.... » Forum Post by Horemvore

Quoting Horemvore,

I think your name fits you. (The first 4 letters atleast)

I won't say I'm not an asshole, but I WILL say that what makes me one ISN'T pointing out that modding a game while it's going through frequent updates, expansions, and the like will lead to problems.

I mean, that's just common sense. If it bothers you when people bother to ask a fair question, you must have a very miserable existence.

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 197

I'm a little confused... Are you implying he should have waited until the game was "finished" or that his efforts somehow made it less likely that SD would work to fix their own issues/etc.?

Or something else?

The former.

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Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

Well... a few thoughts...

1) in the age of "games as a service" is a game ever finished? The answer is no. So when precisely should someone offer a mod or not? The answer is simply that there is no right or wrong time, merely a matter of the work involved. Otherwise I'd have to ask exactly why an "unfinished game" is even for sale... I don't buy "unfinished" cars for example.

2) Do most gamers wait for the game to have sold its maximum number of DLC before playing? Are they aware they are playing an "unfinished product"? That would seem odd... why would companies sell DLC in portions if people only bought them when the game was "finished". What you might consider "finished" I would consider "Over". There's little joy for me in modding a product that has reached the end of its life-cycle, the audience has diminished and the hope of improvement for the platform is gone.

3) I don't think Horemvore was complaining about the amount of work involved with updating his mods due to frequent updates or the like, he was complaining about the quality and attitude of Stardock's work and their ability or lackthereof for fixing well documented problems. For example... the new expansion irreparably DISABLED all mods, even for those who didn't purchase Retribution... if Bethesda had done that with Skyrim... well they'd have a riot on their hands.

Now they fixed that within about 3-5 hours, which is quite good in my opinion, but I think Horemvore is continually disappointed with the glaring lack of quality assurance with StarDock and their design choices.

4) While Horemvore is often acerbic, and you could certainly argue his tone is overly emotional or an over-reaction (and he'd argue back I suppose), he's also been consistently helpful to the community and deserves to be treated squarely. If you want to argue with him... actually do that with a legitimate question.

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

+5

Quoting JerkClock,

reply 201

Quoting Horemvore,

reply 198

I think your name fits you. (The first 4 letters atleast)

I won't say I'm not an asshole, but I WILL say that what makes me one ISN'T pointing out that modding a game while it's going through frequent updates, expansions, and the like will lead to problems.

I mean, that's just common sense. If it bothers you when people bother to ask a fair question, you must have a very miserable existence.
The former.

While there were issues with the game before Crusade - the massive amount of changes that were made in Crusade which well over year later are now mostly fixed in one way or another, for the most part, at least in the apparent intent that Stardock after Paul stopped developing Galactic Civilization 3 before Crusade was released. Makes it hard for the casual bystander to say Hey if you enjoy playing the game but don't want to be frustrated that you can model out some of the typos and mistakes in the XML code and every update Stardock breaks something or adds new bugs. Would seem to either completely ignorant of the history of the development of the game or stupid enough to not have any real common sense.

When Crusade came out I spend weeks going through the XML files to find all the inconsistencies and figure out how the game used to work before Crusade and what might happened to the code in changing everything around for the new design of Crusade. While I think there were good reasons for a lot of the changes, they were implemented haphazardly without a knowledgeable detailed oriented person going through everything and fixing the inconsistencies and other problems.

If you are "Johnny come lately" and in the last six months been playing the game, your comment makes alittle sense without any appreciation for the amount of effort that has been done in the past to make the game more playable only to find each patch break something you spent a lot of time fixing. If Hormvore didn't care about making the game better he won't be upset with each round of changes.

If you are happy playing the game without any mods that why complain about someone's frustrations with MODDing ? If you don't like what someone is saying why not say nothing that do something that is essentially "stirring the pot". Horemvore has more appreciation that you can imagine about the difficulty of keeping up with changes that the developer can and has been making. But since no one has read you what going on, you decided to help the situation but making statements that imply you know more about what going on than anyone else.

P.S. I generally like the Tech Tree changes from what little bit I played the Retribution Campaign. The game has come along ways since the Crusade launch. I haven't looked at the XML code to understand exactly how it Is implemented so I might be being a bit quick about praising the effort Stardock has made on the expansion. But with all the bad comments I have made in the past on Crusade I much more like that game that exists now than I did when Crusade was released so I wanted to say so

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Quoting barrybeal,

reply 202

I'm a petulant, whiney child who can't stand someone who doesn't live in my echo chamber

Uh huh.

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 202

Well... a few thoughts...

1) in the age of "games as a service" is a game ever finished? The answer is no. So when precisely should someone offer a mod or not? The answer is simply that there is no right or wrong time, merely a matter of the work involved. Otherwise I'd have to ask exactly why an "unfinished game" is even for sale... I don't buy "unfinished" cars for example.

2) Do most gamers wait for the game to have sold its maximum number of DLC before playing? Are they aware they are playing an "unfinished product"? That would seem odd... why would companies sell DLC in portions if people only bought them when the game was "finished". What you might consider "finished" I would consider "Over". There's little joy for me in modding a product that has reached the end of its life-cycle, the audience has diminished and the hope of improvement for the platform is gone.

3) I don't think Horemvore was complaining about the amount of work involved with updating his mods due to frequent updates or the like, he was complaining about the quality and attitude of Stardock's work and their ability or lackthereof for fixing well documented problems. For example... the new expansion irreparably DISABLED all mods, even for those who didn't purchase Retribution... if Bethesda had done that with Skyrim... well they'd have a riot on their hands.

Now they fixed that within about 3-5 hours, which is quite good in my opinion, but I think Horemvore is continually disappointed with the glaring lack of quality assurance with StarDock and their design choices.

4) While Horemvore is often acerbic, and you could certainly argue his tone is overly emotional or an over-reaction (and he'd argue back I suppose), he's also been consistently helpful to the community and deserves to be treated squarely. If you want to argue with him... actually do that with a legitimate question.

1 & 2 are splitting hairs. My point was that if the final expansion hadn't come out, stuff was going to change. Stats and game mechanics were changed with every expansion in GC2 as well, it was going to happen with 3. Not saying you can't still mod it and enjoy it, but you have to expect that as more expansions come up, it'll easily fuck with what you were doing before.

3. He could have just said that and I would have accepted it. When you get hostile with someone over a simple question, don't be surprised when they fire back.

4. I'm not questioning what he has or hasn't contributed, I haven't been here enough to come close to gauging stuff like that. I asked a fair question, as I said above, a simple clarification would have been accepted.

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Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

Well you may want to consider rephrasing your question next time because it reads pretty "loaded"... the subtext instantly said to me (and others) as:

"Stop complaining, it's your own fault for trying." in a sarcastic tone. It reads aggressive and disingenuous to me and he obviously took it that way. Part of it, is that modern culture has generally trained us that when someone says "Let me ask you a fair question" we've learned to expect quite the opposite.

.... and I think we're conflating the issue... a mod as extensive as GST is a TON of work... I know from personal experience with my mod. I doubt he's annoyed because it will take X hours to fix... I think its more like "I dislike everything they've done, SD continue to ignore the continuing bugs we've all reported, and they don't QA their work seemingly at all, so why should I bother with this game."

But I'll stop talking for him... I may well be wrong.

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Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 205

Well you may want to consider rephrasing your question next time because it reads pretty "loaded"... the subtext instantly said to me (and others) as:

"Stop complaining, it's your own fault for trying." in a sarcastic tone. It reads aggressive and disingenuous to me and he obviously took it that way. Part of it, is that modern culture has generally trained us that when someone says "Let me ask you a fair question" we've learned to expect quite the opposite.

There might not have been a way that didn't risk coming off as such. In fact, it's always risking irritation when you ask someone a hard question that has any sort of valid point to it. People are just inclined to take "Maybe this is a side effect of something you didn't consider", as "You're an idiot, OF COURSE this happened, your low IQ kept you from considering the blindingly obvious and now you're paying the price".

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 205

.... and I think we're conflating the issue... a mod as extensive as GST is a TON of work... I know from personal experience with my mod. I doubt he's annoyed because it will take X hours to fix... I think its more like "I dislike everything they've done, SD continue to ignore the continuing bugs we've all reported, and they don't QA their work seemingly at all, so why should I bother with this game."

But I'll stop talking for him... I may well be wrong.

I can't speak for SD, but I would guess that between all the updates, DLC, and new expansions might have made fixing every little thing before all the work is done impractical. There's a WORLD of difference between coding/designing a game, and modding one. Adding new content and updating current content can unexpectedly break things in ways that may not make sense even after you figured it out and fixed it.

If SD HAS been lackluster with fixing the game's issues, it may easily be that doing so before all the content is finished is undesirable for the above reasons and about 1 million others that would be difficult to articulate to anyone who's never coded a game. I'm not saying this IS the case, just that it MIGHT be, and that it's at least worth considering.

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Sir_On_The_Edge

Join Date 07/2006

+7

Quoting Horemvore,

reply 198

Quoting JerkClock,

reply 196

Let me just ask a fair question here, do you think the fact that you have been modding an unfinished game (since the last expansion wasn't out until yesterday) might just have a LOT to do with that?

I think your name fits you. (The first 4 letters atleast)

None of this please, keep things civil. Insulting people like this will not be tolerated.

Please move any personal greavences to PMs, this has already gone way too far off topic.

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 202

4) While Horemvore is often acerbic, and you could certainly argue his tone is overly emotional or an over-reaction (and he'd argue back I suppose), he's also been consistently helpful to the community and deserves to be treated squarely. If you want to argue with him... actually do that with a legitimate question.

Thats actually a fair assessment

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting Sir_On_The_Edge,

reply 207

Quoting Horemvore,

reply 198

Quoting JerkClock,

reply 196

Let me just ask a fair question here, do you think the fact that you have been modding an unfinished game (since the last expansion wasn't out until yesterday) might just have a LOT to do with that?

I think your name fits you. (The first 4 letters atleast)

None of this please, keep things civil. Insulting people like this will not be tolerated.

Please move any personal greavences to PMs, this has already gone way too far off topic.

I'll close the door on the way out.

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I hadn’t played with your mod yet but it looked interesting. Thank you for the work you did I was looking through the list of bug fixes and changes. Loss for the community this is.

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WELSHMAN HOREMVORE,

I propose we stick with 3.4 as a group until we are happy with the results , you are an artist , and I understand the frustration , I spent years playing chess , only to be frustrated by cheaters in the end... chess is art too an expression of the mind and heart

Quoting Horemvore,

reply 195

I am no longer updating, supporting or checking on this mod.

Had enough of SD's antic's in regards to modding and flatly refusing to fix a broken game. Time to move on.

PLEASE DONT QUIT HOREM !! WE NEED YOU !!

jj PLEASE RETURN !~!

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The mod should work with 3.5 and retribution disabled. So the mod is still usefull.

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We will always miss Horemvore

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the download link doesn't work anymore

someone care to reupload the file ?

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Download should be working again now. Bare in mind this has been discontinued by myself (someone else is welcome to pick it up).

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Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

Sadly I'm not able to open the file that downloads from the link provided. I was hoping to dissect some of your work (particularly the diplomacy stuff) and learn from it.

If you get a chance to see what might be at issue? It comes through as a .rar and I use 7-zip or whatevs.

Or if you feel like PMing me and sending me the files for Diplomacy additions directly.

Thanks in advance either way, I get it if your busy.

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 216

Sadly I'm not able to open the file that downloads from the link provided. I was hoping to dissect some of your work (particularly the diplomacy stuff) and learn from it.

If you get a chance to see what might be at issue? It comes through as a .rar and I use 7-zip or whatevs.

Or if you feel like PMing me and sending me the files for Diplomacy additions directly.

Thanks in advance either way, I get it if your busy.

Just tried it, work fine for me. The file should be 374mb in size. Try using a different zip archiver. This has helped others with this issue.

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Get yourself WinRAR if 7zip is not liking it.

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Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

Yeah, that did it. Thanks all.

@Horemvore. Would you care if I directly copy your visual UI changes for Diplomacy into GRM. Properly attributed to you of course?

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 219

Yeah, that did it. Thanks all.

@Horemvore. Would you care if I directly copy your visual UI changes for Diplomacy into GRM. Properly attributed to you of course?

Help yourself.

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Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

Cool. Thanks!

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Updated and fixed for the 3.6 patch. You can thank Gauntlet for this final fix/update, I reinstalled GC3 to test an issue he was having which in turn prompted me to fix this mod pack. (Does not support Retribution)

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2317

With Retribution out, our updates going forward are about QOL and reported bugs. Hopefully v3.6 already demonstrates this pretty clearly and v3.7 is in development.

What you are seeing with GalCiv III, really, is a game with two sets of vision. Let's call it pre and post Crusade. I took over GalCiv III for Crusade and beyond and while I have no issue with GalCiv III, the base game, I didn't enjoy it that much.

Now, with hindsight, what we should have done is made Crusade GalCiv IV. That would have made modding a lot easier because we constantly have to dance around the ugly fact that GalCiv III data has to support two wildly different games (pre Crusade and post Crusade).

I apologize for all the modding pain that this has resulted in. Both myself and our GM (Kael -- maker of Fall from Heaven) started out as modders so we know, first hand, the pain.

If someone wants to start up a thread with say 5 *simple* things we could do to make mods more robust and tradeable, please do so and I can ask Cari, our lead developer, to see how doable they are.

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Quoting Horemvore,

reply 222

Updated and fixed for the 3.6 patch. You can thank Gauntlet for this final fix/update, I reinstalled GC3 to test an issue he was having which in turn prompted me to fix this mod pack. (Does not support Retribution)

where is the new version and is it good for 3.4 which I am still on...

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Hi Horemvore. I really wanted to try your Star Trek flavoured mod so I got full GOG version of GalCiv3 (all DLCs without Retribution). It shows version 3.6

I copied all folders from package to Documents\My Games\GC3 Crusade (Designs went to Designs in main game directory). I dont know what exactly these rars are from mods folder: Combat, Map Setup and Moar planets.

Unfortunately there are some errors. When launching:

C:\Users\user\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\UCP_Temporal War\Game\UCP_TemporalTechDefs.xml(136,13): error:
element 'TechAge' is not allowed for content model '(Unavailable?,Government*,Techs*,Culture*,Ideology*,RaceTrait*,TechAge*,Stat*,Relation*,Improvement*,StarbaseModule*,ShipComponent*,ShipComponentType*,UpgradesFrom?,ColonySponsoringShipyard?,MegaEvent?,Turns?,GalaxySize?,NumPlayers?,NumAIPlayers?,NumHumanPlayers?,AllPlayersHaveNumColonies?,HasNumColonies?,FactionPowerAbsolute?,FactionPowerMultipleFromAverage?,PeaceTurns?,WarTurns?,LatestTurn?,EarliestTurn?,UPResolution?,EventChoice?,UnitTypeFrom?,MustBeOnPlanet?,AtColonyLimit?,UnderFactionApproval?,OverFactionApproval?,Tag*,OccursOnce?,OccursOncePerPlayer?,OverrideOr?,DLC?)'

C:\Users\user\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\UCP_Temporal War\Game\UCP_TemporalTechDefs.xml(463,13): error:
element 'TechAge' is not allowed for content model '(Unavailable?,Government*,Techs*,Culture*,Ideology*,RaceTrait*,TechAge*,Stat*,Relation*,Improvement*,StarbaseModule*,ShipComponent*,ShipComponentType*,UpgradesFrom?,ColonySponsoringShipyard?,MegaEvent?,Turns?,GalaxySize?,NumPlayers?,NumAIPlayers?,NumHumanPlayers?,AllPlayersHaveNumColonies?,HasNumColonies?,FactionPowerAbsolute?,FactionPowerMultipleFromAverage?,PeaceTurns?,WarTurns?,LatestTurn?,EarliestTurn?,UPResolution?,EventChoice?,UnitTypeFrom?,MustBeOnPlanet?,AtColonyLimit?,UnderFactionApproval?,OverFactionApproval?,Tag*,OccursOnce?,OccursOncePerPlayer?,OverrideOr?,DLC?)'

Before main screen I get message about numerous "incompatible faction detected", using generic values +Unknown Ship Style. There are no Star Trek factions in New Game.

Halp, please update install guide

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