunch of modders. Our egos are OUT OF CONTROL!

 

[Kruelgor]

You know, a simple 'you're right' would have avoided all of this, but you kind of trolled the topic away from the original discussion over to your project that you wanted to thump your chest about. Completely irrelevant btw. Nice. Good job.


There is absolutely nothing you can say to prove me wrong. Nothing. Fully integrated user-friendly functionality for editing/creating leaderheads, units, tech tree, etc... would have most definitely been a good idea.

 

[lemmy101]

You're not right though. You're wrong. We just pointed it out to you and gave you a pretty in-depth reasoning why you were wrong, which you flagrantly ignored. That's kind of the point.

Also it's not irrelevant. You accused us of being elitist and preferring that only the 'blessed few' could mod, while we've been spending our entire time trying to enable as many people as possible to be able to mod, hence your accusation was grossly insulting and that needed pointing out to you. Ignorant to that though you were.

 

[Kruelgor]

While that is nice of you and your friend to create tools for the community, I disagree that some joe off the street should have to do such a thing. All of this could had been avoided if the game devs had implemented my idea from the beginning. Besides, I'm skeptical that your tools can do even 10% of what I'm envisioning.

 

[CaptainBinky]

Well, of course the tools can't do more than 10% (or 1% for that matter) of what you're envisioning. Because what you're envisioning is so far beyond what is possible to build into a turn-based strategy PC game with limited appeal and market-size that it's (to be honest) absurd. As we explained earlier.

It's a nice hypothetical idea, but impractical. That's all.

 

[Kruelgor]

Well, of course the tools can't do more than 10% (or 1% for that matter) of what you're envisioning. Because what you're envisioning is so far beyond what is possible to build into a turn-based strategy PC game with limited appeal and market-size that it's (to be honest) absurd.

You're speaking pure rubbish and we both know it. Why don't you explain to me what I'm envisioning since you speak with such authority.

 

[lemmy101]

Of course we've said this about five times already and you just keep replying with 'well they should have done'... sigh.

 

[lemmy101]

You're speaking pure rubbish and we both know it. Why don't you explain to me what I'm envisioning.

What you said. Where the entire game is moddable from within the game, with easy to use menus, and assets you can place on units and leaders to customize them. Like the Sims or LBP or something (you know, those games that their main FEATURE is they are customizable to that extent. You know, the ones where they have a team of like 30 artists whose job it is to pump out hats and sofas and trousers for 3 years straight)

Of course it would be nice. Of course it would. So would the ability to be able to zoom into first person and go and explore your cities. But just like that, it ain't gonna happen. That's all we we're saying before you attacked us and called us greedy egotistical 'elitist's out the blue.

 

[Kruelgor]

What you said. Where the entire game is moddable from within the game, with easy to use menus, and assets you can place on units and leaders to customize them. Like the Sims or LBP or something (you know, those games that their main FEATURE is they are customizable to that extent. You know, the ones where they have a team of like 30 artists whose job it is to pump out hats and sofas and trousers for 3 years constantly)

So you're claiming that Firaxis is incapable. I disagree with that notion. I say it has to be planned from the beginning before the first code is typed. Firaxis most likely will never because they have "elitists" to do half-ass work for them.
Moderator Action: Don't troll here.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

May riches be blessed upon the first game company who does create a moddable war game construction set.

 

[lemmy101]

So you're claiming that Firaxis is incapable.

OH GOD NO!

They ARE incapable, because they are funded by 2K GAMES. Their staff are paid by 2K GAMES and the amount of money paid to Firaxis is for a certain amount of staff over a certain amount of time. And what you're suggesting would add a bunch of programmers to the project and make the costs rise massively, and if they had trouble finishing what they did put into the game then how would you expect them to get all this extra stuff in?

And all this on the PC platform where they've probably sold 200,000 units by now, compared to console games (Sims aside, but that's an exception) that sell MILLIONS of copies. It just wouldn't be green lit. We're lucky we got modding at all.

AGAIN we've explained this multiple times, do you have a blind spot in your vision?

 

[lemmy101]

Nothing to see here folks, move on!

 

[alpaca]

Civ5 is a lot more moddable than most other strategy games (and will allow people to mod even the core game). Sure, it would be nice to have user-friendly WYSIWYG editors for leaderheads and an easy-to-use interface for adding techs, etc. but at some point it's unrealistic to expect a developer to create tools that are way better than what they use themselves without additional compensation.

Also, and I know you will call me elitist for that but couldn't care less, I don't think I would enjoy most mods that were made with such tools too much because they would most likely just add stuff. To really change the game rules or AI, you have to code, there's no way around it. And a strategy game is about its rules and AI for me, in contrast to an RPG like Oblivion where just adding stuff is actually meaningful.

 

[Ajidica]

Question:
Is it possible (now or future with a community mod tool) to make it so people who download a mod can edit it in ModBuddy? That is probably for me so far the biggest complaint with modbuddy. Being able to edit downloaded SQLs could be nice for modmod creation.

 

[Gedemon]

Civ5 is a lot more moddable than most other strategy games (and will allow people to mod even the core game). Sure, it would be nice to have user-friendly WYSIWYG editors for leaderheads and an easy-to-use interface for adding techs, etc. but at some point it's unrealistic to expect a developer to create tools that are way better than what they use themselves without additional compensation.

Also, and I know you will call me elitist for that but couldn't care less, I don't think I would enjoy most mods that were made with such tools too much because they would most likely just add stuff. To really change the game rules or AI, you have to code, there's no way around it. And a strategy game is about its rules and AI for me, in contrast to an RPG like Oblivion where just adding stuff is actually meaningful.

amen to that.

I strongly prefer a system where modding is harder but allows more freedom in creation than a system where modding is easier but allows only hundreds of cloned mods... And no, you can't get both, a tool will simply never be able to anticipate all the ideas one may have to improve/change the game.

 

[Justicex]

All I'm saying is if the core concepts of changing the tech tree, creating new leaderheads, creating new units, were all integrated with USER-FRIENDLY editing tools [/snip]

As far as I'm concerned, you sunk your own argument right there. I own and love both LittleBigPlanet and Modnation Racers, and am waiting rather impatiently for LittleBigPlanet 2. In those games, you don't MOD anything. You create content in those games using existing rules and content provided by the developers. What we do and try to accomplish here goes far beyond the scope of anything those games could accomplish.

Let's take the example of ModCivNation Racers. You want to build a custom track? Great! Lay your track, plant some trees and race away. But in ModCivNation, say you want to race on the yellow brick road to OZ. Pull out your XML and have at it! See the difference?

Quite frankly, Modbuddy and the rest of the SDK is not that hard to use. The people that are having a harder time with it are the ones with the bigger dreams that are basically trying to build a whole new game within the scenario of Civilization V.

If I moron like me can get an unique civilization up and running (with the help of the awesome people here of course ) modding isn't that difficult.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Quite frankly, Modbuddy and the rest of the SDK is not that hard to use. The people that are having a harder time with it are the ones with the bigger dreams that are basically trying to build a whole new game within the scenario of Civilization V.

I have to agree with this. The first rule of modding in a new environment should be "start SMALL", both in terms of how much data you try to change, and in what functionality you try to add.

When I was first developing Crazy Spatz's Alpha Centauri Mod (v.0.000001 available now for testing, in that thread!), my biggest mistake was that I started too big. I'd add 45 new techs, but an error on one of them would mean that none would load. I'd add 20 modifications to tile yields, but because I put IMPROVEMENT_FISHING_BOAT instead of _BOATS in one spot, none of it would load. And I've still got half a dozen Wonders with no effects because the effect I WANT for them simply isn't possible yet; I'm learning the .lua as fast as I can, but it's easily possible that some of what I'd envisioned won't be possible without source code changes that will never happen.

The fact is, "custom content" games like the Sims or LBP aren't truly moddable; you're still operating everything within the gameplay framework they've provided. For Civ, that'd be pointless; sure, people would come up with all sorts of historical scenarios and such, but in the end the basic strategies would remain more or less the same. XML editing suffices for that sort of change. My only real complaint about the XML edits in ModBuddy is that there's too little debugging feedback.

But we, as modders, want the ability to truly change the underlying game structure, and for that, there's no way the developers could have made a user-friendly interface that wouldn't be horribly limiting. And the potential for introducing crash-causing bugs skyrockets once you get into that sort of environment anyway so it's not something the casual player would be interested in.

 

[Kruelgor]

Losers of the same feather will flock together. Enjoy yourselves. When you grow some balls to accept the hard truth then you'll be on my level. Until then you live in a fantasy world.

Moderator Action: Your post is inappropriate and inflammatory. Please refrain from such posts in the future.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Ajidica]

Accepting what truth? That we are lucky to have an editor that actualy works fairly well? Sure, there are some problems with it, but hopefully it will be addressed in a patch.