How does mod sharing work?

from Elemental Forums

I have been looking forward to the release of Elemental War of Magic for a very long time.  I watched the forums and press releases very closely at the time the game was first announced, but until now the game has sort of fallen off my radar.


Back in 2008, I read on several gaming sites that Brad Wardell had talked about a special aspect of the modding system where mods would be automatically added to the Impulse server after their creation.  He said that they could then be dispersed into other player games directly from the game's interface.  He used "Spore" as an example of how this would work where everyone's work could be shared very easily.


I'm just curious, as the game has been released now but the online multiplayer is still disabled, is this feature still planned for the future?  Or has it been removed in favor of a more conventional mod-sharing system (in other words, you search the web for mods, download Zip files, and extract them into your game folder)?  Can someone direct me to a quote or some other information by Frogboy or another staffer on the status of this feature, if that is known?


I know, personally, that I don't have a problem with finding and installing the mods myself, but I thought this was pretty awesome when I first heard about it.


There were a lot of references to this in previews a couple years ago.  Here's one from Gamasutra:

A small excerpt:

The game also integrates mod support directly into the main interface, meaning users can easily upload their own custom maps, races, technologies, and buildings; those mods will then be added to a central server to be seeded into users' games. "We ourselves use the same system [as the users]," Wardell said.

"After Spore, it probably seems a lot less original," he added, laughing. "But we had the idea before Spore."

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

It's still in the game. If you go to the Workshop in-game you can access the Mod Library. At the moment you can only share maps through it, I believe, as submissions have to be moderated and they're still ironing out the admin tools and guidelines for approval. There are some screenshots of the screens on IGN, they should be near the top.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Annatar11, reply 1
It's still in the game. If you go to the Workshop in-game you can access the Mod Library. At the moment you can only share maps through it, I believe, as submissions have to be moderated and they're still ironing out the admin tools and guidelines for approval. There are some screenshots of the screens on IGN, they should be near the top.
End of Annatar11's quote

 

Oh, wow, this is great news to me, I hope they continue to allow more types of mods through it soon.  In my opinion, this is what will make or break the game as the vanilla version lacks quite a bit in terms of content.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh the Library already has listings for quests, tiles, etc. Just that only map submissions can get approved for sharing at the moment while they finalize stuff on their end for the rest :)

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

It's not implemented yet so we are stuck using the "Mods" folder, atm.

I'm still unsure how far they intend to go with mod support. Right now it looks like it's just Maps, Items, Tiles, and Quests. We'll have to see once they implement it.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I think Boogieback said they were gonna try to get some moderation guidelines nailed down next week so they could open it up. can't wait, will be so much nicer than the traditional download and unzip method

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting brass1983, reply 5
I think Boogieback said they were gonna try to get some moderation guidelines nailed down next week so they could open it up. can't wait, will be so much nicer than the traditional download and unzip method
End of brass1983's quote

Agreed.  If this works out well, I'd hope to see this feature in future mod-friendly titles such as TES and other 4X games.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting James009D, reply 4
It's not implemented yet so we are stuck using the "Mods" folder, atm.

I'm still unsure how far they intend to go with mod support. Right now it looks like it's just Maps, Items, Tiles, and Quests. We'll have to see once they implement it.
End of James009D's quote

No, it reads out of the user folder just fine. I had a tile and a quest xml left over in there from beta, and it actually showed up in my sandbox. I totally forgot about it until then.