[smurfbizkit]

I was wondering, what exactly are the most usefull parts of Generals/ZH modding compared to say...ra2. Also, what additions would be helpful? What about modding for "Battle for Middle Earth"?

The main things I like about Gen/ZH modding are;
-ocl's
-the wide variety of modules
-being able to grant upgrades/sciences

There are some areas that could be improved though;
-the creation of new warhead types would be nice (I often find myself limiting what I can do...because I dont' have enough warhead types)
-being able to remove locomotor upgrades
-a way to add in new types of resources (food, fuel, wood, etc.)
-more flexibility with modules (it would be nice to be able to have every one of them follow a standardized system...say each one be able to require a science or upgrade)

Modding for BFME;
-it would be nice if it would be possible to make a perfect version of cnc:generals for bfme, since that would ensure many other types of mods would be done...but since I doubt thats possible the main points are;
-being able to bring back the dozer building system, so we arn't locked into just having a limited amount of buildings
-vehicles, tanks, etc... all that stuff would be nice to be used
-unit/building/science/upgrade prerequisites would also be nice

[Eradicator]

-A major improvement would be the ability to program our own modules through some kind of C dll. But that seems to be against EA's religion or something.
-Give us a fully featured non crashing Gmax and 3dsmax 6 plugin for w3d support. Exporting, importing with animations and multiple materail... the whole deal except actually made for this game... please
-A proper ini debugger.
-A wnd editor.
-A world builder that isn't "beta" (I didn't pay for your beta).
-Post release support (patches, patches and more patches). I know you can do it EA. Look at bf1942. They even get new content
-Very little hard coded. Have a kindofs.ini and a damagetype.ini Anything that is hard coded allow us to program our own stuff through an open source dll that the game loads ala Quake2, Half-Life, etc.
-Allow every file the game uses to be read from a big file and have all files being read throuhg a big file -mod command line parameter overwrite any other files.
-Infact scrap big files and use zip files ala Quake3.
-Package a big editor with the game (uh... common sense I thought).

[sc4freak]

I don't think very many companies would give away an entire game engine withtotal and absolute control over the files for only around $20

[Eradicator]

Read what I said again. If you don't understand what a dll is then please don't respond with remarks like that. They would hardly be giving away the entire engine, lmao. They would just need to make certain functions and variables loaded from an external dll of which they provide the source code. This limited source code could simply allow us to program our own modules and not even see the core engine code. Quake2-3, Doom3 (most likely), Half-Life, JK2 and many other games already do this. Does anyone have the Quake3 engine and didn't pay an assload of money of it? I didn't think so.

Or if that is too scray how about some lua scripting for modules? I wouldn't mind learning some of that to get rid some of the hard coded stuff.

[Ambershee]

I would definitely like to see some proper hard architectural stuff - down with the goddamned silly soft stuff like ini and lua ^_^.

[Capt_Pickles]

Ini editing is annoying... tedious... boring and monotonous work... If nothing else they should implement a tool to speed up this process.

[CodeCat]

I actually like hunting and pecking through the code. But then I'm a code person anyway.

[DeeZire]

Same here

There are serious developer advantages to using INI files though - they greatly improve collaboration, make debugging and balancing a heck of a lot easier and speed up the development process - with INI files, you dont have to recompile the entire game to test a small change.

Originally Posted by Eradicator

-A major improvement would be the ability to program our own modules through some kind of C dll.

Good call, it was done like that with Renegade.

[Eradicator]

I think that is why they developed the ini files. For internal use to quicken the development process not with modders in mind. Because Generals didn't really ship with mod support, only map support. -mod command line had to added after. I'm not blaiming the devs at EALA either because I know how EA deadlines can from talking to a friend who's worked for EA. I can imagine how long it took to create the amazing SAGE engine from scratch :O Amazing use of physics in an RTS.

Thanks, Dee, means a lot coming from a guy who was hired by EA and who's ideas were used in the dev process. Maybe you could slowly push the idea for the next RTS game from EALA It's probably too late to do this for BFME. The less hard coded stuff the better. I am not sure if EA is against any sort of source code release or if that is just a myth, but if they cannot provide a C dll then lua scripting could get the job done.

[Smartmlp]

The "UserData" was suppost to allow the swaping of mods, but I guess it got phased out or something.