View Full Version : Is C++ a requirement for modding
All modders in the half life and most games communities needs to know how to program in C and sometime more than that. But my question does not apply to them, it applies to you and it is "Should i look over my C++ guide again to relearn skills i used to have" and "is it a requirement for more hardcore modding" these questions need to be answered for me so all those who wish to comment are welcome as long as they are intelligent helpful comments not negative timewasting comments like many i see.
thanks dessa
Wellington
10-03-2003, 18:01
Quote[/b] (dessa14 @ Oct. 03 2003,07:32)]
All modders in the half life and most games communities needs to know how to program in C and sometime more than that.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif News to me.
I really hav'nt a clue how you came by such a sweepingly broad, yet obviously incorrect, assumption.
But my question does not apply to them, it applies to you and it is "Should i look over my C++ guide again to relearn skills i used to have" and "is it a requirement for more hardcore modding"
No.
these questions need to be answered for me so all those who wish to comment are welcome as long as they are intelligent helpful comments not negative timewasting comments like many i see.
Well, if you've no wish to read posts that contain negative timewasting comments I can only suggest you don't start posts that contain sweeping incorrect statements
Dessa;
InSoFar as modding MTW goes, evidently it only requires a mild interest in what parts of the game CAN be modded.
You might do yourself a service by reading the threads concerning a type of mod you might wish to try, eh? Some of these have been going on for rather a long time now.
Myself not being a creator,so I don't know for sure, I can still say that until the bits of the 'hard code' that are due to be freed up come available, it doesn't SEEM like one needs a coding language to do the job, just lots of hard work/study/ and a few friends willing to do research on the historical bits.
No doubt, the more you know the better off you are, tho.
Good luck to you in your endevours, eh?
wellington i would like to say that with most gaming communeties that to do any modding of worth you need to know C or one of the advanced programming laungauges of course there are exceptions and there are games people think are exceptions (personally i think we haven't scratched the surface of modding MTW yet though i don't think C is needed for most modding in MTW) but for halflife i noticed that modding it in any real way other than images required C or some other advanced laungage same with UNREAL,Quake series,Starcraft,Warcraft and all other games i have modded or helped mod excepting of course MTW.
P.S hey wellington have you used C++ it is the most flexible advanced language currently used. almost all games are programmed in C also do you use windows or linux to program
Wellington
10-04-2003, 14:07
Quote[/b] (dessa14 @ Oct. 04 2003,04:30)]wellington i would like to say that with most gaming communeties that to do any modding of worth you need to know C or one of the advanced programming laungauges of course there are exceptions and there are games people think are exceptions (personally i think we haven't scratched the surface of modding MTW yet though i don't think C is needed for most modding in MTW) but for halflife i noticed that modding it in any real way other than images required C or some other advanced laungage same with UNREAL,Quake series,Starcraft,Warcraft and all other games i have modded or helped mod excepting of course MTW.
P.S hey wellington have you used C++ it is the most flexible advanced language currently used. almost all games are programmed in C also do you use windows or linux to program
HL was special in that the source code was released. However, the number of people who change HL source code for modding purposes is infitessimally small in comparison to the number of (experienced) people who also mod HL.
What do you call modding of worth? No-one in htis forum had modded MTW or VBI and changing siource code and probably never will. Does that make their efforts worthless? Of course not.
First, IF CA released the source code tomorrow, how many people would understand C++ (presuming its been written entirely in such) enough to attempt to change the code? Not many. Second, if they did understand C++, how many would have the ability to examine and correctly amend such source in order to change some aspect of the game? Even fewer. Don't underestimate just how much source code is written for todays generation of PC games.
Basically, modding such games by changing source code is the realm of a very few experienced and telented individuals. If anyone thinks they can learn C++ and then learn how a game works (via the source - if available) within a matter of weeks or months then I'll assure you most people can't.
The TW series source will probably never be available to the modding community. Does'nt matter. If it was I suspect very few would utilise it - and it is'nt really required to.
As for C++ their is no doubt it's a flexable and powerful language. Thats the Pro. The Con is that such flexability can lend itself to unintelligible code whilst the power it provides can be very dangerous in unexperienced hands.
Welly
I Agree that the damage potentially caused by unexperianced C++ programmers can cause unrepairable havoc by changing the script, but in the halflife community and many before it there was many very experianced programmers that did edit the source and they did most of the most popular and biggest mods. the modders that didn't change the source code were stuck in a trap of limitations now MTW has plenty of skilled programmers by the looks of it but it still has limitations such as being able to edit AI everyone knows the AI in MTW was not as smart as it really needed to be and that it was a let down of the game but we need to break that limitation barrier in my opinion to get real work done. work that will live for 5 years or more because most games nowadays last a period of 12 months then begin to die such as empire earth how long did it last about 12 months of popularity then it began to die now what has been done here with MTW is brilliant accepting our current limitations but we are on a dying game next year RTW will be out and we will have to mod it using the same limits now ask yourself what is stopping this game from becoming open source is A: lack of interest by other companies in Genre B: lack of pressure from the gaming community
Half-life had an edge over other games at the time but because the source was released it gained a gigantic edge over the competition who were still a conservative closed source producer but halflife gained more income because people needed the original game to play the mod so if CA were to release the mod they would get more income for free labour pretty much. but to underestimate the ability of programmers to break source codes is a mistake i have seen programmers break source codes and i think there are brilliant programmers here so to underestimate them i think is a mistake but i believe that there would be someone around here with the ability to find out the source code otherwise pressure CA to give us less limitations so that we can make their game better.
Sorry for the Absurdly Long Post
Dessa
Duke John
10-05-2003, 12:38
I only want a game where we can fight battles between medieval, fantasy or ancient armies. MTW provides us this with little limitations. Sure the AI can be improved but in that case I fully trust CA that they are more capable than us in writing routines for AI strategy.
MTW does not vanish because of lack of open source code but because it will be replaced by, hopefully, the next generation. Why would we stick to MTW if RTW does provide us, again hopefully, better graphics, gameplay and AI? Now if RTW proves to be mod-unfriendly and new models cannot be added then open source in a certain degree will be welcomed, or I'll stay with modding MTW.
Cheers, Duke John
Lancer6969
10-06-2003, 23:08
I am a programmer, mainly in C++ and C#. And I cant mod. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif lol. I tried, and couldn't figure it all out, but if I studied it alot more I could have figured it out.
Lancer
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif
A couple of points:
1. CA has indicated through posts to this forum that the source code will not be released.
2. The source code is encrypted, which means that unless you reverse engineer it somehow using some quite sophisticated techniques you will never even see it. Giljay indicated he didn't think it made much sense to encrypt it, but that decision wasn't his to make.
3. If somehow you decrypted the source code, you'd still need to figure out how it was put together and how it works before you could mod it. As Lancer666 indicates, that ain't easy.
Better to concentrate upon what can be changed. Much AI behavior CAN be modified by modding the units build probabilities and the like (as has been discussed at great length in this forum). People like +DOC+ and WesW have come up with some interesting ideas. You might check them out.
Still i think it is completly possible to decode it if we had the right software (god knows where i could find it) fast enough Comps and plenty of skilled programmers but you guys don't want to and im too lazy to do it by myself so ill just keep with playing your mods
Thanks dessa
Wellington
10-07-2003, 12:38
Quote[/b] (dessa14 @ Oct. 07 2003,03:45)]Still i think it is completly possible to decode it if we had the right software (god knows where i could find it) fast enough Comps and plenty of skilled programmers but you guys don't want to and im too lazy to do it by myself so ill just keep with playing your mods
Thanks dessa
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif
You have no conception of how difficult it is to dis-assemble executable code (compiled code) and then try to interpret it.
Such reverse engineering IS possible, and I actually did some several years ago for a client that had lost the original source code for some software. Only a small executable with 20 or so programs linked into one load module. Each program only contained between 100 and 400 lines of code and the changes rquired where minor (but important).
You've no idea how long it took, or how f*****g difficult that was - AND I was working from the original documentation that explained the internals.
Now I know I'm pretty good at such things, but if you really think a similar reverse engineering could be perfomed on the MTW executable, which would extend to 10's if not 100's of thousands of lines of code, with no comments, no original labels, no change history, no documentation ... and so on ... then your living in cloud-cuckoo land.
Another caveat is that no dis-assembler has yet been designed that is perfect. Depending on how the code has been written it can be impossible for such software to interpret executable machine code from data contained in the same program/load module - and such 'clever' dis-assemblers that try to interpret code from data often get it wrong.
Deciphering the contents of Hex data files is somewhat easier as such files generally have a recognisable block structure to them and if you look at enough of them you can generally puzzle out what the data represents IF you know what the file is being used for. Thats exactly how I now know the contents of MTW '.jjm' map files. Dis-assembled code, however, is an entirely different matter.
Welly
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