Things You Should Do When Making a Mod

[Chairman Baad 2,000]

Things You Should Do When Making a Mod

General Issues

• Consider the mod you want to make. Are you going for a story-driven mod with diverging paths? Or maybe you want to focus on a certain era of human history? The first thing you should always consider before making a mod is what kind of mod you're going to make.
• Know your limits. Try to refrain from having too many projects going at the same time. If you have 3 mods in the works and you're trying to focus your attention on one mod at a time, players who were looking forward to the other mods might be disappointed with having to wait longer.
• Don't steal! Stealing content from another mod is one of the worst things you could do in development. You could get into some serious trouble with the developer of the mod you stole from, or with the players if they recognize whatever got stolen.
• Consider using The Lost Update. The Lost Update is an unofficial update for AoH2 that includes various fixes and improvements.

Scenarios

• Do your research! If you're making a historical scenario, do some research on the year or era your scenario is set in. What was going on in each continent? Which nations existed? Which cities were capitals? Historical scenarios should be as accurate as possible to ensure high quality.
• Fill in all the necessary provinces. Sometimes a tiny province like Monaco or Hong Kong gets left unclaimed by any country in some scenarios. Make sure to double-check all the provinces and make sure that they are claimed.

Custom Maps

• After completing a map, check the province settings. Did you set the growth rates up? How about the terrain types? The continents and regions? Details like that can make or break a map, no matter how many provinces it has.

Events

• DO NOT use the "Decision taken" trigger. This mistake killed my #1 mod and effectively puts every event-driven mod at risk of breaking. There is a bug in AoH2 where if you take a decision on an event and then save and reload your game, the game won't remember that you made that decision, thereby disabling any events that were supposed to trigger from the decision.
• Don't use the "Have army" and "Have a core" triggers. Those are broken and will cause the event to always fire.

On the Forums

• Bump your thread every once in a while. Players might not try your mod if they don't see the thread. Posting something in your mod thread will "bump" your mod to the first page of the mod list, where more people will see it. It will also let players know that you are still active.
• Watch out for spam-bots! We all know those casino and drug loving spam-bots that flood the forums with nonsense and bury people's threads. If your mod gets buried by spam-bots and Łukasz isn't there to beat them with his shoe, you should wait until the spam-bots stop posting and then bump your thread.
• Keep your players updated! Don't leave them in the dark for long periods of time! This may make the players think that your mod is stuck somewhere in development, or even dead! Every now and then, try giving them a little update on your mod's development. It doesn't have to be a big teaser. Even a simple "this mod is alive" will work.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Chairman Baad