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EMF: Extended Mechanics & Flavor
The core mechanics & flavor overhaul mod for HIP.
What is EMF?
EMF is the new kid on the HIP block, the first to be added to and created for HIP since HIP formed as a confederation of co-visionary mods in January 2014; EMF itself arrived in September 2014. Its lead developer is zijistark, and it continues in the spirit of Project Balance's minimalist aesthetic while nevertheless greatly expanding the scope of core mechanics & flavor improvements within HIP.
EMF is a project with the mandate to work toward an increasingly flavorful, less repetitive, more strategic, more challenging, more balanced, more customizable, and most important of all, more coherent Crusader Kings II featuring much greater dynamism and unpredictability. In other words, EMF is a gameplay mod, and in that capacity, it seeks improvement in fun factor on every front.
While this scope is quite wide, note that EMF does not, however, modify the map. Further, note that EMF's first priority is be to the core of a HIP installation, so while I'd like to spend a lot of time on flavor as well, things like Casus Belli and other core or scenario customization mechanics receive most of my attention. The vast majority of what makes EMF particularly unique is mostly-hidden infrastructure code and fixes/improvements for vanilla that improve quality-of-life.
Some principles which have already and shall always guide EMF's development:
EMF's code repository can be browsed here:
link removed - Had a dad
EMF's latest development changelog is always here (not guaranteed to describe all of the latest features & fixes currently in the beta):
link removed - Had a dad
Who is behind EMF?
I, @zijistark, am the EMF lead, and @Rylock is my primary co-pilot.
@Rylock joined me this Spring [2016] after leading CK2Plus for a very long time (very successfully). Most of his contributions so far have derived from prior work that he's done on the CK2Plus mod, and thus, EMF now perma-credits CK2Plus for a heck of a lot of cool stuff. He's also done plenty of revision and extension of that work and will likely go on to develop many entirely new projects for EMF in the future.
@AnaxXiphos is a crucial contributor and co-owner, although he now only has the time to save us with some neat art as we need it.
@Think0028 has also been a valuable contributor in the combat mechanics arena, but he is now retired.
@caocao268 is a new recruit -- so far working upon combat, retinues, and buildings -- but also serves as an adviser to the mod. He has his own sub-mod work-in-progress, ARLES, where he is testing-out some ideas that might eventually trickle into EMF.
@IoannesBarbarus is an excellent advisor to EMF, continually being a central part of our mechanics debate as well as someone that runs EMF observes so continuously that it's his effective screensaver. He also contributes plenty of code in his own way, as a programmer and occasional modder.
Finally, EMF also inherits from the work of @Meneth and myself on the now-obsolete Project Balance, although note that almost zero PB code remains active in the mod.
How can I contribute to EMF?
Community contributions are most definitely accepted, conditionally based upon adherence to the development/design principles already outlined, and that is done via GitHub (see: GitHub Bootcamp).
If you'd like to be a part of the EMF team-- including contributing as a tester/adviser-- and you agree with the aforementioned EMF principles/vision, then EMF Wants You! EMF is greatly in need of more manpower in order to hasten and better focus its development efforts; our focus upon quality over quantity does indeed have its downsides in some respects.
People with experience directly contributing (in any manner) to high-profile, professional mods like EMF, CK2Plus, AGOT, Lux Invicta, MEIOU & Taxes (EU4) are particularly likely to be of the greatest immediate need (apologies to all the highly-professional mods not mentioned!).
Next steps: Strike-up a discussion with me, @zijistark, that goes over some background about you and/or your experience, why you want to help, how you can help, etc., and you can expect a followup within at most 1 week. NOTE: I am also the HIP lead and can probably find a place for you within HIP at large if more appropriate.
Additional Credits
The core mechanics & flavor overhaul mod for HIP.
What is EMF?
EMF is the new kid on the HIP block, the first to be added to and created for HIP since HIP formed as a confederation of co-visionary mods in January 2014; EMF itself arrived in September 2014. Its lead developer is zijistark, and it continues in the spirit of Project Balance's minimalist aesthetic while nevertheless greatly expanding the scope of core mechanics & flavor improvements within HIP.
EMF is a project with the mandate to work toward an increasingly flavorful, less repetitive, more strategic, more challenging, more balanced, more customizable, and most important of all, more coherent Crusader Kings II featuring much greater dynamism and unpredictability. In other words, EMF is a gameplay mod, and in that capacity, it seeks improvement in fun factor on every front.
While this scope is quite wide, note that EMF does not, however, modify the map. Further, note that EMF's first priority is be to the core of a HIP installation, so while I'd like to spend a lot of time on flavor as well, things like Casus Belli and other core or scenario customization mechanics receive most of my attention. The vast majority of what makes EMF particularly unique is mostly-hidden infrastructure code and fixes/improvements for vanilla that improve quality-of-life.
Some principles which have already and shall always guide EMF's development:
- High Quality
- EMF games should never crash, insofar as that is possible with the CKII engine's ebb and flow of hard-coded bugs.
- EMF features/changes shall all be tested and tuned before release, and we'll often be overhauling vanilla behind the scenes for higher scripting quality.
- EMF performs very well. Great care and leveraged experience is taken to implement all of our features with minimal overhead considering the features' benefit.
- EMF is built for long campaigns and strives to remain performant 300 years into your game, often even moreso than vanilla (when using the vanilla map).
- We will conduct observes of full campaigns regularly to spot balance problems, bugs/crashes, and any performance regressions.
- Plausibility
- Whenever a mechanic within EMF is considered for alteration or add, the first question asked will always be, "Is this change real-world plausible, and if so, what is the realistically grounded explanation of the mechanic?"
- Sometimes one must choose between the most plausible outcome and the most historically accurate outcome, and for EMF, plausibility must take priority. Historical accuracy is very important, but ultimately, when we have to choose, we choose not to railroad history.
- Coherency
- We see coherency as one of CK2's main problems. You'll save your liege on the battlefield to his great delight, and then he'll be plotting to revoke one of your titles on the next game day. A random event will suddenly give you Craven for no particular reason. In EMF, if something happens, it should make sense or be a direct result of your actions.
- EMF shall go to great lengths to serve up flavor that reflects relevant character properties or previous outcomes and relationships built during a campaign.
- EMF will give you what you righteously, reasonably expect from the game's presentation of strategic effects (such as army composition or demesne law).
- EMF will strive to continually, comprehensively improve how all the pieces of the game fit together to maximize immersion.
- Fun Factor
- If it's not fun, it's not going into EMF. If it's getting in the way of fun to serve some other purpose, the approach or very premise of that other purpose needs reevaluation.
- EMF plans for the long game and assumes challenge, diverse strategy, and what would amount to a great AAR are fun.
- Despite being the core overhaul mod for the Historical Immersion Project, EMF also offers a wide array of ahistorical or "what-if" scenario customization decisions to offer an even wider, more fun number of options to the player and enable the game to be played the way you want rather than simply how we think you'll want it.
- Compatibility
- EMF is compatible with all HIP modules and strives to be compatible with simpler, non-overhaul mods as well as be relatively easy to compatch for more comprehensive 3rd-party mods. If you want permission to use EMF code to create a compatch for such another mod, simply contact @zijistark.
- EMF will always support at least the vanilla and SWMH maps.
- EMF will do its best to not only be compatible but also highly-coherent with the features of the various combinations of HIP modules that it may be installed alongside.
- EMF follows a very strict save-compatibility regimen, wherein save-compatibility is only broken when new major DLC/patches arrive (e.g., CM, WoL, HL-- whenever vanilla breaks save-compatibility itself), so you may play EMF knowing that you'll be able to safely upgrade to new versions within the same major patch cycle without any negative impact on your ongoing games. Since EMF's initial release in September 2014, we have never violated this save-compatibility regimen. [EDIT: Oops. We did need to violate this rule finally in 2016 while adapting to Conclave.]
EMF's code repository can be browsed here:
link removed - Had a dad
EMF's latest development changelog is always here (not guaranteed to describe all of the latest features & fixes currently in the beta):
link removed - Had a dad
Who is behind EMF?
I, @zijistark, am the EMF lead, and @Rylock is my primary co-pilot.
@Rylock joined me this Spring [2016] after leading CK2Plus for a very long time (very successfully). Most of his contributions so far have derived from prior work that he's done on the CK2Plus mod, and thus, EMF now perma-credits CK2Plus for a heck of a lot of cool stuff. He's also done plenty of revision and extension of that work and will likely go on to develop many entirely new projects for EMF in the future.
@AnaxXiphos is a crucial contributor and co-owner, although he now only has the time to save us with some neat art as we need it.
@Think0028 has also been a valuable contributor in the combat mechanics arena, but he is now retired.
@caocao268 is a new recruit -- so far working upon combat, retinues, and buildings -- but also serves as an adviser to the mod. He has his own sub-mod work-in-progress, ARLES, where he is testing-out some ideas that might eventually trickle into EMF.
@IoannesBarbarus is an excellent advisor to EMF, continually being a central part of our mechanics debate as well as someone that runs EMF observes so continuously that it's his effective screensaver. He also contributes plenty of code in his own way, as a programmer and occasional modder.
Finally, EMF also inherits from the work of @Meneth and myself on the now-obsolete Project Balance, although note that almost zero PB code remains active in the mod.
How can I contribute to EMF?
Community contributions are most definitely accepted, conditionally based upon adherence to the development/design principles already outlined, and that is done via GitHub (see: GitHub Bootcamp).
If you'd like to be a part of the EMF team-- including contributing as a tester/adviser-- and you agree with the aforementioned EMF principles/vision, then EMF Wants You! EMF is greatly in need of more manpower in order to hasten and better focus its development efforts; our focus upon quality over quantity does indeed have its downsides in some respects.
People with experience directly contributing (in any manner) to high-profile, professional mods like EMF, CK2Plus, AGOT, Lux Invicta, MEIOU & Taxes (EU4) are particularly likely to be of the greatest immediate need (apologies to all the highly-professional mods not mentioned!).
Next steps: Strike-up a discussion with me, @zijistark, that goes over some background about you and/or your experience, why you want to help, how you can help, etc., and you can expect a followup within at most 1 week. NOTE: I am also the HIP lead and can probably find a place for you within HIP at large if more appropriate.
Additional Credits
- CK2Plus (tons of shared code and lineage)
- Improved Genetics for HIP 2.03 (@Crimson9)
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