Customizing Tools / Mods

[Leviathan]

Posted this topic because Horus asked about them.

What would you want to customize Horus??

I gess i can make the GUI skinable and very customizeable.

As for mods, only changing the game so its not in a Outpost world is what i can think of.

Cant beleive were talking about at such a early strage

But im excited!

[Hooman]

What about some sort of unit or structure editor? You could play around with variables that control what a unit/structure does, and how well it does it. Thinks like attack strength, and concussion or pentration damage, armour, speed?, maximum carrying capacity, or production rate. Does the structure build units or produce some sort of resource, or how much resources it takes to run a building.

There are lots of things to customize in any game. It's always best if you can avoid hardcoding stuff. Plus, it makes it easier for you if you just get a bunch of content creators to fill in details, or fine tune things for you. It leaves more time for you to work on the rest of the project, or just set rough values and let someone else work out the details.
 

[dm-horus]

My thinking is the same as hooman. A unit/structure/stat editor would let a team of content creators tweak, tune and balance variables while you work on completing the rest of the project. Ideas could be tested very quickly this way so new features could be implimented a lot faster (than it is with OP2). If someone wants to see what happens when a unit is given +5 HP, it doesnt take a month of community effort to get results.

I also asked about an editor because there are lots of ppl in the comm (including myself) that have no programming skills but would like to contribute. It would be difficult to have to wait while ppl learn to make content before their ideas can be explored. Most would be dropped long before they were tried, which tends to be the case with some OP2 ideas that are floating around. Having an editor with a comprehensive gui would let otherwise inclined OPU members submit content quickly and easily. Having a sound mod/patch system in the game that allows easy modification/addition would be the single greatest contribution to the game/community that could be made, Lev. If twice as much time/effort could go into designing a platform that could do this, content creation time would reduce significantly in the end. I also think this would really bring the community in tighter and appear more welcoming to new users as they could immediately begin making contributions.

[Leviathan]

Sounds great and good ideas and points

I like the idea of someone else being able to edit the game stats (units, research etc) and i can get on with the coding.

wen i get around to this i will make all the game info stored in data files which can be edited with a editor later