Elemental Mods or the lack of

from Elemental Forums

First off this game has serious potential, the game itself is basic shell though, what is needed is input from players but since release I can not seem to find any at all.

Civ 5 was released and within a few months very decent mods have appeared (check here Civ5 - Creation & Customization - Civilization Fanatics' Forums ). I have tried the basic map making facility in Elemental and even that was quite buggy but manageable I guess. 

There are stickied posts in this section but the links are to mods thought up back in 2008 with little or no development on them!!!

There is just nothing here.

Am I missing some section or are the mods on another site?

If I had the time I would love to make a mod - perhaps a Stephen Donaldson mod...

7,969 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

You hit this right on the nose!

We in the mod community have been holding off on development until we get a green light that things in the game will not be drastically changed (except for Heavenfall and a few others who apparently have a lot of free time). 1.2 is the green light for my project, though I can not speak for other modders. In general Summer is the best time for many of us to mod; I am after all a student. If you would like to see what I have planned for meta-map modding check out the link below:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/404666

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The stickied mods are actively maintained.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/399062

https://forums.elementalgame.com/402601

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400551

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400876

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395529

https://forums.elementalgame.com/399607

Elemental lacks any kind of scripting, which makes adding content to Elemental easy, but changing Elemental nearly impossible. Most modders do not appreciate this. When a new thread is created, often the first replies will be "this cannot be done". Sometimes, you can work around the problem, but most of the time you cannot. That, in my opinion, is the primary reason for lack of mods.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 2
Elemental lacks any kind of scripting, which makes adding content to Elemental easy, but changing Elemental nearly impossible. Most modders do not appreciate this. When a new thread is created, often the first replies will be "this cannot be done". Sometimes, you can work around the problem, but most of the time you cannot. That, in my opinion, is the primary reason for lack of mods.
End of Heavenfall's quote

I tend to agree with this.  I was very interested in expanding the Quests in Elemental when it first was released, however it's still a little messy to do some of the more elaborate stuff.  With Jon Shafer now working to expand Elemental's modability, I expect more and more things to become possible as time goes on.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

The game isn't finished and isn't easy to change, so yea, I haven't even thought about trying to mod more than a little here or there.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 2
The stickied mods are actively maintained.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/399062

https://forums.elementalgame.com/402601

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400551

https://forums.elementalgame.com/400876

https://forums.elementalgame.com/395529

https://forums.elementalgame.com/399607

Elemental lacks any kind of scripting, which makes adding content to Elemental easy, but changing Elemental nearly impossible. Most modders do not appreciate this. When a new thread is created, often the first replies will be "this cannot be done". Sometimes, you can work around the problem, but most of the time you cannot. That, in my opinion, is the primary reason for lack of mods.
End of Heavenfall's quote

 

Add to that the major design changes a few months after initial release.  Many modders either scaled back or completely stopped modding until after 1.1 was released.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Our time will come and it WILL BE GLORIOUS!!!!!!!!!!   XO

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm working on a massive overhaul (No name for the mod yet, so just Massive Overhaul right now) that's revamping a lot of the issues, but it's just changing existing content or adding. The changes I'd like to make won't occur until after the scripting is enabled. I forget which news/dev post it was but one of them mentioned that they'd hired on a particular person or were planning to hire on someone that has experience in modability and adding flexibility and mod options to games.

With Derek Paxton on the team then hopefully after 1.2 and the polish is added, then modability will set in. For now we just have XML ability and roundabout modeling ability.

My mod is split into stages and I'm doing the possible bits (Mapping things out, creating the tiles/effects, then doing the XML) first since by the time I'm done with those (1,000 + tiles for the resource overhaul alone! https://forums.elementalgame.com/404104) I'm sure the game will be stable enough that they'll have added scripting and increased mod functions.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

my 2 cents on this subject.. no one asked for it but i freely give it. O:)

The lack of mods is mainly due to a few core issues.

 

Granted I haven't messed with modding elemental very much.. but from what I can see.. (anyone more experienced in modding elemental feel free to correct me if i'm wrong in any or all of the points)

1. limitations

 The majority of things we can mod in game dynamics at this point are rather limited xml values. nothing wrong with XML but its all dependent on what options are coded into xml files.

2. ease of modding

this sort of ties into the limitations issue.

Alot of the dynamics we can mod at this point are so easy to do I personally wouldn't see a point in releasing it for others. For instance i tend to mod the game speeds so that on epic speed research takes a bit longer... but its so easy to do (1 xml value) that I figure anyone could do it themselves so why release such a simple xml change?

3. massive game changing patches

especially going from 1.09 to 1.1 there were massive changes in the game that made many people put off modding since they would just have to rewrite/redo the mod for 1.1

my conclusion

I'm pretty interested to see what direction the modding capabilities take.. but as it is now any mod ideas I may want to do are either so easy anyone could do it or far beyond the modding options we have(as far as i can tell). But to be fair i'm what you might call a private modder.. I tend to make mods for my personal enjoyment and don't bother releasing them to the public.