modding for ww

when i read the interview with digital eel a couple months ago. i forget where it was but most people are saying that the modding will still be cheap like sais where u cant exacly change that much. but Phosphorous said "The modding will be insane in WW". so that is something to keep my hopes up

Well I think it depends on your level of expectation.

If, for instance, you're hoping that WW modding will allow you to make a game of backgammon with internet-based multiplayer, then I suspect you're out of luck.

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to when you say "most people are saying that the modding will still be cheap like sais where you can't exactly change that much", as I've only heard encouraging things about the modding possibilities myself.

Personally I'm expecting that we will be working within a similar framework to SAIS, but that we will have a LOT more control over things, far fewer restrictions, and (most excitingly) we will be able to define chains of events to facilitate quests (such as finding all the missing fragments of the Nanowave Disrupter, and then getting to install the weapon in your ship, or settling a feud between two warring super-races, and having them combine forces with you to defeat a galactic threat -- and you can probably actually implement their war in the game with their fleets travelling the sector, so that if you don't appease them before their two main fleets meet and clash, you might not have enough firepower for the later battle...).

Although I've not played the game, those ideas are not merely wishful thinking -- from what I've heard, I think they are entirely feasible possibilities. So while the overall structure of the game wil presumably be hard to alter, I think there will be enormous scope for mod-makers.

I for one don't think that SAIS was that limited mod wise. The game engine, the way it was buillt made the game limited to it's boundaries but with a little imagination and a lot of hard work, it was possible to come up with totally original concepts. All in all, most of the game components of sais WERE moddable.

As for Weird Worlds, i think Shadowcat might be a little over optimistic but Oooh! , i do hope he's right. It would in effect be great to be able to do that much with the game.

I guess we'll see soon.

I'll stay optimistic for the moment :) I'm not going to be completely devastated if I can't do this kind of stuff, but I'm certainly hopeful.

Iikka said that "There is a "quest" scripting system that can be used to set up special encounters and events, although it'll probably take a while for people to learn", which to me implies a goodly amount of flexibility.

We've also heard that it's possible for NPC fleets to travel between stars, although my little scenario would also require that the scripting system is able to assign them actual targets, and ensure that their starting points are not too close to each other, and admittedly I don't have any idea how much influence we'll have over those sorts of random elements.

Assuming that we can use the scripting to summon and destroy entities at will, then everything I've suggested should be possible. Even if you can't change a race or fleet's attitude from 'hostile' to 'ally', you ought to be able to create a separate version of them for each state, and simply remove the former and add the latter at the appropriate time.

I confess it's probably disingenious to let my imagination run away (or at least jog briskly) so close to the time when we'll start to learn actual facts about the modding system, but hey :)

I'll be happy for as long as map sizes and time limits can be edited. Being constrained to ten years was rather limiting.

wut i mean is in sais u cant ADD races, make galaxys bigger, add sounds, make ure flota a lot bigger, etc.

I suspect you have no idea how immensely irritating it is to read that kind of thing. Please at least try to write in english. If you carry on like that, people will actively dislike you before they've even figured out what you've actually said. (I will give you bonus points for at least knowing that "a lot" is two separate words, OTOH.)

I presume that is intended to read

but I'm reaching with "flota"... seriously, that could be anything at all...

I believe the following is correct for WW modding.

You can add new races (and still have a first-enounter screen).
You can have at least three different sizes of galaxy.
You can have custom sounds.
and I suspect it's possible to have fleets of greatly varying sizes, although I don't remember seeing anything that specifically indicated this.

If these sorts of things are your main concerns, then I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with the new game!!

I'm still saying most of the above mentioned WAS possible in sais.

-You couldn't add new races, but you could replace the existing ones as you saw fit.

-You could, although it was complicated, make new sounds (eg replace the old ones)

-You could make the enemy flotillas bigger

Again, the two things you really couldn't change in sais were map sizes and time limits, as i already mentioned.

Ps and i quote myself:

No?

The following were found on the Shrapnel forums. They are all replies written by Fingers who, i assume, is part of the development team :

Hope that helps.

Ha, I was just coming back to post some of that new info.

*waves to Hugo who is online somewhere*

Fingers is Iikka Keranen, Digital Eel's programmer, so he definitely knows what he's talking about.

It will certainly be interesting to discover just how many of the game's actions are visible to the scripting system. (And hopefully anything useful which is not currently visible to scripts might be made so in a future patch.)

Weird Worlds is much more flexible than the original SAIS when it comes to modding. It was something that was in our plans from the beginning of the project, as opposed to adding the feature to a finished game like we did with SAIS v1.2.

The main advantages:
- Game data is in separate files, so to add an item or a race or a starship hull you just make a new file for it. No need to modify existing files or include them in your download. It's much cleaner this way.
- All the graphics and sound file names are defined by the data .ini files, so you can again make your own rather than modify or overwrite the existing stuff.
- The "quest" system is fairly flexible and lets you do basic conditional events. For example, the whole Kawangi encounter is set up in a script (blowing up stars, emergency messages, gameover and all) rather than hardcoded like it was in SAIS.
- There's no strings.ini - all race-specific text is in the race's own .ini file, quest-specific text is in the quest's file and so on.
- A "master file" controls which items/races/quests are available in the game or mod. This allows you to "remove" existing items as well as add your new stuff. Want to play without the pesky Zorg? Now you can.

The player flotilla size is limited to five ships for interface reasons. More than five would probably get tedious to manage in combat anyway. (If you want a cloud of fighters, give the player a carrier)

This is good to know. No more speculation ... it was good of you to say Fingers.

I guess that means countless hours fiddling with parameters, variables, strings, graphics, plots, sounds and so forth.