The Future of PA

There is currently no way to mod the engine so I'm not sure what you're expecting from mod developers.

There are ways to mod the server code. There are TECHNICALLY ways to mod the engine, the files aren't blatant but are there and games that weren't made to mod have been modded before, games that were intentionally made not to mod have been modded before. The newest SimCity has been modded.

Yes, I specifically brought up 3d chess with Star Trek firmly in my mind. And it's not popular, which was my point, again. Just adding complexity for the sake of it to something that already works, turns out not to be necessarily "awesome". Shocking, I know.

And you don't berate regular chess players and say "maybe you would enjoy playing with this tennis ball" because they don't want to play with 10 chess boards.

The same is true for the next paragraph you wrote - exactly my point. I don't think PA is bad for trying something new. I applaud their effort. I just don't think it has moved the genre forward in any way. Like 3d chess, it hasn't resulted in a better game.

3d chess was memorable, now 50 years later.

Who is to say how profound PA is or it's impact of advancement? An arguement can be made, that it is too different to advance the entire genre. Even then, it does add a flavor to the genre as a whole, even that isn't "nothing". If every RTS doesn't end up being multi-battlefield, there will still be some players that remember a game or two using that idea and being fun of it's own.

Which SimCity mods change the engine? ie not just packages.

Can you also share your approach to modifying the underlying PA engine?

I said possible, not "I'm an expert".

*French Voice* "Wun. Googewl. Sehch. Leta...."

This allows players to build past the hard coded engine limits. Even your perfectly rigged arguement couldn't hold up. Mission Impossible Accomplished. The difficult I do right now, the impossible just takes a little while. Just duck down while I do it, that way if I make any sudden turns I won't knock you over with my 'shaft.
http://www.gamingmomentum.com/simcity-project-orion-mod/

I'm sorry, but PA isn't 3d.
The surface of a planet is a 2 dimensional manifold called S2 (list of all manifolds) that is in our case embedded within the "normal" 3 dimensional euclidean space. There are only 2 degrees of freedom in S2, if you want real 3d with 3 degrees of freedom, you should head towards Homeworld Remastered, or Shallow Space.

By the way, if you really want a complex manifold, try RP2 (real projective 2-space) also known as the klein'sche Bottle. It is a non-orientable surface, which means that there is no "inner" or "outer" surface. It is so complex that it can not be embedded within R3 without intersection of itself, only in 4 dimensions (R4) and above.

NEGATTTIVITYYYYY

@cola_colin

Step up your game bro!

No offense, but we have strong ones here, just not free-time-professional-gamebuilders who understand the code the game was built on and subsequently how to reprogram actual engine files.

The fact is, it is technically moddable, in the longest stretch of the word i.e. rebuildable, since the server files are in community hands. I mean, it runs files and files can always be made. You just need people, that are literally the same strength and talent, as the devs themselves. That is easier in some games that others, depending on the code and how the game was built. This one isn't the easiest, but is by far not the hardest neither.

The point is, you can always find somebody with entirely too much talent and time on their hands in large communities like GTA4 was and no doubt GTA5 will be, despite the likeliness that GTA5 will be highly rigged to be "impossible" to mod, it will get mods made by somebody. If that guy wandered here, there would be server and engine mods. We have people like Colin even capable of server and engine mods. But of course, 11 people that talented, with produce 11 times more server/engine mods than just Colin/Raevn alone.

BTW, I appreciate that Raevn/Colin work on so many community mods over total conversion ones or the like. Like the PAHub or the community ladder or mod manager.

Personally I wouldn't expect any serious binary modding as long as there is a new version every month or so.
When you patch binaries, you have to adapt your patch every time a new version comes along. If you are clever you can automate some portion of it, but - depending on how much you want to change the behaviour of a binary - there will always be some breakage.

10/10 would laugh again.

I think you do not understand the difference between a C++ source file and a compiled binary executable.
Making small modifications based on nothing but the binary may be within reach, but creating whole game scenarios isn't something you usually do and the skills a good C++ coder may have are not the ones you need to rewrite a game based on the assembler chaos that the executable provides.

I am pretty sure most SupCom fans won't get their fun with ashes. They say they want to appeal to them but at the same time they do not want to show icons on units when you zoom out because they want to force people to baby sit their units from close view. They also plan active abilities that players have to activate by hand. All that while they say they don't want apm and micro to matter.

Weird contradictions. We'll see how it turns out but I am very skeptical they'll capture what the hard core of SupCom players wants.

That basically looks like they managed to change one single number somewhere. Cool stuff, but far from a big mod that works on binary level.

I had drafted this and decided to stop responding...

I also think there might be some confusion about easily modified server scripts vs the compiled PA engine binary in the statement "server files are in community hands".

The engine is proprietary closed source and the community has no access to the engine source code other than compiled binaries that change with every update.

Any binary is *technically* modifiable in the same way the NSA can hack hard drive firmware.

We are not at a point where that level of effort is required.

*Nervously remembers when the last major Dev contact went silent because was 'busy with other things' and then popped up a few weeks later with an entire new kick-starter campaign...*/ paranoia

In the end, open source or not, what I really hope is that if Uber ever is facing imminent shut-down, they shift 100% of their resources into making every single aspect of the game as mod-able as possible. Colin what would your total wishlist be for modability?

access to the source code

no need for paranoia.. again, my role at Uber is overseeing production on all fronts. PA is still going strong.. and honestly, production focusing on something else usually means things are going well

no fires to put out
Still makes me curious on what other projects uber will do in the future.

Calm down people, uber are quiet as they're working on stuff, and as evident that stuff definitely includes PA. Now I wouldn't be surprised if there are some other things in the pipeline too- a key way to remain successful in business is to have multiple sources of income, so a new project is something uber needs ideally to compliment pa and create a second revenue stream.

I don't see them dropping pa whilst it still sells and makes money (the sales are the real test of this imo). If they hit a sale and get no takers that'd be the point they'd be forced to make hard decisions. Otherwise the ideal situation is keep working on pa, and start a new project in parallel.

Tlr: if they announce a new project its not automatically 'the end' and would probably be a good thing as it hopefully gives uber a wider foundation.