A language option

[Tellos Athenaios]

To answer the OP's question: no, I don't expect EB2 to offer you the option to switch between “native” and “English” names, and in fact we have pushed our use of native names further than before. An example of this would be native names used in tooltips for campaign map objects such as ports, settlements and agents.

EDIT: Additionally, it looks like the first releases will not make it easy to mod this yourself.

[Arjos]

Excellent, weed out the lazy XD

[Ca Putt]

I hope this prevents him from posting a 5th topic.

[d'Arthez]

EDIT: Additionally, it looks like the first releases will not make it easy to mod this yourself.

I like the sound of that.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I like the sound of that.

My sarcasm detector just went off, is working properly or is that a false positive?

[Blxz]

My sarcasm detector just went off, is working properly or is that a false positive?

Seconded.

Also, as much as I like the names, having less moddability seems like a bad thing. Is there a reason why these particular units will be less moddable than the rome.exe equivalent?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Also, as much as I like the names, having less moddability seems like a bad thing. Is there a reason why these particular units will be less moddable than the rome.exe equivalent?

It has to do with the way we use the strings.bin file format, or rather how we use the CUF tool to build some of them. We don't enforce certain limits on what symbols may occur in these files and as a result you might find that while you could decompile them fairly easily, you would not end up with a usable result. This ranges from the fairly obvious “my text editor barfs”, to “what's with that indentation” to “when I recompile, suddenly bits and pieces are commented out”/“the game CTDs”.

The reason we probably won't give you the source files on installation at this point is that the source files have changed significantly in format (now they're in a custom XML format that isn't actually understood by any tool out there), which in turn necessitates another whole machinery to be able to splice them into the mod.

It is the last bit which would complicate things most: internally we use the equivalent of “lots of duct tape” to hold things together, which works well enough for our purposes but it isn't exactly something we can foist on people who just want to play the mod. To do it properly would first of all require a rewrite of that into something less dependent on all the tape, and secondly require more work on the installer code to support it.

[Brennus]

The reason we probably won't give you the source files on installation at this point is that the source files have changed significantly in format (now they're in a custom XML format that isn't actually understood by any tool out there), which in turn necessitates another whole machinery to be able to splice them into the mod.

My brain hurts.

[Blxz]

My brain hurts.

Me too, although I understood duct tape.

[d'Arthez]

My sarcasm detector just went off, is working properly or is that a false positive?

Sorry, I did not check the thread earlier.

Ideally of course everything would be moddable, without too much fuss, but we all know that software does not work that way.

Undoubtedly there are many features that may make an appearance in the final release of EB2 that won't make it in the first few releases. I don't think anyone minds that - there is no way things can be done to perfection in one go.

What I meant to imply is that it means that progress with EB2 has been substantial enough not to have a "quick fix" for this particular issue - that the team is not starting from scratch (or near scratch) now. I am happy with such progress, even though I wish it was easier on the team to manage it. I am not too concerned it is not a priority for the team to address this particular issue. It is a feature that is not essential for gameplay, and as such I don't mind if it does not make it in the first releases of EB2.

Hope that clarifies it.