Is there hope for modding breakthroughs?

**Greek_fire19** · 07-29-2005, 19:32

Ok, this is a topic about hardcoding.

My knowledge of any kind of code is pretty limited, but I'm curious about hardcoding because it seems to be a big issue in the RTW modding community. Obviously the main thing about hardcoding is that it defines limits that cannot be altered. I thought this might be a good place to clarify some of the other issues:

First of all, what is hardcoding? I assume it's some kind of encryption, but I'm not sure.

Whatever it is, is it theorectically possible that one day it might be 'cracked'/broken into/altered/changed in any way to raise or remove the limits they impose? Or is that a total and utter impossibility

If it is possible, is there anyone in the RTW community who you believe has the skills necessary to do that?

If it is possible, is it legal?

If it is possible, how important a breakthrough do you think it would be?

I decided to post this here rather than at the TWC because EB, with its focus on having the most varied and huge of everything from factions to provinces to map size to troops to buildings, seems to have been pushing the limits on all these fronts and therefore would be the biggest source of information (and general anger) on this topic.

**Moros** · 07-29-2005, 20:33

Originally Posted by Greek_fire19

Ok, this is a topic about hardcoding.

My knowledge of any kind of code is pretty limited, but I'm curious about hardcoding because it seems to be a big issue in the RTW modding community. Obviously the main thing about hardcoding is that it defines limits that cannot be altered. I thought this might be a good place to clarify some of the other issues:

First of all, what is hardcoding? I assume it's some kind of encryption, but I'm not sure.

Whatever it is, is it theorectically possible that one day it might be 'cracked'/broken into/altered/changed in any way to raise or remove the limits they impose? Or is that a total and utter impossibility

If it is possible, is there anyone in the RTW community who you believe has the skills necessary to do that?

If it is possible, is it legal?

If it is possible, how important a breakthrough do you think it would be?

I decided to post this here rather than at the TWC because EB, with its focus on having the most varied and huge of everything from factions to provinces to map size to troops to buildings, seems to have been pushing the limits on all these fronts and therefore would be the biggest source of information (and general anger) on this topic.

-hard coded?: all the code in the .exe for example and all other encrypted code wich can't been altered because it's encrypted. (well not a good defenition but get it)
-encrypted?: yes
-possible to crack: it can be cracked but that would take really really a long time I think (or they did a verry crappy job)
-legal?: NO, they'll sue you!
-I don't have to awser last one now do I?

**GoreBag** · 07-29-2005, 21:22

The hard code has been cracked. Of course, EB doesn't support such a thing, and you should be careful asking about it. It's all very hush-hush.

**khelvan** · 07-29-2005, 21:23

Cracking the .exe means breaking the copy protection of the game. No mod will ever do this, period.

**shifty157** · 07-29-2005, 21:31

Essentially youre reverse engineering the game. And thats all very illegal.

**Greek_fire19** · 07-29-2005, 22:11

Ah, well that does clarify things, I hadn't realised that was the situation.

Thanks anyway

**caesar44** · 07-30-2005, 10:32

No one managed to break the factions limitation !!!

**Malrubius** · 07-30-2005, 14:57

Sometimes people talk about hard-coded limitations thinking it's like if you knew some password you could have a game with 50 factions in it or something.

Adding any more factions would mean changes everywhere in the programming, because those faction and culture names are everywhere. Lots and lots of new code would have to be written to add to that, and that means access to the source code (C/C++ or whatever). A lot of the hard-coded limitations are that way. That's why for BI they say they've made it so a faction can change its culture. That was probably far easier than adding any new cultures or factions. The province limit is probably the same way. Pathfinding is easier with a finite number of nodes. Once the decision was made on these things during the design phase, there was no going back and changing it for an expansion.

However, certain other things might be less complex. If something has been set to have a maximum value, like generals can only have 15 hit points, maybe that's just one line in the code:

Code:

MAX_GENERAL_HP = 15

or something like that. That would be much easier to change than the number of factions. But those aren't the kind of limitations most people care about seeing lifted.