Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: BFG on November 07, 2021, 05:01:31 AM

Title: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: BFG on November 07, 2021, 05:01:31 AM

Aka the two techs and one ability that pretty much exist in-game already but are dummied out.

I know a lot of the more expansive mods already add (or replace) these.  But I thought I'd create a short mod/guide for enabling these in a minimally modded, or even completely vanilla, game, in a way that makes sense and isn't intrusive.  I'll include instructions (and files) on how to do it for people who have no idea what they're doing, and custom PCX icons to replace the stock tech024.pcx and tech070.pcx that are reused for other techs.

Thought I'd post this here in case anyone had any interest/comment.  I already have a start to the guide, and the new icons (for Inertial Damping CONQUER and Global Energy Theory DISCOVER), which I've confirmed look correct in-game.

("Discover" might be an odd choice for Global Energy Theory but Conquer and Discover are both short one tech.  So there it goes.)

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2021, 06:42:36 AM

Be advised that Santiago's voice acting for Inertial Damping doesn't leave much wiggle room for how powerful a tech it's supposed to be.  Bullets stop in midair.  Requiring it for something as mundane as a ship hull with extra capacity, doesn't make any sense.  In my mod, I put Inertial Damping at the very end of the tech tree, and made Inertial Damper my maximum strength 30 armor.  It replaces Stasis Whatever in the original game.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: BFG on November 07, 2021, 07:21:52 AM

I agree that it doesn't make a ton of sense to assign Heavy Transport to Inertial Damping, per Santiago's quote heavily implying it's an armor tech, and more extensive mods like yours would do a better job of placing it in the tech tree and assigning bonuses.  The reason for assigning Heavy Transport to it here is simply to minimize the changes made in a vanilla install...and let's face it, Heavy Transport isn't that great a bonus anyway.  (The justification I give in the guide is "Inertial Damping = safer transportation = can transport more".  Yes, that's a stretch.)

Anything included in this mod (except perhaps the custom icons) are completely unnecessary in a more heavily modded game.  Speaking of which, feel free to recycle these icons for your mod if you don't already have new icons for those techs.


EDIT: I thought about switching AntiMatter Plate to Inertial Damping (from Matter Editation), renaming it to something like "Repulsor Plate", and giving Heavy Transport to Matter Editation.  But, again, minimal changes.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: BFG on November 08, 2021, 01:42:13 AM

Latest attached.  Still need to check everything over in-game and decide if those are the best "minimal" tech tree modifications.  Comments are welcome.

Meanwhile...can anyone post the base tech024.pcx and tech070.pcx icons, OR remind me which icons they duplicate?  I apparently forgot to save backups.  :-\

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: bvanevery on November 08, 2021, 04:07:25 AM

Quote from: BFG on November 07, 2021, 07:21:52 AM

to minimize the changes made in a vanilla install...

Why have that as a goal in this case?  The "radical" change to be added somewhere in the tech tree, is a useless ship ability that nobody's going to bother with in practice.  I've had it early in my tech tree for a long time, and I think I built them once.  There just generally isn't any point.  If you're in the era when you can only transport 2 units, then sometimes it could be advantageous to be able to transport 3.  Once you've got Cruisers and can transport 4, it's hard to care.

I'd just slam it into Adaptive Doctrine and call it a day.  Or any other vaguely maritime tech.  Doctrine: Initiative if you're feeling creatively challenged.  Or you could say it's some kind of Build bonus and put it in that part of the tree.

It's just not impactful enough to be stewing about "the change".

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Speaking of which, feel free to recycle these icons for your mod if you don't already have new icons for those techs.

Thanks for the offer, but I have the unusual policy of only making alterations to the game that I know are 100% legal.  I plan to ship my own 4X TBS game someday and I don't want any yabbering from EA about my mod work.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: BFG on November 08, 2021, 05:46:28 AM

Quote from: bvanevery on November 08, 2021, 04:07:25 AM

Why have that as a goal in this case?  The "radical" change to be added somewhere in the tech tree, is a useless ship ability that nobody's going to bother with in practice.

To each their own. My gameplay style perfectly suits what I'm doing here, as is my personal desire to keep the game as close to vanilla as possible.
 Meanwhile if you want to extensively overhaul the INI to suit your tastes, that's your prerogative; I choose not to.

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Thanks for the offer, but I have the unusual policy of only making alterations to the game that I know are 100% legal.  I plan to ship my own 4X TBS game someday and I don't want any yabbering from EA about my mod work.

SMAC/X was designed to be moddable, and not just the INIs.  You also are not making any money, at all, off of these changes.  I cannot envision any viable legal challenge to "we used the ability you explicitly programmed the game to come with, and encouraged us to use".  And of course, these icons are only meant for personal use, just like any INI file edits.  Meanwhile, there is no legal distinction between editing a stock INI file and editing a stock PCX file when the authors encouraged you to do both.  And you're not even deleting or overwriting any assets; both icons are full duplicates of other files.  If you are truly concerned then I'd strongly recommend you not make any modifications of any kind, including bugfixes or text file edits, available to anyone else; not sure if you have or not.  Or, perhaps read the EULA and/or Fair Use explanations, or consult a lawyer who knows more about this than either of us does.  All that said, I can appreciate you not wanting to do anything to endanger your own 4x plans!

In short: it's clear this doesn't suit your playstyle.  That's perfectly fine.  Then it's not meant for you.  I'm only interested in suggestions that fit within the confines of what I'm trying to do here: keep it close to vanilla, and make it easy for a noob to activate these.  For people interested in more, they can talk to you or check out the other mods on here.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: bvanevery on November 08, 2021, 11:35:21 AM

Quote from: BFG on November 08, 2021, 05:46:28 AM

Meanwhile if you want to extensively overhaul the INI to suit your tastes,

In the case of Heavy Transport ability, why are you exaggerating like this?  You're talking about changing one text field in alphax.txt from:

Code: [Select]

Heavy Transport,        1, Disable,  Heavy,     000100100111, +50% transport capacity
to:

Code: [Select]

Heavy Transport,        1, WhateverTech,  Heavy, 000100100111, +50% transport capacity
That's it.  Ascribing great effort, or the great purity of the original game, is making a mountain out of a molehill.

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SMAC/X was designed to be moddable, and not just the INIs.

Only the alphax.txt and faction.txt files actually have explicit permission from Firaxis in them, to change them.  You can change all kinds of files in all kinds of games.  That doesn't mean you're on a firm legal footing for doing so, if someone wants to send you a Cease and Desist letter, or take aggressive action against your small change indie game studio.

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You also are not making any money, at all, off of these changes.

That's not a legal defense, and if you otherwise have any business assets for something else you're doing, a litigious company could try to extract damages from you.

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I cannot envision any viable legal challenge to "we used the ability you explicitly programmed the game to come with, and encouraged us to use".

Suggest you actually spend some quality time with the licensing and actual permissions granted.

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If you are truly concerned then I'd strongly recommend you not make any modifications of any kind, including bugfixes or text file edits, available to anyone else; not sure if you have or not.

Here, let me help you actually read the top of alphax.txt and the various factions.txt:

Code: [Select]

;
; Sid Meier's ALPHA CENTAURI
;
; Alpha Centauri User-Configurable Rules
;
; Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 by Firaxis Games, Inc.
;
; ALPHA CENTAURI reads the rules of the game from this file at
; startup. Feel free, at your own risk, to experiment with editing
; this file. We recommend you make a backup copy of the original.

Now, find that permission in other .txt files.  Doesn't exist.

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In short: it's clear this doesn't suit your playstyle legalese.

FTFY

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: BFG on November 08, 2021, 12:32:33 PM

Exceptionally busy week coming up between work and grad school, so it may be a while before I can reply again. Wanted to say thanks for continuing to reply in the meantime, and for the responses.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: BFG on November 09, 2021, 05:37:36 AM

Any drama or hostility (including my own) is neither helpful nor necessary.  Especially given our prior friendly interactions on this board, I did not at all expect this conversation.  Nor have I encountered such a conversation in any of the four other game modding communities I have participated in.  In the interest of civility, I will not post further after this, nor will I spend more time on this little pet project.  I thought it was something that newbies discovering this site might have some interest in, but there appears to be no support here.

On the Heavy Transport piece: I'm neither exaggerating nor making a mountain out of a molehill; instead, it appears you missed my point.  I'm not talking about just changing the technology assignment for this ability; I'm talking about the holistic tech tree and other overhauls that you've done.  For example: "I put Inertial Damping at the very end of the tech tree, and made Inertial Damping my maximum strength 30 armor".  THAT's what I'm not interested in, and it sounded like your Heavy Transport change fit into that.  Frankly, I care little what tech Heavy Transport is assigned to, especially given how unhelpful it is in the game; but I do lean towards not altering the vanilla tech bonuses at all, excepting bug or consistency fixes.

As for the legalese: as already stated, I'm not claiming to be an expert.  If it sounded that way...I'm sorry.  I'm basing my response on my and my copyright lawyer's prior limited exploration of this topic, since I am a published software author (I currently hold one copyright).  I was just surprised by your reply; this prior general knowledge, and limited knowledge specifically of EA's TOS and of SMAC/X itself saw no difference between modifying the TXT files and modifying the other non-code assets, when in reality any differences are governed by the TOS and copyright laws.  (Hence my "but you're not selling it" comment: copyright laws sometimes but not always, extend limited exceptions to modification of copyrighted content when it is neither being resold nor republished, under Fair Use terms and/or the distinction between owning a "copy" of a software, and owning a "license" or "service".  But all this varies by country, and I'm sure in many cases, "republished" would include giving it to others to use.)

I'm aware of the explicit permission given in alpha(x).txt.  And to extend that further, Appendix 4 of the original Manual seems to grant permission on all TXT files.  But, it is not clear to me that those permissions would absolutely hold up: the current EA TOS (https://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/) seems to indicate (in part 2) that any modification is not permitted - though there's that "unless expressly authorized" phrase.  Meanwhile, one could argue that the edit permission was given only by the developer, Firaxis, and not the publisher, EA, and that you are only permitted to do what both organizations allow - which would block the editing of TXT files.  But, I find this doubtful, especially since EA published the alpha(x).txt files and Appendix 4...that probably is implied consent.  (But is it "express" consent?)  Then there's the publisher of the Mac edition, which (I think) is Aspyr Media, not EA, and its EULA might change things.  But then again we're all modding PC installations here (I think).  Then there's a question on whether the Mastertronic EULA governs, at least in some cases; the one included on my original 2002 CD ROM purchased in the UK seems to indicate no modding of any kind is allowed...but this may only apply to the software code or the physical media.  Then there's the EULA that appears during installation, which may or may not be different from any of the above...but which I cannot currently get to appear unless I first uninstall SMAC/X, something I'm not willing to do right now.  Add to all this the interview with Sid Meier where he expressly encourages and thus permits modding of all assets of his games, including video, graphics and audio (https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/sid-meier-and-the-meaning-of-civilization), which is what I was originally thinking of when we started this whole discussion.  But, does this interview have any legal bearing at all?  Probably not, unless Sid Meier himself owns a copyright (or at least some rights) to SMAC/X.  But if it does, it's express consent to modify everything except the code.

Long story short...I was just surprised by your response on the icons.  I've not yet encountered a situation where *some types of* a game's non-code assets may be moddable and not others according to the TOS.  Especially when said non code assets are unused.  Maybe it's common, I've just not seen it.  But to me, if you're concerned about future ramifications, it may be best not to share any modifications of any kind with the public, including to the TXT files, just to be completely safe.  My read is that the permission to do so is murky, and even if you are in the clear, I could, frankly, see a company like EA tying it up in litigation anyway if they really want to.  But that's just my read and again, I'm not an expert; if you're comfortable that you're in the clear, who am I to question it?  (And besides, I don't want to be the guy responsible for you taking down your mod - a lot of people use it!)

I certainly wish you the best on your own 4x (or 6x, if you go hexagonal!) coding dreams...that is ambitious, to say the least, and a coder who's only released software in academic sectors probably doesn't have much right to speak here.  Take care.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: bvanevery on November 10, 2021, 08:31:59 AM

Well you've certainly dug into the details of licensing more than I previously had, although I thought the situation, was sufficiently clear already.

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But to me, if you're concerned about future ramifications, it may be best not to share any modifications of any kind with the public, including to the TXT files, just to be completely safe.

Obviously I didn't do my modding work to keep it a secret.  It's my calling card as a game designer.  I hope it establishes reputation and gets people to buy my own game someday.

I doubt anything ever becomes legally actionable or draws the legal attention of EA.  However if it ever does, I personally am on the safest possible ground.  I could certainly dig up an old copy of the game somewhere, to get around however EA wants to pretend things are.  IANAL and who knows what arguments about such things are had by lawyers, and whether such case law is written in stone or not.  That's what you pay lawyers to mess with, and you pay them, in court for a long time.  So it is not even worth contemplating at this time.  A clear case of cross that bridge when/if I ever get there.

What you thought I said about Heavy Transport, seems to be a function of me quoting you incompletely.  I assumed you'd recognize the context of what you had said.  But, with elapsed time and life stress being real world factors, I'm realizing that didn't have to be the case.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: Vidsek on November 20, 2021, 06:01:55 AM

  So, is *anything* legal ever sufficiently clear?

  I like real world geometry enough that hexes appeal to me as causing less weird distortion of distances on flat (or spherical !!) maps.


       And that's my cherry-picked two energy credits worth.

Title: Re: Creating "mod" for Inertial Damping, Global Energy Theory, Heavy Transport
Post by: bvanevery on November 20, 2021, 11:57:42 AM

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So, is *anything* legal ever sufficiently clear?

I just got in an argument with some guy on r/SocialistProgrammers about a slate of "anti-capitalist" software licenses.   ;domai;  Most of them, I suspect don't have any real world enforceability and amount to performance art.  Long story short, I ended up blocking him.  Identifying as socialisit, and trying to talk to other 'socialists' about practical matters, is new for me during the pandemic.  There are certain... 'types'.  Some get blocked immediately; socialist subs often have a "Leftist Unity" rule to curtail those kinds of people.  Some get blocked after long, drawn out discursions where they're never gonna acknowledge the capitalist facts of life they're living in.  Like how court systems actually work.  As they paint you with some kind of strawman for the umpteenth time.  Gets old.

Since that conversation was so unproductive, I actually started web searching for "restrictions on field of endeavor".  Like let's say you don't want the Military Industrial Complex to use your software.  No bomb dropping lol.
;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;liftoff ;liftoff ;liftoff  :hunter:

Well I didn't find squat that was legally helpful.  All of the Open Source licenses intone "no restriction on field of endeavor", it's part of the OSI definition of open source.  But none of 'em talk about what that means in court.