- This topic has 12 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 4 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Considering how much attention my almost-complete gemfire mod received (none here, almost none on gamefaqs), I am taking a break from modmaking.
Maybe I'll return to it someday, but for now I'll be working on other stuff.
Aww… that sucks… But you got to consider that mods are a risky business in terms of attention. Think about it this way: The 10 people who actually still play this game are all working on their own personal mod. :p I think if you made a mod for a more popular game, you would get more attention.
I tend to "struggle" with this too. How many people do you think actually care that I spent dozens and dozens of hours extracting complete Generals info for Destiny of an Emperor 2, along with complete maps for every square-inch of the world of DOAE 2? Not that many! DOAE 2 is an old game, and it's a non-US released game. I made the decision to work on my tools for DOAE 2 knowing full well not too many people would care about my end-product, outside the 10 or so that come to this board. I hacked DOAE 2 for me and my own personal satisfaction, not for others. Heck, I even have a bunch of other such data dumps that I haven't even published, so it hasn't been "consumed" by anyone but me.
The moral of the story? Making a mod for a game that is -this- old and unpopular is probably not going to get too much attention "out there", especially when you consider most people don't play ROMs, and those who do usually don't play NES ROMs, and those who do usually don't play unknown games like DOAE, and those who do usually don't play hacks and only want to play the original game, and those who are willing to play hacks have about 10 different hacks for DOAE to choose from since almost everyone in this board has made their own hack. And those who do might not have heard of this board or your hack, and those who have might just not have picked up your hack yet and might be busy on like the other 9 hacks for this game. :p
It's like Drake's equation, except instead of estimating the number of planets with intelligent, advanced life, it estimates the number of gamers who would actually play a specific NES ROM DOAE mod within a specific time frame. ( Since the day you published it, until today. )
So if you are willing to invest a lot of effort on a project like this, you need to accept this up-front, otherwise you might be disappointed at the lack of attention later. I am personally happy with my DOAE 2 work. Even if no one would have ever been interested, I did that work for my own satisfaction, not for others. Besides, I'm probably the only one out there who now has made maps for DOAE 2. ( There are already 100+ people who have made a map for Dragon Warrior 1, so why even bother with that… at least I have a monopoly on DOAE 2 maps. :P ) I guess that's just my 2 cents? :)
Also, I feel this is a good place to remind inquiring minds that I personally don't play mods. It's just not my thing. I am a video game purist, and there are very few games I play with mods. ( There is only 1 game I play with "mods" and that is SNES Civilization with some "game rules changing" Game Genie codes. ) I'm even reluctant to play fan-based translations because technically they are "mods" but I make a few exceptions here and there. ( DOAE 2 being an example. ) I even swallow the BS crappy, game-crippling bugs of games like Might and Magic 3 for the SNES just so that I can feel that I'm playing the original game. Oh, and finding out that someone actually modded the "clean" release of Earthbound Zero didn't make me too happy either, even if they had good intentions for it…
Anyways, cheer up mate! I'm sure your hard work still gives you bragging rights, no? Besides, as Lord Yuan Shoe said, hacking this game is not meant to be done to make your e-penis any bigger, but rather because you enjoy it. :)
PS: Maybe this is a good example of why you guys should unify your efforts and make a single hack of DOAE with everyone's efforts combined. I bet that would be a lot more of a kick-ass mod from a team effort, and "less choice means more likely your product will be selected for consumption in the market" as well…
Quote:The 10 people who actually still play this game are all working on their own personal mod. I think if you made a mod for a more popular game, you would get more attention.Then we just need to promote the game and the mods and make them more popular.
Quote:PS: Maybe this is a good example of why you guys should unify your efforts and make a single hack of DOAE with everyone's efforts combined. I bet that would be a lot more of a kick-ass mod from a team effort, and "less choice means more likely your product will be selected for consumption in the market" as well…That's kinda the idea behind the ROM hacking guide. That we share what we know and people can choose which enhancements and hacks they want to use for their mod. I think if we all worked on the same mod we'd have a lot of problems about who is updated it when, creative differences, etc…
Well, creative differences are always going to happen. If we use that as an excuse for people not to work together on a game, then none of the modern games would ever get made. The last time a single person worked on a whole game by themselves was… well, it was a lot more common in the NES era, but that's about it… ( guess you got me there! )
Now as far as source control, well, there is…. Source Control… ( Tortoise SVN is a common one that is free ) of course, the exception being that real source control for binary files works through a "check-out" system and that's hard to do when you only got 1 binary resource file for the whole project. ( The ROM )
I still say it can be done. You can work on an edit while someone else has it "checked out" and when they check it in, you create an IPS file of your changes you were working on the side, and then apply the IPS patch of your changes to the freshly-checked-out version of the ROM you checked out.
As long as people remember to check-in their changes in rotation, and discuss what areas of the ROM they changed ( to avoid "merging conflicts" ) then it might work… Verify and check your applied changes before "submitting" your changes and letting someone else take lock ownership of the file in rotation. Since DOAE hacking is a side hobby for you guys, this rotation system might work pretty well. I doubt all of you guys mod the game at the exact same time anyway. Just remember to submit changes regularly so other people can get their turn at their work.
I don't expect you guys to actually do that of course, I'm simply saying this game is not all that popular and there is already a congestion of mods for it. Remember the video game crash of the 70s – 80s? Analysts say it happened predominantly because there was too much choice for consumers. If the supply of your industry's products out-weights the demand for them, to the point that the supply-demand determined market value of your good is below the cost of production for it, then your industry is doomed to fail.
Of course, DOAE mods are free, but I'm sure you get my point. There aren't that many people who would play mods for this game, but there are plenty of mods for it too. It's expected that not too many people would pick any one of the mods here. I'm sure the people who made like 150+ mods of NES Metroid or NES Legend of Zelda have the same complaints about attention. :)
As far as promoting it, that's always an option. I'm sure there are people out there who would be willing to play these mods and don't know about them yet, but not sure how many of them are out there. I would think the best bet is to "advertise" them on places like GameFaqs and romhacking.net, ( is zophar's domain still running? ) but IMO, anyone who knows enough about ROMS and mods to be willing to pick up this game probably already knows about Gamefaqs and romhacking.net, so I'm not sure how many other places you can go to promote this… ( Maybe you guys should upload youtube demo videos for the mods too? )
EDIT: Yea, sorry for the long-ass posts. I got nothing better to do… :p ( Oh shoot… I should go to work! :p )
I think someone posted my Rise of Lu Bu on Facebook and I did see an upspike on downloads for that… to like 10?I have no clue what Gemfire even is?
I would say I'm surprised that the Jin Xuan mod is on hold… but… :crybaby:
I believe there is a dedicated facebook page with Destiny of an Emperor fans, maybe that would be a place to look towards posting if you're looking for testers?
I spend about 6+ hrs. a day working on this Rise of Ieyasu mod because I like it and like creating the portraits/story knowing it will be sorely overlooked by most, but meh, I like hacking now :finger:
I wonder if I could sell the mod as a Wii download or something q.q
I doubt you could sell it because of copyright, but it might be an option for the hardware-modding community to download it for free.
I'm not an expert in copyright law, but I believe due to the Millenium Act, a ROM could not be resold and repackaged, even if you claim that it is a "parody" in which all the text is changed. Even so, chances are, you will not be changing everything. Original artwork, sounds, music, and text of the actual game will still exist in your mod.
It would be like taking a movie like Transformers 3, and editing the clips of the movie and adding a few of your own to make a different story, and then trying to get your edited version showing on theaters. I believe if you want the copyright of a parody to stand legal ground, you have to code the parody game from scratch, and it has to be clear that it's a parody and not just a ripoff of the original work. If you try to make money from a parody and it fails these qualifications, you can be sure that the original creator will seek damages. I could be wrong though…
On that note, yet another reason why you guys may want to consider the possibility of making a game from scratch, instead of modding an old one. ( Yea, I know you guys are not going to jump at that thought already… just saying. )
meteorstrike is there a way for me to play your doae2 mods? i happen to prefer doae2 over doae do to damage formulas and weapons types and the terrain type an all that make each officer unique and allows for more versitility
and the fact that its more realistic in terms of tactics being more importent then brute str…… a well planed strategy will almost always guerente a victory……. you get more of a feel for war in doae2 then you do in doae cause strategy is the core to battle… sure in doae tactics did have there uses but you still relied more on brute str then offensive tactics for instance i auto battled the final battle cause i was lvl 45 and i won only losing 2 officers to ansha
but the use of same strategy in doae2 would guerentee my defeat…..just wanted to get this in guess i should start a new topic with this
while i'm at it is there away to make it where you can only get the officers that join as part of story and you can't get the ones you fight cept the lu bu gem sword trick and the one pang tong fight
now for on topic you could finish the mod cause i was looking forward to playing the finished mod for awhile now i'm a big fan of the series and was hoping to see how you answered the lack of officers problem
Hi Jiang.
I'm not sure what you mean by DOAE2 mods. I haven't made any mods. I only wrote tools to extract the data from the ROM and generate the html tables I have uploaded in my site. I guess I can provide the details of the addresses in the ROM, etc. over time, but I never actually made any mods for DOAE2.
Quote:while i'm at it is there away to make it where you can only get the officers that join as part of story and you can't get the ones you fight cept the lu bu gem sword trick and the one pang tong fightWhy would you ever want to do that? Is it because you're annoyed / tired of having the text ask you about what to do with captured Generals? If that's what you want to avoid, that should be pretty simple to do with a Game Genie code. I might need to do that later though… Well, let me know if that's what you're asking…
On that note, I always wanted an option like this:
"We captured bla bla General. What should we do?"
Option 1 – Convert to our side.
Option 2 – Release.
Option 3 – Execute this mother f**ker.
I would LOVE to see a DOAE hack that does that. Unfortunately, adding a 3rd option can be complicated, however, -replacing- option 2 with option 3 would make for an -awesome- mod for this game. For those of you modding DOAE 1, you guys should definitely consider making that change!!! The only problem would be that the player might end up executing that General at the first area that you need to convert to your side… Boy, that would be awkward… lol… ( This can easily be accomplished by setting a flag, BTW. )
On that note, Jiang, if you made that option you are asking for, then you wouldn't be able to recruit that first General you need to get into that cave on the first chapter…
I love your idea Meteorstrike, but it's far beyond my or our best abilities to do that, though as far as I know anything is possible with ASM. I assume you, maybe plus MidKnight, are the only ones capable of doing that.
DoaE gave birth to Huo Hu.
If you're doing that, you may as well make execution an option for generals who say no to being recruited. After all, most executed officers were first given the chance to defect (and said no!)
There's one problem I see, though; the Wen Chous of the world you don't want to execute because you can recruit them, while the Cai Hes of the world are better off alive as large bags of exp.
Well, it's actually pretty easy to replace "release" with "execute". The first step is to replace all the text. It should say "Execute General" or something, and instead of saying "Bla bla was released" it can say "bla bla was executed" so that part should be easily done within your abilities.
The next step is the flag. I don't recall all the flag values, but basically, IIRC, the values $6300 – $63FF are the Generals Statuses flags. One of those flags indicates the General is dead. ( Example, Yuan Shu executed, other Generals executed, etc. ) Another flag says the General was added to your army. So when you let go of someone, just set their "executed" flag rather than letting them go. This can probably be done by MidNight without too much problem.
Lastly, adding this as a 3rd option might be complicated, but it's probably still doable. I'm not into hacking or modding, so if MidNight wants to look into that… but at a minimum, the "replace" option to replace "release" with "execute" should totally be doable.
As DragonAtma mentions though, it might not be the best thing in the world sometimes to replace that option. Ideally, it should be a 3rd option, so the player can just execute the annoying looser Generals, and leave the rest alive.
i agree bout the officer thing that meteor is using
meteor you are capable of making a doae2 mod correct why havn't you
and can you make something like destiny of an editer for doae2? or could niahak make that an option as in make destiny of and editer compatible with doae2 like make it an option in file which game you would like to mod and then it ha the folders for each game seperated and you can quickly get doae2 sprites for doae seems like a simple thing to do
i'm currently working on my nanman mod but only get 1 day a week cause of other games i am working on for psx and up cause coding them comes easy yet all systems before the psx coding is difficult which baffles me and well i editing my nanman mode from scratch aka no program to help and i adding alot of code and it takes 7 hours to find the place for each line of code
and since i on the topic of my nanman mod i gonna show a boss battle and well give a little tidbits i have completed so far
one i added a leadership stat which has an effect on damage dealt higher lead less damage taken lead= high effect on def and slight effect on atk
two i changed power/str into war and war= high effect on atk slight effect on def
three i made each officer have their own lvl (still working on it but coming along fine so far)
four each officer has own tactics and tp count (still working on but coming along fine)
five every officer grows in all stats every lvl (still working on a formula so that each character is semi unique)
six damage formulas and tactics formulas have been altered to suit new stats and allow for more realistic combat aka tactics have a much greater effect on outcome of battle (97% complete)
seven new weapons and armor are added in so you are not stuck with ake for 6 castle battle(87% complete)
now for a battle with the wei five tigers(officers still up for debate this is near end game so yeah stats troop wise and atk and def are gonna be epic secret battle for alot of goodies)
zhang liao- 245war 255 lead 240 int 235 agi 47000 troops 255 atk 235 def
xiahou yuan- 250 war 235 lead 180 int 175 agi 47000 troops 255 atk 235 def
xiahou dun- 245 war 245 lead 220 int 200 agi 47000 troops 255 atk 235 def
xu zhu- 253 war 180 lead 120 int 165 agi 47000 troops 255 atk 235 def
zhang he- 240 war 200 lead 150 int 160 agi 47000 troops 255 atk 235 def
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.