Is Empires Easier To Mod?

[ccllnply]

So whats the communities opinion now that modding is in full swing?

I find it easier then M2TW but harder then Rome. To do simple things like change province ownership you have to go through a lot in my opnion and its made even more annoying because its harder to find out why your game has crashed

[alpaca]

They said it would be more moddable, not easier.

And no, I don't think it's easier than either M2TW or RTW. We had to write our own tools to even be able to mod anything at all, so what does that tell us?

Scripting is a pain in the arse, editing the map is all but impossible, changing models is quite impossible... yeah. Most moddable for sure.

P.S: I was so close before voting "I don't mod and have no idea why I'm looking at this thread"

[Sorkenlol]

It's the hardest one yet until we get the tools.

[alpaca]

It's the hardest one yet until we get the tools.

There will be no full-fledged tools I fear. Lusted said the only tool they have right now has been "far surpassed by some community ones" or something very close to that (too lazy to search) so I wouldn't hold my breath for great tools. Maybe they'll come over with some info about how to mod things at least.

[sage2]

I'm not holding my breath that we'll get tools. CA is very far behind in some really basic things, like fixing crash and corruption bugs that have no place in an A-list title.

Unfortunately, CA has chosen to obscure very many things from battle AI, to diplomacy AI, to mapping that wer're previously available. This:
a) Reduce the games modding potential
b) Makes it that much harder to fix a game that is fundamentally broken in many ways.

[Rorarii]

There will be no full-fledged tools I fear. Lusted said the only tool they have right now has been "far surpassed by some community ones" or something very close to that (too lazy to search) so I wouldn't hold my breath for great tools. Maybe they'll come over with some info about how to mod things at least.

This doesn't make sense, they designed the game to load MODS properly, -last, to work with patches etc, plus the game appears too well planned and developed, not just hacked together. There must have been more than just one tool to develop this game, shirley!

They may not have time or a budget for proper modding tools, thanks to the dep/recession but once things get better, and if there's a large enough market/demand by modders, I suspect a Mod Tools update must be possible, especially considering they have 2 TW teams to employ!

R

[alpaca]

This doesn't make sense, they designed the game to load MODS properly, -last, to work with patches etc, plus the game appears too well planned and developed, not just hacked together. There must have been more than just one tool to develop this game, shirley!

They may not have time or a budget for proper modding tools, thanks to the dep/recession but once things get better, and if there's a large enough market/demand by modders, I suspect a Mod Tools update must be possible, especially considering they have 2 TW teams to employ!

R

It may not make sense to you but that's how it is. Maybe they initially had planned to open more parts of the game up for modding but now they have to spend their time on fixes because they rushed the game out. And I doubt SEGA will want to pay the programmers for a few months to create modding tools without getting any money out of it.

[just]

Lusted said yesterday they will release information on the contents of the .esf files, so the campaign AI can be better edited. I haven't heard anything else yet about what might be included, other than the surpassed tool.

[harshman_chris]

Honestly they should just open up there documentation to us, then let us build tools, or let us play with more options.

or maybe an offical unpacker that unpacks everything to a nicer format, say xml

But really, documentation is what we need.

No more Hex Editor

[SigniferOne]

Lusted said yesterday they will release information on the contents of the .esf files, so the campaign AI can be better edited. I haven't heard anything else yet about what might be included, other than the surpassed tool.

What makes you think that the AI is in the .esf files?

[harshman_chris]

What makes you think that the AI is in the .esf files?

Well it can either be in the packs, esf, or hardcoded.

And the packs have alot of reference to Ai but they are just mostly sets of key pair values. There is very little total hardcoded space for the game so to have alot of AI in there would be unlikely. The ESF seems to make the most logical choice.

[just]

How I know? I explored the startpos for a bit:

The AI for each faction has a number of desires and beliefs and the like. For the minor factions this might be just their home region and one other region, that's why when you use an aggressive AI mod, like Quixote's, the minor AI will only conquer one territory and leave other regions that are sitting around defenseless alone.

And of course:

Very little really, I intend to make a post about campaign AI modding sometime next week with info from the campaign programmers, but basically because how the startpos system works changes to the ai managers table won't have an effect and there will be more info as well.

[SigniferOne]

Yes but this seems a lot like changing variables that are fed into the AI, rather than changing the AI itself. By the same logic you could give a faction 1 million coins in Medieval too, and consider yourself to have "improved the AI" as you watch them proceed to conquer their enemies.

The only true AI modding must be something akin to the AI .xml files released for Kingdoms, where you can directly adjust defense/attack priorities, determine how it should group stacks, the kinds of abstract strategic goals it should aim for, etc. That emphatically cannot be done with DB tables, so we'll see what sort of editing we'll be allowed to do on that account.

[Emperor of The Great Unknown]

once its patched they might let us in on some of there tools and some hardcoded stuff. Kinda like MTW2 before the unpacker.

[harshman_chris]

Yes but this seems a lot like changing variables that are fed into the AI, rather than changing the AI itself. By the same logic you could give a faction 1 million coins in Medieval too, and consider yourself to have "improved the AI" as you watch them proceed to conquer their enemies.

The only true AI modding must be something akin to the AI .xml files released for Kingdoms, where you can directly adjust defense/attack priorities, determine how it should group stacks, the kinds of abstract strategic goals it should aim for, etc. That emphatically cannot be done with DB tables, so we'll see what sort of editing we'll be allowed to do on that account.

AI is nothing more than a handling of priorities and applying logic based on the current situation.

And as Jack Lusted said changing the DB has little effect, if any but the startpos is were it is at.

[alpaca]

AI is nothing more than a handling of priorities and applying logic based on the current situation.

And as Jack Lusted said changing the DB has little effect, if any but the startpos is were it is at.

So... you're saying all that praise for Darth and Quixote's campaign AIs is placebo effect? I knew it

[Hobbes]

It is very difficult. Everything is compressed to a couple of files. So I voted " Its the hardest one yet!"

[random_samurai]

I'm still holding out for mod tools, but Lusted's statement made me seriously doubt that CA is even trying on mod tools. Alpaca's reasoning makes sense, and I will be a very unhappy camper if we get the shaft when it comes to modding.

[harshman_chris]

This is why we should push for documentation rather than tools, we have enough programmers around here to make better tools, but Hex editors can only take us so far.

[Rorarii]

This is why we should push for documentation rather than tools, we have enough programmers around here to make better tools, but Hex editors can only take us so far.

I doubt very much SEGA wil release details of a new engine!, unless they have total control through tools / front end etc.

Points;

(1) CA England probably need a break from ETW, once these bugs are fixed. So they'll probably won't be asked to do the tools. Though with their experience, they'll probably start on Napoleon TW after a short break? maybe?

(2) CA Aust, need to familiarise themselves with the engine so why not do it through tools development .. makes sense? kinda? Unless CA Aust will be ....

R