Combining Mods?

[Rhuarc]

Ok, I am really impressed with all of the mods that people have been creating to edit the graphics, the governments, and the civilizations. But what I am wondering is anybody planning on combining all of these into one easy to use patch? I mean for the average Civ3 user it is a little too complicated to do al of this stuff seperatley and not overwrite anything. Basically I was thinking of something along the lines of WesW's MedPackII. That was very easy to use and combined the work of a lot of people. Anybody planning on doing something along these lines? Thanks a lot for all the great mods!!

[Sarxis]

I doubt anything like that will happen until some of the patches are released. It would be a shame to put a lot of work into a combined mod, only to have it nullified with the release of the first patch; which will be soon.

[PMLF]

But after Firaxis releases the patch, Rhuarc's idea is a very good one.

[Rhuarc]

Any ideas on who would be willing to undetake such a task? I would if not for two things, number one I don't have the time, and number two I don't have the technical know how. So, any ideas, or any volunteers?!

[FrostyBoy]

It is a very good idea, I think it's still a bit early to work out what is best for the game yet.

Eventually it will be done.

Whoever wants to use my graphical work to include in the masspack, definitely has my permission.

[Rhuarc]

Does anybody know if WesW is still working on thigns, or if he would be willing to work on this when the time is right? Thanks for all your help, and by the way, Sn00py, I think your graphics mods are really great man!!

[Che Palle]

Most of the Graphic mods will work with one another sans problems, and in many cases (for instance Snoopy's terrain mods) the mods are a "wanna always use it" or "don't want it" ... take my own Wonders with Info, realistically you either want the wonder pictures to give you info or you don't, I can't immagine wanting to play a few games with and a few without.

While I understand your desire for ease of use, I personally prefer mixing and matching mods to my liking... take some guy for instance that likes my Wonders with Info, or Usability Pack, but doesn't want to change his domestic advisor to Elvis... if I combined the three together the user would have a bigger download and if I didn't provide instructions on how to install some but not all, he'd have to go thru more hoops to avoid the Elvis mod (not to mention my other Smiley People mod that while imho very user friendly is bound to be unliked by most folks who may feel it's not serious enough).

The issue then is with the rule-changing editor done Modpacks.

Unfortunatelly in my opinion, a simple patch won't make it easy to combine packs... unless such a patch included a full opening of the BIC format... if that happens (ok, when that happens) I suppose someone could write a program that compares two modpacks to the original and combines what's different in both in a new scenario.

What bugs me right now, however, is that some modpacks are being released as replacements for the standard BIC file (at least one of the corruption reduction ones is, for instance) this imho is a mistake, as it makes the *default* behavior a replacement of standard rules that one may wish to play by when they get better. Since the game has an option to load a scenario, and scenarios may be saved without a map, I wish all developers would stick to releasing scenarios.

Alessandro

[Rhuarc]

I see what you are saying Che Palle, but that is why I keep a backup of all my files so that I can replace the new ones with the old ones if I so desire. Also, I understnad what you are saying about the graphics mods, and I agree. I have already used a lot of them and I will probably always use them, what I woudl like to see though is an easy way to combine say two governents. I mean if I want to add Fascism, and City State. The way it is right now I can only have one of the Civilopedias, eitehr the one ofr Fascism or the one for City State. And I know I could go in and move one over to the other manually, but i have no idea waht all has changed. Is tehre some easy way t combine to different Civilopedias? Also, since the civ3mod files only have one of the governments in each of them, is there anyway to combine two of those files? I mean, it is a pain in the butt if I want to us the pre mod patch 1.5, and fascism, and city state, because I have to go into the editor and manually transfer over all settings from each of the other files I want to use. If this is too hard to understand just say so and I can try to explain it further. THank you guys so much, by the way, for all the owrk u put into these mods, both graphical and otherwise!!

[Che Palle]

Originally posted by Rhuarc
I see what you are saying Che Palle, but that is why I keep a backup of all my files so that I can replace the new ones with the old ones if I so desire.

I understand this is possible, but since the game already comes with a very easy to use option to load a scenario, I don't get why the developers would expect those who would like to play their rules sometimes and the standard rules other times, or someone else's rules for that matter... to go through the hoops of not just backing up, but switching every time you want to change etc.

And of course I understand you can just rename the file to "somecoolrules.bic" and then it becomes a scenario, but why put this burden on the users if it can be conveniently done ONCE by the developer?

Also, I understnad what you are saying about the graphics mods, and I agree. I have already used a lot of them and I will probably always use them, what I woudl like to see though is an easy way to combine say two governents. I mean if I want to add Fascism, and City State. The way it is right now I can only have one of the Civilopedias, eitehr the one ofr Fascism or the one for City State. And I know I could go in and move one over to the other manually, but i have no idea waht all has changed. Is tehre some easy way t combine to different Civilopedias? Also, since the civ3mod files only have one of the governments in each of them, is there anyway to combine two of those files? I mean, it is a pain in the butt if I want to us the pre mod patch 1.5, and fascism, and city state, because I have to go into the editor and manually transfer over all settings from each of the other files I want to use. If this is too hard to understand just say so and I can try to explain it further. THank you guys so much, by the way, for all the owrk u put into these mods, both graphical and otherwise!!

Like I said in the previous post, before what you want becomes possible I think 3 things need to happen:

1. Firaxis needs to release the format of the BIC files

this is the condicio sine qua non (excluding hackers figuring it out) that would allow for step 2

2. Some nice programmer needs to write a Diff program that uses logic such as this:

Read standard rules
Read mod1 rules
Read mod2 rules (mod3 etc.)

If First Rule from mod1 is different from standard and mod2 is same as standard or same as mod1 then spit out mod1 rule.

Else if both mod1 and mod2 different from standard then ask user which he wants to use.

On to next rule.

For this to work, of course...

3. Freggin' developers of BIC files that replace the standard rules need to stop doing so, release their mods as scenarios and strongly discourage users from renaming their mod to the standard rules file

Otherwise above program would be unable to compare mod1 and mod2 to standard (we can't expect the program to be smart enough to go looking for a backupped copy, or assume that all users will correctly backup).

I hope this clears my thoughts on this.

And of course said program would need to compare civilopedias as well.

And yeah I look forward to it too!

Alessandro

P.S. I just thought of something... the comparison I mentioned may not always work as expected. Assuming that if a rule in mod2 is same as standard but mod1 is different, then mod1 should be used may be a faulty assumption. Take a case where someone loads a fascism mod and a city-state mod and both somewhat modify units. Quite possibly the fascism mod writer may have changed some unit definitions to have his mod work properly, while the city-state mod did the same for his mod. In either case it's quite possible that one or more unit definitions in either was left standard for game-balancing reasons. Assuming that either one is the one the user wants to use may be a faulty assumption. And asking the user may be useless as without knowledge of why a unit was or wasn't changed it would be essentially a worthless decision.

[Rhuarc]

All of what you have said sounds good, but there is one scenario that is still left unanswered. What if the user wants to use all of the rules? I mean there are people who have created a city-state mod, and a fascism mod. As it is right now I can only use one at a time, unless I go in and manually add either the city-state to the fascism, or vice-versa. The same goes for the civilopedias. I eitehr have to use one or the other. What I want to do is be able to plug all of this stuff (pre-patch mod 1.5, fascism, city-state) all together at the same time. All of the modders come up with good ideas, but I think that by plugging all of these ideas into one mod so that it includes all of the things it will make it so much better. Oh, do u know of a program that you can compare text files and merge them? THanks a lot ofr all the feedback on this!