Hey all!

Have you ever tried to use a Warzone mod? I want to hear both good and bad experiences with mods.

Are there mods that you use regularly that you enjoy? Tell me which ones.

Are the mods that you tried to use, but had them crash or found them to be buggy in other ways? Tell me which ones and what went wrong.

If you don't know what mods are, see https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Mods

Edited 3/14/2019 04:16:09

I've tried a couple - love the swap picks and randomized bonuses mods. Other ones I haven't tried.

Only compliant is that I can't use it for tournaments/seasonal/or non-members (at least not w/o coins). AWP would probably add some mod templates if it was possible to do a tourney with mods.

Also, haven't really tried out many of the mods - mostly because they don't feel particularly accessible/visible. I.e. I don't know how to create a new mod game.

Thanks for the feedback!

Note that, as a member, you get one free modded game with non-members per week (it only costs coins after your free one each week). Modded games with members are always free.

When making a game, scroll to the bottom and click "Change mods" to enable them.

Are the mods that you tried to use, but had them crash or found them to be buggy in other ways? Tell me which ones and what went wrong.

The Advanced Diplomacy mod crashes when I play with many players.

Are there mods that you use regularly that you enjoy? Tell me which ones.

I use these mods always: Limited Multiattacks, Diplomacy, Late Airlift, Gift Gold, Deployment Limit, Commerce Plus. These are all perfect for diplo games.

Edited 3/14/2019 06:23:31

Mods have been fun, but with them only being accessible as one game, rather than a tournament, or seasonal, I do not see any templates becoming popular.

Swapped picks and Randomized bonuses are awesome. If you ever decide to implement some mods to the core game, please consider those two :)

I really like the "swapped-picks" mod, but we are missing a template designed especially for this mod, as the Strat ME board isn't suited well enough for the mod.

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to use the mods in tournaments and so it is tough to promote the mod and get other to play it.

I really would like to have a seasonal with swapped picks (promoting the mod and mods in general!). Preferably before a competition of designing a cool map and a good template would start. Maybe you could give a coin-price or a cool achievement in order to motivate players, but I guess even without we have community members who are willing to do this.

I played around with the Diplomacy mod. It's an improvement for diplo scene, but unfortunately it still doesn't make diplo games as fun and accessible as in some other competing titles.

I feel that alliances in the diplomacy tab should be sorted by expiration time. The shortest ones on top. It gets really messy when you have 20 players, everyone in 3 or 4 alliances. Some end in 1 turn, others in 9.

Color coding player names would help a lot to clear the mess as well. Blue player would have his name in blue etc.

I don't get a message when my alliance expires, so I tend to get backstabbed anyway since it's so hard to keep track of which one ends when.

Finally, It would be great if instead of proposing an alliance for X turns, you could make infinite ones. They could be broken at any time, but with 2 turns notice.

I know it's a lot to ask for, but better diplomacy options have been #1 on uservoice for years. And Warzone isn't the only game of this kind, it's sad to see it losing players to other titles.

There are also a couple of bugs. I can send multiple diplo proposals to the same player in a matter of seconds. I can also send them after being eliminated. Reportedly, players who joined the game and then declined or were removed can send them too if they open the gamelink. In short, the mod could be a bit more trollproof.

I was a huge proponent of Diplomacy mod. After all, "peace treaties" were the #1 requested feature BY FAR for the longest time on uservoice:
https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warzone-features/suggestions/1088481-peace-treaties

Unfortunately, we STILL don't have a diplomacy mod that does
- what the users want
- without bugs

The "Advanced Diplomacy Mod" by dabo1 ( https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Advanced_Diplomacy_Mod ) works the way users want, but it has bugs and is very slow - you have to wait sometimes 2 minutes to send/receive your alliance requests. This makes it unplayable. If I remember correctly, sometimes requests keep popping up in the middle of your turn because you haven't accepted or declined. The last player to submit orders was getting booted because the mod was crashing.

That's why I created this thread:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/319549-diplo-mod-needed

And thank you, Fizzer, for creating something, but the "Diplomacy" Mod ( https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Diplomacy ) is not what the diplomacy players want. They don't want alliances for a determined amount of turns. They want to:
- start at peace with each other;
- declare war, and then only next turn be able to attack each other;
- if at war, and if both agree, a peace treaty is formed, but not one that lasts a determined amount of turns; it should last until one of the players declares war again;
- be unable to attack each other for the 1st or 2nd turn(s) even if one of the players declares war (this can be solved with the Safe Start mod)

dabo1 had the right idea, but he added too many untested and not needed features such as the "shop system" (which changes the game in overpowered ways because you can summon armies out of thin air with the money you have).

Other efforts I tried:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/321043-asked-peace-treaties-uservoice-right
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/263484-diplomacy-players-members-needed
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/285875-remake-advanced-diplo-mod-members

Other than the already-discussed swapped picks and randomized bonuses, I think these mods can be used in competitive games (but I'm not a competitive player so I don't know why the competitive folks don't use them):
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Late_Airlifts
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Limited_multiattacks
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Stack_Limit
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Deployment_Limit



One big thing that bothers me about mods(and sorry if this is not the discussion you want to have, Fizzer): Creating mods. I tried creating mods and this guide is not at all beginner-friendly:
https://www.warzone.com/wiki/Mod_Developers_Guide

I got stuck trying to create a mod. And everyone that I asked for help said the same thing:
- "Look at Fizzer's example mods."
- "Read the API".

Well, sorry, that's not going to help AT ALL a beginner. I'll give you a specific example. I was looking at this code in one of dabo1's mods:

UI.CreateLabel(horz).SetText('Attacks per Multiattack(0=Infinit) ');
InputMaxAttacks = UI.CreateNumberInputField(horz).SetSliderMinValue(0).SetSliderMaxValue(100).SetValue(initialValue);

I asked him "Where did you get CreateNumberInputField ? I can't find this anywhere on Google"

He said

UI elements are created by accessing the UI global. For example, mods can call UI.CreateButton(...) to create a button.
Both of this is wrote on the UI page.

and I said

Ooooh so it's the word create + all the things in the UI page? How the heck was i supposed to know that?

For example
CreateButton
CreateCheckbox

Etc?

to which he replied

Yes, maybe you take a look on Fizzers example mods, they have even comments

Soooooo yeah, if there is no tutorial on how to create mods, I will never learn by digging through hundreds of lines of code that I don't know what they do. You can see how discouraging it is to get stuck on something and get told "read the API" or "read Fizzer's example mods." And I'm a programmer. I can't imagine someone who's a non-programmer trying to start programming his own mods. Maybe I'm different, but I cannot learn from reading through someone else's code and the API. The answer to my question wasn't even in the API!!! How was I supposed to know it's the word "Create" + all the other UI elements such as "Button", "Checkbox" etc ???

Another problem: To test the mods, you need another Membership account, or another member to join your test game.

@krunx - I agree, more "swap picks" templates would be fantastic. It's very underused atm.

And, in case you haven't seen it, Lombardy Swap is a great such template.

E.g. https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=17752733

So far, it's miles ahead as best template of 2019. (Credit to rakleader for designing it.)

Edited 3/14/2019 17:35:12

Thanks all for the feedback!

The Advanced Diplomacy mod crashes when I play with many players.

Do you know what the error message you got was? If it was a timeout error, then this problem is likely fixed now. A week ago I patched the mod system with a fix that improved performance a ton, so mods should not time out like they used to. If it was an error about exceeding storage size, this will be fixed in the next update as I plan to increase the storage size limit. If it was any other error, you should report it to Dabo.

this guide is not at all beginner-friendly

Sorry about that. I agree the the documentation is not beginner-friendly. I plan to do more work here.

I haven't played with the Advanced Diplo Mod in a while. I think the mod should be rewritten from scratch without any extra features, or spin it off into a separate mod without the extras, just keep the basics.

It wasn't just a timeout error. Like I said in my post,

you have to wait sometimes 2 minutes to send/receive your alliance requests. This makes it unplayable. If I remember correctly, sometimes requests keep popping up in the middle of your turn because you haven't accepted or declined. The last player to submit orders was getting booted because the mod was crashing.

Here are other examples from some games:
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=13906209

kevin#1 2017/10/09 17:37:45 "actually nevermind, the unavoidable popups every 10 seconds are too much, i do not want to continue this game, lets vote to end"

TurboTT117 2017/10/10 14:35:34 "XD true, some times the popups would lag and make me unable to do my turn and i got a freeze."


https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=13922952
Multiple people complaining that they didn't declare war, but the mod declared war for them


https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=14431862
various bugs with the "money" system

"yes you can buy armies but it's buggy. 2 money for 1 army. make sure the order is added at the deployment phase, otherwise the game will crash(it'll say something like illegal deployment in the attack phase detected) and you'll be booted lol ViralGoat2017/12/01 10:33:44 my orders say i bought 69 and 100 armies, but only 69 and 31 appeared. Together this wouldve cost 338 money (169*2) and I know I had the money. so something is off"

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=14472447
dabo1 "the commerce setting makes some problems so better not i am working from time to time on fixes for that but I am currently pretty busy with school"

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=13886568
ViralGoat also i attacked Zhaoqing-Yunfu 肇庆云浮 which is owned by chainsaw, but the mod skipped my attack and now i find myself at peace with chainsaw, but i never received a peace offer, and never accepted it

ViralGoat 2017/12/12 8:01:34 lol surveillance card declares war too

dabo 12017/12/20 12:52:24 i guess he declared on you(there is still the bug bug it could happen that me trying to fix it could break the game or make it worse since I am not sure how I made my datastructure)

Fleecemaster2018/04/24 16:52:01 If I click on it my game crashes and I have to reload the whole pageFleecemaster2018/04/24 16:53:33I managed to get it working this round, but milo is also having trouble accepting my trades
dabo12018/04/26 14:17:16 hm... that is strange but if your hole game crashes, then it is I think a problem of Fizzer and the mod system and not of the mod espicialy since you found a workaroundFleecemaster2018/04/26 18:38:21work around?


https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=16233807
(This is for the Diplomacy mod, not the Advanced Diplomacy mod)

The Furious Logan2018/08/23 11:02:29 ok i cant ally anyone because everytime i try to i get a pop up saying(Oops, an error has occurred)
)
The Furious Logan2018/08/25 13:58:32 everytime i do anything in the game i get a pop up im going to have to surrnder sorry

^Yeah, the mod always makes me randomly declare war on people and sometimes I have to delete the pop-ups 10 times before it goes away.

I have created a Warzone game with Randomized Bonuses turned on and the mod did not work at all and the bonuses stayed the same. I usually don't play with mods but I know that they can be buggy since I have used a couple in the past that have glitched out. I really enjoy the mod system since it works majority of the time. I would like to see more mods in the future.

Thanks all for the feedback! I have used the info here to help categorize mods, in addition to querying all games and seeing what mods people are actually using. I also removed a few that had been giving lots of errors.

Randomized Bonuses turned on and the mod did not work

I had a private conversion with Zach and we determined that the mod worked fine, he just didn't notice the numbers on the bonuses had changed. If anyone else has an issue with mods let me know!

I don't know if it's possible or not, but could there be a mod which modifies a map so there is one tile connected to all other tiles, would be useful for managing a complex diplomacy game which features rules that aren't included in either current diplo mods or spectating live games like at the Berlin Open.

So a map that’s just a grid?