Matrix Games Forums

I played Distant Worlds since the beginning. I enjoyed modding it in many ways. With the last expansion you wrapped the DLLs into the exe and ran an obfuscator over the code. That made it incredibly difficult to mod the game. It basically ruined the game. Why would you do this? No one used obfuscation unless they are plagued with multiplayer cheating. Even Microsoft doesn't obfuscate their code.
I really hope you will rethink this decision and reverse it in a future patch and for future games.

Modding the game has not been a problem with most players. DWU had a lot of modding options added....GP

Maybe it had something to do with Steam? No clue...

But yeah, lots of people have modded DWU up the wazoo, to great effect, so it doesn't seem to have slowed them down.

Not sure what the OP is about, but when you look at error messages written (after crashes), things do not look obfuscated to me.

I don't follow the OP either.

Matrix specifically responded to community requests for extra modding capability, such as opening up AI research orders, which enabled AI Modding in the first place.

Maybe the OP is referring to code modding. I'm happy to spend some free time changing around some xml's but coding no way.

ORIGINAL: Icemania

I don't follow the OP either.

Matrix specifically responded to community requests for extra modding capability, such as opening up AI research orders, which enabled AI Modding in the first place.

Maybe the OP is referring to code modding. I'm happy to spend some free time changing around some xml's but coding no way.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

I supposed I didn't follow the series much after Universe came out. Legends was the last expansion I bought.
Let me give you an example of a code change I made to another 4x game Star Drive 2 and you tell me if such a thing would be possible with XML editing. In SD2 when missiles are fired at an enemy and the enemy is destroyed, the missiles will just fly off to the end of their endurance without having a chance of hitting anything else. I modded my game so that the missiles would look for a new target within X range, which I let the player specify in an XML file. The default was set to zero so vanilla behavior was unchanged until the user put in a number greater than zero.
I just don't see the reason for forbidding a player from modifying game functionality if it will improve the game experience for himself and maybe for others.

In Distant Worlds Legends, I modified the hyperspace parameters so that ships would exit farther apart and set the minimum hyperspace distance so that jumping within a system was impossible. That created a different feel to the game where there was more in-system maneuvering instead of just having your entire fleet arrive over the target planet and slug it out. For me it was more fun. For others? Who knows? The point is that I enjoyed the freedom Distant Worlds Legends gave me to make that change. I truly miss it and don't understand why it was removed.

To avoid duplication I've responded to the same thread / post over in the Steam forums.

I truly miss it and don't understand why it was removed.

I'll assume it was required for steam's drm system so you have to have steam running for the game to play. Leaving the dll and exe open to modding means you can take out that bit and run the game separately from steam.

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

I truly miss it and don't understand why it was removed.

I'll assume it was required for steam's drm system so you have to have steam running for the game to play. Leaving the dll and exe open to modding means you can take out that bit and run the game separately from steam.

Hence the reason I will not use Steam. Seems to me that they're making it far more complicated than it has to be.

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

I truly miss it and don't understand why it was removed.

I'll assume it was required for steam's drm system so you have to have steam running for the game to play. Leaving the dll and exe open to modding means you can take out that bit and run the game separately from steam.

That would be a good guess, and a practical reason they did it if that was the reason. I don't think it was though as that check is made in the Steam.dll which is, ironically enough, an un-obfuscated file.

One of the things I can't do with Universe that I could do with Legends is to change design limitations. I had modded my game to allow civilian ships to have up to (1 + size/50) weapons instead of just one. It's stuff like that that I miss.