17-05-2002 05:34									#1
	Clash Modability Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Hey guys.

Question:

How Modable will Clash be? For example can I:
- Go into a file and make a map?
- Go into a file and change unit stats?
- Add techs/units/buildings/etc?
- Change the graphics of units/techs/buildings/tile imps/terrain?
- Add Great Library entries for all the above?

As a Modder of CTP2 I find this quite interesting, and something that really enhances the life of a TBS-Civ styled game.

	17-05-2002 12:13									#2
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Hi Dale,
- Go into a file and make a map? YES
- Go into a file and change unit stats? YES
- Add techs/units/buildings/etc?
You can probably add techs now, you can definitely add units . There are no buildings.
- Change the graphics of units/techs/buildings/tile imps/terrain? YES
- Add Great Library entries for all the above? You will be able to do the equivalent of that.

I put smilies where I am 100% sure it is already coded. The files are xml, so you can actually open them in IE and look at what they look like, expanding/collapsing sections. That's a bit verbose, but at least simply opening it in a browser tells you if it is badly formatted, instead of civ2 shouting at you it doesn't understand a rules.txt you spent hours tinkering into (of course, if you are not a fool, you made a few saves of the various steps... argh I forgot to do that)
In D6 you can open the jar with any unzipper like it were a zip file (it is) and look at resources folder. What's in there is moddable. As of D6, I don't think the map is in yet but units are (military.xml). Look at it and tell me how much it is understandable. I can at the minimum add new comments lines to explain things that are murky.

	17-05-2002 12:48									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

EXCELLENT!

I'll check it out sometime this weekend (if I can, RL is really hitting hard at the moment) and let you know.

If Clash can become as moddable as CTP2 is (even to adding events and such) then Clash will be awesome.

	21-05-2002 19:12									#4
	Tired of ads?

One detail also, Richard made a program that allows editing the technology file more cleanly than hand-editing the xml file:
http://paws.wcu.edu/RB22393/xml/Editor_Start.asp
Note that the application part is probably obsolete, as it actually belongs to other files (military for instance).

	23-05-2002 07:57									#5
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Will the AI be moddable?

Big Dave

	23-05-2002 08:07									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Hi Big Dave:

We're still wrestling with that one, but we definitely would like to. The part of the AI where details of plans are made, called DetermineActions, is where this will go when we figure out how to do it. But I want to see how our cutting edge AI concept works with hard-coded guiding strategies first. See the second page of the AI thread if you're interested in our overall approach.

	23-05-2002 12:04									#7
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

We currently have a military.xml and a technology.xml file, plus scenario and map files. I think we will have to precise in the scenario which military and technology files are to be used in order to allow mods to be installed without the "Save the original file somewhere, replace them and put it back in place when you have finished" stuff. Since the map is already precised by the scenario file, I think this should be pretty trivial to do, and we could still use the default files if unspecified.

	28-05-2002 04:32									#8
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

quote: Originally posted by LDiCesare We currently have a military.xml and a technology.xml file, plus scenario and map files. I think we will have to precise in the scenario which military and technology files are to be used in order to allow mods to be installed without the "Save the original file somewhere, replace them and put it back in place when you have finished" stuff. Since the map is already precised by the scenario file, I think this should be pretty trivial to do, and we could still use the default files if unspecified.

This is exactly what I was coming into this thread to talk about. After looking through the testbed, here's my suggestion:

In the scenario xml file (the one in class\scenarios\dawn1.xml etc) have a "gamefiles" section where you can specify other files to use. IE: I create a scenario called "Pharoh's Race" and within pharoh.xml I specify the following:

"gamefiles"
"tech"PHA_technology.xml"/tech"
"military"PHA_military.xml"/military"
"/gamefiles"

Basically, this will load my technology and military files, but the default files for other areas.

This way, no overwrites need be done to the default files.

EDIT: changed < .. > to quotes as they didn't show up.