1.2 is upon us, Fallen Enchantress is under work.
Can we have an update on the DLL support you'd planned post 1.2 and give us some modding powers?
I am not confident right now in the future of modding on the Elemental line of titles, at least as I had envisioned it. Please understand I think you're doing great work here, but this is the state of modding in Elemental as I see it:
* 90% of the "mods" are actually just maps made with the map editor* We have no ability to change core gameplay* We have no way of producing dynamic, branching quests* We have no way to produce new behaviours in the game* Our changes are largely limited to tweaking values in XML* Even community members like Wintersong have been basically limited to producing factions* There are a handful of new tiles/models buried in the depth of the "other" category* The rest of the categories outside of Other and Maps are essentially empty* There's a great modder working on the AI, but he has a day job and it's called running stardock. No one else is able to contribute* There's no appearance of change - the last thread I made on this topic has been floating on the front page for a month and a half
I don't want to contribute to a negative feeling, and I don't want to waste developer time, but I would like to know where Stardock plans to go from here. I can offer many compelling reasons to really hunker down and get the modding tools out there, but with Derek and Brad and Jon in charge, I'd feel like I'd be preaching to the choir.
So I'd like to leave this question out there: What is the holdup post-1.2 for making the Elemental engine moddable for us consumers? Have you sat down and discussed what it would cost you to strap on a scripting engine and start using it?
Now is definitely the time to think about whether you want Fallen Enchantress to have hard-coded missions written in C++ by junior developers with no garbage collection, limited modding community, and extensive bugtest/development cycles that require rebuilding the project, or whether you want a Fallen Enchantress that is relatively lean with excellent modding support, with a long shelf-life and dedicated long-term community that provides value back.
Hope to hear something back.
Thank you for being honest.
It's the maddening potential that I see in the game. I do understand your position though.
Stardock needs to make EFE awesome because the company's reputation is literally at stake.
If it falls below expectations then modding won't really matter anyway.
I do expect the game to be great though.
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
I bought this game back in 1.05? - despite the warnings on the forum - only because of the promise of "massive modding support" and the love of GC2. I've been wanting to get into modding for a while and thought Elemental would be the game. I'm very glad to have read this post. I've been waiting for the modding support to improve. Now I know it won't for a very long time and can move on.
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?
I just want to chime in and say thanks for responding. I really appreciate you letting us know of the situation.
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.
That's fair. If you're under crunch and have limited manpower, stuff like that really is unattainable. I wish you and Stardock the best of luck on FE.
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.
Really that is about all I need to do the mods I have in mind. I will take another stab at modding Elemental when Fallen Enchantress comes out.
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.
We definitely appreciate it! But a word of caution: if you find yourself creating if/else logic in XML (if the player has X token, consult this value) you really need to reassess directions. XML-like scripting languages have been done before (see: coldfusion) and they're neither fun nor particularly accessible to newbies.
Don't get scope-creeped into a pseudo-scripty specialized XML dataset, you won't like it. If you want to go down that route, do it deliberately and not accidentally! : )
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).
They already exist to an extent. Check out quests for a good example of this.
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. : )
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