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[Servant Corps]

Modding the game is okay.

But actually going into the code of the game and changing that code, that's reverse-engineering. That is against the ToS. But merely modding it, that's fine.

Oh yes, and new feature:

Your successful stand works a graduation from the story mode and the endless game, you then have further possibilities open to let you further rule your dearly won El Presidente, for Publisher Kalypso at an extensive Online part.  Over a not more closely defined Online service, it should be possible in Tropico 3 to visit with your avatar, islands of another player. On the strange island, you may stroll around then, may explore the area and chat with the dictator there. This option has practical utility only if you help one other player on his island in a problem or if you in some other way lift someone when they are down. [In other words, help and assistance -- not war or subversion]

Such relations help to act in the later game course, resources of your own island over the Internet with the players in all world, would be were it against money or in the exchange against just necessary. Kalypso thinks about even that to introduce a type island advice, that selected players preside. That everything is naturally not necessary in order to conclude the game, but without question a community forming measure that can carry thoroughly fruits. 

Multiplayer Tropico.

And yeah, I don't think I'm going to buy T3. It's not really that compelling. Plus, the game company is suspect.

[Sowelu]

Don't worry, you'll get plenty of reviews here to decide from once it comes out

[Yanlin]

Modding the game is okay.

But actually going into the code of the game and changing that code, that's reverse-engineering. That is against the ToS. But merely modding it, that's fine.

Oh yes, and new feature:

Your successful stand works a graduation from the story mode and the endless game, you then have further possibilities open to let you further rule your dearly won El Presidente, for Publisher Kalypso at an extensive Online part.  Over a not more closely defined Online service, it should be possible in Tropico 3 to visit with your avatar, islands of another player. On the strange island, you may stroll around then, may explore the area and chat with the dictator there. This option has practical utility only if you help one other player on his island in a problem or if you in some other way lift someone when they are down. [In other words, help and assistance -- not war or subversion]

Such relations help to act in the later game course, resources of your own island over the Internet with the players in all world, would be were it against money or in the exchange against just necessary. Kalypso thinks about even that to introduce a type island advice, that selected players preside. That everything is naturally not necessary in order to conclude the game, but without question a community forming measure that can carry thoroughly fruits. 

Multiplayer Tropico.

And yeah, I don't think I'm going to buy T3. It's not really that compelling. Plus, the game company is suspect.

I'm not talking about reverse engineering and changing the code.

Look at Oblivion and Fallout 3. Or TF2 and HL2. Is that changing the game code? No.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. If everything is hard coded, you alienate pretty much everyone.

[Sowelu]

...wut

Look, it's like this.  If the code isn't designed to support mods, then you DO have to change the code, and you DO have to reverse engineer it, to mod stuff.  And that crosses a line that some publishers aren't okay with.

Every major FPS from Quake onward was designed with moddability in mind, hell, even Doom was designed to be easy to change--even when you hacked the executable it was mostly data modding, and the developers were mostly okay with it.  You have to go back to Wolfenstein to find an FPS that wasn't easy to mod.  Most popular games are very moddable, because they're often easier to develop that way.  Tropico had some major design breakdowns, check out their postmortem.

TROPICO IS NOT AN EASILY MODDABLE GAME.  You can't make TCs for it.  It just doesn't work like that.

I'm sorry you don't like that Tropico 1 has hardcoded stuff, but it is what it is.

And it's funny that you think they alienate everyone by hardcoding stuff, when you said you played a ton of the game without ever inquiring about mods >.> Many games don't need to be moddable to be fun...

[Gunner-Chan]

Learn to read Yanlin

Yanlin: According to the modders, it seems the only way to create new crops is to...just rename one of the crops already there by using a Hex Editor. Editing the code to create a new crop would be against the ToS. So, for now on, Coffee is actually Coca.

Most people don't like you hacking at their game like that. If it takes that to rename something It would most likely need to somehow be reduced back to source code to add new crops and stuff, and that's illegal in many other ways than the Tos

[Servant Corps]

Wait, wait.

It is against the ToS to edit the code.

It's totally okay to rename something! Renaming is fine. It's okay. You can change the name. You can't change what it looks like though, but I can rename Coffee to Coca.

[Yanlin]

Learn to read Yanlin

Yanlin: According to the modders, it seems the only way to create new crops is to...just rename one of the crops already there by using a Hex Editor. Editing the code to create a new crop would be against the ToS. So, for now on, Coffee is actually Coca.

Most people don't like you hacking at their game like that. If it takes that to rename something It would most likely need to somehow be reduced back to source code to add new crops and stuff, and that's illegal in many other ways than the Tos

Well pardon me for getting used to games being moddable! Seriously. I didn't know Tropico 1 was mostly hardcoded.

I was talking about Tropico 2 anyway.

[Gunner-Chan]

We still have to wait on that, but I would guess not. As these types of games really don't have that much potential for modding, I mean I can imagine new building types and stuff like that but it would be mostly redundant.

Sorry if I came off as a bit of a hardass, but back in the day modding was a new thing and I usually assume a game is not built for modding by default. Sadly though it seems mods are becoming less popular to game designers, so the lessons ID tried to teach the industry are being forgotten. I mean, people are still modding Doom and Wolfenstien for Christs sake!

[Sowelu]

Yeah, FPSes are at their core very simple things.  There's objects, some of them have health and some of them can be picked up and used to hurt things.  You can do a LOT with that.  It's a formula that is playable with, like, nothing else added.

Strategy games don't work like that as easily, and simulators REALLY don't work like that.  In fact, simulators work so totally contrary to that, that someone either needs to change *EVERYTHING*, or just make tiny little minor changes.

So for Tropico, the dev attitude was "Well let's give them tools to make simple things happen in scenarios, and just do the rest in C++ instead of implementing some elaborate scripting engine".

After all, remember that Counterstrike was an amazingly good mod for its day.  Most good mods of that level are done with finding and dev support.  Most Quake mods were along the lines of "Why don't we change the death messages, so that it points out when someone died from a quad-damage attack".

[SirHoneyBadger]

Whether a game has robust modding tools-and how robust they are-is one of the most important questions I ask, anymore, before I purchase a game. If they don't, it's almost enough by itself to turn me off a game.

If Tropico 3 is a failure (and I really hope it's not) then maybe some independent will pick up the basic idea and run with it under new labeling.

[Yanlin]

My hopes are high for that El Residente mod / expansion pack I've been talking about.

Seriously. Am I the only one who sees the potential? Dual gameplay? Lose the elections? Try to get elected again!

[SirHoneyBadger]

I think it would be great, Yanlin

[Muz]

The best modding tool is your imagination. Just imagine that the Coffee is Coca. Imagination is what helps us when playing DF. It is our friend.

[DJ]

Just changing the name and appearance of coffee would accomplish nothing. If it's possible to make it so that growing cocaine massively hurts your USA relations, then it will be a truly moddable game.

[Yanlin]

That's what I meant. After all, coding is all about inputs and outputs.