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Nibelung44
Nibelung44
Join Date 04/2011
+1

Still no modding sanity, right? (and a question to Stardock)

January 25, 2013 2:01:50 AM from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

By that I mean you can't mod properly coreimprovements.xml for example, as the previous data are not erased correctly. So you have to edit directly the base file.

Respectfully, I believe Stardock is making an error overall, to not commit more developers now in improving FE. It is clear from patch 1.2 that the changes are made by Derek and Brad and no one else, or perhaps an occasional fixing but that's it. I would have imagined that a developer would be full time fixing issues reported in the forum, but most remains patch after patch. Not sure if this is the best policy to grow the community.

 

In all due respect for the excellent game that is FE though and the job done. 

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Nibelung44
mqpiffle
Join Date 10/2010
+44
Reply #1 January 25, 2013 2:53:33 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Well, they are working on the expansion, which equates to potentially more cash flow.

Hopefully the team can concentrate its efforts at some point to really 'polish the turd' so to speak, but I certainly won't be holding my breath.  Brad has shown that he doesn't dwell on a single task too long, take that as you will.  In fact, it's kinda surprising they spent almost two years developing FE from the shattered remains of WoM.

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Nibelung44
MarvinKosh
Join Date 08/2005
+87
Reply #2 January 25, 2013 8:38:40 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

To be honest I'm not sure if you can get more bugs fixed in a shorter space of time just by applying sheer manpower.

If you think about it, a lot of updates for GalCiv 2 also updated the vanilla game as well as the expansions.  There's good reason for most of the team to forge ahead and cover new ground, it means that they're not held back by having to make all of their changes available to the base game right away.

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Nibelung44
mqpiffle
Join Date 10/2010
+44
Reply #3 January 25, 2013 11:45:02 AM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Exactly.  If they're going alter some mechanic here or there in an upcoming expansion, they might as well build the new content first and then squash bugs, because building in new content will invariably introduce new bugs anyway.

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Nibelung44
jshores
Join Date 09/2009
+11
Reply #4 January 25, 2013 1:35:05 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

I disagree with that line of thought. No one should have to wait for an expansion for bugs to be fixed in a vanilla game. I know that has become the norm with shitty companies in this industry, but I would hope Stardock is not one of those companies. Building new code on top of buggy code is a bad practice. 

I do agree with mqpiffle, Brad's "Modding is going to be a focus after release" lasted about 24 hours and consisted of some posts being stickied. Suffering through the development/release of WOM and FE has taught me not to believe anything being said by Brad until it materializes. Derek's posts and promises may not be nearly as ambitious, but at least we see those items come to fruition. 

 

 

 

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Nibelung44
mqpiffle
Join Date 10/2010
+44
Reply #5 January 25, 2013 2:37:59 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting jshores,
reply 5
I disagree with that line of thought.

That's fine, but SD simply doesn't have the manpower to both dedicate on squashing current bugs while creating and iterating on new content.

I originally disagreed (quite vocally) about Brad's original decision to abandon WoM in favor of starting development of FE, but in hindsight I see that it worked out in the long run.  Dealing with a smaller developer (or any small business) can be frustrating at times, but it's rewarding as well when you see what they have to offer.

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Nibelung44
Mmrnmhrm
Join Date 02/2005
+8
Reply #6 January 25, 2013 2:40:30 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

The last update came out less than 48 hours ago and people are complaining about a lack of support? Wow.

As for modding, yes, like 99.999% of other games out there, there are some files you have to modify in the game directory. Most games I play that are modded have a utility, made by modders, that will swap in and out different data files.  FE at least lets you modify and extend the game in all sorts of ways without doing that. 

I think ti would be more reasonable for modders to write up a data swapping utility than to demand that Stardock put developer hours into something what is being requested. I'd rather see core gameplay improvements and fixes.

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Nibelung44
Heavenfall
Join Date 07/2008
+441
Reply #7 January 25, 2013 3:00:09 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

This is the thread referenced by OP (I assume): https://forums.elementalgame.com/434780

 

To sum up modders are running into a lot of issues when trying to mod from the /mods/ folder, the different object types used are behaving in different ways which makes it annoying to use.

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Nibelung44
Xan
Join Date 01/2003
+29
Reply #8 January 25, 2013 3:49:38 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

Quoting Heavenfall,
reply 8
This is the thread referenced by OP (I assume): https://forums.elementalgame.com/434780

 

To sum up modders are running into a lot of issues when trying to mod from the /mods/ folder, the different object types used are behaving in different ways which makes it annoying to use.

I've run into that myself with the techs. But I also know that I can just modify the directory. The other guy (What the hell does Mmrr mean anyway???) is right. Most games have a mod manager made by a modder. Even FTL has one. It seems like if the issue was a big enough deal someone would have made a mod swapper by now.

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Nibelung44
mqpiffle
Join Date 10/2010
+44
Reply #9 January 25, 2013 3:57:46 PM
from Elemental ForumsElemental Forums

There is a community made Mod Manager, and it's pretty durn good.

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