Utility: The Mod Compatibility Index

[Sombre]

Wow I still haven't updated them from 1.0? That's nuts.

Anyway if you look in the .dm file of the mod using any text editor (such as notepad) you'll find I listed the used ids at the top.

[rdonj]

Skaven 1.0:
armor 319-320
weapons 661-689
monsters 2540-2589 (2582-9 unused but reserved)
sites 993-5
nation 73
nametype 148

[Gregstrom]

Skavenblight is now in the index spreadsheet. It uses 22 spell slots, btw.

[Gregstrom]

I think I can call this version 1.00 of the index. It has over 100 nations from the full depth of the forum in it.

Next I'll work on a slightly more user-friendly version of the sheet, as some of the mods with chopped-up batches of unit IDs can probably be made simpler to look at. It'll be a bit of an incremental change (and probably a small increment), but it's a start.

I have a quite impressive collection of old zipped mod files now
And on the very last page of the forum I read an interesting discussion on what a biblically themed nation mod might include.

[rdonj]

Wow, you went through every mod? That's quite an undertaking. Thanks for all the hard work you've put into this project, greg.

[llamabeast]

Wow!!

[Sombre]

Well he didn't say every mod. I'd guess it's more like every mod on the modlist,..? Though that isn't all of them by quite a way, it's still a lot.

I just want to repeat that I'm not going to start modifying the ids I use to avoid clashes with mods I don't care about. I wouldn't expect other people to either. There are a lot of mods out there that are pretty bad. Actually I think I might write a list of mods I think are good stuff (or at least potentially good stuff), with it being purely my opinion (so people can't complain).

But this is still useful to help people who aren't familiar with modding to understand clashes, which are becoming more frequent as people start using mods more and more.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Well he didn't say every mod. I'd guess it's more like every mod on the modlist,..? Though that isn't all of them by quite a way, it's still a lot.

I'll clarify what I did a little. Over the last couple of days I've trawled through the pages of the mods forum, looking at every thread that appears to contain a mod (sincere thanks are due to Edi here, as his work in prefixing mod threads from before the forum migration was invaluable).

Some of those threads were (or appeared to be) long-abandoned work in progress, not yet in a playable state. These I did not include, as I had no reason to believe they would ever be usable. If someone later completes them, they'll be added to the index.

Some others were adjustments to existing units in the game, and those did not need inclusion (no new units, weapons etc.)

A few beyond that were obsolete (blessing hotfix, anyone?).

I also have no doubt I've missed a few along the way. The errors may even be glaring - I haven't consistently paid attention to mod nations over the last two years, and may have missed some very relevant ones. Please do alert me if you've spotted any holes that need filling.

Originally Posted by Sombre

I just want to repeat that I'm not going to start modifying the ids I use to avoid clashes with mods I don't care about.

You have a set of mods that already avoid clashes with each other and also CBM. I'd say that was good reason to leave them where they were. IIRC, the Warhammer mods were pretty much intercompatible, as was a lot of Amos' work.

There are only a limited set of mods which could still be called live (i.e. being actively updated, or with creators who still frequent the forums). If we end up trying to make everything intercompatible, it seems reasonable to build an index around them than make them fit an index.

Past this, I guess it makes sense to work in order of quality and popularity. Frankly, I'd prefer a minimum of shuffling stuff around - this is a big enough job anyway.

[Gregstrom]

Another update. I have created a sheet of sortable data. It's in its infancy at the moment, but you can now sort many mods by monster ID.

Basically, where mods use a single (more or less contiguous) block of monster IDs I've put the start and end points of that block in two columns of data. It makes a lot of clashes easier to spot.

Mods that use widely separated blocks of monster IDs don't work too well with this, so you'll have to check them on the raw data sheet.

At some point I'll do the same for armour, weapons and sites. The farther I go along this route, though, the less mods will end up with full sortable data.

[Foodstamp]

I've got 12 nations done for the Master of Magic mod I am working on, not to mention most the heroes and wizards. So I am going to have a whole lot of indexing for you in the future if I can get motivated to finish the beastmen, orcs and spells.