event engine for mods

[Therlun]

Hiho

It may be a bit early to talk about mods.
But IMO you cant plan such a thing early enough, and on the other side it could already be much too late to implement...

As i see it Horizon is a more "open" strategy game, meaning you can restart the game again and again for different sessions.

But IMO there is also great potential in story driven scenarios.
From a commercial standpoint it would not be that rewarding to make such a game for selling nowadays, but mods could be perfect for this.

However, to write good mods you need an engine that supports that.

-The engine must be versatile, meaning that it can change and create things that normally dont appear in an "open" game. (create colonies out of nothing, change Ai behavior, make a ship that is important for the story invincible so it can flee a fight etc.)

-There must be versatile "events".
Not like random events, but little story chapters.
e.g. you discover an Artifact on a Planet, but an Alien Race jumps in the System declaring that it is theirs, and the Artifact belongs to them.
Now you have a "chat" with them.
You have different and perhaps multiple choices.
You can give in, you could fight for it, you can try to buy the artifact, you can try to flee... etc. Every choice triggers different results and variables.

-This events should be relatively easy to code and to use.
Very easy would be external textfiles, that the program reads and activates itself when you play with them.

A mod should also be easily usable. Meaning you can activate and deactivate it like you want.
IIRC half life 1 had some menu, where you could choose which mod you want to play now. No different game folders for different mods, no worries about messing with you vanilla version...


I really hope Horizon can do something like this, as there are always tears comming to my eyes if i think about what games like Reunion, or "Escape Velocity Nova" could become if their engine would have been more "modable".

[ForesterSOF]

Never fear

If there is not a mod engine built in I see programs to modify the games such as ACEdit for SMAC and then other programs made specificly by gammers to change the game.

Galactic Civilizations Alterian Prophcy has a good built in editor for senarios and campaigns.

The thing I am trying to get across is that no matter what happens we will get our mods.
_________________
You have two choices in life; Explore and Learn, or Vegetate

[Therlun]

Galciv is a good example.
alone how difficult it is to add a new ship type!
(i am able [and proud of it! ], but i took my some time to get my first flawless ship-model working. and as i heared few succeded to this day.)
i dunno how much changed with altarian prophecy, but IMO galciv 1 is IMO not a game easy to mod.

there are mods, but it takes much work and time to create them and they are less... different from the original game.
they change ship types, add events or techs, but few, if any, mods truly create something "independent".

i dont want to flame Galciv (i even hope that horizon manages a similar good diplo-AI. -> IMO the greatest strength of Galciv), but from a mod-standpoint it is not worth the work it costs.
concerning the three points i posted, Galciv fulfills IMO not one completely.

[Bard of Prey]

FWIW, I agree completely with Therlun. The only reason I haven't made a serious case for modding in this game is that I think it's probably too late to worry about it.

IMHO, true modding support has to be part of the basic design of the game from the beginning. At this point, I would say we'll just have to hope for the best... if the engine is already flexible enough to support it, then adding specific modding support (editors, etc.) is fairly trivial. If it isn't that flexible currently, then I can't imagine anybody going back through and re-engineering their code to support modding.

In general, I would argue that support for modding is probably THE #1 most important feature that just about every game needs. These days, it seems the only games that last are the ones that can have limitless free content added to them by the community. I mean, people are still playing MOO3... and not because it was a brilliantly implemented piece of sh... that is to say, 'software'.

[Edit: Typo]

[pilum]

I would also hope that there is the potential for modding, and i agree that it is essential that for successful and diverse modding to take place then the construction of the code at the concept stage is important. If you look at Rome:total war (for all its AI problems) it employs a whole series of text files or scripts which allow for an easy modding by the community, just look at the diversity of modificiations and themes introduced there, and one that ensures the continuing popularity of the software.

just my 2c worth

[Zaimat]

We fully intend to support basic modding, as in provide the information necessary to make it easyer (for example to make your own ships, etc).

As for scenario editors etc. These are just not possible with our current (human) resources, something we could look into after release or in a future version/expansion if the interest is high.

As to some of the things therlun proposed. Like 'versatile events'. Many of what you describe the engine is already capable of and the rest could be developed (to support making scenarios vs. random).

I can see the merit of changing ai behaviour (in fact Horizon has these already internally). We would have to make small changes to make it modder friendly (meaning a simple text file people can edit from), right now it's not high priority on our list of things to do but these are all possible.

The design and most components in Horizon are very flexible with very few things hard-coded. It is simply a matter of priorities and limited resources and in this first version we have setup the foundations and basic gameplay to support it. We designed/coded Horizon with every intention of building up and expanding it.
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Horizon - Lead Designer

[Warcaster]

i have to agree with bard of prey (good to see ya still kicking around mate, sad to see moo3mods fall) modding should be a #1 priority. to look at other games such as the star trek armadas they have a huge modding community and as such still make huge sales every yr, i personally have stopped playing armada 1 not because i was board (far from it, i was actually in the middle of making my own mod) but because my lastest computer doesnt support it, its too old to run and yet there are still people buying it. now that is what horizon needs to survive.

I am really glad to see that very little is 'hard coded' as this was a great problem for a1, many new and inovative ideas were stopped because although the game engine could in thoery support it it would require modding part of the huge 'hard coded' info. the less of the program that is hard coded the easier it'll be to mod regardless of how complex the code is.

keep it up guys.

by the way are we looking at a cd release or online download? or have you guys not given it any though, dont imagine you have, probably got a looong way to go until its ready for that i'd imagine.

warcaster