Slitherine

The beta testing team was asked to test the two DLC campaigns and we did that - and in many cases found improvements to be made and one case of a key bug that could be fixed before release.

but

Why was that same testing not done for 1.04? There are some serious problems in the release that would have been detected and they have got through because we were not given access to the system (or at least told to test the features that it had) until after it was released.

Can I suggest that if future DLCs will be released at the same time as a game upgrade that *both* be beta tested - not just the campaigns.

We had two choices essentially - release 1.04 without custom mod support and delay it till 1.05, or try to squeeze this change in the last moment. We needed 1.04 out to enable DLC support, so could not delay it any more. I assumed that adding custom mod support should not create new problems, because the DLCs are using essentially the same mechanism (with a few additional tweaks), and it was covered by beta test. I'm not sure yet what exactly went wrong, but I should know by tomorrow, and then we shall see what is the best way to proceed for us.

Other changes in 1.04, like German language support, did get proper beta testing, so it is not a problem with the patch in general.

Personally I would prefer that it would be postpone until 1.05, specially if we would had full mod support then.
This way it's not even possible to combine mods.
I hope that with 1.05 it will be as good as at least as what we have with Generic Mod Enabler.

Cosmetic mods are much easier in the first place - you can copy them to your main game folder and forget about them (at least till the next patch). This will affect the main game, and all custom campaigns too. Custom campaigns, on the other hand, were in a really bad state. For example, essentially, you had to remember what campaign each save belongs to, and activate the right mod before loading each save. UI for selecting custom campaigns did not exist. Etc. For this reason custom campaign support was a higher priority for me, and I wanted to have it asap. After all, nobody knows when 1.05 is going to appear.

As for GME, I would appreciate it if you, as an expert of GME, could post a list of things which are relevant to PzC and which you think it does better. This might be useful to me in the future.

I'm no GME's expert, Alex. I'm sure that you know much as I know about GME. What happens is that with GME I can at least combine mods (although not in a perfect way), while with 1.04 I can't; unless I use the method you described, which is not the best, IMO (mainly due to its unfriendly nature). So in this regards 1.04 is a step back. In other kind of communities, this could fracture it. However, I do feel that most of the cosmetic mods, are not relevant for PzC, so this won't have that effect. Only a minority uses them.
Personally, I prefer to wait for a full functional mod support release than have now a half functional. But if that's not possible and you've other priorities, than I'd say that a good champaign mod support is primordial.
Don't take me wrong, I agree, that after ironing, the campaign mods will benefits a lot from the 1.04 mod support.
It's a good step.
Let us wait for 1.05, then.

Well, to me campaign mods and cosmetic mods are two completely different entities.

Campaign mod works "on its own" by definition, it cannot be active together with other campaign mods, and we don't want the user to activate two campaign mods simultaneously by mistake. Changes that such a mod does to data files, graphics, sounds etc. are usually not compatible with other mods or base game, they are done to add new units (or completely change their stats), add new tiles, customize game rules etc. Cosmetic mods, on the other hand, should not affect gameplay at all, their effects are usually pretty minor, but they should be compatible with any campaigns out there, and be able coexist simultaneously.

I think, it is important to separate these two things, not only from terminology point of view, but from user experience point of view too. Thus, for campaign mods you have custom campaign selection UI, while for cosmetic mods you would probably want something like what GME does, with a list of all available mods and UI to activate/deactivate them separately, in a completely different place in the UI (maybe in Settings screen etc.).

Also, let's not forget that parallel active mods create all kinds of new problems. For example, take your flag mod. What if the user plays a custom campaign, where some additional nations are added? The user would want to see your custom nazi flags, but he also needs the flags for new nations visible on the map. So, the game would need to merge both flag files in the right manner, something it cannot do yet. Same problem might arise with many other game files too. This example shows that enabling cosmetic mods as an official feature is not as trivial as one might think, it requires some careful thinking and changes in the base game too.

So what we have in 1.04 is by no means a "step back" or a "half-done feature", we just had one of these two very different aspects straightened up. Another one is still on the todo list. However, I realize that overwriting game files or using a third-party tool is not an optimal solution, so yes, I hope to address this aspect in the future too.

Rudankort wrote:Well, to me campaign mods and cosmetic mods are two completely different entities.

There could be a third, in a certain way... I'm referring to custom units.

Rudankort wrote:with a list of all available mods and UI to activate/deactivate them separately, in a completely different place in the UI (maybe in Settings screen etc.).

That would be a nice.

Rudankort wrote:Also, let's not forget that parallel active mods create all kinds of new problems. For example, take your flag mod. What if the user plays a custom campaign, where some additional nations are added? The user would want to see your custom nazi flags, but he also needs the flags for new nations visible on the map. So, the game would need to merge both flag files in the right manner, something it cannot do yet. Same problem might arise with many other game files too. This example shows that enabling cosmetic mods as an official feature is not as trivial as one might think, it requires some careful thinking and changes in the base game too.

I have already thought about it and come to the same conclusion that it won't be trivial. I think that the base game was not "structured" for that kind of idealistic support, where you could more easily deal with collisions and so on. And to be honest I'm not expecting it in a future patch (maybe for Panzer Corps 2 ) because I sense that you would had to change a lot of the game base structure. I know that the limitedness of resource will make it hard to happen.
I hope that at least we're able to do it at the GME level.

Rudankort wrote:However, I realize that overwriting game files or using a third-party tool is not an optimal solution, so yes, I hope to address this aspect in the future too.

Good. Will wait then for it.

C-c-c-c-c-c-ombo BREAKER!!!

Oh wait... I have that Avatar too. DAMNIT!

@Kerensky - what the...?

Back to our regular programming...

I have played around with the GME and new 1.04 system and my initial tests seem to hold up with what Rudankort is saying about keeping campaigns separate from other mods. If the campaigns are structured in the 1.04 Mods folder, they work fine, as we would expect. And if the other mods are put in the GME Mods folder in the main Panzer Corps folder structure - they work as they used to, too. So I have campaigns in my games\panzer corps\mods and the other mods in the main panzer corps\mods folder and they all seem to work without fiddly manual copy/paste.

That said, there are other issues reported, such as H.Balck's AK mod doesn't show the correct splash screen, but his mod does seem to work in the Editor when its activated by the GME.

One day, a uniform system....

Kerensky wrote:C-c-c-c-c-c-ombo BREAKER!!!

Oh wait... I have that Avatar too. DAMNIT!

LOL, well-played sir.

El_Condoro wrote:I have played around with the GME and new 1.04 system and my initial tests seem to hold up with what Rudankort is saying about keeping campaigns separate from other mods. If the campaigns are structured in the 1.04 Mods folder, they work fine, as we would expect. And if the other mods are put in the GME Mods folder in the main Panzer Corps folder structure - they work as they used to, too.

Not when the campaigns have custom units. At the current stage, it seems that the efx file is not loading from the 1.04 mod campaign folders. The moment this bug is corrected, GME will be almost useless.
Try Italian Campaign from Nikivdd. Move his custom units.

What about the editor?

It doesn't work.

Save an exsisting map and then you can not play it.
Either in single player or multi player.

monkspider wrote:LOL, well-played sir.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner. The first non-Panzer Corps Logo Avatar!
We really had something going here... And then you had to ruin it. For shame!

For the perfect combo we also need uran21.

VPaulus wrote:For the perfect combo we also need uran21.

Ahh... there's always next time.

Anyways, I apologize for the light hearted intrusion, please continue.

Razz1 wrote:What about the editor?

It doesn't work.

Save an exsisting map and then you can not play it.
Either in single player or multi player.

Hmm.... I haven't had this problem. Can you elaborate?

I'm not sure if this is what Razz is talking about but this may be related.

I opened my Kharkov43.pzscn in the Editor and clicked the save button - nothing else, no changes etc, just Save.
The scenario can be played in SP but the pzloc has been edited so that the victory conditions have been wiped. I wasn't sure if I had done something wrong so I tested it again by copying in the original pzloc. The original pzloc had all the victory conditions and none of the hex names - I checked these in Notepad++ to be sure. After saving in the Editor the hex names were added but the victory conditions removed.

El_Condoro wrote:I'm not sure if this is what Razz is talking about but this may be related.

I opened my Kharkov43.pzscn in the Editor and clicked the save button - nothing else, no changes etc, just Save.
The scenario can be played in SP but the pzloc has been edited so that the victory conditions have been wiped. I wasn't sure if I had done something wrong so I tested it again by copying in the original pzloc. The original pzloc had all the victory conditions and none of the hex names - I checked these in Notepad++ to be sure. After saving in the Editor the hex names were added but the victory conditions removed.

Looks like someone forgot their update... heheheh....
ALEEEEX!!!

Does this help? (remove the underscore)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/g9kxlp

Yes, it did. I went through the whole process described above but this time the victory conditions remained.

Does that mean everyone who downloaded the Editor in the 1.04 patch needs to re-download the updated file above?

Edit: manners! Thanks.

*Runs out of the room screaming.*

ALEEEEX!!!