Is it possible to officially unhardcode the game engine in next update?
to allow adding unique skins to villagers and monks by actually allowing to assign civ specific graphics to task graphics via AGE editor?
to allow adding new civs to the game. I think it is actually a work in progress. but no new news on it recently.
to allow adding proper icon with colors to tech tree for unique units.
And other such hardcoded features.
It will broaden the modding capabilities of the game vastly. Who else agrees with me?
I would rather prefer getting some more official support from devs for modding rather than relying on OpenAge which is being done by volunteers and will take a lot of time to unhardcode DE. This is the main reason I started this thread. I wanted dev support. You are kind of trying to take the discussion off track by giving away the responsibility of devs to OpenAge.
Officially very hard, not impossible. Even if it is then it’s a total file loading structure re-write which I hardly doubt devs gonna spend any effort on it. Every unit in this game shares same unit tasks across the civs. Unit task by gold collecting, wood cutting, carry graphics, etc. Everything besides tasks are civ specific. AoE2 file loadings are very complex. If you change one value in the game tons of other units effected by it. You can often see bugs and other stuffs in each update. That’s why I think it’s a too much of work for game devs.
openage was following this process at start. Later about a year ago they completely dropped this hardcoded process. Now they are going to use new nyan file format. Which’ll remove every hardcoded stuffs possible. File readings will be humanly readable. Won’t be using complicated binary file that we are facing now.