Modding tools - What will we be able to achieve?

Hey,

Forgive me if I am asking to early or if this has been asked already... I am just very excited for Planetary Annihilation.

I am planning on developing a modification for PA. (More on this later...)

Anyway on to the questions!

• Will we be able to perform unit swaps only?

• will we be able to perform total conversions?

• What internal tools from Uber will be available to develop mods for PA?

Also I saw in the scale renders that there were some (Very Small) human sized units. Were those in there for scale or were those actual units?

So far based on things talked about before we're looking at something hopefully at least on the same scale as SupCom/FA.

And why post this here?

Mike

Oh I am so sorry!

I did not know that this was already asked let alone I was posting in the Backers only forums.

I blame lack of sleep.

It's cool, Uber has said they want modding to be prominent, and even something as good as we had in FA, while not perfect, would be super fantastic. There are a couple other modding related threads out there, I just haven't hunted them all down yet.

Mike

Hey Mike,

Thank you for the links and the replys

I am a happy camper right now

I expect there to be a lot of flexibility. At some level though the engine is C++ and you guys won't have access to that.

Luckily we intend on continuing to update the engine post-release in a fairly regular manner. This means that if people want something exposed we can always add in the hooks. So I expect it to get more flexible over time.

Question for you neutrino will we have access to the game DLL (Similar to civilization 4).

Definitely not. Mainly because the game runs cross platform. In addition native code is a massive security hole.

Ok, fair enough

Through Modding, It would be possible to add in other factions?

Im just being curious.

What is it with people and factions? They can be cool if the game is designed around it but PA is specifically designed to not include them. A "factions" mod sounds like it would be really hard to justify in the environment PA is creating.

I agree with you, still I expect the modding tools make this possible. The question is just, how hard it will be. Look at Forged Alliance and Nomads, which are a total new faction. But it took several years, and several teams to make them finally done.

What I find much more important than "factions" and "unit packs" is gameplay mods. Look at WC3 with all its OVER 9000 gameplay mods, dota is its most famous one. This is what can make a game community last for years and years.

I know Uber didnt want to add factions because writing the lore and other back story stuff would take up money and time something they are trying to streamline. But I believe if people want to mod in factions if done right and if people make the lore around the factions they create, it can work really well and i say more power to them.

If modders want to make factions then i say let them it cant be to hard to explore the hooks to do something close to factions really all a faction is a set of Models that all look the same with a Back story to them.

Im also quite convinced we will see a spaceship mod within the first year of PA's release a mod I would get if and when it is released.

Adding factions will be possible.

hmm... gives me to think, other question: will be there then clean not modded server too, there I am sure that I am playing official or ladderboard server (if there is a ladderboard)

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40970
Being able to make a single player or co-op campaign would be nice. And it would require a lot of extra scripting capability than a standard multiplayer game

Oh hellz yes

Frequent updates are nice, but I wouldn't ask for non-critical updates more than every couple of months, else you will blow your budget for post-release support before the modders really know what they are doing and what is really missing- not to mention that we could use time of our own to develop bugfixes in the scripts (if such exist in the same way) so you don't have to. It's better to be calm and space out the updates, rather than blow all the money right after release- apart from anything else, you can simply get better value that way.

I expect a full supreme commander community mod within two months, quicker if models can be exported

That would be great, I could try and (most probably fail to) fix the SupCom campaign, and its poor execution of potentially great ideas...