I think these have both been requested in a different form. I think the real point is simply that it would be nice to have a few more geometric shapes than simply just a circle of the area of effect. Interesting possibilities would be line, triangle ( or "cone" ), cross, semi circle, and X. This would give modders the ability to great much more interesting spells as we could do more than single targeting and radius AoE.

Also a working radius limitation for damaging spells centered on "self".

My requests for improvements to particle cauldron:

1) Save As button.

2) Fix the crash that occurs when loading the same effect twice during one Elemental session.

3) Option to duplicate Emitter/Beam

4) Option to copy/paste Emitter/Beam

5) Ability to save Emitter / Beam as template and create a new emitter from any saved template

6) List view of colors & textures, so that it's not necessary to scroll through everything all the time

7) a delete emitter / beam button (I know pressing delete key works)

8) Ability to adjust any value by increments using mouse wheel (just like the color/texture list works)

9) A Load Emitter list that is easier to navigate than the current one (smaller font, jump to a letter using keyboard etc)

Spell Modding Improvements:

1) Add support for beam-type spell effects, so that we can make for example static lightning bolts between the caster and target

2) Option for instead of using projectile speed variable, use a fixed <time until spell hits target>, regardless of distance. This would allow for a lot of new projectile effects, such as arcing projectiles

Some spell-related requests.

1)Allow substitution of models. This would allow a variety of transformation spells.

2)Allow Calculate to reference resource values. This would allow for adding custom shard type power increases. If I understand the code currently, the influence of shard posession on damage is hard coded. A big limitation for those of us who want to expand the magic system.

3)Allow for a "rounds in effect" reference, used for gradually increasing/decreasing damage per round. Allows for oh-shit! spells that would pressure you to win the battle in a timely manner. And lots of other things.

4)Allow Calculate to reference stats for persistent resource-boosters.

5) Creation of a tag for a static particle effect stretched between caster and target. Like a lightning bolt effect.

6)Also, a Dispel-type effect. Really the only way to have persistent debuffs.

I'd like for some way to make the AI build pre-designed units. I've tried every way I can think of to add a way for the AI to train pre-designed units, but every way I've tried has failed.

Basically, the functionality should be something like diplomacy units, but using tech instead.

This is how a diplomacy unit currently works: A diplomacy unit works like this: you get the tech, it spawns a world resource, you build on it, the closest city can now build those units (and the AI does that). Problem with that is the AI only builds those units from ONE kind of world resource, so if it ends up with two, it will still only build one. Imagine a city getting an umberdroth world resource and a darkling world resource - it will build only one of those. If the player is unlucky, the AI is only building darklings = game over for AI.

What I want: The desired functionality here is that instead of using a world resource, the AI would somehow unlock a tech (techtree, whatever). Then the AI would build these units. Right now, they are simply ignored.

I would also like a tag that allows us to limit training a certain pre-designed unit to cities with a certain level. For example, some units should only be buildable in a city that is level 5.

I would like this to be added in tactical battles as well. In other words

Tactical Battle Improvements:

1) Allow for timed events in tactical battles. Example: All units take X points of fire damage every Y turns.

2) Allow for battle objectives. Examples:

• Battle is won/lost if units X dies.
• You are forced to retreat (lose battle but not units) after X turns.
• Enemy automatically retreats (you win) after X turns.

Particle Editor Request:

A spell preview mode would be extremely useful. A mode where you can see how the particle effect would work as a part of a spell. Especially with projectile spells, as the particle effect looks quite a bit different when used as a projectile than it does in the editor, when it's still.

The editor would just have to allow to change a few simple parameters: spell type (projectile/normal(/beam)), caster position, target position (the 5x5 tile is probably enough that's in the particle editor, though 10x10 would be better to see the spell looks good even when fired from afar), projectile speed, projectile effect and on hit effect. Would be nice to be able to choose the caster & target models as well.

It takes a whole lot of time to test how the projectiles look in game with the current system, as you need to make the effect, edit it into a mod, load a scenario with the mod, enter battle and then cast the spell. This would help effect creation immensely.

IMHO, maybe now is the time for the devs to put their money where their mods are - if they are serious about the moddability of the game of Elemental, how about implementing some of the really easy requests right away, and the devs, the mod-makers and the playing community would all start benefiting?  They could find that if they continue to put off adding desperately requested and needed mod capabilities, that mod-makers could get fed up and leave.  From what I have observed, Heavenfall, one of the biggest Elemental modders (if not *the* biggest) is getting extremely frustrated because simple modding features which would help so much are being put off or ignored for whatever reason, and they could potentially be adding to Elemental sales and vibrancy *right now*.

What do others think about this issue?

Best regards,
Steven.

That's a good point Steven and I hope they do start implementing our requests, but I think it's best if we keep this thread clean of discussion related to the matter and just post the actual requests here.

Also, I believe things will make a turn for the better pretty soon, now that the mod-czar has been hired. It'll just take a few weeks for things to start rolling. After all integrating new people to a project is never instantaneous.

Yes, you make a good point.   I guess sometimes you can get a bit frustrated if not much is happening for a while.  That's just like us humans - when things are going well we think they will always be going well, and when there are problems, we think they will continue.   But I look forward to the modding getting a lot better once the modding guy is orientated and primed.

Best regards,
Steven.

Thanks for the support StevenAus.

In reality there are two mods I'm interested in doing right now. The first one is the unique units for the expandedfactions. The second one is the tiered mount system as part of the ExpandedMounts mod. In both cases the AI is the real problem (but not the only obstacle) - it doesn't know how to use custom pre-designed units, or any kind of mount. The AI has alwas been one of the most lacking parts of the game, so it is extra frustrating to see things - things that it should be able to handle - not function when it comes to modding. But all we can do is just make a post in this list and hope that, down the line, some functionality gets added.

And you're right, it is frustrating to hear SD on the one hand talk about how they want to make it possible to design a "whole new game" out of the elemental engine through mods. And on the other hand see no movements in that direction. I feel like modding support since release, while it should have had a high priority, has actually had a very low priority. And I do not think that the rocky launch of the game is to blame for that. There are always going to be features that need polishing or adding to. That's no reason to bump modding all the way down on the list, but that's where it is - especially the AI supporting mods.

Reuqest: Currently, there are two modifiers to summon units using spells. UnitJoinArmy and SummonUnit.

What I'd like for these is an added functionality that would allow us to define what groupingtype these summoned units would have. For example, it should be possible to summon a unit that consists of the groupingtype "raid", giving the unit 12 members. Right now, we can only summon units that consist of a single member.

Another request. Right now with tactical spells and abilities, for each effect on a unit a text is displayed like "+Stoneskin". However, some abilities have a large amount of modifiers and this will make a large amount of texts display - "+Stoneskin +Stoneskin +Stoneskin +Stoneskin +Stoneskin +Stoneskin". A tag used inside gamemodifiers to not display this text would be welcome, then the modder could make sure that only one text is displayed.

I'd like to be able to spawn a quest from within a quest. Right now you can spawn a goodiehut, obviously, but not a quest. This would make it possible to have quests that are more than 1 level. It would allow us modders to make more epic quests. Without this ability, there's no way to ensure the next "act" of the quest shows up on the map.

I would like the datafiles to be consistant in the terms they use.

What I mean is that the Altarians (at least that's what i'm pretty sure this race/kingdom is) are on one hand refered to as "Men" when your talking about the race, but under all of the equipment files in the <typesupported> tag and the champions model tags they're refered to as "Kingdom". I think there might also be some examples of this in the technology files.

Now this might not be a big deal for someone going through manualy altering files, but if the community ever gets any programs designed to parse through the XML and whatever other files you end up using and automate parts of the modding process, inconsistancies like this can cause trouble (as I am sure all of you programmers are aware).

As someone who has heavily modded elemental, I can say that this is not at all a problem. Men refers to the specific race of the unit, as they are men, whereas Kingdom refers to the faction that these men are aligned with. While this can be confusing to the uninitiated, it is fairly straightforward with respect to the overall modding process. Honestly, I would say that off all the requests put in this thread, this is one of the least important. I would much rather them spend the time to implement a unit editor or many of the requests above, as these would allow the mod community to actual expand what we can do, rather than simply making the process easier. I think once you get into the process of modding the xmls you will see that some of these inconsistencies are really just different categorizations.

kenata, you're the man.

*Edit* Also, I agree with kenata. Confusing, isn't it?

Yes. But if you read the last paragraph of my post, I state it is not so much for people modding manualy but so you can automate the process with a script or something without having to provide manual conversions in your code from one term to another. Which actualy mostly what I have been doing for the past week. We're approaching it from different angles, is all.

Which actualy is another thing. Clearly people automating modding isn't a big deal compared to all the other things that need to be done, but I still thought I would bring it up. You know... it's not like all the ideas on this list aren't going to be archived for a later date anyways.

can you not spawn a unique goodiehut that only has one quest and doesn't spawn any other way?

A goodiehut is not the same thing as a quest.

I think we should elect a modder captain to put together the most necessary point that need to be fixed/added into a usable list and submit it to them. I know they will probably do this in their own time, but we are getting pretty close to the point that Frog said would be love for the modders. If we consolidate things into a shortlist, they will be able to work on them faster.

I nominate Kraxis and Heavenfall.

Im guessing Kraxis is lightofabraxas. Right now, Impinc, Heavenfall, and I keep in regular contact and the three of us have a pretty well defined understanding of what needs to be done to make the game a lot more mod friendly. I was telling impinc the other day that we should wade through this list of requests and make cases for the best/most useful requests.

To be honest, this thread is only four pages long, and they have a dedicated mod-czar. If this thread is too much for SD to handle, it would be a pretty sad state of affairs. Of course consolidating all the info on this thread to the original post would be useful if you guys would bother. Just remember to make a note as to up to which post the OP is up to date.

We're not swarming them with requests, putting them in a single topic sounds unnecessary to me. 100 posts in four months, not all requests, shouldn't be a problem to follow.