Mod thought: Muspellheim and Tang

RedRover · #1 November 9th, 2004, 04:50 AM

One thing has been bothering me a bit about "Norse myth" and "oriental" themes and mods. This is the tendency modders have had to stack these onto a base nation with a similar cultural theme.

It seems to me that it might be better to use a base nation with a similar magic profile or tactical approach instead of a similar culture. For example, when working on the Grey Elves, I started by looking at flight + air magic and picking the base nation that most closely matched the magic.

If, for example, Niflheim, Muspelheim, Helheim, Utgard, Midgard, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, the Aesir, and all the other potential Norse mythology nation variants are stacked into Jotunheim, then how can we ever put together a Ragnorok-theme scenario? Wouldn't it make more sense to (for example) replace Abysia with Muspelheim?

Likewise, if Barbarian Kings mod represents Mongols, and the Ashikaga Shogunate and Tang mods also overwrite T'ien Ch'i, don't we lose the opportunity to put together an all-oriental-theme game? Wouldn't we be better off spreading the cultural variations across the national bases to encourage the creation of themed scenarios?

Vicious Love · #2 November 9th, 2004, 08:29 AM

Excellent point. Not one likely to be relevant until more mods gain mainstream acceptance and/or players actually start making use of them in MP, but an excellent point nonetheless.

Kristoffer O · #3 November 9th, 2004, 08:44 AM

A good point that has bothered me as well.

I'm running into the same problem in dom3, and I'm not quite sure how to make it work. It feels better to make a mod to transform a (making abysia into muspelheim) than to make a theme for a totally different nation.

Themes are made slightly different codewise in dom3 so there might be new solutions possible.

The dom2 mods are probably not too difficult to remake for another nation. Change #selectnation x, and perhaps couple of unit numbers.

Arralen · #4 November 9th, 2004, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Kristoffer O said:The dom2 mods are probably not too difficult to remake for another nation. Change #selectnation x, and perhaps couple of unit numbers.

Can we mod national heros yet, including number of them etc. ? And what about modding themes?
If I want to do significant changes to T-C S&A, I have to rebuild the nation from scratch, making it the only theme available, haven't I?

On the other hand, there aren't that much special dominions -Abysia, Ermor, Pangaea CW and C'tis miasma comes to my mind-, so much of the other nations should be quite interchangeable. But what if I want the slow-killing Carrion Woods dominion for my mod? It's only available with the pre-made theme, isn't it?

Vicious Love · #5 November 9th, 2004, 09:56 AM

This might be far, far more trouble than it's worth, but would it be possible to dissociate modded nations from existing nations altogether, and have a game's host choose which nation overwrites which in a given game?
This wouldn't work for existing mods, since most of them edit existing units in addition to adding entirely new ones(Hero editing would otherwise be presently impossible), but this seems a small price to pay for the convenience and versatility this sort of fix would afford.

Gandalf Parker · #6 November 9th, 2004, 11:43 AM

Maybe in Dom3 a "default" nation could be added. Independents? Specifically described in ways that makes it informative on how to replace it. Something that is generally recognized as the one to overwrite with a MOD. It would make writing a tutorial easier.

Quote:

Kristoffer O said:The dom2 mods are probably not too difficult to remake for another nation. Change #selectnation x, and perhaps couple of unit numbers.

Interesting. I wonder if an option can be added to the web-based game manager to put a mod into a particular nation, have it rewrite that line, then set the MOD to "on" for that game. OR if someone has a MOD nation which is fairly mobile in that regard I could quickly whip up an EXE that a user can click on to select which nation he would prefer to taken out by that MOD.

Im still waiting for someone, maybe someone who is looking to learn MODding, to MOD the nations we already have. Id like to see someone do a MOD of Ulm. No changes, just Ulm in a MOD. And one for Ermor, and one for Arcos. For one thing, it would be very informative for new modders to see how Ulm would be modded. For another reason, it would allow people who feel that they are the ultimate Ulm player to play a head-2-head game of Ulm vs Ulm. In fact, Im wondering now if you cant have 15 Ulms in a game.

It would be great if Dom3 came with all nations and all moddable items done as mod files the way SEIV does (and a set of newbie premade gods, and a started game)

PDF · #7 June 10th, 2005, 01:17 PM

The best system to remove all modding limits should be to totally remove all harcoding of "abilities" to nations/themes, and allow for any number (the more the better) of "empty" nation and theme slots for modders...
But surely it's not as simple as that to make ...

Nerfix · #8 June 10th, 2005, 02:52 PM

Hmmm, I think it is going to be like that. I'll go check the info I have on Dom III, I think it was mentioned at either DevDiary or some post that Dom III will have empty nations for modding.

Endoperez · #9 June 10th, 2005, 04:15 PM

DomIIIDevDiary of January:
Before Christmas we begun a remaking of themes that will
make things easier. Both changing stuff and modding at a later date. Each theme is now made as a separate nation. This makes it easy to add, remove and change nations. This also removes the need for a nation to exist in a given era. There was no Pythium before
the break from Ermor.

And I am quite sure that somewhere the ability to add Ulm's resource bonuses etc was mentioned. So, no hardcoding and more than enough empty slots. PDF, it seems your sacrifice was accepted.

There might still be restiction on the number of nations in one game, but new nations can be added freely. Or, that's what I think.