Multiplayer mods MIGHT split the community

A previous thread on this topic degraded into mudslinging and any valid points were lost.

How easy will it be to switch between mods? If it isn't just a few clicks then there's going to be problems.

If only 1 mod exists and half of the community is using it at any given time then the match pool for vanilla PA and the match pool for the mod will be 50% of the entire community. If the community as a whole cannot select to play either Mod A or vanilla PA within the PA client, then the following situations can occur:

Player A has only ever heard of vanilla PA and never has the opportunity to play a mod which he may like a lot more than vanilla, because he doesn't know that mods exist.

Player B isn't comfortable with downloading mod files in order to play modded games because it's too cumbersome to switch between mods

Player C horribly mangles his game files while improperly installing mods and needs to re-install the game. Player C has a bad experience and doesn't bother with mods anymore

Player D has ADD and wants to play right now, asap this second now now now, no time for complicated mods!

Scenario 1: PA has been out for 2 years and there exists 10 popular mods and an average player base of only 2,000 players online at any time. Given that some games contain anywhere from 2-40 players, let's assume an average of 10 players per game. If every mod has an even distribution of players, that's only 20 games going on per mod. With no easy way of switching between mods or seeing other mods, a player could wait an awfully long time before getting to play a game. You alpha players should know how excruciating it can be to find a game with 200 players online at 2-4 players per game, imagine trying to fill up 10 20 or even 40 slots. Due to not being able to see all of the games listed belonging to other mods, a player can't just join some other game while they wait for a 40 game lobby to reach reasonable occupancy numbers.

Scenario 2: Mods have really taken off and no one plays vanilla PA anymore. Some poor fellow buys PA and on ones ever online. He never knows to look up PA mods because who googles mods for every game they buy? Not everyone. This poor fellow never gets the opportunity to play in the modded community and so the modding community is robbed of yet another player, all because mods are not visible in the client by default. This player decides not to recommend PA because he thinks no one plays it and so the community is robbed of N more players.

A way around all of these situations is doing what the blizzard RTS(sc, sc2, wc3) games have been doing for years; custom games. This is an important distinction from the concept of mods, but still quite similar. The distinction is that with custom games, the entire community will be aware of the existence of 'mods' by perusing a game lobby list. There is no need to browse the internet to search for mods because they're all completely visible to the entire community. Game rooms as 'mods' may be difficult for PA due to its procedurally generated maps, but it is still feasible and ideal in comparison to modifying the game client and/or server. Additionally, custom games won't break whenever a new update is pushed out by the PA team. Modders of Minecraft know this kind of pain.

I will attempt to outline how this system may be possible.

In order to facilitate mod usability, mods should not modify the game client or server architecture and should instead show up in a list of all current game lobbies sorted by lobby creation time and sortable by name, mod, etc. A 'mod' should be a stand-alone script which a user creates and selects when creating a game. The script tells the server about the rules of the game. Since PA does not have custom maps, it will be limited to what the terrain generator can do. A script could choose a seed and set the parameters of planet size, terrain types, number of planets, resource generation, node spots, unit stats etc. Upon choosing a seed, events which trigger off of coordinates and conditions could be created because by setting a seed you have in effect created planets and terrain which will not change between procedural generation and therefore events which trigger off of a unit moving to a specific location will remain relevant no matter how many games are created with the mod. Creatively using events and triggers would allow a mod maker to create single or multi player campaign maps.

I believe by forcing mods to go through these channels, mods will be easier to create and at least as powerful as the tools provided by other RTS games with the exception of a terrain editor tool not applying in PA's case. But even that is not too far fetched once a seed is decided upon. Once a seed is selected, a mod could be loaded into an "editor mode" and there you can move mountains and terrain around. These movements would be translated to coordinate vectors to apply to objects after they have been procedurally generated to keep the script size minimal, as opposed to saving the entire galaxy to the script.

This should satisfy the needs of player A, B, C, D and should satisfy scenario 1 and scenario 2 (but not scenario 8 subsection II(a) column 4), while still allowing for powerful modding tools that are easy to use.


TL;DR
Make mods similar to custom games in starcraft/warcraft without sacrificing 'moddability'.

I'd just like to note that there won't really be a "Vanilla PA" because even after it's released Uber will still be working on it. I remember hearing something like the best community mods, or should I say most popular, will eventually be added to the core game.

Also if mods are handled properly there should be no need to turn or switch them on or off unless they are client mods like UI and such.

Example: In Killing Floor I don't need to go to another site or use another program to download and install mods. I just join a server and the server handles the rest. Nothing was turned on/off and I didn't have to mess with any settings. This would be ideal for PA and it seems that is the direction it is heading.

Yup, ideally PA will have a mod vault. Valve will probably advertise it as one of those games with Community Content.

I'm sure Uber plans on keeping the community together, they plan on adding an in-game IRC chat (I believe), and a mod vault should have similar priority to the Galactic War. I would gladly TRADE Galactic War for a mod vault actually.

I just leave link to my post here:
viewtopic.php?p=752197#p752197

My opinion won't change: if mods support done technically right and it's all installation automated, there is no problems with mods:

• You got lobby with powerful search with lot of filtering options (limits, region, ping, installed server mods, installed client-server mods, size of downloads required, scale of solar system, etc).
• You can see any server descriptions and mods this server use.
• You just connect server and game download everything you need automatically.

No problems.

That's pretty much exactly what I'm hoping for, except I'm hoping for gui script editing tool to keep file downloads at a minimum and to make it easy to mod. There's no need to modify code if they provide a robust API we can hook into using a script. This has the added benefit of not breaking whenever the PA team pushes out a new update.

Just because the vanilla PA is being modified by Uber doesn't mean that it is no longer the vanilla PA.

By definition, vanilla PA refers to the PA developed by Uber, even as it's continuously being upgraded by Uber itself. Vanilla PA is not limited to being the initial version of PA released by Uber.

As soon as the vanilla PA gets modified by someone other than Uber, you have a mod.

Vanilla to me means the version of the game that was initially released. That doesn't include any patches and/or changes made to the game afterwards.

Ok sure but what if those mods were adapted to be an official part of the game and thus when installing the game the "mods" are already apart of the game file? Sure it may have started out as a "mod" but then it eventually became apart of the core game.

[Edit]
Side note: It is very hard to realize you are responding to a quote when that quote is AFTER your post. Usually when responding to another user via their quote you post after their quote, not before it.

On a completely unrelated platform...

The iPhone is constantly modded with customization that users add through Jailbreaking. Apple has gotten called out for leaving loopholes for jailbreakers to get in. These jailbreak features became very popular and to most people that jailbroke their phone they found that these features really were important. These Mods for their phone were easy to make because the structure of the phone is rather open once you tell the system you have the right to do whatever you want on it.

Of course every patch Apple is sure to break the jailbreak to try and get people back on track. But something only jailbreakers actually saw was going on, Apple was hiring jailbreak developers to add the features jailbreakers wanted most strait to their OS.

While apple does hire these individuals because of what they do, Apple does in fact attempt to act like they had no idea.

That all aside, this is going to be a very similar model. But you might also notice that people are able to mod their phone and still make the same calls, play the same games, send the same emails. Many mods will probably allow for players to play together whether they have the mod or not, but most mods will also get switched on or off depending on which customer server you join. On top of that I bet you Ubernet will continue to have a matchmaking service and Ubernet Dedicated Servers that will require you to play vanilla.

The player base will still be one community. I have seen the split issue in Arma before (Ace vs non-Ace) but Arma 3 has promise to correct that, but I doubt it will actually happen. But here we have the promise to add in the feature set required to make joining a mod server turn the mods on and off as necessary, until a certain mod becomes a gametype, or till its added to vanilla.

I'm not entirely sure that Apple iOS products are the best examples out there in terms of user mod-ability.

Look at the way faf does it, 1 click.

ONE

and you're in, with all the extra crap. plus the download is always under 7 seconds.

this really is something easy to do, I see no reason why uber couldn't manage it.


EDIT: @ sherrif good point, I currently use 4 mods on PA and none of them affect the way the other players see the game, just me. On that good note click here ↓

To me, vanilla means any version of the game that's being modified by the developer only (Uber in this case).

What you've described is the "original" version of the game, in my opinion.

Not BlackOps I bet! ;p

Mike

Agreed, a proper mod manager renders this is a non issue.

I'm not sure why this is an issue, my impression the way Uber is doing things with being inclusive of modding, you'll not need to start up a new client per say (at least for minor mods), you'll see the list of servers, see one has a mod installed, join it, download needed mod files from server, auto installs them so you can't screw it up, and you start playing.

If you mod the game to the point where people need a whole new client... well I'm curious how radically different the game will be at that point. Because of the server client architecture, a totally different client mainly means a totally different interface for the user. I am of course assuming new units/effects/sounds/icons/biomes/etc. will literally just be drop in files for the client(that appears to be the direction it's going in the modding forum), which will be a fairly minor install(not per say small, just simple).

Balance changes should all be happening server side. The server/client architecture is really great for keeping the community together, the only concern in my mind is Paid DLC/mods splitting the community, but that is not a modding specific issue.

That is an excellent point. Since mods will be server side there really isn't any reason to worry about this at all. Your client will download and run mods as appropriate when connecting to a server. So all we need is a good lobby system for finding servers.

I have posted in the mod forum, asking if they are going to do the same as egosoft, with there Modified Flag and Vanilla Approved Bonus Material packs.

Modified = (stats not recorded and achievements deactivated)

Vanilla Approve = (run with stats and achievements activated)

I sure that would stop game breaking mods and cheats

viewtopic.php?f=72&t=48849

double post

My intent for this thread is to help define exactly what a 'proper mod manager' is. I think it's really important that the modding interface does not take a user out of the vanilla game. It should be wholly accessible to those who don't want to search for and download files and install them, or those who do not know mods exist for the game. Whatever the final plan is, I think it needs to satisfy the player types and scenarios outlined in the first post.

Someone who has used FAF (I haven't) could you describe exactly how a user would install and play the FAF mod from fresh install to the start of a game? Also, compare it to the steps a user must go through to start a game without the mod.

Do you need to exit the game to switch from FAF to vanilla and vice versa?

I think even the much beloved FAF wouldn't satisfy all of the users and scenarios in the first post.

Go to "find game" tab.

Either join a game and any necessary mods are auto downloaded and patched (without modifying your install files).

Or click to host a game, choose from normal faf or any of the available mods.

We need to be clear on some terms I think, since we are talking what will be a diffrent architecture for PA than FAF(btw, I haven't played it)

Server Vanilla -straight game server
Server Modded - tweaks/new units/scripting/etc. i.e. gameplay mods
Client Vanilla - straight game client
Client Mod - UI mods (new buttons, shortcuts, overlays, etc., cosmetic changes)
Client 'Replacement' - radical change in interaction with game, would potentially be part of a total conversion mod

a server mod may download new unit files to a client, but if the vanilla client is prepared for modding, it's still vanilla, just some extra units in the unit folder, the server still controls what you can/can't build, so no need to worry about there being extra units on one client during a vanilla game, cuz the server will tell the client you can only build X,Y,Z. Like linux dependencies, downloaded as needed. Same client, runs an install, and BAM, in the game, and to turn it off, just join a vanilla game, the extra files will be there, but unused.

a basic client mod will actually just change the interface, not the game balance, because it just doesn't have access to that. So everyone can use their own UI mods in the same game, like in SupCom. These can be turned on/off in settings I'd imagine

A client replacement, would be for things like turning the game into something totally different, like an FPS, why you would I don't know, but I expect modders to do crazy things, weather or not you'll need to start a new client I don't know.