I see they're building a modding page ...

[joeyeti]

Sentence no. 0 for Loose Cannon:

"I am entitled to the universe, therfore YOU OBEY."

With or without pun, you decide.


I for myself are looking forward to Universe and will be watching out for the development of Distant Worlds 2.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Osito
Speaking for myself, I'm happy about the scope of what is being modified, it's just not yet clear to me what counts as being part of the basic game design and what counts as a moddable feature, hence the questions in my other post here:

tm.asp?m=3601817

Thanks, I've asked Elliot to chime in on some of those, I'll post answers as soon as I have them.

In general, the goal of expanding modding was not to change the ground rules of the game, but rather to allow you to customize the galaxy and everything in it to match any setting of your choice. This was already a major project - I would imagine that doing much more would only be possible for a new release that was designed for it from the ground up and my guess is that it would involve some trade-offs in other areas.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
Do you guys look at games like SpaceEmpires5 and even EndlessSpace.Those games are basically completely open.They did not care about players messing up the game design.

I didn't say that we care about players messing up the game design. The fact is simply that Distant Worlds was never designed to allow the core game design to be changed, but it will now allow the entire setting and galaxy to be customized and modified within that game design. I understand that some games allow more, but it would require an entirely new Distant Worlds redesigned from the ground up to allow it, rather than an expansion.

For Universe, we went through the years of modding requests, picked the most popular ones and put in the time to make them possible. Our assumption was also that the main reason someone would want to modify Distant Worlds is not to change the core game design, but rather to change the rest. The mod request we've received over time agreed with that.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Loose Cannon
Don't worry, Erik. I'll go over things point by point with things that were done in Shadows in BOLD PRINTwith the expression BEEN THERE DONE THAT posted as BT, DT. Other issues will also be listed in bold print.

It's rather odd to do that to a list that was based on what's new in Universe.

ORIGINAL: Loose Cannon
- The entire Distant Worlds series in one package! Universe includes the Original Distant Worlds, Return of the Shakturi, Legends, Shadows and the new Universe expansion! NOT REALLY

Really? Where was this available in one package before?

- Allows adding/removing/changing most items: resources (including new colony-manufactured resources), ship components, planetary facilities and wonders, fighter designs, alien races and race families, diplomatic dialog, empire policy, custom characters, ship and base design templates, governments, plagues, research tech trees and more BT, DT

Not at all. If you can define your own resources, including manufactured ones (a brand new thing), define your own components, facilities and wonders, governments, research trees, etc. in Shadows then please show me. It would have saved us a LOT of work if we'd known that we'd already done this. [;)]

- Can customize most of the images used in the game: ships and bases, fighters, alien races, planetary facilities and wonders, characters, troops, components, resources, ancient ruins, planets, stars, asteroids, animated in-game effects and moreBT, DT

Only some of these were customizable in the past.

- Powerful new event system accessible from a considerably-upgraded Game Editor. Set up your own storyline in a custom map with triggered events and custom victory conditionsVALUE TO BE DETERMINED
- Add story triggers on specific in-game objects or events, executing one or more actions on other in-game objects (either immediately or delayed)MINOR IMPROVEMENT

We'll agree to disagree on how minor this is. I've already used it, when you get a chance to do so you may find it's more useful than you think.

- Switch between different customization sets with a couple of mouse clicks from the main game menu AND HOW MUCH TIME WILL THIS TAKE?

... "a couple of mouse clicks"?

- Comprehensive 100-page Modding Guide that outlines how to make Mods and explains all of the settings in detail WILL IT WORK BETTER THAN THE PIRATE SETTING SLIDER?

This is getting a bit ridiculous, you are getting close to trolling with this post.

Now, please don't insult my intelligence again. I was hoping to hear from someone not employed by the company to tell us something, anything, that will MAKE ME WANT TO GIVE YOU MORE OF MY MONEY. i don't want to hear the regular company line that tells us nothing. How badly did you fail Business Management 101? This expansion was supposed to come out first quarter then changed to May 2014. And yet you don't know what it will sell for? ROFLMAO. The first lesson in BM101 is that when you decide to create a new widget you decide what you can sell it for. The second lesson is that you then determine what it will cost you to create it. If cost exceeds projected sale price you then have to determine whether you will A cut costs. B raise price. C drop the widget or D some combination of those 3.

I certainly respect and honor our customers. The entire reason to do Universe was to give the community a version of Distant Worlds that would meet their requests for moddability and allow them to change it and expand it in as many ways as possible.

It is certainly every customer's prerogative to decide whether this release is worth their money. We are going to do our best to get all the information out there so that each customer can make an informed decision. Before anyone spends a single dollar, they'll know much more about Universe and what the pricing and upgrade discounts will be.

Regards,

- Erik

[Icemania]

Loose Cannon, it's possible to express even the strongest views while remaining respectful.

[swizzlewizzle]

The way I see it, potentially the most powerful modding tool that seems to have been added is the story triggers and the actions we can execute on them. However... i'm concerned how limited it might be..

Erik, did you folks implement a scripting option for us to put our own code in to be run after the event is triggered? Access to for/if/etc.. loops and the like? Or is it just something where we have to "slot in" a premade event such as "x" race gets "yyy"? If there is enough complexity here, and access to most of the game's base functions, we should be able to do what we want.

[Loose Cannon]

Where was I being disrespectful instead of the one being disrespected?

I read a lot of posts here and watched hours of Let's Play videos before I bought RotS last June (on sale). I picked up Shadows in the end of year/Christmas sale. I now have more money in DW than any other game and 50% more than i ever intended to spend on any game. I'm not one of these hipsters who have to fall all over themselves buying something the day it comes out because they're cool. But for months I sat here and watched all the "UNIVERSE IS COMING. AND IT'S GREATER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE" hype coming out of Matrix and kept my mouth shut. Finally, I posted a question asking for something to give me some enthusiasm for this expansion and I got the company line saying "Lookie here. Fluffy Bunny Pictures". Instead of facts I got BS so who was disrespected?

Last October, I received an email from Stardock on the day of the announcement of GC3 offering me Founders ($39.99) or Founder's Elite ($99.99)status. (I hate GC2 that game bored me within a month.) That's for a game that won't come out until summer 2015 but damn they were giving me the right [:D]to become an Alpha tester. Like I'm stupid enough to pay to do that. But Matrix, with less than 30 days to publish can't even announce the price? Are they that embarrassed??

[Osito]

[Not very happy with this post, so I've deleted it]

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Loose Cannon
Where was I being disrespectful instead of the one being disrespected?

The use of "lessons" is extremely condescending while Bold and Capitals is often perceived as Shouting. In contrast, Erik elected not to respond the same way.

There are some elements of your comments that I agree with. In my opinion the scope selected by Matrix only ticks some of the boxes I was interested in with Universe. But I also appreciate there are many ways to play this game and many different views.

Communicating constructively and with respect is a better approach for everybody. If you would like to liaise further on this let's do it via PM.

[hewwo]

I for one am quite disturbed by such negativity on the forums of my favourite game.