Modding and Its Expansion

[xredwx]

So I think a major part of the CM games that people love is the large amount of diverse and accurate equipment, from small arms to vehicles and general infantry formations. I think that being able to create custom units/firearms/vehicles/equipment would be a huge leap for the games as a whole. My main question is why can't we make our own units? From some I have heard that it is an engine limitation and from others heard that it is possible in CM:PE and because of that it cannot be added to the civilian licensed version of the games. If the latter is true, will we never be able to do it?

[A Canadian Cat]

I don't think we will ever get that ability in the general game. I could be wrong of course since I don't speak for CM. I have no idea if Steve will drop in and comment. His previous stated stance - from my memory so forgive any mistakes I might make - is that he has no desire to do that for two reasons:

- the game is a historically accurate simulation so allowing people to uber their favour tank for nerf the "bad" guys' rifles etc is not a good idea

- the multi player community would be come fractured and or be exposed to cheating because only people with the same capability mods could play against each other and the development effort required to ensure that works without cheating is huge

I, personally, agree with this 100%

[Battlefront.com]

All of the above, but a few other things on top of it...

The ability to create units in the Professional version is limited to being able to customize what we've painstakingly added.  If a customer wants 100+ variants of Boxer, we still have to create them as there is absolutely no possibility of an end user being able to do it.  Smoke discharges, for example, require going into a 3D model, defining the polygons, then going into C++ and coding the characteristics (angles, distances, smoke charge type, etc.) so that it graphically and simulation wise works correctly.  That's just a single smoke discharge tube... that has to be done for each one and everything else that makes that particular vehicle different from all others.  Obviously there is some cut/paste short cuts we can take, but the basic process remains complicated and we are paid accordingly.

What the Pro customer can do is rearrange how the equipment is organized and, to some extent, variable stuff like ammo types and counts.

Steve

[kohlenklau]

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