Any luck where de-hardcoding is concerned?

[NobleNerd]

I haven't heard much about progress regarding the de-hardcoding of RoN. Is there any hope of this ever being a thing?

What would it take to make this happen?

[alincarpetman]

I recall your posts about this, I'm also waiting for news on this and haven't heard anything yet.

It would take finding programmers interested in such a project, either for free or paid jobs, as part or separate from a User Patch project.

You could try posting on various relevant game programming forums online, or places such as Reddit to see if anyone is interested. Usually if it is a player-made project the problem becomes balancing life and the project hobby, which is another reason these types of projects either take a long time or don't happen.

AOE3 got an unhardcode patch done for free by players of the game, I don't know why RON & ROL don't get as much attention - maybe people have moved on after the problems with the RON Steam EE. Maybe there will be a Definitive Edition of both games in a few years which may generate interest again.

[NobleNerd]

Out of curiosity (I'm not a programmer), the documents in RoN say they use Altova XMLSpy to edit with.

Is this the source of the hardcoding? It's an expensive software, so I'm not surprised that, if it's the key to modding the game, people haven't really bothered with it.

[Fission Power]

What do you mean about "de-hardcoding"?

[alincarpetman]

@Fission Power - See this thread here.

@NobleNerd

Here[en.wikipedia.org] is the wiki explanation on hardcoding. I'm not a programmer but here are some basics:

The XML Spy program is used to write, debug, and modify the XML files of the game which are text files that contain data such as unit and building characteristics, spells, powers, techs, etc.

You can use a regular text editor to view and mod the XML files, but if some part of the game is hardcoded, then you won't be able to mod that part and your mod won't work when tested in the game. So you don't need the expensive software for modding or unhardcoding.

It's the laborious, time consuming (and sometimes illegal) process of unhardcoding/dehardcoding via whatever methods and programs the programmers and modders use that makes this type of project one of the most difficult to accomplish.

You most likely need access to the source code to do this and that's usually proprietary data bound by laws. After the devs get the rights to re-release a game and they acquire the source code then they can do something like unhardcoding. Otherwise, player-made and community-made patches can get it done via other methods.

So if we want to work on a community-made Upatch we need skilled programmers with experience and time. Balancing real life and hobbies can be a problem, especially if the project is not a paid job and being done for fun.

[NobleNerd]

Is there anyone we could contact for help? Maybe game programmers with YT channels?

[HoorayForLessRice]

Originally posted by alincarpetman:

I recall your posts about this, I'm also waiting for news on this and haven't heard anything yet.

It would take finding programmers interested in such a project, either for free or paid jobs, as part or separate from a User Patch project.

You could try posting on various relevant game programming forums online, or places such as Reddit to see if anyone is interested. Usually if it is a player-made project the problem becomes balancing life and the project hobby, which is another reason these types of projects either take a long time or don't happen.

AOE3 got an unhardcode patch done for free by players of the game, I don't know why RON & ROL don't get as much attention - maybe people have moved on after the problems with the RON Steam EE. Maybe there will be a Definitive Edition of both games in a few years which may generate interest again.

Well, the Wars of Liberty mod started as a Rise of Nations mod, but was moved to Age of Empires III due to difficulties with moding on RoN.