AoE 4 Modding = dogsh**

AoE 4 has the worst tools to do modding for modern custom games.


its like they purposely ruined their editor so people can forget this game.

hell , AoE 2 and Warcraft 3 have more friendly tools than AoE 4.


i cannot imagine why they would release such a naked editor in 2022.

you cant even make Dota style maps or tower defense maps without learning their scripts and own language. how the hell do you not make a friendly editor in 2022.



what the hell is going on , what the hell were they thinking.


why are there no mods, i mentioned it on reddit and they silently removed my thread . and it was constructive, this is a rant . there is soemthing fishy they are doing

I was guessing this would probably happen. Long gone are the days when you could make a total conversion mod of LOTR out of Age of Kings just using the in-game scenario editor and map doodads.

Player agency has shrunk so that we can have this software-as-a-streaming-service model.

It's odd that scripting is allowed or that this is the main interface of the scenario editor these days. I haven't tried it but that seems like a positive? Unless you require a site licence for Visual Studio or something to actually make maps and mods.

To be fair, AOE3 had a lot of random map scripts that were super popular because they could work seamlessly with conversion mods, custom AIs, and trigger sets. The graphical scenario editor was nice but the real meat and potatoes of custom RTS lay in custom campaigns and civs. Even a dullard like myself learned how to use triggers and conditions to make storylines and cutscenes.

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crunkatog wrote:

I was guessing this would probably happen. Long gone are the days when you could make a total conversion mod of LOTR out of Age of Kings just using the in-game scenario editor and map doodads.

Player agency has shrunk so that we can have this software-as-a-streaming-service model.

It's odd that scripting is allowed or that this is the main interface of the scenario editor these days. I haven't tried it but that seems like a positive? Unless you require a site licence for Visual Studio or something to actually make maps and mods.

To be fair, AOE3 had a lot of random map scripts that were super popular because they could work seamlessly with conversion mods, custom AIs, and trigger sets. The graphical scenario editor was nice but the real meat and potatoes of custom RTS lay in custom campaigns and civs. Even a dullard like myself learned how to use triggers and conditions to make storylines and cutscenes.

time will tell, its been almost 2 months.
im a dullard too, a MEGA one . just wanted to do some cool epic battles or play some but its guess something to wait for till they update the editor. its still in beta 'so fingers crossed.

baffling still tho , there is so much potential i pray to wolololo they dont waste it

how the f did i post 4x

wut

My buddy read about this issue and we spent some time trying to recover a custom scenario he and I were putting in a contest for AOE3 Heaven.

It was a partial mod campaign for the Peninsular War (1807-1814) featuring rebalanced British, Portuguese, Spanish, and French factions, and a lot of painstakingly built cities and battlefields and plot points and Easter eggs in a vast (1000x1000) Iberian Peninsula map.

Procedurally, it would be nearly impossible to get the land contours right, without a very granular contour blob placement for the first-pass landmass. Add in extra layers of terrain clamping to provide Vigo with forbidding cliffs, Lisbon with bridgeable flats, etc.

Setting up unit pathing to prevent "spoilers" from appearing too soon on the minimap of players marching ranged units through tightly-packed objectives would have been a lost cause without actual testing of line-of-sight while exploring the map.

Since the map dimensions have an upper limit, a busy "campaign" style map might have a LOT of sequential plot points in a relatively small area separated by virtual (elevation, cinematic blocks) or actual (walls, teleportation gimmicks) gatekeeping devices. Procedurally coding these to conform to any sort of nonlinear decision tree or free exploration seems like it would have been a pipe dream to implement.

Easter eggs such as the gloomy Roman amphitheatre near the switchback cliff path at Ronda (the site of an ambush, and upon approaching, there is a set of conditions and triggers that changes the ambient lighting to a full moonlit night) and the dust storm parting around Cordoba to reveal a long-lost Mosque nestled in a garden, with a concealed widget that blocks enemy activation and passively heals troops, would NOT work if access to these handbuilt scenario elements couldn't be tightly controlled.

The number of triggers and conditional effects we used just getting players to Vitória eventually killed the project. The French never stood a chance. Writing the second half of the campaign with the actual ouster of Joe Napoleon legit broke the map and the campaign.

It was hella fun testing it, and building all the widgets and triggers and gorgeous eye-candy for some of the set pieces. If we had a little more space to add some distance and relieve pressure on the map, and better code for creating conditions that let players deviate at will from the historical sequence, without breaking the progression of the campaign, it would have been possibly the first of many historical mod-campaigns we had in mind to make.

I cannot for the life of me see how an entirely text-based or scripted command line interface could give creators the control and panache they need to make memorable and award-winning postmarket content for AOE 4.