My dream - mod support for SE so we can have a W40k mod

[Itza]

Shadow Empire is only a few alterations from being the PERFECT Warhammer 40k mod. Will we ever see mod support for SE?

And for those who are not 40k fans, SE is the ideal base to make mods for just about any setting or franchise.

[Voker57]

It already has kind of mod support, depending on what level of WH40kization you are trying to achieve... But of course it would benefit from opening the source code so modders can have full access.

[DeltaV112]

It already has kind of mod support, depending on what level of WH40kization you are trying to achieve... But of course it would benefit from opening the source code so modders can have full access.

You can look around at the game code all you want. The game literally ships with symbol files making a great deal of otherwise hard to interpret logic easy to parse. The reality is though that the game hasn't attracted people willing to put in the level of effort to actually write mods(much, there's a little bit of use of the table editing tools). Which is like... pretty much par for the course. I see lots of indie game devs getting told that they MUST ADD MODS and that people will DEFINITELY COME. and then they do and very little happens.

[Vic]

Not untrue... I have seen most sizeable modder action with gfx modding finally. It is something I hope to offer new functionality for once republica dlc gets released.

[Voker57]

It already has kind of mod support, depending on what level of WH40kization you are trying to achieve... But of course it would benefit from opening the source code so modders can have full access.

You can look around at the game code all you want. The game literally ships with symbol files making a great deal of otherwise hard to interpret logic easy to parse. The reality is though that the game hasn't attracted people willing to put in the level of effort to actually write mods(much, there's a little bit of use of the table editing tools). Which is like... pretty much par for the course. I see lots of indie game devs getting told that they MUST ADD MODS and that people will DEFINITELY COME. and then they do and very little happens.

It's not real source code. Sure, symbols make it easier to understand decompiled code, but you still can't really easily patch it (and redistribute). If somebody could spare a great deal of effort, it could probably be patched with tricks used to mod games like 7d2d, but if the source code was open, the game would improve greatly with close to zero effort required from the developer. "Adding mods" is indeed a questionable endeavour, since it actually requires effort and still might not satisfy all the modders' needs. Community is usually much better at making both mod API and mods themselves.

[newageofpower]

It already has kind of mod support, depending on what level of WH40kization you are trying to achieve... But of course it would benefit from opening the source code so modders can have full access.

You can look around at the game code all you want. The game literally ships with symbol files making a great deal of otherwise hard to interpret logic easy to parse. The reality is though that the game hasn't attracted people willing to put in the level of effort to actually write mods(much, there's a little bit of use of the table editing tools).

It feels like a ton of manual labor to make a mod in Shadow Empire, and then many proposals are impossible with existing toolset (not counting modifying the the game with dnspy and the like). I think there's a reason the biggest mod project (Catasteroid) and even a fanatic like Pymous has faded from the scene.

Which is like... pretty much par for the course. I see lots of indie game devs getting told that they MUST ADD MODS and that people will DEFINITELY COME. and then they do and very little happens.

Having had modding support on day 1 when the game had a relatively large amount of eyeballs on it could have changed Shadow Empire's sales trajectory, but you need a certain critical mass (depending on difficulty of modding the game) to sustain any modding scene.

[Pymous]

I won't say modding SE is easy for sure... ^^ especially for someone coming mainly from Dominions modding scene.

But I appreciate Vic opened to modding his awesome game while it was not planned/designed at the beginning, and hope he will continue on this direction, but yes anything that would ease/speed up the modding would be fantastic (data informations, linked between tables, tools.. anything) and I am sure would attract way more modders.

[Itza]

It already has kind of mod support, depending on what level of WH40kization you are trying to achieve... But of course it would benefit from opening the source code so modders can have full access.

You can look around at the game code all you want. The game literally ships with symbol files making a great deal of otherwise hard to interpret logic easy to parse. The reality is though that the game hasn't attracted people willing to put in the level of effort to actually write mods(much, there's a little bit of use of the table editing tools).

It feels like a ton of manual labor to make a mod in Shadow Empire, and then many proposals are impossible with existing toolset (not counting modifying the the game with dnspy and the like). I think there's a reason the biggest mod project (Catasteroid) and even a fanatic like Pymous has faded from the scene.

Which is like... pretty much par for the course. I see lots of indie game devs getting told that they MUST ADD MODS and that people will DEFINITELY COME. and then they do and very little happens.

Having had modding support on day 1 when the game had a relatively large amount of eyeballs on it could have changed Shadow Empire's sales trajectory, but you need a certain critical mass (depending on difficulty of modding the game) to sustain any modding scene.

Agreed, it is such a good base for a lot of modxs that it would be popular among many fandoms

[Thrake]

I think the current modding support is neat and allows to do a lot, most of it is unexplored, although some things are impractical to do, particularly the modify existing tables tool, which is very powerful but was not very intuitive to use.

With that said, my own modding experience was that there was little interest or feedback expressed when I mentionned making a profile rebalance mod despite regular criticism about this. The mod I did make, adding only a stratagem to recruit a skilled air OHQ commander isn't popular for reasons that eludes me, being as vanilla as I could make it and closing some loophole in multiplayer. I used to think that mod it yourself is a valid answer to fix easily modable issues but now I don't know. At the same time it also precludes asking why it's not in vanilla if it's not popular to begin with. Perhaps a bigger community is necessary, as in mods can allow for more personalized experiences, ie. less consensual but needs a big enough player base to find their niche audience? If anything it's been a learning experience.

[Voker57]

I think the current modding support is neat and allows to do a lot, most of it is unexplored, although some things are impractical to do, particularly the modify existing tables tool, which is very powerful but was not very intuitive to use.

With that said, my own modding experience was that there was little interest or feedback expressed when I mentionned making a profile rebalance mod despite regular criticism about this. The mod I did make, adding only a stratagem to recruit a skilled air OHQ commander isn't popular for reasons that eludes me, being as vanilla as I could make it and closing some loophole in multiplayer. I used to think that mod it yourself is a valid answer to fix easily modable issues but now I don't know. At the same time it also precludes asking why it's not in vanilla if it's not popular to begin with. Perhaps a bigger community is necessary, as in mods can allow for more personalized experiences, ie. less consensual but needs a big enough player base to find their niche audience? If anything it's been a learning experience.

I think there is just not much competitive multiplayer going on: with random and uncontrollable map generation, as well as general lack of balance and means to balance diplomatically, most games are 'play first 50 turns of whatever is thrown at you until you get bored'. Such nuances are of a little interest to players of these games. Fixing the MP is not really possible within the current mod API.

[DeltaV112]

It's not real source code. Sure, symbols make it easier to understand decompiled code, but you still can't really easily patch it (and redistribute). If somebody could spare a great deal of effort, it could probably be patched with tricks used to mod games like 7d2d, but if the source code was open, the game would improve greatly with close to zero effort required from the developer. "Adding mods" is indeed a questionable endeavour, since it actually requires effort and still might not satisfy all the modders' needs. Community is usually much better at making both mod API and mods themselves.

It's actually quite easy to patch a game like SE. There's a bunch of canned injectors that you could just package to patch it. End user runs in targe directory, bang, patched game. You could go so far as to provide an interface to load DLL's out of a mod directory, basically writing a mod loader. Or you could be lazy and just use that injector to do the work. Something like BepInEx would give you the capability needed. The effort would be actually developing a mod to do something interesting.

[Voker57]

It's not real source code. Sure, symbols make it easier to understand decompiled code, but you still can't really easily patch it (and redistribute). If somebody could spare a great deal of effort, it could probably be patched with tricks used to mod games like 7d2d, but if the source code was open, the game would improve greatly with close to zero effort required from the developer. "Adding mods" is indeed a questionable endeavour, since it actually requires effort and still might not satisfy all the modders' needs. Community is usually much better at making both mod API and mods themselves.

It's actually quite easy to patch a game like SE. There's a bunch of canned injectors that you could just package to patch it. End user runs in targe directory, bang, patched game. You could go so far as to provide an interface to load DLL's out of a mod directory, basically writing a mod loader. Or you could be lazy and just use that injector to do the work. Something like BepInEx would give you the capability needed. The effort would be actually developing a mod to do something interesting.

Yes, injecting code is easy, but making sense of the decompiled code to properly modify it is not, and that's what I mean.

[DeltaV112]

Yes, injecting code is easy, but making sense of the decompiled code to properly modify it is not, and that's what I mean.

It's really not that hard. And having source would not make it any easier- there's simply a lot of code and complexity to SE. Any sort of modern IDE will handle the IL decomplication fine and make it easy to reference, but understanding what a large foreign codebase does isn't trivial no matter what.

[Voker57]

Yes, injecting code is easy, but making sense of the decompiled code to properly modify it is not, and that's what I mean.

It's really not that hard. And having source would not make it any easier- there's simply a lot of code and complexity to SE. Any sort of modern IDE will handle the IL decomplication fine and make it easy to reference, but understanding what a large foreign codebase does isn't trivial no matter what.

I disagree, it is hard and requires a lot of effort that does not benefit anyone. No modern IDE can recover names of variables, comments, or even original code, since decompilers produce C#. No newb can jump right into a foreign codebase but by itself it is not a big deal compared to figuring out and patching decompiled "code". That's why games like RimWorld, Barotrauma, Stardew Valley publish the source code and let the community help improve the game.

[eddieballgame]

I think there is just not much competitive multiplayer going on: with random and uncontrollable map generation, as well as general lack of balance and means to balance diplomatically, most games are 'play first 50 turns of whatever is thrown at you until you get bored'. Such nuances are of a little interest to players of these games. Fixing the MP is not really possible within the current mod API.

Would be interesting to have data on how many play this gem via multiplayer.
Currently starting another PBEM game (#17 since 2020) with a great group. Also have played a few more, outside this group.
Shadow Empire, as good as it is in single player, truly shines in multiplayer, imho.
Wishing there was a lan/IP option, similar to the Dominion series; & a few more victory conditions, as well.

[Vic]

Just a quick question... out of genuine interest... i feel like i might be missing something... what is the interest of having LAN / direct connection in a multi-player game that is turn-based? With long turns?

Best wishes,
Vic

[Voker57]

Just a quick question... out of genuine interest... i feel like i might be missing something... what is the interest of having LAN / direct connection in a multi-player game that is turn-based? With long turns?

Independence from central servers and freedom from their policies. I try to avoid buying any games that lock me into a vendor server for multiplayer. These servers also tend to shut down eventually, locking players out of MP, or intermittently, even Steam annoyingly goes down for maintenance once in a while.

The original poster probably also means networked multiplayer instead of PBEM: this would certainly be nice to have, passing saves around is a chore with a group that plays fast. We used Syncthing and automated turn notification program for that in the past.

[eddieballgame]

Just a quick question... out of genuine interest... i feel like i might be missing something... what is the interest of having LAN / direct connection in a multi-player game that is turn-based? With long turns?

Best wishes,
Vic

Excellent question; for one thing a 'good ole' fashion lan party is superior to emailing/transferring files manually.
Much time is saved, allowing for more game play time. Even a direct IP connection would suffice per speed/ease of sharing turn files.
The Dominion series has offered this for years, though they now offer their own server (for CoE, also); which is very convenient per having to deal with routers, for example.
Per the long turns concern; there are options. In Dominions 5, for example, my group will play to a certain amount of turns...usually 60 (5 years of game time).
This takes us about 3 to 3.5 hours; the same could be done for other titles, as well, if time is a factor. I acknowledge, SE is a bit more involved per doing turns; but is doable per game settings/planet size...I am sure.
Servers are ok to great for some titles, ala HOMM III (20+ year old classic) with hundreds of games being played daily!
The Slitherine/Matrix PBEM system is excellent, as well...but, even their, well, maintained servers have had issues, on occasion.

[wbonx]

Just a quick question... out of genuine interest... i feel like i might be missing something... what is the interest of having LAN / direct connection in a multi-player game that is turn-based? With long turns?

Best wishes,
Vic

I agree Lan/Direct doesn't make much sense... we played "steam play together", feeling is similar, but you can actually do something else while the other player is doing his turn ... turns get 15min or more in late games.

On the other hand it is true the game is great in multiplayer and I would prioritize it over adding more content.
At least a decent PBEM solution where the game takes care of sending and loading saves would be a good start.