Digital Digressions VII

This week Sam discusses the modding community.

Due to excessive amounts of time spent playing Civilization IV, I steered the last two Digital Digressions away from gaming. But I'm back. And this time, I'm talking mods.

Mods, as I'm sure you know, come in all shapes and sizes. At one end of the scale, you have custom-made maps, and mods which make tiny changes to the way a game plays. In some cases, this is as little as removing the annoying intro movie and unskippable company logos from the game's startup (making Battlefield 2 just that much nicer). At the other end, though, there are total game conversions. This is the end of the modding scale which spawned Counterstrike out of Half-Life.

There is so much here that I could look at. There are, I'm sure, many user-created maps for Battlefield 2 (not to mention the legions of other FPS shooters I don't have copies of). And I have a couple of heavyweight mods for the Total War games sitting in my downloads folder, too. I'm even half-tempted to explore the unofficial expansion packs for Baldur's Gate I & II. But of course the game I really want to talk about is Civ IV.

I have reasons! It isn't just because this is my favourite game at the moment. Partly, I'm choosing to concentrate on Civ because I've actually played a number of the maps, mods and scenarios for it. And, partly it is because the game has been intentionally built to be modded. Lastly, though, it's because I've actually started modding for Civ IV myself.

Yes, that's right: I actually have some kind of skill. I'm no pro - that I'll freely admit. But it's great to have a project like this; I'm proud of what I've achieved thus far, and alternately excited and frustrated by the prospects for the future. That's enough of that for now, though - I'll return to my own work after I've detailed some of the masterworks of the Civ IV modding community...

Rhye's 18 Civ World Map
This was my first dowload (and many other people's first as well, I suspect) for Civ IV. It's simple - a world map, with all 18 civs in appropriate starting locations - but it is exactly what many players want from a game of Civ.

Microworld
At 32x20 squares, I'm amazed that this world map is playable at all, but it makes for really interesting games. Expansion without conquest is basically out of the question.

Europa Europa
I've had a near obsession with the map of Europe since I first played the boardgame Diplomacy, so this very quickly became a personal favourite. This mod pits 18 European Civs against one another, with Europeanized versions of the non-Euro Wonders, and the addition of Colonial Wonders, which provide exclusive access to certain African, Asian and American resources (like Ivory, Tobacco and Opium), and new religions and civics reflective of the setting. What's more, this mod is now so popular that it has its own mods - map variants, new unique units, and a scenario set in 1380 AD.

The Ancient Mediterranean Mod
Good map and flavoursome civs. More importantly, though, this one fleshes out the early game much more (and the Ancient/Classical eras do tend to be over pretty quickly) with more units and subdivisions of the tech tree. Not as polished as Europa Europa, but definitely worth a look.

'The Awesome Mod'
Just because I needed one complete wildcard... This little mod adds the legendary Chuck Norris as a near-invincible unit. Not great for game balance, of course, but who cares?

Randland (Wheel of Time) Map
A map based on the world of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series of fantasy novels. It's good, but I mention it mostly because it is the basis for what I am working on...

...which is a fully fledged Wheel of Time Scenario for Civ IV!

I've always wanted to create something for Civilization that other people would play. Well, at least since the release of Civ III. But unfortunately, I've never had the necessary skills or the drive to learn. But, with the alleged ease with which Civ IV can be messed with, I felt I had to give it a serious go this time. Firaxis have made the game moddable on several different levels. At the most basic, there is the WorldBuilder - pretty easy to use, and good for straight map-making, but lacking in a number of important features such as the ability to place cities (presumably you are expected to hop in and out of the WorldBuilder and let the game itself turn settlers into cities). Fortunately, and to my great surprise, everything in a map or scenario can in fact be edited as text - right down to the properties of (and units and cities present at) each individual square.

Before I got to this point, though, I did some research. As luck would have it, someone else had already made a map of 'Randland'. The first hurdle had just been passed. Becephalus (who, at time of writing, I still haven't heard anything from) had made a damned good map, but it still used the standard real-world civs. So my first challenges were to add cities to the map and edit the details of the civs to make them the nations of the Wheel of Time books. Both of these were done with Notepad. The civ details were obvious, being laid out near the start of the file. For cities, I first had to place a city with a settler, then go back into Notepad and find the code used for a city. Then all I had to do was duplicate the code at other grid locations and change the city names (the code is actually very easy to understand, once you know what you're looking for).

Knowing how to place the cities, however, was only half the battle. I also needed to know where on the map they had to go. Research again. While the maps in the novels themselves give the locations of the major cities and locations, there are numerous smaller towns which are not marked anywhere (and, in order to flesh out quite a large Civ map, I needed to put these towns in). For the names and rough locations (gleaned from book quotes nobody could possibly remember otherwise), I am hugely indebted to the Encyclopaedia WoT (and also to Tristan, to a lesser extent, for finding this wonderful site). Often modding involves research - even if it's only looking at an atlas - and it is important both for historical mods and for mods based on other pre-existing (should that be pre-invented?) worlds to be accurate, at least within the bounds of playability. Due to the very vague locations of some towns and villages, and also due to the constraints of the game, I have taken some liberties with city placement. As of yet, no-one has complained.

After much struggle trying to find good places to put all the cities, I returned to the WorldBuilder to bring all the civilizations up to the medieval era, technologically speaking, and to give them appropriate units, buildings, wonders (stand-ins for the moment - hopefully we will at some point have WoT-flavoured wonders) and terrain improvements. And, after struggling through a few bugs, I uploaded my efforts to the creation forums at CivFanatics.

At the moment, discussion of this project is mostly based in the thread for Becephalus' Randland Map, mentioned above. And it is gathering people and momentum. I had tried my hand (with little success) editing Civ IV's 'xml' files, which can be used to overhaul units, techs, religions, or almost anything in the game. Like the WorldBuilder files, the xmls are editable in Notepad. And they are still more user-friendly than expected - but the number of them, and the amount of information contained within, makes them more difficult to use. But I plan to learn, and to keep working (CivFanatics also has tutorials for this sort of thing, which is great).

One area I probably won't be straying into is the 'python' files, in which it is in theory possible to change almost anything at all about Civ IV. Supposedly, one could even make a role-playing game using a converted Civ engine. If anyone does, you can be sure I want to hear about it. And I'll let you know it it's any good. For now, please feel free to download this early version of the scenario. I know I'm a shameless self-promoter. You know you'd do the same in my position.

Because I refuse to believe you don't care, I'll give updates on how the Scenario/Mod is coming in future Digital Digressions. For that, and for news, previews and reviews - keep an eye on NZGamer.