12 replies to this topic

[Banshee]

Petroglyph Games has opened a new forum section at their Official Forums called Petroglyph Asks You. They'll use that forum to collect your ideas for Universe At War and any future games and expansions. That section started in a lovely way with the topic Modders! We want your input. They want to collect feedback from modders to make the game better moddable than Forces of Corruption. Here's driphs's words on this issue:

Alright, time to kick off the first question. This one is for the modders.


What would you like to see from us to support the Universe at War modding scene? What tools are you looking for, what would make your jobs easier?

What would you consider to be the upsides and downsides of modding EAW/FoC?

For those of you with experience modding other titles, have any of them stood out as being especially supportive regarding toolsets, ease of use, and so on?

So, what do you feel confortable and unconfortable about your experience of modding Empire At War? What kind of tools and tutorials or guides you expect from them? How is your experience on modding other games. What should be done to make Universe At War a modding friendly game? Share your thoughts with us.

[Soul]

What a great idea!

[Banshee]

Amazing! Someone has posted a comment! Oh My God... that must be a mirage!!! */me looks again* Definitelly a mirage !

[Rebelmoon]

Petroglyph Games has opened a new forum section at their Official Forums called Petroglyph Asks You. They'll use that forum to collect your ideas for Universe At War and any future games and expansions. That section started in a lovely way with the topic Modders! We want your input. They want to collect feedback from modders to make the game better moddable than Forces of Corruption. Here's driphs's words on this issue:

Alright, time to kick off the first question. This one is for the modders.


What would you like to see from us to support the Universe at War modding scene? What tools are you looking for, what would make your jobs easier?

What would you consider to be the upsides and downsides of modding EAW/FoC?

For those of you with experience modding other titles, have any of them stood out as being especially supportive regarding toolsets, ease of use, and so on?

So, what do you feel confortable and unconfortable about your experience of modding Empire At War? What kind of tools and tutorials or guides you expect from them? How is your experience on modding other games. What should be done to make Universe At War a modding friendly game? Share your thoughts with us.

A SDK, if needed, should be part of the retail game at the initial release. It should include all the standards like max importer/exporter, script tools, model viewer, etc. I include importer because for some new modders, it helps to see how a model is put together & rigged. As far as the issue of custom model stealing, they could go the route of Star Trek Armada, where the importer would only import stock models.

As far as editing units, I find EaW to be pretty easy, and think UaW should follow pretty close to that as possible. A LUA editor, script editor, hell, any editor they could include to cover the harder aspects of the game would be hugely beneficial as well as greatly appreciated by all of us.

Unrelated to modding I think, but I hope the battles are more open. As in more closer to CnC than the current EaW setup. I didn't like the restrained building/unit caps. I didn't like being forced to build what little you could build in specific spots.

Cheers,

Rebelmoon

Edited by Rebelmoon, 14 August 2007 - 03:02 AM.

[Banshee]

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. I don't think they'll make an ALO importer, although it would definitelly be very helpful, specially to newbies and people who are not good in the modelling job.

EAW isn't hard to edit units, but the game settings is a pain in the ass. It's so disorganized with so many files and settings randomly placed on them.

I've suggested them to disclose the file formats, to motivate programmers to create modding tools.


And I'm also against population cap, but according to Ishmael, they'll include it, but the pop cap will be higher than EAW.

[Rebelmoon]

Agreed, and the unit pop caps in themselves can be worked around. I just found the land battles to be less than enjoyable. Prebuilt buildings, preset build pads, left me feeling very constrained. In the space battles it's not as noticable, but the land battles were a big disapointment. I also have gotton the impression that that is a fairly common perception.

Disclosing the file formats would be a BIG help. I hope they follow your suggestion.

Cheers,

Rebelmoon

[OmegaBolt]

No... not pop cap! I hate this game now... it's like a blizzard game and they're crap. If the pop cap was removable it wouldn't be so bad...

If there are so many files to edit then maybe there could be some kind of specia Notepad which can have more than one of the files open in tabs or something.

[Rebelmoon]

No... not pop cap! I hate this game now... it's like a blizzard game and they're crap. If the pop cap was removable it wouldn't be so bad...

If there are so many files to edit then maybe there could be some kind of specia Notepad which can have more than one of the files open in tabs or something.

I use EditPadPro for editing all my games. It's multi-tabbed with all the needed tools. Search, replace, spellcheck, etc.

http://www.editpadpr...dproscreen.html

Cheers,

Rebelmoon

[Banshee]

Interesting. I use NotePad++, which is also cool, opens inumerous files on tabs, has hex editor and a lot of find and replace tools as well as some aditional features. And the best of all, it's totally free.

http://notepad-plus....net/uk/site.htm

[Rebelmoon]

Cool, I'm going to check it out.

Cheers,

Rebelmoon

[Phoenix Rising]

Haha, I just use good old WordPad. Go ahead, call me old school .

[Banshee]

OMGz! Old school! But you'll like NotePad++.

[Mastermind]

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. I don't think they'll make an ALO importer, although it would definitelly be very helpful, specially to newbies and people who are not good in the modelling job.

I'd say that just releasing some of the MAX files for the units would be easier to do, and much more likely to happen. They have no reason to do an importer, since they have all of the source art. Just releasing some of that would go a long way toward what having an importer would do.