My opinion is simple a mod list … maybe even buid in game and downloadable from the game itself ?
-Mods should not work with each other. So one could play one mode at a time. It would force people to make big mods, but the changes gameplay would be with more consistance… This would also help to keep game balance if that is desired by modmaker.
WoGify options should go away … With all the respect I have for WoG for it being a great modding platform it was always a poor mod in itself … Throwing thousand of different options for users to choose is a bad idea
Those options are unable to work well with each other
It’s impossible to balance the game
Where is the real game where everybody is playing their own version (different set of options)?
How to agree on a set of options suitable for MP ? Impossible
It’s a usabillity nightmare … Really why anyone should go through thousand of options … read it etc. While he just wants to have some fun and play ? That’s maybe nice for advanced player who knows what he wants and understands game mechanics … but a novice ? He will just turn off the game and don’t bother.
IMHO having a standardbase game providing a proven gameplay and balance is the way to go … On top of that unofficial mods may be enabled with different set of features …
IMO WoG will be better to make as separate “official” MOD, but not as part of the game.
About all that WoG options - most of them can only be opened in map selection screen, but not on game start. And we can still select not to WoGify map. (and got no options at all)
Why? This will only make installing mods a headache. Instead of just selecting mods I want to use, I’ll be forced to somehow merge all of them in one just to run game with all of them!
In multiplayer we always can just select set of mods to use or let VCMI use list of mods from server(first player).
If you think that bigger is better…I feel sorry for you…
Yes. IMO VCMI 1.0 should be reimplementation of the original H3 game (without WoG)
But for now we can only wait for dev’s response, since at the moment we don’t know how mods support going to be implemented.
i think serwer should chose which packages/wog options to use and client have only to agree those + some checksum checking to avoid run diffrent version of the same mod
like those:
server chooses maps and mods + mod options
it’s sent as a list of options to each client
client send checksums of choosen mods
server checks if checksums valid, if not - deny those clients to acces the game
joined clients choose player specific options (town, hero, options in mod marked as player specific ie. choose which bonus use)
client send those options as a list and server check if those valid and accept
if player specific options is invalid player must rechoose = back to step 6 for those clients
players set that theyre ready
if all valid and all players ready then server could start game
addditional options:
server could ban players by IP
server could kick out players with or without ban (default without)
server could remove banishment from players/IPs
(maybe) server could ban some player specific options
IF STICK TO THOSE PLAYING WITH VARIOUS MODS WOULD BE EASIER
some obvious things:
mods are identified by id not by package name, where id should contain version of mod
id is stored in separate text-file of the package
checksum should be complex checksum of files in mod package, not checksum of the package to allow various method of compile package (ie. how strong the compress should be)
mod package should be usual package (eg. zip/rar/7z) but must contain some specific files inside (header.txt as header of package, ID.txt which contains only id of the package, autorun.lua and autorun.erm and autorun.py with autorun script (may be empty or ommmited, if ommited vcmi treats as empty), +some others depending how packages are implemented in VCMI engine)
maybe, but should support by base any options that in WOG are hardcoded (with possibility to ban) ie. new options of transformer from necropolis, leaving artifacts, units etc. on map, where units should rejoin if the player which got into is the same which droped, and not join if another (but may flee), etc.
That’s basic rule of every programmer. Make things not work!
As big as HoTA?
H5 modding community is still alive as everyone can make his mini mod editing only one small file. recently I got nice one which hides stacks count on the battlefield. You try to say that I would need to install whole new campaing to use it?..
Used to play UT servers with 20+ mods installed, people joined and downloaded them in real time. Now, how much easier would be to set all before game begins?
Server should allow players to download and set up all the modifications required. Not hard to copy files and setting, much easier than changing them manually.
That’s also suboptimal. If maps can forbid some options, why server couldn’t?
Ideally VCMI should support all options so that they would not be hardcoded. Then you could add wogification as well as tones of other little mods easily.
but the possibility to download mod from server should be able to disable on server, and enable too.
eg. you play on server which is on normal connnection (fast DL slow UL), and one of mods weight 650mb, and there’s 7 players who wish only to look in lobby and don’t know if they play THERE and haven’t this mod on their computers. In this case server should be able to disable its uploading to clients, shouldn’t it?
But option to choosable ability of uploading mod from serwer to clients would be great feature. Why I don’t though those? Even if some time ago I played nexuiz which has that ability working very well… there is even option to download mod from place which list the server, not only from the game server - easy to implement but cool feature…
PS: lists from server to download was simple pairs expression of name of mod with “*” and “?” suport and folder to download from ftp://something/ or asp/php page which last param is name of mod
You people do realize that you are arguing about a project that does not yet have even a basic functionality of H3? We all have our own visions, but I think we should wait until VCMI is completely playable.
But don’t take this as an attempt to prove you “wrong”. Nobody’s wrong here, we may just have totally different tastes and playing styles.
And now for my opinion: I find that those options are able to work very well with each other. I need working simultaneousely, otherwise I would not like the game anymore. For me, what you are asking is like imposing rules like: “for this cake, you can use chocolate, but not fruits & cream; or fruits, but not chocolate & cream; or cream, but not fruits & chocolate”. I perfectly understand that for some people some flavors are incompatible, but if somebody really likes… I don’t know… “chicken-apple pie”, who is anybody to say they can’t have that.
For most of us NWC’s H3 was a great game for 5-6 years (and that also thanks to the add-ons). But then we needed WoG to take the game further, and that is why many of us are still playing the game today. If WoG never existed, and if I would have had to dig through forums for 50 different custom mods, and then have to choose between them only 1 at a time, you can be sure I would have stopped playing H3 years ago and I definitely wouldn’t be on this forum today.
So what I feel we need now, is something that would take WoG even further, by removing its limitation (number of creatures, alignments etc), not the contrary : imposing limitations. If VCMI will go that way, we’ll probably have something like the H4 effect: less then a third of the community maybe enjoying a more “clean” game, with more “strategic” choices, etc; but two thirds actually hating it for destroying the variation and introducing a very annoying micro-management (as how else would you call having to manage hundreds of different, un-integretated mods?). So I hope in 5 years from now people will not say about VCMI (like they do about H4): “promising project, but a step back from WoG”.
For me, the WoGification & integration of all the mini-mods in 1 package is what kept the game alive all this time. And in all friendliness, I would kindly ask the devs to let me know if perhaps I misunderstood the scope of this project, and the final “product” (be that in 3-4 years) will actually not include large parts of WoG which are very important for me (like the WoGification, Commanders & all their set of skills, Henchmen, enhanced secondary skills and so many other small elements that complete the flavor I’m looking for in this game). The thought that one day VCMI will offer me all that WoG does, but without creatures/alignments limitations, gives 90% of my motivation of working on this project.
It always is. But even balance is sometimes quite subjective. Some may say the original H3 had a great balance, while I feel WoG filled many gaps by enhancing some useless secondary skills. With its many options, it gave players the opportunities of going either way: more or less balanced. Perfect balance is not what everybody is after. Some single players really don’t care about it and get frustrated about too many limitation. Others are almost obsessed by it. By combining different WoG options, I feel everybody can be eventually happy.
The real game will be there, as it will probably come with all options disabled. For the rest, either if you integrate all options under one elegant interface like WoG, or you have the gamers browse like mad through their folders, moving files from here to there, downloaded from 20 different sites, in the end everyone would still play their own game. Of course, their options will be more limited, but that will also limit the number of gamers
I doubt the main target of this project are novice players.
I admit that the first time I saw all those WoG options I got bored after reading just 10% of them, as I just wanted to “have some fun and play”. But after I had the “fun” and played for a few months, I wanted more in order to not get bored. And than I was happy to discover little by little all the WoG features that could be enabled. Should I have had to browse the forums for other mods, and even worse, have to sacrifice some tweaks in order to get the others… boy, now that would be a usability nightmare. For me. Again, I understand some may prefer things differently, but the worst thing we can do is to split in two camps and hope one will win the argument fight.
If the discussion doesn’t heat up, I’m sure well be able to slowly come up with solutions that will make everybody happy.
Because for example if one mod changes how skill A works and another also changes how skill A works you may end up with :
-Technical issues like game crashes
-Imbalance in the game (because modmaker A didn’t think somebody would use his mode with mod B)
That turns moding into a nightmare, where after release of mod people report errors to modmaker which come out of them using it with different mod that modmaker doesn’t use … People come to request to make it work with mod X Y Z … etc.
If you want prove to that WoG scripts are full of disable option A if player choose option B. WoG creators also didn’t take bug reports from people running 3rd party mods.
If anything then I guess if mods where to co work if each other it should be a modmaker who should decide to enable it with mod X, because he prepare his mod to co work with another one …
BTW : No I don’t think bigger is better … I’m one of the minority guys who would prefer to have 4-6 castles in the game but good balanced and with different style of play then 12 imbalanced castles.
All the people that praise WoG are Singleplayers. Mind you the only way I find this game entertaing is HotSeat with my friend (SP is just too boring and not a chalange). We did try WoG and it ended up that with every next game we disabled certain WoG options. In the end we played the normal SoD with some spells disabled DD Fly, no combination arts … So basicly we used just the disabling options and interface changes like buy all creatures button nothing more …
Even the hardcoded things in WoG are unbalanced(Commanders for one make stronghold unbeatable and lame (you finish game with just ballistas).
All in all what I’m proposing here is simple. Can you imagine playing a MP in WoG when you first have to talk to a person and agree with every option from the list ? Game takes 3-4 hours, and in this case you would spent extra hour on talking about rules with this person.
Instead of that imagine my one mod solution … You go visit multiplayer lobby and see some players waiting for games …
The info you have :
-Player name rank etc.
Map name
Name of mod (or no mod)
With this info you can easlly find a person to play without need to talk things over with him, The more options there the higher chance that you will not find a player to play with.
BTW Multiplayers are hardly novice yet they do not play WoG. They hate it . Sad but true. On the other hand you know about Equlibris ? Yeah that mod for H4. This one doesn’t give you 100 options to choose but instead tries to balance the originial game… and guess what it was a success on both MP and SP front.
How to compromise ? I don’t know SP and MP are hardly able to compromise … For example MP want DD and Fly out of the game while SP do not … and this is really a no compromise thing because you cannot play a good MP game with those spells.
Anyway that’s offtopic here really it comes down to WoG while VCMI is not WoG (VCMI is not a mod)… As I said in earlier posts, unless it tries to be something more then engine , then talking about balance changes is pointless …
Yes we have different resolutions, and changes in the interface but that’s just given since it’s an Engine adjustment …
Friendly architecture of software should make mods either don’t cause conflict at all or the source of conflict is obvious, i.e you try to write different values to same variable.
Mods are often incompatible as their authors try to overwrite same files in a different way. But that’s not the case.
That’s the point. You are free to choose the best set of options for your needs.
I don’t know if this is still a SP vs MP issue, but with all the respect, your example of two mods changing the same skill, would be for me an argument pro-integration. Take for example the 3 different War Machines mods in WoG. Having them integrated in the same interface, makes it impossible to select more than 1 at a time (the interface blocks you from enabling more than 1 out of 3). Should these have been 3 downloadable mods, I’m pretty sure that the risks of having 2 of them installed in the same time would be higher, same as the risks of imbalance and technical issues.
That’s what WoG does. I admit, not in all cases (probably not in the cases where the two mods were tested and proven as compatible), but the 3 War Machines mods are a good example.
A couple of notes here:
I’m not a SinglePlayer “pure sang” I used to love H3 in MultiPlayer when I had the time and somebody to play with. Only since I moved to another country, where I didn’t find yet any Heroes fan among all my new friends here (plus family responsibilities eating more and more of my time), I kinda became a SinglePlayer. So I do share some of your opinions, like preferring to play with ban on DD and Fly. But even for that I am grateful that I can so easily disable them from the WoG menu. And I also agree that Commanders, as well as many other features, could use further balancing (and I know it would bother me more if I’d play MP again). But for that I would just use a “disable all” menu function, then enable just a couple (like banning some spells).
For MP lobbies, I think best solution is no mods at all anyway. You can take a couple of minutes to confirm the banned spells, but that’s it - shouldn’t take longer.
About Equilibris, you have a point in a way, but H4 is a bit of a different situation. H4 failed to win the hearts of even a third of the H3 players, not (just) because of the bugs, and definitely not because some lack of balance (which we had in H3 as well here and there). On the contrary, even though H4 made some steps towards better balancing some elements, maybe the biggest mistake was actually reducing the variety of creatures & alignments (which is a killer for many fans, especially SinglePlayers). So Equilibris kinda provided what the H4 fans were hungry for: less bugs, more balance; while WoG provided what the majority (not all, I know) of the H3 fans wanted: more and more variety.
I do understand where this difference in tastes between SP and MP comes from: in MP your challenge/effort/pleasure comes from trying to defeat the other, which sometimes can mean trying to find a new trick/strategy to defeat him on the same map, with the same alignment that he defeated you once. In SP you don’t have that. If there is no human player on the other side, playing the same map, and at some point even alignment, over and over again, does not give any challenge/satisfaction after some point, so then you’re constantly in search for something new.
In conclusion, I still vote for an interface to integrate all mods. I’m hoping for a final VCMI product which will be able to support all WoG features, however which will not have any of them enabled upon a fresh install. So not even the things that are now hardcoded in WoG, like the Commanders for example. So a MultiPlayer will not even notice he’s playing anything but the original game, unless he goes in the menu to disable some spells for example, while the SinglePlayer would get the chance to explore all the options that can be enabled one by one.
While reading this thread, I found that I disagreed so strongly with val-gaav’s notion that mods should be kept isolated that I felt the need to register and voice my opinion. However, reading further, it seems that Zamolxis already wrote most of what I could have said, so thanks Zamolxis.
I’d like to add one thing though: One of the arguments brought forward was that additional options make it harder to agree on a common setup for a MP game. In my experience, multiplayer communities of games with lots of options tend to gravitate to a common multiplayer ruleset. Even though a game may have dozens of options, you’ll find that most games announced in a MP lobby just state something like “4 players, small map, quick turns, ladder rules”. Of course people could discuss every single option possible, but they usually don’t, because they want to play instead of discussing options.
Hence, there’s no need to be afraid that a multitude of options (or mods) would make starting an MP game a nightmare.
VCMI could ease the process by letting the host set the options for the players (so that they don’t have to manually select and deselect all respective options), and/or by allowing to save and load option settings, as in WoG’s dat files. When a common ruleset has emerged in the MP community, then it can be integrated into the engine, so that you only have to click one checkbox (or load one setup file) to set all options to the state that most MP games will have.
So why nobody is playing WoG in MP ? Why is WoG so hated by MP community ?
What I wanted to point out here though is casual gaming , and that a person might want to go online and play not the main game but some mod … It gets very complicated if many mods (options) at the same time are allowed ;/ … That was a point I wanted to make, non pro mp just want to go to a lobby and play with a stranger …
So I’ve done so before as the common ruleset is available from quite a long time … Nevertheless most MP people didn’t want to play it instead of normal SoD, still hated the fact there are options to choose and hated the fact that the mod was based on WoG… Of course they didn’t play normal SoD but SoD with mp rules… Really with that I came to conclusion that what MP people really need is good balanced DEFAULT game with no options …
There is also the technical side to this :
From a developer point of view, and I did a bit of moding on h3 (the link provided to multiplayermod ). I would really not care about whether my mod conflicts with another mod. I would also hate to get bug reports about that… Being realistic even if I cared about some mods I for sure would not care for all of them…
That’s from both balancing point of view and common bugs when differences in mods may produce a game crash. So as a mod dev I would at list would like to have an option to specify that my mod doesn’t work with other mods , or have a whitelist of mods it works with …
Here is the issue … I don’t want to confirm anything. Confirming takes time.On Multiplayer you often play with unknown people and when I hit on some newbie I really don’t want to explain to him why DD should be banned and go in arguments. Putting that aside the more issues to discus the longer the time it will take and the less chance I find someone who wants to play it like I do. and playing the game itself already is too long 3-8 hours ? come on who has that time ? (Hopefully sim turn will help with that)
So yeah once again: sane defaults and balance are what MP needs.
(Note to val-gaav: Although I keep disagreeing with you, I do respect your opinion. I enjoy that the discussion in this thread has been very fact-oriented and friendly, so please take the following post in the same tone, despite its length and despite the fact that I keep disagreeing with you. I thought I’d better say that beforehand because such discussions have a tendency to heat up after a while.)
I always thought that this was due to the network instability of WoG and due to several imbalanced features - and not due to the fact that WoG offers options. I’m not a part of that community though so I’m just speculating here.
Well, casual gamers are the least likely group to get involved with mods in the first place, so I don’t think this will be a very common scenario. If a casual gamer installs a mod, then it’s usually a popular one, which means that either the MP community will have adopted it as well, or will be able to tell the player why this mod isn’t as popular in MP. In the first case, he’ll find a couple of people to play with. In the second case, he’ll learn that he’s unlikely to find play-partners for this mod in MP, and will probably join an unmodded game instead if he wants to play MP. In either case I don’t really see the big deal.
I agree with you that it would be bad for MP if lots of options had to be discussed before playing. But that’s not necessary, nobody forces MP players to use anything else but the default - and if a MP community chooses to deviate from the default, then there’s usually a very good reason for it (like the banning of DD / Fly / Angel Wings in the HoMM3 MP community).
In a way (and if I understood you correctly, there’s always the chance that I got something wrong), your argument assumes that the HoMM3 multiplaying community will not be able to handle the existence of options well, and therefore should be protected from them, even at the cost of frustrating other players who would want to have these options. However, all MP communities that I know have been able to handle such situations, by developing a ruleset commonly agreed upon (usually called “tournament rules”, “ladder rules”, or something similar). And I don’t see why the HoMM3 community should be less smart than the others.
I’m not sure I’m following you here … I can see that you developed a mod for WoG and that this mod apparently hasn’t been adopted by the MP community, but I can’t see the reasons for that or the previous discussions about it. I do understand a bit better where you’re coming from though.
Well … I’ve been around modding communities a bit as well, and I can guarantee you that you will get questions and requests about other mods no matter whether mods are kept isolated or can be combined. If they can be combined, then you will get requests to make your mod compatible with others. If they are kept isolated, then you will get requests about integrating other mods into yours, or let others integrate your mod into theirs. The only way you won’t get any requests concerning other mods is when your mod isn’t popular enough to generate much interest in it.
The underlying mechanism is very simple: People like a feature from your mod, they also like a feature from another mod, so they’d like to have both, that’s quite natural. And you (as the mod developer) will get the respective requests. Whether or not mods are kept isolated is irrelevant in this case, it only affects whether the requests you’ll get will deal with compatibility or with integration. Hence, your proposed solution of keeping mods isolated does not (imho) address the problem you want to solve with it. (Side note: I don’t know if you play Civ4, but if you do, have a look at the CivFanatics forums. Civ4 has one type of mods that can be combined (XML or Python mods) and one type that can’t be combined (dll mods), and you’ll find lots of examples for both types of requests that I mentioned above).
I do agree with you that the ability to combine mods makes testing more difficult, and bug reports potentially worthless. And that’s definitely frustrating for mod developers. However, solving this isuue by disallowing any combination of mods (and therefore frustrating lots of users who’d want that) isn’t really a good solution imho, it just shifts the frustation around. I think a better solution is to provide a framework that makes it easy to activate and deactivate mods, so that it’s easy to try a game with just your mod active. (Side note 2: In this case, Civ4 is a good example of a bad implementation … Civ4 keeps mods at at least 3 different places and has no mod manager. I’ve seen (and replied to) tons of reported problems that simply originated from a player having forgotten about a mod that he had installed in a place where it would always be active … but again, there are better solutions for that than outright disallowing any combination of mods. Compare the mod managers of Morrowind or Oblivion for example - if something reports a bug in these communities, I can always ask them whether the problem persists if they turn all mods off except mine.)
So, in short: I can see where you’re coming from. I know that mod compatibility can be a frustrating issue for mod developers, I’ve been there myself. However, imho disallowing such combinations, as you proposed, will not solve the problem, and there are better solutions around.
Also, even if mod combinations are allowed, you’re of course still free to say that you don’t support combining your mod with any others. That’s a valid route of development, many mod developers of big projects go that way. But making such combinations impossible even for mod developers who do care for them doesn’t sound like a good general solution, does it? It would force other mod developers into the style you prefer, whereas allowing mod combinations would give every mod developer the freedom to choose whether or not he wants to concern himself with mod compatibility.
Well, I can understand why having to discuss several issues (like DD banning) with newbies can be taxing if all you want to do is play a quick game of HoMM3. On the other hand, is this really a good reason to disallow options for all the people who’d want them? Again I don’t think so, I think there are better solutions around - and VCMI is a platform that can actually deliver those.
Example: Let’s say VCMI offers a lot of options, and that it also provides a way to save/load option sets, as in WoG’s dat files, and let’s further say that these files have a “comment” section which can be displayed in the dialogue where you load them. Let’s also say that it comes with a dat file called “common multiplayer rules”. So, when some newbie comes along, all you have to tell him is “load the multiplayer ruleset”, and if he has questions about it, then he can read the comments that go along with that file. Wouldn’t that be a much better solution to your problem?
Single players and MP communities will always prefer different rulesets because the quality of their games is influenced by different factors; a feature that makes a SP game great can absolutely destroy a MP game. Hence, if a newbie who only played alone now comes to multiplayer, he’ll always need some explanations about the differences in play. If you don’t want to give these explanations, then the best solutions is to have them readily available, so that the newbie can read and understand them even if you don’t want to spend the time explaining them. The only other “solution” would be to give the SP game the default options of the MP community, but that would be bad for SP newbies, who’d be confronted with a suboptimal ruleset for their current situation when they are starting out with the game, and that’s not really a solution at all.
Also, regarding your dislike of having to confirm things before starting a MP game, I’d like to point out that you already do confirm things. Before starting a MP game, you have to agree on map size, map type, number of players, turn times, banning of spells/artifacts/specialties, etc. There are at least half a dozen of decisions that have to be made before any MP game can even start. I don’t really see why one of these decisions (“Which ruleset?”) is so bad that it needs to be disallowed. The process should be streamlined, yes, by providing a common MP ruleset that can be activated with minimal effort. But I see no reason to totally disallow it, especially since many people would appreciate to have these options.
Okay, now it’s my turn to thank Psyringe for covering most of the answers I had in mind.
One more thing I don’t fully get though…
[quote=“val-gaav”]
…
So I’ve done so before as the common ruleset is available from quite a long time … Nevertheless most MP people didn’t want to play it instead of normal SoD, still hated the fact there are options to choose and hated the fact that the mod was based on WoG… Of course they didn’t play normal SoD but SoD with mp rules… Really with that I came to conclusion that what MP people really need is good balanced DEFAULT game with no options …
Maybe it’s my lack of experience in MP, or the fact that I’m not a very technical person… but how is setting up MP rules safer and taking less time than banning 3 spells from the game options? If a newbie like you say wants to join your tournament, wouldn’t you have to take the same time to explain to him why DD should be banned? And how do you ban it? From Map Editor? Doesn’t it take you more time then to edit every new map you want to play in MP, rather than having the spells banned by default from the game options?
I’m also glad Psyringe hit the spot when he said that disallowing any combination just shifts the frustration. And in a not very balanced way, because it means less headaches 1 modder, however more headaches for the thousands of players who might be interested in trying that mod: how to install? where to install? what to I need to uninstall to avoid incompatibilities? do I really want / is it really worth it to uninstall a mod that I like, just to experiment with another?
(Single) Players with very little time like me, want to be able to start a game instantly, just as you want to start you MP game asap. And I’m pretty sure that communicating to the other player that you, as a host, have disabled some spells, will take you less time than it will take me to browse the web-sites for every single mod, then browse even further to check if it’s worth it, then download each of them, then uninstall every time something, to install the new mod… and to end up some day having bugs with the game because some mod left some file behind, which conflicts with a new mod - and I’ll be left with no other solution than uninstalling the game itself, only to have a clean version to start adding mods to it again.
I really hope a solution can be found to make everybody happy, because the lack of compatibility and/or integration between mods, looks like a nightmare to me as common player, from at least two perspectives:
The time waste of installing & uninstalling mods all the time, plus the headaches of investigating, making choices and dealing with conflicts;
Being forced to give up a luxury restaurant, which allowed me to choose from 100 different flavors at any time (as WoG does), with a cheap restaurant where I can only have 1 flavor/item a day (“Sorry Sir, you can’t have chicken with fries, because the cook doing the chicken does not get along with the cook doing the fries so they work on different time schedules”). Thank goodness a restaurant like the latter does not exist, and I don’t know if I will ever be interested in playing a game which forces me to that kind of choices.
Now, I am not a mod, so I cannot judge from your perspective how much of a challenge it is for a modder to try to be compatible with a certain platform. But you are a player, so maybe you can explain from a player’s perspective (my only perspective), how come what I just presented above would not be a nightmare for me. I don’t want to be against any solution, if it’s the better one, but I would like then to be shown why that would be the better one. Because so far the idea of having 100 incompatible mods looks like something that will not give me headaches, but only because I’d give up from starters even trying to give that game/system a chance.
I’ve recently browsed again through this topic and talked with Tow about mod support for VCMI. I think modding of VCMI can be done in a way that wasn’t discussed here yet. Most of the demands can be satisfied, except the most radical ones (like an objection to nonofficial mods).
Firstly I divided players into four groups:
Tournament MP players. They want easy selection of game’s rules.
Non-tournament MP / SP players. They want to be able to change some rules of the game without being forced to reach it by manipulation of files.
Casual modders. They want to significantly change the rules of the game or add new stuff. They can manipulate files if there are clear rules how to do it to reach the goal (ie. new unit in the game).
Creators of big mods. They want to be able to change a lot of rules but have nothing against editing a lot of complex files.
I think every group can be satisfied as long as it takes into account the demands of other groups. It’s how it could be done: I suggest making three levels of modding.
The broadest range of modding will be available to games. They are a kind of big mods (like SoD, WoG or HotA) and basically define all constants of game. They could override every graphic or sound too. They couldn’t be mixed but they could provide player with different options (like WoG, but not exactly). The most benefits from games gains group 4.
The next level of modding are mods. I think they should be small modifications, about the size of one or a few WoGification options (eg. there could be a mod “Balanced secondary skills” or “Level 8 units” or “Buy all creatures button”). They can be only on or off but they are not specific for one game - they could be used with SoD or WoG or something. The most benefits from mods gain groups 2 and 3.
The highest level of modding would be provided by rulesets. They would be tied to a specific game and basically set in an internally specified way all of its options, including the selection of used mods. They could be created by graphical editor provided by VCMI lobby client, saved and loaded. They would make it possible to simultaneously play tournament MP games and create new mods on one installation of VCMI - when you play MP game, you just select MP ruleset. The most benefits from rulesets gain groups 1 and 2.
This is the basic structure of my idea. I’m open for any comments, the decision about the shape of mod support in VCMI hasn’t been made yet. There are also some minor issues not discussed here - like per-map mods (which should be treated like mods from the definition above) or safety, I can write more about them if my idea receives generally positive response.
I hope it’ll help us find the best mod support model.
I read somewhere that you expect LUA to be the language you will use to help moders. I wonder If ERM will be usefull? I ask this because I was playing with heroes modding this day and started to see again all the ERM scrpits. While I did some scripts in the past i’m not an expert on the subject. I wonder if it’s usefull for me to keep learning ERM scripting? Will you support ERM scripting? It would be really usefull to know what knowledge of what languages will be usefull to mod what on VCMI, so i can know what languages are worth to me to learn and wich ones do not.
Lua is of course our aim as it’s much more convenient and readable than ERM - there’s no doubt about it.
Of course ERM is also going to get some support, but I think currecntly there are no team members who know it well. We’d like to get some help from skilled scripters or authors who understand its limits.
It’d be great to fix ERM so that it causes less conflicts and errors it does now. Some workout of flags, limited functions and overlaping variables. But these are technical details which are hard to rework.
Actually I was thinking about converting most of ERM scripts straight to their Lua equivalents so that the game will see only Lua script.
We prepared a bit of support for Lua scripting but we are not sure if it’s a good idea. Lua support hasn’t been being developed for some time (about year or so), we consider other scripting languages too (mostly Python). We’ll continue the development of scripting when the game is more feature-rich.
ERM scripting is definitely difficult to add. I doubt we are going to fully support ERM, although many parts of it could be supported. I think it’s not good time to make decisions about such far future.
yet they do not play WoG. They hate it . Sad but true. On the other hand you know about Equlibris ? Yeah that mod for H4. This one doesn’t give you 100 options to choose but instead tries to balance the originial game… and guess what it was a success on both MP and SP front.