TWS2 modding

[Ibn-Khaldun]

How easy it is to mod the game? Have the developers said anything in their previews?
Is the game similar to ETW in regards to modding? Or can we mod it like RTW?

[TosaInu]

I'm guessing it would be quite similar to NTW. I recall something about the release of official polished NTW modtools when TWS2 was going to be shipped.

[pevergreen]

I doubt the tools will work on S2TW though.

It will be tough, and will depend on what the coders can make to let average joes like me do anything.

All this 'making it better and more complicated so its harder to let you mod it' stuff is tripe.

Look at how much EU3 can do, and the entire game is text files, and anyone can modify almost anything.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I agree with what you say about EU3. It is quite easy to mod it.

I really hope that Shogun2 will be something like that.

[TosaInu]

I also prefer text files and standard images. That can't be for 3D models of course. STW already had difficult parts with seemingly standard files which required a special editor to stay working.

[caravel]

I depends on the game engine. Some engines, compile scripts on the fly, some do not.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

So, basically we just have to wait and see?

[Phog_of_War]

I'd say dont hold your breath. In the last few releases CA (but mostly $ega) have demonstrated that they dont want us to be able to easily mod their games. Even though it has been shown to make their fanbase happier and more satisified. I was way happier with Stainless Steel or Darth Mod after I beat TW Vanilla a few times. It gave it a totally different feel to the games.

[Kagemusha]

Like said before it depends lot of how its coded.If everything needs to be decrypted before the files can be modded, then it wont be easy, which i really hope is not the case. If CA wants to give a longer life span for the game they should allow for modders to atleast mod the map, factions, campaigns and textures, so fan made campaigns for different starting periods and new clans could be modded in to the game.

[ByzantineKnight]

The way I intepreted that statement was that at the cost of flexibility (for example, easy modding) they concentrated on speed by hardcoding many of the game's functions. Hardcoding will always run faster than compiling script files as long as it is done properly.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Really? From where did you read that? That is not good news for modders though.

[ByzantineKnight]

Here

The recent announcement that the uniform editor was being dropped jumped the gun a bit.

It’s true that we’re not planning to release the tool we originally designed. Some feature designs don’t pan out as imagined, and this one was frankly not great. All it would allow was the setting of colours for a particular unit type. It was clunky and didn’t do what most people actually wanted.

What we are planning to do is to release the full unit editor along with the data builder tool. This is the tool chain we used to create and edit the units in the game. It’s far more powerful than the uniform editor would have been.

There aren’t any areas of the game which in principle we don’t want players to be able to mod, but there are difficulties in practice in making it possible, and we do have some work to do to package up the tools.

We are intending to come up with a more comprehensive long term strategy on encouraging and facilitating mods, and will talk more about this soon, but for now I can say for sure that the Napoleon unit editor tools remain a priority. The tools are currently scheduled for release in the first half of 2011, this is of course dependent on how Shogun 2 progresses, and we will keep you updated.

We haven’t and won’t forget this, hence putting a date to it. For now Shogun 2 remains our top priority.

Thanks,

Mike

It really sounds like they are either hardcoding or packaging many of the features we used to be able to edit with notepad. Now if we get decent mod tools then it will be a good thing because not only will I be able to run it on my old pc and it will run faster and better on newer ones but we will also be able to mod as freely as we have in the past.

If we don't get decent tools then it sucks because we are limited to vanilla.

While they may not approve of all the applications of modding (E.g adding DLC units) they know very well that a large chunk of the community buys the game for the mods and I doubt they are really trying to stop us from modding.

EDIT: In reference to the comments about EU3 there is a big difference between letting a game as simple as EU3 run and compile text files on the fly and a game that uses resources like Shogun II does. Any TW game after Medieval II lags pretty bad on my computer except on lowest settings, EU3 runs pretty smooth.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Whether we receive mod tools or not I am quite sure that the first modifications to the game will appear in the first 2-3 days or so. Remember ETW demo? After it was released there were immediately people trying to find ways how to mod it.

Edit: And thank you, ByzantineKnight, for that article.

[Furunculus]

"modding for Shogun 2 right out of the box will be better than Empire a year after release, there is a lot of possibility there."

Will total conversions be possible tho, i.e. campaign map modding?

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/total...-interview.htm

ACG: How moddable will Shogun 2 be compared to Napoleon and other games of the series?

CL: The first thing to remember is that Empire was the first game in the series to be built on the Warscape engine, and the Warscape engine is something we built from the ground up. Warscape was greatly polished with Napoleon. With Shogun 2, we really refined the engine. During that same time the modding community has been making their own tools from the Warscape engine. So the tool set that the community has developed is really solid now. To the point where modding for Shogun 2 right out of the box will be better than Empire a year after release, there is a lot of possibility there. The big names in the modding community seem confident that they can do a lot of retrofit mods right out of the box. We are also possibly planning a modding workshops that will teach people how to more easily mod the game.

[LeftEyeNine]

Why not a Blue Lotus revival ?

Good old days...

[falcom4ever]

TWS2 modding is dead ? Impossible to make minor factions playable, modify campaign map or anything ?

Well do you think that it will change or ??

[General Malaise]

It's hardly dead. For example, major overhaul/compilation mods currently out:

Darthmod
ZenMod (my mod, two versions)
S2Realism (2 versions)
TROM - Road to Kyoto
Radious' overhaul mods
Mutant Mod
Lines of Battle
Honour & Glory
Vragos' Compilation
Universal AI mod
Toon's All-in-One mod (2 versions)

And that's not counting graphical or unit stuff like AUM units mod, ACC faction recolor mod, Unit variety mod, etc. amongst many other additions or tweaks.

You're not going to get full conversions no, but that's quite a bit different from completely dead.

[falcom4ever]

I would liked creating a mod about ryukyu islands :(, but I imagine that it will be difficut without mapping tools... Medieval was so easy to mod compared to the lasts tw.

[Suraknar]

I was just looking at that over at the TWC, the modding is similar to ETW and NTW, Pack File Manager and ESF editors seems to work, however, the ESF files are packed now, so will need to unpack the latest patch.pack to do any ESF modifications.

That is all I know for now, I am still modding ETW and been playing it as of late, will move to S2TW once I had my fill of ETW.

I am not sure I will be modding NTW, while I liked many of its features I was only able to hand the directed Campaign style for 30 hours of play, its lack of a FFA Grand Campaign ticked me off.

So I prefer ETW in that regard, the problem with ETW is that it had the older economical system in place, but with the mod tools I was able to balance it in a fun (at least for me) way, insuring a nice and balanced income of about 10k to 15k per turn, while being able to maintain big armies. I have been having a blast.

S2TW has a different approach all together that I like, seems to work good right off the bat. But anyways, seem like I am straying from topic here.

Bottom line is if you are familiar with either ETW and NTW modding should be easy to get in to S2TW modding.