Customizing city details ...

[MoiChain]

I'm a great fan of the citybuilding series.
I also do like to customize my games by editing skins, textures, shapes, etc.
Many games offers doors to third part developers for customizing a lot of things.
I was wondering how tiltedmill team intend to deal with this ?...

I guess the developing team concentrate on gameplay although perfecting graphic details is very long and would raise the cost of developement ...

It would be awesome to be able to change/add objects to enhance 3d shapes, textures, etc ...

What do you think of this ? Does anyone know or guess any tiltedmill's intention ? :o

[Azeem]

Traditionally, there weren't any modification features for the city-building series. I doubt that they're going to do the same for CotN. Although it would be interesting to see a sort of "architect" tool included. But the chances of that ever happening are slim...

[Eddy]

I would think it would be very difficult because of the 3-D nature. It would require the ability to plug-in the user modifications, which would take up space and require development time, users would have to have incredible artistic ability and the know how to get their creations to work effectively within the game, and I don't see a lot of users wanting to do this. I never really wanted to change any of the graphics in the other city builders because I was too busy playing them as is. It's not a bad idea, just impractical I think.

[EmperorJay]

Actually, it really depends. If all textures will not be packaged into a .pak (or similar packages) it just a matter of opening the file, redoing the texture and then saving it in exactly the same way et voila, you'll see your texture in-game.

I agree that the 3D models would be a bit harder but anyone with enough money to buy 3D Studio Max and enough patience could make very nice 3D models. It then depends again on how the 3D models will be stored on the hard disk. If they will be packaged into a .pak, you'll have to write a .pak extractor first. F.e., if you want a new houses, you'll just have to name your model exactly the same as the original models.

[vovan]

Well, I think it all depends on the 3D engine they are using. I mean, if you look at a lot of modern FPSs, they are quite moddable these days, so it is certainly possible to allow the players to update the graphics and what-not. Theoretically.

On the other hand, I don't believe strategy games have traditionally offered any moddability - certainly not citybuilding games. About the only games I know like that are Civilization 2/3, which you can mod quite a bit. However, these games cover a large time period and pretty much the whole earth territory-wise. So, it only makes sense to mod them and add new techs, wonders, change the looks of the terrain and what not.

The city-building games, on the other hand, concentrate on a fairly small time period, and only one culture. In this case - egyptian. So, it doesn't make quite as much sense to allow the players to mod the game, since supposedly there would be nothing particularly new to add to the game that would at the same time go with the style and idea of the game.

Also, it depends on the engine they are going to be using - how many tools are already available for it, how user-friendly are they? Sometimes tools are hacked together in such a way, that the user must know what they are doing or risk breaking the game badly. Not a good idea to release such a tool to the general public - it will complain a lot.

I think I read somewhere that they will be using an updated version of the Empire Earth engine? I don't recall there being any big mods for EE, so I imagine the engine might not already have a toolset developed enough for public use with it. Hence, I figure the chances this game would be very moddable might be slim. :)

[Jayhawk]

Taking into account the game's using the EE 3D engine, there shoudl be a fair chance of it being customisable.
The question is...how much did TM change things?