Frogboy Frogboy

The modders will destroy me

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The modders will destroy me

from Elemental Forums

If I could, I'd cancel the modding beta.  

I'd get shot so I won't.

The reason I'd cancel it is that I will be shamed. Terribly.

When better people get ahold of our stuff, they produce better stuff and show me for the souless engineer that I am.

My idea for the printed Hiergamenon was just to crank out a bunch of print version of XML data form the game as a reference guide.  Random House instead took the hundreds of pages of notes and short stories I had provided them months ago and crafted something brilliant. It's wonderful.

Similarly, modders will end up looking at the stuff and realizing I'm no real game designer. I'm just an engineer. I'm just an AI guy at heart. 

The spells people come up with are cool. But the crazy thing is what's possible, right now, with the tools.

People in the game industry don't usually have the luxury of talking about the sausage factory. And people outside our industry don't understand how it is nowadays.  Elemental isn't a licensed engine. It's one of the very few indie engines out there. We (you guys and us) are free to do whatever we want.

So when modding starts, please don't think less of me. I am not a real game designer like Chris Taylor or Will Wright. I'm a gamer who likes to code AI.  The limitations in our games (galciv included) are typically the result of a lack of imagination in my part.

elemental
14,306 views 30 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top

So where do these "game designers" learn their trade, do they train at a special learning facility, or do they just learn as they go? I thought people like chris taylor, will wright and sid meier were just comp. sci people that got into designing games.

Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top

it is more important that a game has good AI, and okay graphics, because this translates to good game play.  If you have bad AI, pretty graphics, the game becomes only good eye candy.

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Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 23
The modding tools are good. But the main thing is that just that so much is data driven (XML based).  

In GalCiv, it was almost completely hard-coded.

 
End of Frogboy's quote

 

How is the API for scripting coming along?

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

One reason to preorder was the ability to heavily mod Elemental. Normally, I play games to a certain period (depends on the game a story how long) and afterwards I look into the mechanics behind and thinking what could be improvement or made differently. The more option to mod, the longer I stay with the game - to such an extent that I only play the game to make modifications and not actually play the game anymore. What you are going to provide with Elemental is not only a Sandbox Strategygame -> It's a perfect Sandbox Mod playground. This is something you can be proud of, it's seldom that a company is such community driven :-) Thank you for that :-)

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Look at Empire Total War. If it wasn't for modders that game would have sucked the big one. The fact that the comminuty had to finish the game and AI is laughable and that is without mod tools. Then they lied about multiplayer campaign and used Empire as a beta platform to develop some half ass multiplayer that is now present in Napoleon albeit still broken because CA doesn't listen to its customers.

In some ways modding is awsome as long as its done well and with balance. Most modders just go totually overboard when it's usually a few subtle changes that can make a world of difference. I wouldn't expect the AI to be broken in this game since its a Stardock game and Frogboy is gunning it but that said I never really liked Calciv AI or gameplay. It just never felt good to me. I really hope this game turns out excellent and the more modding the better as usually with every game I play now the only thing I want to do is fix it. heh