EB/EB2 New Unit Thread

[AngryAngelDD]

Mods help to extend the life of a game - they are, in effect, free expansion packs - and some people might actually buy "yTW" not to play the game itself, but to play the latest version of their favourite mod!

for me this is a main reason why the game publishers/developers should make their game as mod-friendly as possible.
a lot of companies recently discovered this, as there are games still in development and have mod´s for them already in production.
even more...the developers invited the mod-makers to use the game´s SDK.

this brings a community to a game....and a community makes more people to buy the game....

so it would be very smart for CA/SEGA to help the best modding crew´s with improved/open game code.

on the other hand, CA´s xTW engine is very advanced. so giving away the code could spawn more competitioning games....but even this might be an advantage for the gamer....competition improves products...


AADD

P.S.: sorry for bad english

[I Am Herenow]

What is SDK?

[bovi]

SDK = Software Development Kit. I assume he means the source to the game engine, giving the ability to change that code rather than just the data the engine uses. We have no access to that with EB.

[I Am Herenow]

I see. Also, as we're on the topic of techy stuff, what exactly does a game engine do? In other words, if I had the C (or whatever) code for RTW in front of me, deleted it all, pasted in the code for DOOM or something, would it work? Or would you need to go even "deeper" and change the engine? Indeed, what is the difference between the engine and the source code for the program (or game, in this case) itself?

[abou]

That is a complicated question. Wikipedia has a good article on the subject so my suggestion is to check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine

[bovi]

Well, if you intended to delete all the game code in the first place, you can do as well with the blank sheet that you have now. That question of yours really is quite meaningless...

But yes, you would need to go deeper, reading the code to understand how it works and then make the changes you want (quite like what modders have done with the exported data for traits, script, unit models etc btw). This is not a quick process, but can be a lot less painful if you have the documentation at hand.

Understanding the difference between source code and a game engine requires a bit of technical knowledge. Source code is human readable for those who know the syntax, while the game engine is compiled code. An example of source code could be:

loop
start turn
if(player owns all cities in victory conditions)
   play victory sequence
else if(player has no cities)
   play defeat sequence
end if
allow user input
end turn
do computer movements
end loop

This of course is extremely simplistic, and utter bollocks, as there is no interpreter that can make the computer understand what I want it to do. In essence, a valid source code can be compiled by an interpreter to create a machine readable program, in this case the RTW engine. There are lots and lots of programming languages, each with its own compiler.

[I Am Herenow]

I see, so for RTW, say, or M2, or any other game, do the developers have 3 separate files for the game's source code, the .exe itself and the game engine code, with the .exe and engine being released to the public?

[bovi]

Err... The source code is likely to be thousands of files, referencing eachother. The exe is the compiled code (including the game engine, code for showing menus, copy protection etc), sometimes along with DLLs (Dynamically Linked Libraries), JARs (Java ARchives), SO (Shared Objects), ActiveX or whatever it's called on the operating system and programming language in question.

Every other file is data, loaded by the executable. Taking RTW as an example, RomeTW.exe is the compiled code. Among other libraries it uses mss32.dll, which is the Miles Sound System packaged for inclusion anywhere (you'll see this in many other games too). It also has a number of configuration files such as preferences.txt and version.inf. And a whole lot of data files, which you can see under Data.

Anyway, the original question has been answered, and I won't explain more of the composition of computer programs. You can spend some time on online tutorials instead if you want to know more about how it works or learn how to do it yourself.