Jon Shafer on Modding in Civ5

[Robert]

We're working on this video interview we had with Jon Shafer (Lead Designer of Civilization V).
Here's a small preview on what Jon Shafer had to say about modding and a possible SDK:



Jon Shafer: "There are plans for an sdk. I don't know when down the road, but we have that intention. It will include pretty much the same thing as it did in Civ4 with the AIs etc. Thus people will be able to do simular things. In the terms of scripting we decided to move from python to lua. (...) We used Lua for the entire interface, so everybody modding in civ4 knows there are parts in the UI that are not accessable, like the diplomacy screen. But in civ5 everything is Lua accessable, You can change the diplo screen, you can change the front menu, you can change whatever you want! It's pretty neat."

[Grandpa Troll]

Robert, please forgive me,Im not threadjacking, but I am a layman when it comes to modding, I enjoy simple modding such as creating my own maps, and maybe changing advances a civ or leader has, maybe a UU or even UB, is CIV V set up this way or will be?

Thanks for any feedback..looking forward!

By the way, Im ok with BTS Modding, for what I am looking at, hopefully it will be simple enough for my intentions!

Grandpa Troll

[Robert]

From what I understand, there is a map builder / world builder wher you can change that kind of stuff. I don't know how sophisticated this is of course.

[Grandpa Troll]

From what I understand, there is a map builder / world builder wher you can change that kind of stuff. I don't know how sophisticated this is of course.

Thanks Robert

I would simply use a text editor for UU or UB as I see fit.

Gramps

[Dinner]

The world builder/editor sounds pretty cool if you can actually edit the details of units and buildings to make new UUs or UBs. Theoretically it might even be able to create new civs.

[Proteus_MST]

Lua...
never used it, but sounds like it isn´t difficulty to learn,
if you already have experience with other programming/scripting languages

[Hauldren Collider]

Apparently it is kinda like Javascript? Dynamically typed, prototype-based OO, and it has closures. Never used it myself.

Anybody here used Lua before?

Also: I hear it is fast as hell.

[Robert]

I know that I will try to learn it!

[jkp1187]

Definitely looking forward to this. Can anyone recommend a good primer on Lua?

[Hauldren Collider]

Lua itself comes with a tutorial. I've been playing with it (only briefly, so take everything I say with a grain of salt). Syntax seems a bit unique compared to other languages, but there don't seem to be any particularly new concepts.

EDIT: The lua tutorial seems to be a "quick tour". I'd try the Lua site for more info, this might be promising though it isn't really a tutorial. Everything else seems to cost $$$.

[Hauldren Collider]

Okay, five minutes of playing with it and so far it seems that if you've used Python and you've used Javascript (and actually understood it) this should be pretty easy to learn. I think.

The only major difference people are going to find switching from python I suspect will be the way it does object orientation. It's prototype-based, not classical like Python.

[Robert]

More javascript-like then python, I read somewhere, is that true?

[LDiCesare]

Apparently it is kinda like Javascript? Dynamically typed, prototype-based OO, and it has closures. Never used it myself.

Anybody here used Lua before?

Also: I hear it is fast as hell.

It's not OO. It's a table-based language. It's fairly simple to use really, except for obnoxious 'x = a or b' syntax and the fact that 'if 0' is true.
It is possibly the fastest scripting language out there.

[Hauldren Collider]

It's not OO. It's a table-based language. It's fairly simple to use really, except for obnoxious 'x = a or b' syntax and the fact that 'if 0' is true.
It is possibly the fastest scripting language out there.

It can be OO, if you use the metatable feature.

And yeah a lot of scripting languages have a retarded number of truthy and falsy values, javascript included.


@Plomp: I think it'll be more familiar to Javascripters, except it doesn't have most of the Bad Parts, like a global object and implicit global variables.

[onodera]

How can you call Lua's syntax unusual? It's been designed to be as unobtrusive as possible.