I read elsewhere in the forums that each server would keep track of the mods installed to restrict the ability of users to bring in their “Uber” game breaking mods and whatnot. Here is my question - Will there be some classes of mods which you can take with you regardless of where you go? For example, something that would be cool is if you could mod the AI of your little people, so that when you join worlds, your characters would interact differently with things than those of other people.
Perhaps deserving of its own topic, will modding the AI even be possible?
I could see this working as a client side mod that changes aesthetics without affecting gameplay. Beyond reskinning of villagers, though, I tink it would be hard to implement. You could perhaps make different idle animations, but since the idle behaviors of the villagers are supposed to move them about, it would be hard to prevent mods that gave someone an advantage in game.
Yeah, I agree. It wouldn’t be ok for multiplayer. But I feel like if you wanted to have your little guys Hi five each other occasionally, or do other amusing little ant farm things, that would be fun. You could also change the thresholds for existing values. Maybe you want to recreate the absurd cowardice and artificial stupidity of DF Dwarves. You could do that: In your own single player game.
Personally I’d actually like my villagers or dwarves or whatever not to be afraid of an animal that isn’t even actually aggro’d at the time, or even morbidly afraid of certain animals at all whether or not they are angry, but some might want that.
I’m also thinking you could do a really extreme mod and do something like say, Smurfs or Norns from Creatures. Those would also require unique, and endearingly silly AI. They could screw around a lot more than “normal” human villagers, and maybe have different requirements for being placated. I tend to think that something like Smurfs or any other kind of “generic tree hugging elfin Creature” like that would be pretty averse to work, really.
Or whatever. You could mod in an “evil” race, or just a sort of humans that was notably more fractious and inclined to not listen to you because they had bad attitudes and low work ethics, and more inclined to fight with each other and be worthless unless you had someone to bully them or directly supervise them. So kind of like Dungeon Keeper.
That could even be a feature of something that normally worked differently: You could have useful creatures or mercenaries that are disinclined to be as determined to defend your settlement or do anything useful unless you bribe them or pay through the nose, and generally aren’t “your guys” as much as the villagers. Mercenaries could bail if it got bad a lot faster than your guys, or maybe your guys wouldn’t run, but mercs would.
With the evil race, I could see a leader class being useful, but I wouldn’t want one in the normal game.
I am constantly amazed at the potential that this game has. People have so many crazy and unique ideas, and a lot of them are truly brilliant.
It actually wouldn’t be incredibly difficult to implement. Believe it or not, the general AI algorithms that are used for these sort of tasks could be incredibly easy to implement, especially where they are pluging in things with Lua. All that would need to change in the core algorithm would be to accept an arbitrary heuristic to judge which goals are more important given the current state of the world. And there wouldn’t necessarily be any unfairness, as you would only be modifying your own nation, and unless you’ve got a better grasp on the gameplay and dynamics than the game devs themselves, you’d be unlikely to be able to make a straight up improvement.
It would likely be a lot more subtle than making an “evil” race, or what have you. In most cases, it would be more like “Well, my nation prefers to modify the terrain and build stairs (or whatever) than fighting other players.” But the difference would be so tiny, that’d hardly be noticeable until the game has progressed a significant amount.
I actually saw that, and messaged the OP on that one to see if there was anyway I could contribute or assist As that is more or less exactly what I was looking for. Nonetheless, I think it would be sweet if you could load up your own and play in other people’s worlds without them also running that mod.
Just kind of making my way through the mods… But this one is kind of interesting. My only caveat is that you talk about your client side changing of your villagers but what’s stopping you from using that on other players on the same server if you can already do it to your own? sounds like a security issue if it were possible. If per se though there was a server side mod that bundled together a bunch of client interfaceable idea’s I think it would be more secure. Just an idea though
As that is more or less exactly what I was looking for. Nonetheless, I think it would be sweet if you could load up your own and play in other people’s worlds without them also running that mod.