Posted July 23, 2010
First of all if you are a fan of 1 and 2 and you are either a big fan of that EXACT gameplay or you are a really big fan of the race/character setup in those games, there is a very good chance you will not like this game. It is like when a friend says he's getting pizza for supper and he's buying because say you helped him move. All day you are just waiting for that big pizza with your favourite toppings just the way you like it. Then suddenly the doorbell rings and he says the pizza is here and he ordered it without asking you what you want and it has tomatoes/olives/shrimp or some other topping you hate. It still may be a great pizza, but it wasn't the pizza you were drooling over all day and it has something annoying you don't like.
However if the pizza just happens to be ok or by dumb luck different but just as good as what you wanted, your fine with it.
So it goes with MOO3.
When it was made the lead designer did not like the original races and storyline much. He did a major revamp and was more than a little abrasive to the fan community as he did it. Then the money behind the game forced them to put the game out before it was finished let alone polished and properly tested. The most obvious sign to player is the interactions between the alien diplomats and the player. The second most obvious is the overly complicated UI controls that supposedly were going to be refined later.
Very quickly people who still liked the game "if only they fixed or tweaked" this thing or that started to do it themselves.
Thats where I came in. One of the problems was people were using mods to fix or enhance so many different things that it sometimes caused issues that didn't turn up until after a long game was over half done. I created a package mod that compiled these mods into a single install, putting them in the right order that they didn't conflict. I called it MasterMasterMod 1.0.
Shortly after I created MasterMasterMod, the community came up with another solution, which was to come up with an unofficial patch that included an mod control and have mods be made like extentions to the patch and more compatible with each other, much like a plug in architecture.
You can find these, plus stuff for MOO0, MOO1, and MOO2. at The Master of Orion Gaurdian at www.MOO3.at
However if the pizza just happens to be ok or by dumb luck different but just as good as what you wanted, your fine with it.
So it goes with MOO3.
When it was made the lead designer did not like the original races and storyline much. He did a major revamp and was more than a little abrasive to the fan community as he did it. Then the money behind the game forced them to put the game out before it was finished let alone polished and properly tested. The most obvious sign to player is the interactions between the alien diplomats and the player. The second most obvious is the overly complicated UI controls that supposedly were going to be refined later.
Very quickly people who still liked the game "if only they fixed or tweaked" this thing or that started to do it themselves.
Thats where I came in. One of the problems was people were using mods to fix or enhance so many different things that it sometimes caused issues that didn't turn up until after a long game was over half done. I created a package mod that compiled these mods into a single install, putting them in the right order that they didn't conflict. I called it MasterMasterMod 1.0.
Shortly after I created MasterMasterMod, the community came up with another solution, which was to come up with an unofficial patch that included an mod control and have mods be made like extentions to the patch and more compatible with each other, much like a plug in architecture.
You can find these, plus stuff for MOO0, MOO1, and MOO2. at The Master of Orion Gaurdian at www.MOO3.at