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I can only iterate what I've said before. There is no news for this game coming for a while so don't hold your breath. In the meantime I would like to ask around what you would want from us to be able to start developing your own mods?
I must admit I am not very knowing of how modding usually works (never been involved personally) and could do with knowing more. As I said before, we won't be able to develop any modding tools for it. But we are more than willing to listen to what you need to be able to do stuff on your own. Someone mentioned earlier that there were people who managed to develop some modding tools on their own?
Anyway, post your suggestions what we can do to help you out if you have any. Thank you!
I must admit I am not very knowing of how modding usually works (never been involved personally) and could do with knowing more. As I said before, we won't be able to develop any modding tools for it. But we are more than willing to listen to what you need to be able to do stuff on your own. Someone mentioned earlier that there were people who managed to develop some modding tools on their own?
Anyway, post your suggestions what we can do to help you out if you have any. Thank you!
Official unpacker/repacker of game pack files.
Reader/editor of bianry xml files used by the game.
That would open a lot of modding possibilities.
Yep, unfortunately due to strict forum polices, threads were closed and those projects quickly died out. With no way of authors to share things like this with community in official forum, they quickly lose interest in continued development of such things.
And none of such tools were ever been able to be used for modding. At best, they could unpack (not repack) assets, and read (not write) binary xml files. So they are more like gimmicks at this point.
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Thanks for all the feedback I received here, in PM's and by email. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the current situation and I am currently discussing with the producer team what can be done. More info to come!
I would love to see the a lot of work on the magic system if you are going to rework the game and produce a version 2 or whatever. The game has great game play and battles are fun, but compared to the classic MoM the magic system is very deficient. We spend 100s of turns researching 60 odd spells but can only cast 1 or 2 spells per turn despite having 1000's of mana. There is not really a magical option in WMotA, there is a wonderful might option and also a good might supplimented with some magic, but no magic option or mainly magic supplimented by might. MoM is such a classic fantasy game because it had everything at a strategic level and a way of transferring gold to mana or the reverse which would also add to WMotA strategies. Adding that to this great game would take it so much closer to making this the best turn based fantasy strategy game.
To make magic more decisive in the game I think we need a way to cast many more spells in a turn (in the late game) but without allowing spamming all damage spells or all summoning or mass powerful enchantments on units. Perhaps some sort of cooldown on spells lasting several turns would prevent spamming one particular spell while allowing several different types of spell in the same turn. It makes sense to research 4 different types of damage spells if they have independent casting times and cooldowns.
JJ
To make magic more decisive in the game I think we need a way to cast many more spells in a turn (in the late game) but without allowing spamming all damage spells or all summoning or mass powerful enchantments on units. Perhaps some sort of cooldown on spells lasting several turns would prevent spamming one particular spell while allowing several different types of spell in the same turn. It makes sense to research 4 different types of damage spells if they have independent casting times and cooldowns.
JJ
Just to keep you all in the loop, below I'm posting what I originally sent to BjornB as a PM as I originally didn't have permissions to post here:
First of all, let me applaud this new change of direction!
Actually there is only one thing required from you for this to happen: that you allow modding. On this forum that means allowing discussions of modding and attaching/linking to modding tools and actual mods.
That "someone" probably referred to this thread which now is locked, and the attached tools were removed by the author due to the current anti-modding rules of this forum. The poster, Copernicus, seems to be long gone and the modding tools with him or her.
Luckily, after being frustrated with some of Warlock's shortcomings, I spent a few days last month backwards-engineering Warlock's proprietary formats that package the game content (i.e. graphics, sounds, and gameplay logic like unit/spell/perk stats). After figuring it all out, I wrote all the tools necessary for unpacking (and re-packing) the .pack files found in Warlock's installation folder, and converting the game logic-related binary files therein to a more human-readable format, namely XML, and back. Using these tools Warlock turns out to be very mod-friendly. It's very easy to pick the files you're interested in (e.g. unit stats, perk stats, spell stats, ai priorities, etc.), alter them and then re-pack only the changed files into a new .pack. If that .pack is correctly named and placed into Warlock's installation directory, the game will load the changes and prioritise them over "vanilla" Warlock so they end up in-game.
So far I've successfully tested (in-game) the following things:
Even if I haven't tried it yet, I can see that it's easy to add/modify a plethora of other types content, like quests, random events, artifacts, map generators, special resources (like iron, Halberdier hall), landscape types etc. It is possible to add completely new content like new units and buildings (with new graphics and sounds), and, ultimately, new races. From the looks of it, when the Dark Elves were added, those changes/additions were cleanly contained in some .pack file(s), and required no further modification to the game's executable or libraries. For such modding to be possible, someone in the Warlock community would have to figure out the formats for the 3D-models, textures, sounds etc we get from extracting the .pack files, but with some luck they're using common formats. I haven't looked into that at all as my main gripes with the game revolve around the inferior mid/late-game AI and game balance of existing units/spells/perks.
My hope is that if I were allowed to announce these tools on this forum, the community would pick them up and create mods that breathe some life back into this game. That is unless it's already too late... these forums aren't exactly boiling with activity these days, so the question is if there's still enough interest to support a healthy modding community around Warlock.
First of all, let me applaud this new change of direction!
Actually there is only one thing required from you for this to happen: that you allow modding. On this forum that means allowing discussions of modding and attaching/linking to modding tools and actual mods.
That "someone" probably referred to this thread which now is locked, and the attached tools were removed by the author due to the current anti-modding rules of this forum. The poster, Copernicus, seems to be long gone and the modding tools with him or her.
Luckily, after being frustrated with some of Warlock's shortcomings, I spent a few days last month backwards-engineering Warlock's proprietary formats that package the game content (i.e. graphics, sounds, and gameplay logic like unit/spell/perk stats). After figuring it all out, I wrote all the tools necessary for unpacking (and re-packing) the .pack files found in Warlock's installation folder, and converting the game logic-related binary files therein to a more human-readable format, namely XML, and back. Using these tools Warlock turns out to be very mod-friendly. It's very easy to pick the files you're interested in (e.g. unit stats, perk stats, spell stats, ai priorities, etc.), alter them and then re-pack only the changed files into a new .pack. If that .pack is correctly named and placed into Warlock's installation directory, the game will load the changes and prioritise them over "vanilla" Warlock so they end up in-game.
So far I've successfully tested (in-game) the following things:
- Modifying existing units' stats, including adding existing perks and actions to them, and changing their building requirements and upgrade paths.
- Modifying existing unit actions.
- Modifying the difficulty level (i.e. AI opponent mana/gold/food production bonuses, AI opponen unit/building production speed bonuses)
- Modifying AI priorities (like build less boats (especially in small lakes) and forts (to leave room for more production/tech in the cities), more often dispel heavily buffed enemy units, etc.).
- Modifying units' (and even unit classes', like "all ranged units") level-up tables.
- Modifying spells' stats.
- Adding completely new perks, spells, units (no new graphics/sounds though; see below), unit actions.
Even if I haven't tried it yet, I can see that it's easy to add/modify a plethora of other types content, like quests, random events, artifacts, map generators, special resources (like iron, Halberdier hall), landscape types etc. It is possible to add completely new content like new units and buildings (with new graphics and sounds), and, ultimately, new races. From the looks of it, when the Dark Elves were added, those changes/additions were cleanly contained in some .pack file(s), and required no further modification to the game's executable or libraries. For such modding to be possible, someone in the Warlock community would have to figure out the formats for the 3D-models, textures, sounds etc we get from extracting the .pack files, but with some luck they're using common formats. I haven't looked into that at all as my main gripes with the game revolve around the inferior mid/late-game AI and game balance of existing units/spells/perks.
My hope is that if I were allowed to announce these tools on this forum, the community would pick them up and create mods that breathe some life back into this game. That is unless it's already too late... these forums aren't exactly boiling with activity these days, so the question is if there's still enough interest to support a healthy modding community around Warlock.
That's fantastic work Arkonten! :excl: Looking forward to seeing some of your mods here in the future!
Sorry, but I'm pretty sure I won't be involved in any actual mod development myself. If Paradox gives us the go-ahead for modding I'll release the tools I've written plus some basic documentation, but that's all I promise for now. I'll leave the actual mod development to you all, the Warlock community. If I see enough interest I'll stay along and maintain the tools and develop new ones if needed, otherwise all my work would be for nought, and I do have better things to waste my time with.
If you feel that you are a potential mod creator, please announce so in this thread (or a new one), both to convince me and any other potential mod tool developers that we won't be wasting our time, and to motivate Paradox to actually jump through all the necessary hoops for allowing Warlock modding. I'm sure they (Paradox) too have better things to waste their time on than making potentially difficult decisions on an issue that no one seem to care about.
That pretty good news ! I have download Corpernicus's unpacker before he had to remove the link long time ago. But it was impossible to repack with his tools. What i have notice at this time, it's the lack of script file like lua. Most function are probably hardcoded (unlike king's bounty for exemple which use the same engine), but anyways, with just an unpacker/repacker we'll be able to change some interesting things like starting position. But without access to main function, modding will be limited (but welcome !).
Ino-co previous game (majesty 2) was also very unfriendly to modding and they deliberately limited modding when first DLC come out. I love their games but not their politic toward theirs customers.
Ino-co previous game (majesty 2) was also very unfriendly to modding and they deliberately limited modding when first DLC come out. I love their games but not their politic toward theirs customers.
If there were modding tools and mods and Steam Workshop integration, there would be much more activity around this game. So the decision should be made on how future community activity could look like, not backwards looking...
Great news, arkonten! Thanks for working on it - I'm much encouraged.
It might indeed be too late to get a community going - I haven't looked here for quite awhile, or even played Warlock in that time - but modding could bring a lot of life (and sales, IMO) back to Warlock. Games, especially 4x games, seem to thrive on it. I'd certainly like to play Warlock with some tweaks.
From what you describe I'd agree that all we need from the mods is permission: XML files are plenty easy enough to work with, and packing/unpacking is par for the course.
Without going into any specifics (and thus risking to get this thread locked), some of the pack files do contain lua-script files, so there is scripting support, although its extent is still unclear to me. While most of the game logic indeed is hardcoded, perhaps its symbols (variables, functions) can be overriden via lua-scripts, and that's what the lua-scriptsin the pack files do? Otherwise I'm afraid we're in the rather limiting situation where only a static list of symbols (defined by Ino-Co in the scripting engine, i.e. a list of symbols they felt would be practical to have easily patchable) are reckognized and imported into the game's logic from lua-scripts.
Hopefully Ino-Co will be more helpful if Paradox decides modding is allowed (I actually remember reading some positive words about modding from an Ino-Co dev, so there's hope). Stuff that'd be very welcome from them in that case would be:
- Documentation for TXML attributes/value names. This is already very clear for e.g. unit stats, since they can be observed directly in-game, but very unclear for e.g. some AI constants, whose effects can only be observed indirectly behind tons of random noise.
- Documentation about lua-scriptable symbols. E.g. function interface descriptions (function name, what the function does (return value/side-effects), and descriptions of the parameters).
- Potentially (if this is not already possible) a patch for the game that exposes more internal game logic to lua-scripting.
Perhaps I'm a pessimist. Nevertheless, I certainly hope you're correct.
Arkonen, you can always upload them to Nexus or Moddb or some other site of the kind.
See the MyGames tab up the top-left there? Click on it. Wherever you bought your games from, they will supply you with a Paradox Forum registration code to enter there.
Yeah i have noticed there are some lua files, but they don't include main function. We'll be able to change map generation and some othes variables,and no more. But it's still welcome, not enough but welcome.
Sooo....
When's the first mod coming out?
I love this game, but the replayability is limited when the AI is so easy to beat, and when I can't find anyone to play mutliplayer with.
When's the first mod coming out?
I love this game, but the replayability is limited when the AI is so easy to beat, and when I can't find anyone to play mutliplayer with.