Thoughts on modding in MTW2

[zakalwe]

I'm not a modder, but I was thinking about RTW mods. Some magnificent mods have been produced or are currently being produced for RTW. But due to the vast number of jobs involved, many of these have taken huge amounts of time or have fallen by the wayside. Some of these have looked amazing and it has been a real shame to see them ending.

I was wondering whether the modding community were going to take a more strategic and measured approach to mods with MTW2 or whether it would be similar to RTW? Will the fact it is the same engine help this time - can you transfer information/skins from a RTW mod to a MTW2 one?

Perhaps fewer mods but with phased releases of content? - I guess rtr did this, building up gradually.

Smaller scale but completed 'other world/time period' mods?

What are the modders thoughts on this? How could mods be streamlined/speeded up and what lessons have been learnt from RTW?

[Duke John]

I won't be modding M2:TW, but I'll spew my lessons learned anyway

No official tools, means that the extent to which TW can be modded depends on what tools the community can create. Despite Vercingetorix' efforts we still do not have a proper tool for animation which greatly hinders mods that really depend on orginal animations. Examples are mods focusing on different periods or fantasy.

Also a mod can only start well once models can be imported and exported. This didn't take too long for units, but it did for buildings, which made the future of for non-roman era mods insecure.

When starting a mod for M2:TW then be aware of the fact that CA might not release their tools and that the community tools will not allow everything to be edited. For example, the buildings in M2:TW can collapse in different ways. That could be complicated to write a proper tool for and if the community coders have no intention in putting their time into it, then it effectively means that non-medieval era mods are out of the question.

No proper documentation, resulted in simple modifications in the beginning with great discoveries being made only after many months. This hinders the truely interesting and innovative mods such EB which aim for a single concept with all the goodies included, but is not so much of a problem for mods that evolve (RTR).

The tendency of some modders or modding teams to keep things secret to blow the "opposition" away is not helping either.

Too much to do in 2 years. There seems to be the trend of a TW game being released, 1 year later the expansion and 2 years later the next TW game. That effectively means that most mods need to get at least a beta out before those 2 years are gone. This is less important for the mods who focus on a different era then the next TW game as those will always keep interest from the fanatical fans. The top mods will also remain interesting as they tend to have better gameplay than the original games.

Now couple that with the previous two points and you can see a problem. Before you have enough knowledge and the proper tools to get the ball really going 6+ months have already passed. If you don't get your beta finished by within 9 months then the expansion is coming closer with newer features and oftenly a direly needed improved AI. If you use the expansion then the mod will be even further delayed as more tools might be needed and more knowledge must be gained. And before you know it 18 months have passed, with the next installment of TW already casting its shadow.

"I want it all!" Not a quote of mine, but I see alot of modders wanting to keep the maximum amount of factions, more units, bigger map and so on. They manage to get a few modellers on the team who eventually burn out after realising that making 100 models plus lower LOD levels is a bit much to chew. As if a mod is bad if it doesn't stretch from Iceland to India.

"The AI is not worth it!" which is a quote of mine It meant the demise of my mods until I started on NTW2 which is designed for MP. The process of making a mod can be fun, but it also means putting hundreds of hours into sitting behind a computer. Is the gameplay and challenge in the end worth that?

[Silver Rusher]

What are the modders thoughts on this? How could mods be streamlined/speeded up and what lessons have been learnt from RTW?

From the screenshots we have seen of the strategic map, it looks very similar to the RTW one which means I am certain they will work in the same way. If teams begin working on their campaign maps early, before M2TW comes out (see the link in my signiature for an example) they will be able to get a lot more done due to the extended development time. Of course, this does not include things such as adding factions/units/buildings to cities etc.

[shifty157]

We've been discussing this quite a bit at MA. I cant reveal our game plan just yet but I just wanted to make it known that we are keeping ourselves grounded in the reality of the situation and not frolicking about in blissful ignorance.

[Epistolary Richard]

I was wondering whether the modding community were going to take a more strategic and measured approach to mods with MTW2 or whether it would be similar to RTW?

I think a more strategic and measured approach to mods is unlikely, personally. Undoubtedly, within the RTW modding community some mods set themselves hugely ambitious goals, but nevertheless eventually achieved them. Countless more didn't, of course. But a community will never act with a single mind, it will be driven by the individual decisions of its thousands of members.

The more popular a game is, the more fans it draws into its online community, the more modding projects we will see begun because - as we see - many people's first inclinations are to work on their own ideas rather than help others realise theirs.

Will the fact it is the same engine help this time - can you transfer information/skins from a RTW mod to a MTW2 one?

Too early to say - hopefully our experience with RTW will allow us to pick up the MTW2 system quicker, but nothing's certain until the game's actually released.

Perhaps fewer mods but with phased releases of content?

We've seen several different project development models within RTW - from incremental releases right to (relatively) complete versions. From one man solo efforts to grand team enterprises. Every mod requires talented and dedicated individuals to accomplish anything; but I think projects that try to produce a complete version right from the off set themselves a very hard objective and need doubly dedicated members, great vision and extremely effective leadership in order to be able to make it through such an extended development cycle.

Smaller scale but completed 'other world/time period' mods?

I hope so. A more experienced modder than myself predicted that smaller scale mods would be the future, but that was over a year ago. We've started to see a few now, and hopefully that trend will continue into MTW2. Smaller scale mods will never be the ones most often proposed, but they may well be the ones most often finished. Plus work doesn't have to be a full mod to be released - as some members have discovered, you can become just as well-known by creating individual elements that can be used in a variety of other mods.

How could mods be streamlined/speeded up and what lessons have been learnt from RTW?

One of the things I've certainly learned from RTW modding is best summed up by the old adage 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink - not even by modding the descr_mount file'. You can't make people do what you think is best for the community, you can't make people finish mods, you can't make people help each other out, you can't make people be open about new things they've discovered. All you can do is make it as easy as possible for those who do want to learn, to help, to discover to find what they're looking for. Everything else, necessarily I believe, has to come from the individual.

[Dol Guldur]

Perhaps the most important element for modders (and those who start mods) to grasp is "reality".

Mods that have a sole aim to modify a specific element of the game (such as the sky dome, vegetation, AI formations, etc.) are grounded in reality and provide a useful resource for many milieu mods.

Mods that have a sole aim to create units for custom and historical battles are grounded in reality. These too can provide resources for others.

Mods that focus on small areas for their maps with a limited number of units, or at least the latter, are grounded in reality.

Mods that do not stray from a culture and genre that deviate from that of all of the preset vanilla buildings and imagery is grounded in reality.

Mods that are major and undertake a full conversion need to have a very strong team (many of whom must have a lot of spare time) - and even then they will be a long time in development and unlikely to beat "next release" deadlines from CA.

M2TW is likely to take longer to mod than R:TW, simply because there are more things to mod.

It is appealing, I admit. But is it practical? Time will tell.

[Arbaces]

I guess choosing between a smaller scale/higher scale mod depends on the time each man has available or perhaps the team he knows he has. A smaller map ussually kills realism by not allowing the player to do whatever he wants, but it can increase the quality on other areas however.

Some magnificent mods have been produced or are currently being produced for RTW. But due to the vast number of jobs involved, many of these have taken huge amounts of time or have fallen by the wayside. Some of these have looked amazing and it has been a real shame to see them ending.

Yep, when it comes to modding projects the community is a bit divided. Anyway, everythings moves around the work each modder does if he likes to see his project fulfilled. I'm a bit concerned about fellows who have no modding skills and start projects. "Hey guys I have an idea a project... but i need modellers, coders, I make the research". They won't succed of course until won't start putting their mind on learning 3dsmax and ps .

How could mods be streamlined/speeded up and what lessons have been learnt from RTW?

As ER said the tutorials give air to the modding community. But only hard heavenly work from modders can speed up a mod and get it finished.


Arbaces.

[zakalwe]

One thing i really liked with MTW was that the BKB and VH mods were very much expansions of the original game. Rather than changing alot of the existing game they added - more factions, more units, more provinces, etc. I thought that this worked extremely successfully.

The far superior graphics of RTW has meant that historically accurate appearances have come to the fore and alot of time is spent re-skinning and changing the existing units. I imagine that this is an enjoyable and a creative job, but it does take time.

I'm hoping that one of the modding teams out there is taking the approach is primarily adding good content and secondly tweaking and changing the existing elements.

For instance - if we do have no hard code on faction numbers - it would be great to see a mod team work simply on producing an Aragon faction or a Kiev faction which can then be incorporated into other mods.

But this is just me being selfish and hoping

[PROMETHEUS]

Another thing that could be problematic for non Medieval era mods will be videos , how many of the modders have video editing and 3d creating movie abilities ? Since the Diplomacy seems will have video sequences or animated things this could be a problem for non Medieval settings....

[sunsmountain]

By the time you complete the artwork the next CA game already has a new graphics engine.

Community requests:

- Bug fixing, primarily to fix CA typing errors in character traits, buildings.
- missing faction data, making sure every faction has a faction leader pic & initial map area
- missing artwork in the original game: Glossy textures, LOD for all models, some extra added skeletons, animation data, etc.
- mods that help the AI... this is very game dependent.

Other, successful projects have been, primarily due to a better unit balancing, hitpoints, morale, etc., due to game speed and due to historical accuracy:

Rome: Total Realism
SPQR: Total War
Europa Barbarorum
Darth mod

and some others, probably. Mods that would have been nice because of artwork, if it would have been finished on time:

Blue Lotus: Total War*
4th age, LOTR Total War**

* has actually been finished, but the site is down very often.
** will appear as a serie of custom battles against the forces of Mordar, etc.

[Dol Guldur]

Fourth Age has also a demo, and will be a mini-campaign and eventually a full campaign. I believe lotr:tw also has a campaign (using me:tw's map) and is not therefore the "series of custom battles" it was initially intended to be.

Those who expect such full-conversions into such genres to be completed by now do not live in the real world. And that has been most of us at some time. One can only imagine such undertakings will take a great deal longer in M2TW :(

[Hepcat]

The best idea is probably to start early, if you start planning the mod out before M2TW comes out then you should be more focused in what you need to do and (hopefully) work more efficiently because you have already worked out what is going in it.

[Ra-az]

I think Zakalwe still has a point, especially for the tools.

I think that the people that build these tools or could potentially build these tools should get together now. Just get the people resources ready so that when the game comes out work on the tools can start immediatly. I think the main thing is the tools

My experience is that the information that is available, is still hard to find on the net, I have Googled a long long time and read many a dead forum before getting the knowledge that I have now (witch still is not a lot). There's so much non-sense about. But there is some stuff (like those 5 video tutorials on modelling) that saved me al ot of time.

People that are willing to participate in building the hard stuff should be able to find the place where they can participate.

Take me for instance...

I'm interested in modding and game design, I''ve gone a long way in a short time with modding Total war. Personally I don't care witch version I play (RTW, MTW2) as long as I can mod just about everything in the game.

I'm a pretty good programmer (OpenGl also) I'm not a genius but I usually get there in the end.
But I usually only READ the forums I never participate because as I said there's so many people that clutter up the forums with bs that has nothing to do with the thread subject etc. Let's face it I'm not a real forum/chat kind of guy, I usually think I can spend my time more effectively. If you could get more people like me actively participating (they're out there) with guys like Vercingetorix I think a lot's possible.

To sum up:

My Vision to game modding strategy as a community:

Concentrate on the tools.
Form team a.s.a.p.
Strictly mantained forum or preferably other means of communicating within the team.
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