Bring on the Content Mods!

from Elemental Forums

As much as I love the total conversion mods (kudos to the guys doing Dragonlance), bug fix mods, and mechanic-changing mods, I would love to see more pure content mods.

What do I mean by this?  Well, I want to see more stuff that is purely cosmetic and aggregate.  So as soon as the full modding download network is enabled in Elemental I would love to see long lists of assets that simply add to the game without changing any game-mechanics or imbalancing anything.

For example, some of you may be familiar with Martigens Monster Mod for Oblivion and Giants for Morrowind.  All this mod really did was add a metric ton of monsters to the game world (it also tweaked some behavior as well, but that's beside the point).  The wilderness was 10x more fun to explore because of all the critters you could run into.

In my wildest dream I envision being able to finish a game, log into the modding download list and say, "ooo, someone just uploaded 10 new monsters, 3 new quests, and 7 new resource nodes".  I could then download all of them and they would automatically, randomly spawn in all of my new games.

So, I'd just like to put in my personal request to the talented modders out there to give us more monsters, more races, more quests, more clothing, more resources and just more STUFF, to flesh out our games.  It doesn't have to change any mechanics, it doesn't have to imbalance anything, it just makes our games a little more exciting each time we play.

79,041 views 21 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

 

Agreed. I've started working on quest modding, with the intention of eventually doing a pack of quests and also big quests that are effectively mini-campaigns. I've hit a wall though that has stopped my progress, and that is that I cannot figure out how to spawn a unit from a quest condition or result and that is central to most of my quest ideas. I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to do this and give an example in the XML, I pounded by head against the wall for hours trying to figure this out. 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

<GameModifier> JoinUnitArmy

is what you're looking for, I think, Bobby. Frogboy wrote a large Dev journal with all the currently hooked-in GameModifiers (though no explanations).

Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I've been thinking about this for a bit today.

Essentially, I reached a point in my current project where I completed everything that I could do at the moment. I'm working on a new race for empire. Specifically, background story, tech tree conversion, new resources and city tiles are all complete. For all intents and purposes, the race is playable. But it lacks everything that makes it special, which is everything I CAN'T do with the current modding system. Right now, it's barely more than a re-skin. Since there's no depth to the mod tools at hand, there's no depth to my project. It's boring.

So I started looking at other projects, and I thought to myself - what would I like to see in the game?

Personally I think custom races are the future of Elemental. Undead Rising 2.0 is a perfect example.

So let's say I post a thread tomorrow that basically calls for everyone to contribute a city tile to a race - let's say elves. The basic attributes are that it looks like they're living in a wood, but not in tents. It should be a city and feel like a city, but it should also be elven and feel like a forest. I will also include the colour codes.

So the deal is that everyone who feels like it contributes one city building tile (and one more which is the same, but building in progress). That way we can spread the load a bit, and we can hopefully push some races out to the users. It's a decentralized way to mod.

Maybe we can even get some unit skins, and some weapon models in to replace the standard weapons. They'll look different but play the same.

Maybe it takes a week, maybe it takes two. There's no rush, but we should slowly be filling up on the necessary things.

Then, when we're done, we start the next one.

How does that idea sound?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 3
I've been thinking about this for a bit today.

Essentially, I reached a point in my current project where I completed everything that I could do at the moment. I'm working on a new race for empire. Specifically, background story, tech tree conversion, new resources and city tiles are all complete. For all intents and purposes, the race is playable. But it lacks everything that makes it special, which is everything I CAN'T do with the current modding system. Right now, it's barely more than a re-skin. Since there's no depth to the mod tools at hand, there's no depth to my project. It's boring.

So I started looking at other projects, and I thought to myself - what would I like to see in the game?

Personally I think custom races are the future of Elemental. Undead Rising 2.0 is a perfect example.

So let's say I post a thread tomorrow that basically calls for everyone to contribute a city tile to a race - let's say elves. The basic attributes are that it looks like they're living in a wood, but not in tents. It should be a city and feel like a city, but it should also be elven and feel like a forest. I will also include the colour codes.

So the deal is that everyone who feels like it contributes one city building tile (and one more which is the same, but building in progress). That way we can spread the load a bit, and we can hopefully push some races out to the users. It's a decentralized way to mod.

Maybe we can even get some unit skins, and some weapon models in to replace the standard weapons. They'll look different but play the same.

Maybe it takes a week, maybe it takes two. There's no rush, but we should slowly be filling up on the necessary things.

Then, when we're done, we start the next one.

How does that idea sound?

Good idea. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

You mean somethin like this:

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, exactly like that (but with a dark green or brown roof)

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Can we change the color of roofs?

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Bottom left, where it says Roofs.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

ooh...that took about 5 minutes to make...so tiles aren't so bad.  I read your topic then just did one to prove it could be done.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

A community project might be interesting, but it would require someone to supervise it, write up the guidelines for what the tiles should portray, the feel, style, intent, look ect. and ultimately decide on which tiles to accept or not, for the given project.

Actually my trees look so tiny!

 

Version 2, now with bigger trees

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Anyone want an elven watchtower?  RAR FILE.

Under construction:

Built:

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Here is one I did this week that would probably work for some elves:

 

 

Side view:

 

+1 Loading…
Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting acristello, reply 14
hey jshores, i think that is a fantastic building man.

 

 

 

Thanks, I plan to use it for a Dryad faction in the future :).

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

As much as I love the total conversion mods (kudos to the guys doing Dragonlance), bug fix mods, and mechanic-changing mods, I would love to see more pure content mods.

What do I mean by this?  Well, I want to see more stuff that is purely cosmetic and aggregate.  So as soon as the full modding download network is enabled in Elemental I would love to see long lists of assets that simply add to the game without changing any game-mechanics or imbalancing anything.

I'm all for this. Actually that's part of the plan with the Dragonlance Assets. As we finish parts, like new races for example, I'd like to release them as stand alone additions to the base game that don't do anything special aside from look differently.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Raven, reply 16

I'm all for this. Actually that's part of the plan with the Dragonlance Assets. As we finish parts, like new races for example, I'd like to release them as stand alone additions to the base game that don't do anything special aside from look differently.

Yes Raven X, you WILL release the Draconians faction, so I can use them in my Master of Magic mod. :P

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Speaking of content, anyone know how to make the Umberdroths a mountable unit, and a rescource just like wargs and horses? :P While still allowing them to be trained as its own unit. Actually now that I think about it, adding attack stats to wargs and allowing them to be trained would be cool too!

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, that stuff is fairly easy. The thing is, units look horrible mounted on them.

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Aww :( my idea sucks LOL

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

honestly, if i could model, i would flip open a monster manual and go to town.

 

i was thinking about this when i was mowing the lawn today.

 

seems a hydra would be easy to make off the current dragons.

also a chimera, again from a dragon, maybe a bear or wolf head (i havent seen a lion in game)

 

beholders should be easy to model, orb + eye stalks = fun times.

 

i would even volunteer to do the mundane things like backstory, stats, etc... etc... for these.

 

after all, i want content too :)

 

i've modded myself 5x fallen female NPCs just cause there don't seem to be any, gave them a spawn chance of 100% and it's nice