Trust me guys, the only thing I want to see more than an awesome moddable game is an awesome, fun game. We still very much want to get to the point where the modders can do pretty much whatever they want, but it will take time and a lot of hard work. If we could snap our fingers and make it happen now we would.

Jon

Thank you for the response! Like the other comments, I appreciate the honesty and am myself now ready to move on.

I will admit I am perplexed Stardock is developing an engine without scripting, even if they had no modding plans. Scripting lets designers work on the mission components without accidents that cause memory-leaks and instability across the entire product, not to mention the productivity gains you get out of a high-level language.

In Fallen Enchantress, would it consume too many man-hours at this point to drop in Google's V8 ECMAScript engine http://code.google.com/p/v8/ or http://www.lua.org/ and take a small system (like quests or UI) and expose them to the script, put in some event triggers and start from there, rather than making a wholesale effort to move the entire game over?

It really just comes down to planning. You need to know what you want and how to get there before you start. Derek and company have been busy making sure the company is organized and staying focused. The fruits of that will first be seen in the gameplay for Fallen Enchantress. We just can't do everything at once.

Stardock is really small compared to other "major" game studios. We only have a handful of engineers on the games side, so even minor tasks can eat up a sizable percentage of our resources. As we expand and the technology base is improved we'll have more time and people to work on new features. No promises on where we'll end up or what we'll be able to do, but I feel good about where we'll get in the long run. It's tough for me to be patient too, but sometimes that's what's necessary.

Jon

I think it should be noted (and perhaps Jon has done this elsewhere) that while the DLL and scripting work is on the backburner, everything we're implementing on the XML-side for FE is being done with the modding community in mind. Many values for the countless new game modifiers are made accessible via XML, so while we may have only 1 use for a new system, Derek is making sure they're implementation can be used a dozen other ways, simply by tweaking that data.

I know it's not the same as full scripting support but modability, in even this basic form, is something we're striving for.

You know, this has to be one of my favorite threads. Honest situation reports that include what the internal line of thinking is on a given topic reminds me of why I like your company. I'd still like to see a couple of low-cost-high-reward modding functions added for FE, but appreciate that you want a fun core experience above all else.

TCores: Your warning has been noted  And yeah, once the separating the engine and game logic begins in earnest, it'll be via scripts, not XML logic flows (which I can certainly imagine are painful to traverse).

I know! There was a big discussion about it last year, but I can't remember whether it was here or on the now-cancelled Elemental community expansion thread. Every company I've worked for that has had a hodpodge "language" created from scraps of things has had a major PITA down in the road. The crud flotilla still gives me the shivers whenever I see the early warning signs.

It's a big relief to know Stardock "gets" it, the quality of the game will be a lot higher. : )