How's the mod situation going?

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

Have there been mods that have revamped all the graphics of tanks to look like their purchase icons? I was disappointed that the remake decided to keep the art design as close to the original SHPs as possible, instead of trying to make them look like the real life vehicles presented in the sidebar icons.

[Nyerguds]

Um. Look in the workshop? You can filter on "TiberianDawnMod" or "RedAlertMod" in the sidebar.

Mortecha seems to have a bunch of mini-mods that do exactly that.

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

Originally posted by Nyerguds:

Um. Look in the workshop? You can filter on "TiberianDawnMod" or "RedAlertMod" in the sidebar.

Mortecha seems to have a bunch of mini-mods that do exactly that.

Can all of these mods be combined though? I was looking for a full mod that does what all those mini ones do.

[Nyerguds]

Well... that's a bit complicated. See, there are two types of mods: those that only affect media, and those that include global data files.

Mods can only override things once, though; if you got two mods that both replace the graphics of the Light Tank, but one adds spikes to the front, and the other adds a bigger fuel tank to the back, it's obviously not going to combine the added features of both. Files don't work that way. One of them will be loaded first, and that one is the one the game will use.

But the same thing is true for more globally used files, such as the global XML definition files for configuring things such as team colors, theater tiles and object graphics, and the main game engine core DLL. You won't magically get the game engine tweaks from two mods; each of these is a complete game engine core replacement, and nothing can magically combine those two files.

So in principle, multiple small graphics mods can be combined, as long as they only override stuff from single units or structures.

But, well, while I said there were "two types of mods", in reality, the distinction between those two is kind of a blurry line. Mods that seem to make only some small changes sometimes need to tweak higher-level global lists of objects to correctly make all their changes. For example, my TD Fixes mod doesn't change the game engine, but since it adds some objects that exist in the game engine but are missing in the remaster, such as TD's two types of concrete pavement, it overrides the main object graphics definitions file, TD_VFX.XML, to add those in.

This means that, while it won't interfere with any mods that modify the game engine itself (TiberianDawn.dll), if such a mod also needs some tweaks in these object graphics definitions, and has its own TD_VFX.XML, one will still override the other, and one of the two mods will lose its required tweaks in that file, inevitably breaking things.

So yea, your best bet is to check the subscribed mod's Workshop files (Steam library folder → workshop → content → 1213210 → folder with the mod's id → folder with the mod's name), and see if the "Data" folder in there contains either a game engine core dll (RedAlert.dll or TiberianDawn.dll) or an "XML" folder that tweaks global configuration files. If that's the case, and the overridden files have overlaps, then the two mods will conflict.

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All that said, I do expect Mortecha to have designed all of his mini-mods to be combinable; otherwise, what would be the point?

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

Thanks for the in depth reply, I'll look into it.

[Nyerguds]

Also note that the main ccmod.json file has a "load_order", which is basically the mod priority, so mods with their priority set to 1 will override mods with priority 2. This system was intended to be used so that mods which override global files like the game engine dll should use 1, and addons like these unit graphics should use 2, but I have no idea if mod makers actually used it that way.