Just curious, have you started a new game or continued a previous one?

All the spell files Icecrown uses have been heavily modified in the last patch, he'll need to update his mod unfortunately.

This is not good if our game breaks every time an update is released because we are using mods.  It's easy to find the culprit now since there are so few mods, but when we have dozens installed down the road we're going to be screwed.

That unfortunately is the reality if you use mods.   There really isn't a way around it.  Icecrown has made a copy of the 1.07 spells and added his own effects, for 1.08 they changed the format that spells are described in, so if you are still using the 1.07 format, your spells are not going to work.    Stardock made a change that was highly requested by the community (min & max damage values), but it was not something that could stay compatible with existing mods.   :shrug: sounds reasonable to me.

Yes, there is a way around it.  Because with any other game that supported "modding", the developers have kept mods and the core game engine independent from one another.  I can throw a hundred mods into Morrowind, Oblivion or Civ 4 and never have conflicts with updates.

That's the whole point of modding, especially with a game like Elemental which supports modding tools to an unprecedented degree.  What you do is you allow people to dump files in a special folder that doesn't interfere or break with core files.  In other words, it is okay if the mods break for updates, but it's not okay for the game to break.

What you're saying is that I have to delete all of my mods every other week before I get an update from Stardock.  And considering that Frogboy has promised frequent updates for the next few years, that sounds quite ridiculous to me.

There is a way around it......
Only add the information in your mod xml that is changed from vanilla..

So in effect, if you ONLY change 1 line (or however many it is) in a fireball_spell.xml, you can just make a new fireball_spell.xml and add nothing but that one line, then that line will replace the vanilla line in that file, but the entire spell stats and such will be loaded from the vanilla file.

This works with some xml files, maybe not all. Give it a try!
It works for the coreraces xml at least, this is how i easily change the vanilla faction race colors & environment type without ever having to update it as patches and changes gets released for those races, example:

CoreRaceChanges.xml (note its not even named the same as the vanilla xml, still works)

  <RaceConfig InternalName="KingdomOfGilden">
    <BuildingPrimaryColor>255,194,130</BuildingPrimaryColor>
    <BuildingSecondaryColor>138,95,54</BuildingSecondaryColor>
    <EnvironmentTerrainType>3</EnvironmentTerrainType>
  </RaceConfig>

  <RaceConfig InternalName="KingdomOfPariden">
    <BuildingPrimaryColor>255,194,130</BuildingPrimaryColor>
    <BuildingSecondaryColor>138,95,54</BuildingSecondaryColor>
    <EnvironmentTerrainType>4</EnvironmentTerrainType>
  </RaceConfig>

Unfortunately, raceconfigs are the excemption.

Edit: Actually, I'm lying. I haven't tested many others. So I really have no idea.

Stardock should hire Ice Crown..... not joking

A truly amazing mod! Incredible work.

Congrats getting you Mod added to the game in the 1.08 patch Truly excellent work.

Hey does this work  with fridays update? Great work by the way Icecrown.

I think you forgot to remove some mods

lol Yeap...I saw his animations and didn't realize I had the files still in place...oops. I thought one of the devs said something a while back about putting these in the vanilla game though so I figured maybe they were added. My bad. Sorry for getting your hopes up if you saw that Icecrown. I notice some of the damage modifiers went screwy with the last update and hotfix. I'm going to try re-adding your mod now and see if it works right but if not they might have changed something in the XML which means we might have to change some things in our mods if they need a hotfix too (still investigating this).

Ok, I just doubled checked. I downloaded the newest version here you have up and when I put the XML's in place for the mod to work the spells don't do any damage . Something's up with the way Mods work now, Icecrown. I think a lot of us modders will have to do updates.

was expecting this when they announced all those changes to the spells system ^^

i will fix that but im afraid you need to remove it for now

that will rly be great, i'll give it a try, thx for the tips

the mod is now updated for 1.08

sadly i can't manage to make it work in the way baleurion suggested

I believe it is non-destructive when you place it in your My Games\Elemental folder. However, if you put it in Program Files\Elemental\Mods the changes are destructive. Since this mod only works when you put it in the \Mods folder is it destructive and modular changes won't work (: 

That's at least how I understand it. 

This is BS if we have to keep deleting and re-downloading this mod every week after each update.

I don't think it works like that awuffleablehedgie. I think its just a difference between types. It ties into this https://forums.elementalgame.com/394013

Basically, if you're modifying an existing improvementtype, a raceconfig or abilitybonus, you can use the "less evil" approach and only define the tags you are actually changing. If you're changing a spelldef type, for example, you absolutely have to redefine the whole thing. Or a spellbooktype, for that matter.

I'm not sure what types this applies to, however.

Both ways of handling modifications have their merits.

The "less evil" way makes mods work with each other, which is very good. However, it is very bad when we can't remove tags from the original. Try removing <UnlocksShopItem>SaltedPork</UnlocksShopItem> from a cityhub, for example. Can't be done.

The "more evil" way makes mods not work with each other, which is very bad. However, it also allows us to completely change the way something works.

Ideally, there should be an option in the XML to define what kind the mod is, rather than a pre-defined arbitrary solution.

Shit looks tight def gonna try this out, yah sad that you did better in such short tim ethen there art/graphic dev team, lol , like the weapon/extras in gibert mod i belvie those look fuckin great to , they should start do job recruiting in the mod section shit.

Anybody know if this is still compatible with 1.09?