So.. what is coming in the mod tools? Before I waste my time. :/

Right. I know about the beta mod tools. That's what I'm referring to.
They aren't really mod tools.. it's not an SDK.

By the FAQ, interviews I saw on TV, interviews on websites, it sounded like this game would have real mod support. But it doesn't. All you can do is edit some text files, not the software.
Games like UT, quake, HL, released with half or so of their source code so you could change the game into almost anything.

This.. this isn't what I thought we were supposed to have. And usually if a game doesn't have good mod support in the beginning, it never will. :/

I think you should give Ironclad a chance to get all the modtools released before making any assumptions. You do have to remember that it isn't an engine that is designed for multiple games like the UT, quake, and HL engines. The sins engine was designed solely for sins. I'm sure when the full mod tools are out I'd expect you'd be able to change some gameplay mechanics. Kind of off topic, but wouldn't it be possible to make grav wells really really small so that you can pretty much phase jump anywhere?

Yeah but.. it doesn't seem like we'll get real mod tools.
This is just some data file editing.

We need some source code. :/ You can't edit a lot of important things you would want to to make a total conversion.


and uh... you could do that but you can't make it so you can slow-boat it to another planet. But again, this is sort of like a "stupid hack" that i was talking about that you need to do to get stuff to work how you want because of the limitations of this entity editing. :/



Sorry but it annoys me how RTS game never have good mod support like ut, quake, and hl had. You basically have to mod one of those 3 games in order to make a good RTS.
It ticks me off how good this game is yet I can't make a good mod out of it because of the massive limitations in what can be changed.

I don't think Stardock owns the engine, just the right to use it. So they can't go willy-nilly and have parts of it open-source.

Hopefully they release a ingame language that allows heavier scripting in their expansion.

Erm... maybe try waiting a bit longer before you declare that it'll never be possible to do what you want? The game's only been out for just over two weeks! Show some patience.

Besides, even if the current mod package isn't exactly what you had in mind, it's a whole lot better than nothing. Blair's post said that it's "an incomplete "beta-ish" version of the mod materials". Does that mean they're releasing source code later? No. But it does sound like there's more on the way later.

Take a deep breath, relax, and give it some time.

They've already said there's going to be no custom DLLs.

WindexGlow: Ironclad owns the engine.

You all should be aware that there's a huge difference between source/hard/engine code and module/object/script code. There is not a commercial game out there that gives modders access to the source/hard/engine code. Commercial games are just about never open source because this would harm their ability to compete with other companies. If an engine was licensed, this is automatically a violation of the licensing agreement. However, in most cases the module/object/script code is readily accessible via some sort of export or decompiling tool. This is the stuff that you can use to make Source, Crytek, or Unreal do pretty much whatever you want up to the limits of your coding ability and the ability of the engine. How much of Sins is made up of these available modules/objects/scripts? I don't know because I've been focusing my effort on Crysis (I used to be a UT modder until one of the developers harassed me). If things are in the source/hard/engine code, then you will not be able to change them. For example, if the research feature must be a part of the game, then you cannot get rid of it although you should be able to change things that can be researched, what effects they have, or rename and reuse that feature for something else.

Sins is made up of very little of it.. that's the issue.
And modifying these entities pales in comparison to unrealscript. With unrealscript you can actually add in new things.

I understand not having access to engine code, but not being able to modify the core gameplay at all is stupid.
Like quake, unreal, hl, crysis have it it's as close as you can come to having source code. You can do A LOT. But you couldn't make sins out of them without the actual engine code because all the engines are hard coded.(IE, the netcode would poo all over having thousands of units)

I don't consider things less than making a TC to be actual modding, and it doesnt' seem like we're going to be able to make real TC's. All we can do is replace models/skins/damage values and blah blah.


Like I said.. usually when the devs don't say anything about what we're going to have, and the tools at the start suck, then it's not going to get better.
Devs aren't saying anything.

And I thought this game was supposed to be highly moddable. It's part of the reason I got it.

Like one of the above posters mentioned, there's not a game available that gives you access to changing game mechanics. There's tons of stuff you can do in Sins - within the engine's limitation, which is true for ANY moddable game.

So, in fact, the game is *highly* moddable, but expecting the ability to change the engine is quite unreasonable on your part.

"Like one of the above posters mentioned, there's not a game available that gives you access to changing game mechanics. There's tons of stuff you can do in Sins - within the engine's limitation, which is true for ANY moddable game."
HL.. quake.. unreal.. crysis..? What are these?

The game is not *highly* moddable. It's only as moddable as games usually are now days. :/

You can't add new mechanics, you can only change around current ones.

I'm not saying I should be able to change the engine. You don't know what you're talking about so I don't know why you're argueing against me.

The game is* actually highly "mod-able", in the respect that it is very easy to anyone who has half their wits about them to change the settings, or modify, if you will, the game to their likings. It might not be what you wanted, and I agree that it is limited, but saying that nothing less than a TC is an actual mod is a touch elitist.


I see a TC as fully viable at the moment for most of the popular SciFi genres, with a bit of creativity of course. You seem intelligent enough to know that the game is still very new and that it takes time for inspiration to take full advantage of the possibilities.


Comparing and complaining that this game isn't on par with what is(are) the most highly mod-able game(s) on the market is apples to oranges, imo. Sure, it'd be fantastic, but what we've got is still above par. Give it some time, play with what you've got. They're not going to give you less to work with in an expansion, so things can only get better.

Oh, I don't know, FPS games? It's not like you can modify their engine either with their SDKs, they just give you basic tools to let you work with the engine. Do you remember perhaps how stupid vehicles were in a few CS maps, because the engine wasn't built to have vehicles?

Sins engine is simpler to work with than FPS engines, and you can mod much more than just unit stats.

Right. You can't mod the engine in those either, but it's a lot more than you can do here..

PC games need a very moddable rts engine like there are FPS ones. :/

Start listing, because other than a few seemingly random engine limitations in Sins (only 5 capitals, for example), pretty much everything can be changed that's not hardcoded (and every game has stuff that can't be changed)

What I think we are asking here is an extensible interface, python or lua bindings to objects in game and function calls to control events.

People have turned Halflife and Unreal into RTS's flight sims and even card games! (or ghast gary's mod for example, that's a lot of hacked together custom code)

That's modding, changing some text files and importing models is really restrictive. At least HW2 had a nearly complete (though undocumented) scripting engine that allowed for external bindings (controlling tactical AI, creating arrays and objects, writing/reading files, feedback mechanisms for the UI)

for example how do we make a single player campaign with events? there is no ability to do that what so ever! I would have been happy if the devs left in event stubs and told the community to make the SP game for them! How can I make unit move to a specific spot on the map or have a certain ability fire off on a timed trigger? what about binding keys to ship behaviors that are built of existing calls in the engine?

I want to be able to write code against the existing data structures !!! I could do that in HW2, which is known to be a POS for modding, it had bindings to lots of the internal code, you could make new game types with different goals.

what if I want to make a persistent campaign mode? I want to be able to upload stats from a game to a web server that had a collection of other simultaneous games to have a larger galactic community? with python bindings to export ship stats, some code to fire it off at predefined intervals and some creative db work this is a very real possibility.

You are right when you say that the engine is built for sins, but why no external bindings and flat denials that they will be possible? I've implemented the lua stack before in other programs, it is painful to do, but once you've done that it's pretty easy to make the bindings available to the scripting language. Python is even simpler because of the object level transparency and the ability to compile modules to other languages.

I don't want to modify large sections of the game like the rendering engine, netcode or entity management system. I want to be able to extend the tools the engine provides with my own code!

I'm willing to wait for the dev's to see if they help us with this, but it's unfortunate because I had really high hopes for moving off of the HW2 platform and into a more strategic game.

Without the ability to do these things the modding capability is NOTHING more than changing some graphics and tweaking stats.

My guess is that they don't really know what they will put inside those tools. They just gave a generic awnser. IMHO they are to make reading forums and gathering data on what ppl are willing to do with this game. So we should make a single post where we will clearly explain what we are asking for and how deep we want those tools to go or if not tools then how deep we want to be able to mod the game.

That post should be made sticky since it would give to IC a clues on how to do there moding tools.

Maybe what we should do as opposed to crying over our lack of a PS3 when we got a PSOne, is play with what we got, learn what we can do with it, and ask for what we can't. I do agree that we are limited in our abilities out here. I want my Antimatter to be limited and delivered to my caps by a new type of cargo ship. I want in system jumps. There's a black spot on my map. I should be able to jump to it and build some kind of a starbase. Some of these might be possible with what we have, but that last one definatly is not.

All we as the customer can really do is ask for the ability to add in these features. It worked well during the beta. Who's to say it won't work now? Brian Fraiser did say himself that these are "Beta-ish" tools. Let's run with that.

If you want me to be truely honest...I'm really surprised and disappointed at this kind of reaction. As someone has already stated, the game has only ben out for a couple of weeks. The tools we have, just a little over half that. Be thankful for that much. It was originally stated we weren't going to have them for a month after release. There's something to think about.

EDIT: And I agree with Loup on the sticky post.

I want to be able to add another bloody page to the frigate factory. I'm already starting to get the feeling there are a lot of invisible walls modders will be crashing into in the next couple months.



The way the tools were presented makes it look as if the only reason they're "betaish" is that they lack documentation and such, not because they're incomplete.

And to make it clear, again, this annoys me the most because I love the game so much and I badly want to make a mod from it.
Making a mod from crytek, unreal, id4, source isn't really an option because their netcode is hard-coded on all of them I beleive. And even if they aren't, there is far more work that would be needed to get them to do what I wanted than sins. Sins only have a few things I need to change, but they're important things.


Yes I know this is easy to mod.. but modding where a few can make amazing things than everyone being able to make 10million hp cap ships.


And as far as asking the devs for new strings to use?.. It'd seem odd for them to do that. I'd rather have the ability to myself. And even if they did I'd have to be waiting on them for new things in order to make the mod.
If I had the tools now I could have the mod out in 2-4 months. :/

Finally someone who knows what they're talking about, someone with experience with modding (Some know you from the HW sw's mod) who's replied and not made a fool of himself like some (not all) of these others.

I'm, like you said, not asking to be able to change the rendering engine or the netcode.
But at least I want to be able to write my own code and stuff. I'm limited to all these variables which are linked to hard-coded variables within the games code which I have no idea what they do, because I can't look at them, and I can't make my new code and variables.

Yeah UT2004 had some really silly hardcoded things like LADDERS. You couldn't mod the freaking ladders! But you know what you could do? Code a new ladder actor for mappers to use!

I'm sure there is more that I can do which isn't apparent right now.. but it seems attempts at a lot of things leads you into a brick wall of tremendous limitations.


There is no scripting language here. No C++ or java that has alot of strings disabled, no unrealscript, no python, any of those things. We have some variables, numbers, booleans..

I can't, for example, as far as I can tell from this point, add in fog of war which I need, because you can't really code in new things. My way to get rid of the grav wells thing is to just make a huge one around a star and place planets around it, instead of one around every planet and star, but doing that will make the entire thing revealed for everyone (now you have fog of war on grav wells you can't see, and it revealed in ones you can.)


You can do the cargo ship thing. Look at the advent recharging antimatter building and put the AM recharge rate on your cap ships to nothing.

Now because you can do this doesnt' mean my point i've been trying to make is moot, it just reinforces it: If that advent building wasn't in the game to take that recharge in radius string from it, doing that would of be impossible!

bump :/

I actually have to agree both with the OP and those who advocate patience.

Fact is, Innociv is correct - right now about all we can do is tweak the stuff which already exists. As I am making a mod which should add some new stuff, including a new race which is supposed to have quite a different gameplay than the existing ones, I am faced with a number of, as Carbon said, "invisible walls", including the fact that right now you cannot add more types of ships than there already are since it seems the slot data is not handled by the files we can edit, but elsewhere. I can only imagine the sort of walls a serious script-writer encounters, since you can't actually modify game behaviour on the basic level.

Now if you are making a mini-mod or tweaking stuff, yeah, it can be done no problem. But the most rewarding and challenging projects, and most serious modders go for those, are total conversions. Which implies not only changing the look of the game or a few stats, but how the game plays.

Take Star Wars TC for example. Lets say you want to remove phase lanes and make it so ships can hyper between any two planets directly. Right now, that means making a map with all planets linked by hand.

But let us say you want to make a Death Star. That implies destroyable planets. Now, planets are models just like ships, and I am sure that with access to the right data, they can be made destroyable, just like ships. But right now, that cannot be done. I, for example, want to make a "superweapon" which requires modification of how the bombing effects work i.e. the explosion doesn't just blossom on contact with the planet mesh, but "envelops" the entire planet slowly, burning it. To be able to transform the planet type at that time would also be nice, otherwise it would look silly, to have a giant firestorm consume a planet, and next - its back to its pristine glory, city lights and everything.
Well right now, that remains just an idea, because I can't have a peek in the deeper level stuff to see if something like that can even be done within the constraints of the game engine.

BUT. Patience is a virtue. I know many serious modders and modding teams are anxious to know to what extent will we actually be allowed to change the game, because some of those projects imply months of work and team effort, and its difficult to commit when you don't even know if you are going to be able to do half the stuff you want to do.
But the devs have so far been quite forthcoming and I think they deserve a bit of leeway for that, yes? Until more information is released, we can use the time to master the intricacies of what is available. Some old dogs here already know their stuff, true, but you can always, eh, play the game?

Anyway. When the current mod tools were released, we were told in no uncertain terms that this is not all. Just a taste to get things rolling. So I believe we will get more extensive information and/or tools to be creative to our hearts content. Until then, patience.

Patiance is a virtue sure.. But i'm saying I want to know what i'm being patiant for. Like the topic says, what are we waiting to actually get? Or is this it?

I rather think this is it.. :/ The devs haven't said otherwise. They said they encourage modding, the game is data driven (what they mean by the entity files), and blah blah. But look at what we have. :/

I just want to hear what we're actualy going to get before I invest hundreds of hours. Sure the devs have invested hundreds, thousands, of hours, but they got paid for that. I don't want to spend all this time on stuff and then find out the mod support isn't going to be any better than it is now code wise.

And I don't want to wait a year before coding can actually start. The game is fresh now. Who wants to make a mod that no one is left around to play, after all?

90% of all the complaints can be solved by allowing us to define our own entityTypes (within limits, obviously).

The other 10% are so unreasonable that I don't expect anything

I honestly think a lot of people don't realize just how much you can do already. Instead of complaining that you can't get rid of a fundamental mechanic that the game was built around (phase lanes, anyone?), try doing everything else because it's pretty much all possible.

I'll freely admit some of the invisible walls that make no sense are annoying, and I hope we're given a way to get around them eventually, but complaints that modding is very limited are unfounded. A mod/TC will *always* be limited by the engine in one way or another, there's no getting around it and the sooner some people accept it the easier it will be. The truth is, some things are a stretch to fit into Sins, and you can never have a game that you can practically mold into another totally different one.

Lol.. "I honestly think a lot of people don't realize just how much you can do already. "

:/ Yeah okay..

We can do a lot right now to change gameplay. Just search for my Sins Enhancement mod. Most of what I do is just changing simple values but I'm learning more now and starting to add new things. I agree with you though that the current mod tools are limiting, especially with some of the new features I'm working on for my next version.