Mod: Even Weirder Worlds *** Now 1.02

[lexicat]

Phlagm,

Well you are really inspiring in what you have provided so far. I myself have been frustrated, but have produced nothing nearly as much as you.

Ok, cat out of bag: I have been writing extra Esmerelda quests. I noticed that she was (a) really annoying to encounter, and (b) that it became really important to take her showing up into account. So I made a few quests that really make her dangerous (and have ideas for more). (and I confess that while I hacked WW, I usually just hack EWW… heh).

I've got the basic skeleton of of the quests working, but there's important subtleties that just fail with the quest engine (inconsistencies in break and endquest, in order of evaluation of page blocks, in sequential popups, etc.).

I really hope that you do write Fingers and Ripcord and (respectfully) persuade them that their excellent game could be improved.

Cheerio,
Lexicat

[clomaka]

Keep going w. the awesome content Phlagm! Your stuff was one of the main reason why I decided to buy WW. You could, albeit painfully, rip out some of the standard races to make room for yours; or perhaps make the sequel, where you focus more on the stories of fewer (but more expanded/developed) races.

Either way is not optimal, and so much more could be done if more of the code was accesable. In the meantime, hang in there!

[Phlagm]

I'm not sure how likely it is that there will be another major patch. My problems with the modding are significant enough that I don't think they are readily fixable with a small patch. My primary issue is with the evaluation of conditions. So many just don't evaluate except in one particular circumstance, and that is what makes this game difficult to mod. I find that if you do a total conversion, things work out well because you can reuse the same quests in different clothes, but you often can't easily get conditions to evaluate under circumstances other than how they already show up in the standard game. There are also issues with inconsistency in how rules are applied as well. Finally, there are a things that just aren't exhaustive. For example, you can't take an enemy and make them neutral. You can THIF or SABT a random item, but you just can't remove one.

While the ship and weapons modding present their own difficulties--You would not believe the amount of effort that went into getting the minefield thing up to about 80% of where I really wanted it--they're mostly pretty good and flexible. The quest system is much more complex, and that's the place where you find the most holes. That's also the place where you have the opportunity to truly come up with something unique.

I would be happy to work with other modders here to develop a more comprehensive list of these kinds of stumbling blocks. I can imagine that making a game complex and yet moddable isn't something that can be done flawlessly without some kind of input from the community. You just never know what kind of nutty things people are going to try to bend over backward to do. I am realistic and know that there may be a significant portion that just can't readily be addressed in a financially feasible way. On the other hand, if we could fix a bunch of those things, I think the modding community would explode. If I could figure out why the hell races won't load beyond a number much smaller than what is listed as the max, I would have at least 4 more in the game.

These grumblings aside, it's a spectacular game, and I would love the opportunity to work on some more mods for it.

[clomaka]

I'm up for some collaborating. It's true that there's a ton of oddities, particularly with the quest system, that make things frustrating. It could be really useful for everyone to expand the quest section of the modder's guide with some more explainations as to why some things have to be set up the way they are, maybe a step-by-step how-to for a couple of the complex ones, etc.

I would love to see a more open version of WW (where more of the internals are stored as editable external files), or even a sequal to WW. But while WW is still making money I doubt it'll ever be open source