CherryMod Thread

[Saber Cherry]

Hello! I'm going to make a mod for Dominions 2, doing some things like rebalancing light/heavy infantry as I see fit=) But, the details won't be announced until I see the contents of patch 1, as there might be some official changes.

However, I WILL say what would be useful to me as a modder, that I don't think are currently possible:

1) Visible fields in armor that allow it to affect attack, precision, and gold cost (currently, the only fields are resources, protection, defense, and encumbrance, AFAIK).

2) New unit ability, "Upkeep", set as a percentage. Most units would stay at default of 1/15 cost, but you could give a unit the "Upkeep" ability to set it at 130% of normal or 40% of normal or whatever. Alternately, this could be a floating-point unit stat, that you could see by right-clicking on the unit's name or something. Upkeep should always be visible on the unit screen, anyway, so you don't get confused about the costs of keeping Black Hawks or whatever...

3) New unit ability, "Forager". This would also be a percentage, allowing you to give some units the ability to consume 70% of the normal supply, or whatever... even better, supply usage would be a great unit stat.

4) If this cannot be accomplished with a mod already, the ability to rescale supply levels, so that units eat 10X as much, castles hold 10X as much, items generate 10X as much, pillaging generates 10X as much, and provinces yield 10X as much. Alternately, processing supply as a float instead of an int would accomplish the same thing=)

If the engine and modding tools support these things, I'll make good use of them=) If not... well, some of them can be gotten around, it would just be a lot easier to set an attack reduction for an armor type than for every unit using that armor type.

If you have any suggestions as to what you'd like to see in a mod (that can realistically be accomplished), feel free to post them here! Just don't assume I'll include them gratuitously=)

-Cherry

[Truper]

This something I've been wondering/worrying about. Its whether the whole modding concept will make it harder than it already is to get MP games going. There has been hardly any reponse to the MP game thread, and as far as I can see things can only get worse if player A says "I wanna play standard Dom", B says "I wanna play Cherry Mod", C says "I wanna play Mortifer Mod" and D says "I think Cherry Mod does X better, but Motifer Mod does Y better, so I wanna make my own mod that combines the two and play that". For myself, I was perfectly happy with Illwinter as final arbiter of what does or doesn't belong in Dominions.

What do people think about this issue?

[Saber Cherry]

That's not really fair. The standard for multiplayer games will always be the vanilla game, which is why it is important for the official Version to be well-balanced, and mod tools should never be relied upon. Even if there was a PERFECT mod that everyone who played agreed was absolute perfection, most people would still play the original. Unless you want to play a specific mod, I don't think the presence of mods will ever make it dfficult for you to start or join a game.

Since the majority of Dominions-playing is offline, though, mods would not cause any conflict in most games=)

-Cherry

P.S. The lack of response in the MP thread may be partly due to people lacking the full game. I don't have the game yet, for example.

[ November 19, 2003, 19:52: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Nerfix]

Truper:
My thougths exactly. IMO the developpers should fix the "blazing red issues". I was also happy with Illwinter as final arbiter of what does or doesn't belong in Dominions. Personaly, the idea of a tolkien mod just disgusts me, even if nobody forces me to play it.

But you ppl can do WE you wan't. I'm not forced to touch your mods.

[ November 19, 2003, 20:00: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Nerfix:
Personaly, the idea of a tolkien mod just disgusts me, even if nobody forces me to play it.

But you ppl can do WE you wan't. I'm not forced to touch your mods.

My plans to build a Middle Earth/Tolkien mod for Dom disgust you - perhaps you might have been better to keep that to yourself?

Do me a favour and don't bother to explain why.

Come now! No need for people to start throwing around comments like that. The beauty of a mod is you are not forced to play it, know it exists, let it have sex with your wife or eat cornflakes!

I would hope that the Mod's don't become standard but an added flavor to change and diversify the game if (and I highly doubt any time soon) the game becomes stale or the balance an issue.

The only real issue I see, is that in the age of "Modding" people want to play a certain way or with a race and once they recieve the tools *They* won't play any other way since they know the ins and outs of it and they are more likely to win. That isn't saying that everyone that mods, does this. But it's the general theme.

If a Mod ever becomes standard in MP or SP and the features raved about. That simply clues the Developers into what the community desires.

Don't rip on those Modheads any more than people should rip on SPers or PvPers. Everyone is different, at least until the Inquisition comes.

[Saber Cherry]

My happy-happy thread has become polluted with meanness

Maybe if I mention the new "Lions and Lambs" Pangea theme, where cute forest animals unite to spread a dominion of love, the unhappy people will become smiley?

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

Maybe if I mention the new "Lions and Lambs" Pangea theme, where cute forest animals unite to spread a dominion of love, the unhappy people will become smiley?

Sorry to be a cynic but wouldn't the Lions eat the Lambs?

So instead of blood slaves Lions would carry around pet lambs and eat them at the start of the battle to get bonuses.

Don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir

[ November 19, 2003, 20:51: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[DominionsFan]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nerfix:
Personaly, the idea of a tolkien mod just disgusts me, even if nobody forces me to play it.

But you ppl can do WE you wan't. I'm not forced to touch your mods.

My plans to build a Middle Earth/Tolkien mod for Dom disgust you - perhaps you might have been better to keep that to yourself?

Do me a favour and don't bother to explain why.

---

Hell yeah! I want to play with a LotR mod!

[Johan K]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

1) Visible fields in armor that allow it to affect attack, precision, and gold cost (currently, the only fields are resources, protection, defense, and encumbrance, AFAIK).

2) New unit ability, "Upkeep", set as a percentage. Most units would stay at default of 1/15 cost, but you could give a unit the "Upkeep" ability to set it at 130% of normal or 40% of normal or whatever. Alternately, this could be a floating-point unit stat, that you could see by right-clicking on the unit's name or something. Upkeep should always be visible on the unit screen, anyway, so you don't get confused about the costs of keeping Black Hawks or whatever...

3) New unit ability, "Forager". This would also be a percentage, allowing you to give some units the ability to consume 70% of the normal supply, or whatever... even better, supply usage would be a great unit stat.

4) If this cannot be accomplished with a mod already, the ability to rescale supply levels, so that units eat 10X as much, castles hold 10X as much, items generate 10X as much, pillaging generates 10X as much, and provinces yield 10X as much. Alternately, processing supply as a float instead of an int would accomplish the same thing=)

Well, Cherry chan. I'm glad you are planning some modding, it would be boring if we did enable modding and no one made a mod anyway.

I'll see what we can do to help you out, but our first modding patch will be very basic and things like modding of armor and weapon types will probably not be supported. BTW, there is no resource stat for armors, it is a unit stat instead. We have the armors' resource values scribbled down on a paper somewhere.

3. Changing supplies usage can be done already to some extent. For instance the fey boar generates 20 supplies and the fat celetial servant eats like 3 men even though he cannot starve.

4. This can be done for some things, but not all, so I don't know if any rescaling would be possible yet.