Changing mods for games in progress

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hello,

I've been playing DA with a variety of mods combined, but I've decided that I want to drop one of them from my game (the Ultimate Design Freedom mod). I deleted the xml file used by that mod, but much to my surprise, that didn't accomplish anything. I restored the xml file, and tried changing the values it contains. Again, this did nothing. Nothing I do with this mod seems to have any effect on my current game - the changes only appear after I've started a new game.

What gives? How do you make mod changes appear for an existing save game? Surely Stardock wouldn't do something as boneheaded as lock the player into using a mod through their entire game.
modding
3,937 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, not that boneheaded perhaps. Suppose you could change the mod data mid-game. Then you as part of your changes, you'd remove the data for one type of planetary improvement for example. Now, when you load your game where you have those built, the game can't find the data ... and it might just crash. Or otherwise do something unexpected. Or some other data might become corrupted. So probably SD didn't want the headache of designing sane behaviour for those situations, and just went with the simple and sane (from software engineering PoV) solution.

I don't know how mod developers get around this limitation - some tech and items typically become available only later in the game, so you can't just start a quick game to test them out in the typical setting. Is it possible to edit saved games? (I hope regular games are different from metaverse games in this respect.)
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It is possible to edit saved games, but only with a hex editor. Trying to edit out something like a portion of a mod would be pretty much impossible.

varis2000 pretty much summed it up as to why you can't change or stop using the mod mid-game. And the mod developers don't get around it, they simply work with it.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
SD simply took the lazy way out with this design decision. I tend to mod the hell out of every (non-FPS) game I play, and I've never encountered an implementation like this. If planetary improvements or ships are suddenly missing data from a mod, they should simply disappear. This isn't perfect, but it saves the player from losing 15 hours of game time because they realize a mod isn't working as intended.

Civ IV can gracefully handle the removal of mod components at any time during the course of a campaign. On the occasions that TW can't, it does crash but logs a very clear indication of exactly what missing element caused the crash. The TES games are the best here - not only do they gracefully handle the addition and removal of data, they also notify the player when they load a saved game that used mod elements that are no longer present.

Anyway, as pissed off as I was when I first ran into this, it did turn out to be a serendipitous thing: being forced to start a new game sucked, but the new campaign is shaping up to be a whole lot more interesting than the first.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't know how mod developers get around this limitation - some tech and items typically become available only later in the game, so you can't just start a quick game to test them out in the typical setting.

You can play a Battle-Of-The-Gods scenario with all techs researched in advance or use the cheat mode where you can clone ships, get money, research techs with only a few button presses.