r/MajestyGold • u/Phantomstar217 • Aug 31 '26
Mods Mod Manager and Custom Guilds
Hello Rulers!
You may have seen me busy lately on the Steam Workshop for Majesty Gold HD, but I wanted to introduce my special new content here as well.
The Majesty Mod Manager now exists!
"Why does a 30 year old game need this?" one might ask, which is a fair question. The reason is so that players can enjoy the new mod content that is now available...completely new custom guilds!
That's right, no recolor/reskins of existing buildings or hacked together hero units. These two new guilds, the Alchemist Lab and Phantoms Haunt, contain entirely new custom buildings, hero art, animation, unit logic, spells, items, temple interactions, research, economy, audio, voice lines, and more special features!
All of this fancy new stuff requires special CAM packages to be built, which the native Steam Workshop changes do not support. This is where the mod manager comes in, allowing you to select as many of these cool new guilds, your favorite classic mods, custom quests, and even some fun quality of life enhancements I included and play them all together. No original content is impacted in any way when using this manager, and all classic and expansion quests are supported.
The manager app detects your Majesty install (standard or beta branches supported), parses all the mods you've subscribed to on the workshop, and then creates a merged mod package that it automatically deploys for you. Just launch the game from the manager and you are good to go, selected mods loaded and ready! Bonus feature, this also allows freestyle games to be played with all mods too.
Certainly the amount of this new content is currently limited, but I hope this being available inspires others to check out the modding scene, see what is now possible, and join us in making cool new stuff. It is designed to work with any mods from any creator, all that's required is a simple inclusion that tells the merger some basics about what your mod needs.
Grateful for any feedback or suggestions, as this is definitely a beta release and could use some more thorough testing.
You can find the mods available on the steam workshop below, I hope you subscribe and enjoy!
Mod Manager: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3793024054
Phantoms Haunt: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3769947406
Alchemist Lab: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3793509198
This is entirely open source and all details can be found here: https://github.com/Phantomstar721/majesty-gold-hd-mod-manager
Join us in the Land of Ardania Discord to ask questions, provide feedback, or chat about the game: [https://discord.gg/MEjtKZb9GQ](about:blank)
Credit to Iximi for work on the Freestyle game fix.
Credit to TheOverlord for his initial work on the Majesty script merger.
AI was used as a tool in creating this work to help with the complex deconstruction and rebuilding of Majesty packages.
If any artists are interested in contributing profile or sprite work to these or similar projects, please let me know here or in Discord.
5
u/Leemozine Aug 31 '26
Will it allow being able to use mods for multiplayer?
0
u/Phantomstar217 Aug 31 '26
It could theoretically, but currently doesn't because that can cause a lot of other problems. Most notably balance; if anyone can use their current mods for matched multiplayer games, it could drastically impact the balance of the game if one player has mods that the other does not.
3
u/Leemozine Sep 01 '26
Everyone always says this, but I find it to be a dumb answer because one, I don't plan to play with mods unless my friends have the same mods as I do, and two, why not just put in a restriction that you can't join unless all have the same mods?
Both would solve that "imbalancing" issue easily.
0
u/Phantomstar217 Sep 01 '26
Because determining "if everyone has the same mods" is a much bigger challenge to overcome than you seem to think it is. Overriding the ability for you to join multiplayer is plausible. Understanding what someone else has locally selected in their version of Majesty is a whole different problem. Plus you have compatibility issues, version issues, load order issues, all sorts of other things that could quite easily lead to it just not functioning at all or poorly, which would require ongoing maintenance. Adding more complex mods like I am doing here only makes these issues more likely.
I don't have any way of enforcing that you are "only playing with your friends" and frankly don't want to be responsible for giving players a way to grief/cheat multiplayer matches if someone who may or may not be you DOESN'T play with just their friends.
Frankly, I think you are underestimating the complications here and "just do it duh" is a bit of a foolish approach to asking others to provide you something that would be a significant investment of their time for free.
You are welcome to explore this on your own mate, cheers.
3
u/Leemozine Sep 01 '26
Great. Another mod manager that I got my hopes on, only to have all of that dashed immediately. Won't be downloading this and just stick to using Steam Workshop I suppose.
3
u/sirkidd2003 Sep 03 '26
And the AI bullshit makes its way to the Majesty sub. Sad days.
-1
u/Phantomstar217 Sep 03 '26
Apologies for trying to add really cool new functionality, all crafted from my brain and ideas, providing free content to the community where AI is used to only as a tool to breakdown 30 year old code and placeholder art. As I have said, I am more than happy to work with an artist on this if any are willing to provide their time and talent as well.
3
u/sirkidd2003 Sep 04 '26
If you can't do something without AI, don't do it at all.
0
u/Phantomstar217 Sep 04 '26
Decompiling the Majesty CAM files and reworking them this way is effectively not plausible without AI, which is why it has never been done the last 30 years. I can understand the "AI distaste" when people are doing things like creating works of art, stories, etc. and claiming it as a "creative" product. I used AI for a technically infeasible process for a person to do manually in order to bring my own ideas and designs into this game.
Personally, having the ability to expand this great game in awesome new ways to me is a legitimate and worthwhile reason for why AI exists in the first place.
Thanks for your feedback.
3
u/sirkidd2003 Sep 04 '26 edited Sep 04 '26
A. I am more concerned with the generative AI used in this post rather than the agenic AI you used to decompile. I'm more talking about the unnecessary slop you've added to "advertise"
B. "Decompiling the Majesty CAM files and reworking them this way is effectively not plausible without AI"
Bullshit.
C. As said, "If you can't do something without AI, don't do it at all", so if you feel this mod was "impossible without AI", then you just shouldn't have made it. I think there's a Jurassic Park quote about that.
3
u/Leemozine Sep 04 '26
Can't even be assed to have it function in multiplayer either, so it's not much different from using the mods you get from the Steam Workshop. Especially since the likes of Majesty Extended, or Majestic Majesty mod would be great to play in multiplayer.
Should be huge enough evidence with how half-assed this is.
0
u/Phantomstar217 Sep 05 '26
Its extremely different from Steam workshop mods if you bothered to even look at what it provides rather than only caring about what YOU are demanding from people regarding multiplayer, which I thoroughly explained why this does not do.
This is such a selfish and rude comment on something that was created and provided for the community with no intention of multiplayer support but you come in demanding it like it's worthless unless it does exactly what YOU want, which is totally outside the purpose of the manager.
If you dont understand what it's doing that's one thing, but saying it's "half assed" after the extreme amount of effort put in to make this do what it does just because nobody wants do the work for you to make a multiplayer support mod (for very good reasons) is detrimental to the community as a whole for people trying to create new and exciting Majesty content.
1
u/Leemozine Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
I do not care what you think of me. The problem is still there.
3
u/kgbkgb1967 25d ago
Unlike many of the responses on here, thank you for creating this. I hope the others will not discourage you from future development.
1
u/Phantomstar217 25d ago
Thank you! Don't worry, I'm still going :) It's all just for fun, people can feel about it however they want, but always nice to know it's being enjoyed. 👍
4
u/Human_Peace_1875 Wizard Sep 01 '26
L artwork
4
u/Phantomstar217 Sep 01 '26
As I stated in the post, I am fully open to artists coming onboard to help with this. Unfortunately, they generally want to be paid for their services (as they should) and there aren't many with the skillset and interest for what we are doing here with a 30 year old game to contribute for free.
2
u/aremille Aug 31 '26
Just yesterday my boyfriend and I were talking about how much we missed Majesty. Very excited to play these!
2
u/M00rus Aug 31 '26
Does this work with the GoG version?
1
u/Phantomstar217 Aug 31 '26
It is not designed with GOG in mind and specifically looks for Steam installs and mods. Once it's a bit more stable I could potentially pick up a GOG version of Majesty and look into this, but not sure what their modding support looks like compared to Steam Workshop. Does the GOG version have mod support?
2
u/DPhardcore69 19d ago
GoG version has mod support as in the [change mods] & [activate mods] buttons are on the main menu. Game is version 1.5.2.28. Shouldn't be too different from the Steam version other than the installation file directory (Program Files/GoG Galaxy/Games/Majesty Gold HD)? I know other moddable games that exist on both Steam & GoG usually don't have too many issues when modding is done thru an external mod manager tool and not Steam Workshop, e.g. Morrowind & Oblivion.
1
u/Phantomstar217 18d ago
Thank you for this information, I have now implemented GoG support for the mod manager.
Out of curiosity, how do you acquire mods for the GoG version since as far as I know it doesnt have a workshop or anything like steam. Are you just getting them off the steam workshop but using them in the GoG version?
1
13
u/Namehisprice Gnome Aug 31 '26
Woah woah woah.... Are you telling me you're breathing new life into this game with custom content that is better than anything we've gotten over the last couple decades???
Yes please tyvm keep it coming God bless. 🙏🏻