Game should be modding-friendly

[dmazz]

Releasing their tools, providing us with any documentation they have and putting a little effort when making the game to making it mod friendly, are reasonable requests.

[imhotep]

I wrote on the other thread about the social features and touched upon modding:

To this date, no cRPG game has been perfect, and most likely never will. There has always been limitations in the amount of interactions between the PC and the game world, like environment, items, and NPCs. Due to budget and time constraints, there always is a limited amount of quests, dialogue and alternative ways to solve things. Often, the engine also limits the size of the game world. I would like to see these things being tackled and the limits pushed as far as possible before including purely optional elements what many would assign a lower priority. Often we get these DLCs that try to remedy the situation, but then happen in a totally separate universe without most items you had due to design and testing limitations.

I think that a big part of love to the modding scene comes from trying to overcome those limitations (cf. above). Furthermore, some games like Little Big Planet or Minecraft successfully commonize the modding allowing people to actually be a part in constructing the gameworld and developing the game, and then share the results with others. Perhaps cRPGs could also benefit from lowering the bar to include new content to the game.

In part, I am promoting that it would be nice for the tools to be accessible to people with less skills. Perhaps even throug the game UI itself. To give an example, I have education on these matters, but I have no time to personally work on modding the game. Some others may have the time, but not have all the technical skills. We need some middle ground here. The should be enough technical assets in the game to allow for lots of new quests, plots and dialogue without the need for any under-the-hood work. And, hey, game constructing is old-school.

[Sluggish]

Said this somewhere else but I don't think any consideration for modding should be made.
It will only be a distraction.

[SXX]

Said this somewhere else but I don't think any consideration for modding should be made.
It will only be a distraction.

Mods can help as a solution for people who do not like certain features of the game.

Its seems like actual problem for this project where we have conflict of interests few different groups of people.
You don't like something - install (or make your own) mod and remove it!
You want to see something special, but nobody else like it? - Create your own mod!
So everybody can get bit different game and be happy with it.

[Sluggish]

Thats all well and good, but to make it the developer's responsibility to make it easier to do such things just comes off as selfish to me.

[kasra5004]

Said this somewhere else but I don't think any consideration for modding should be made. It will only be a distraction.

Mods are necessary, given the fact that wl2 will probably be the last sequel(at least for a long time) mods can keep the game alive and flowing. It has a really strong fan community who mostly care about content rather than high-end graphics so wl2 can and will have many mods that can keep the players satisfied for years.

[madmax]

Thats all well and good, but to make it the developer's responsibility to make it easier to do such things just comes off as selfish to me.

A poll shows that modding is the second most popular feature to have if there is more money to spend and Brian Fargo has picked up on this and said modding was definitely on his list but may be post release. So I'm not sure what you mean here.

[dmazz]

IMO mods are overrated. The only mods I like are 'total mods', which change gameplay and alot of things. STALKER Oblivion Lost is a good example, and there was one for Morrowind, I can't remember the name. Both mods improved the game overall, made it more fun to play. The mods improved the game.

So that's the real reason I want it to be mod friendly. Modding doesn't interest me for extra content cause mod content is usually of low quality or of little significance. (extra items and small locations and stuff)

I think the modkit should be the most powerful ever released and take modding to the next level. Modding is a good thing.

[imhotep]

IMO mods are overrated. The only mods I like are 'total mods', which change gameplay and alot of things. STALKER Oblivion Lost is a good example, and there was one for Morrowind, I can't remember the name. Both mods improved the game overall, made it more fun to play. The mods improved the game.

So that's the real reason I want it to be mod friendly. Modding doesn't interest me for extra content cause mod content is usually of low quality or of little significance. (extra items and small locations and stuff)

I think the modkit should be the most powerful ever released and take modding to the next level. Modding is a good thing.

I argue that the easier it is to make new content, the more there will be. This increase in the amount of content, in turn, leads to greater possibility of some really new ideas with equally good execution. Then it is more a matter of ranking the contributions to be able to pinpoint the best ones.

The new content is often lacking because the tools are too hard to use. See some user created Little Big Planet content. You can hardly say it is of low quality.

[dmazz]

Morrowinds tools weren't hard to use, but I never downloaded any truly great content. (just little stuff) I think the reason is high quality RPG content is just too hard to make.

[imhotep]

I agree, making cRPG quests can be harder than making platformer levels for instance. Mainly because it is hard to write quality stories and dialogue. But those Morrowind tools most likely make you write scripts, to code the thing by hand. That limits accessibility for those with good language and story-telling talents but with not so much coding abilities. The coding-by-hand portion should be replaced altogether with graphical representations of triggers and timers (see e.g. Little Big Planet) and so on.

Generally, a significant portion of people who could and would make some interesting contributions never even bother trying to mod if you have to download separate tools, and launch different programs. A few will not even know what mods are. Modding will catch the interest of some of them only if you can easily make content within the game, share it with others, and easily download other people's mods directly from the game. Of course, I am not saying this applies to HC cRPG crowd.

Still there are huge number of people who like to create those Little Big Planet levels, create SIMs characters and houses, build their own Minecraft worlds etc. I know these names may be dangerous here. But that just shows that many people like the construction part more than the actual playing parts of those games. Some of them or the likes of them might like to create cRPG content, and succeed in it.

If games allow people to contribute and a huge amount of content gets created, the best ideas will be incorporated in some forms to the best mods. The good ideas will bubble up this way.

[presence]

Neverwinter nights made a toolset that was basically accessible to/by all...yet still allowed significant capability through story and programmatic interface.

IF it was built modularly people could borrow other people's code to get the game to do what they want it to do. I would prefer to have access to the lowest level of the API using code rather than only a drag and drop system like Little Big Planet has. It might work ok for a platformer...not so good for an RPG.

[imhotep]

Surely a person with coding experience can have an extended set of tools and miscellaneous utilities to work with. Why not?

It just seems that to date, most of those persons making mods with coding based tools have not delivered very good stories, quests, and settings for cRPGs. That is the type of content I would like to see, not some tweaking of game mechanics or graphics. A game like W2 will have a nice engine as well as lots of items, NPCs, and other assets that will just be awaiting to be put into good use. Well, instead of that, most likely we see a 2 GB texture pack and a total skill point overhaul. Not that those can be nice, but still.

I wonder, how one can say beforehand that a new type of an modding tool approach would not work at all in cRPGs when it has worked out in several other genres? There is a whole lineage of games that are played by just giving the player all the tools to build stuff and make it work together. I surely cannot claim to know it would work well with a 100 % chance, but there are many great examples.

In any case, the tools need to be more accessible to really put the things to another level. I am not saying they have to be identical to the Little Big Planet but just pointing out how great visual tools can be and how well integrated the experience can be made, just using that game as an example. The moment there is coding by hand (like NWScript), even in modules, the thing is lost to many.

[That said, it is not feasible to dream of these new types of visual tools with this sort of budget and time constraints.]

[dmazz]

Main problem is good content mods need a writer, programmer and artist. Very rarely is anyone skilled in all three areas. So the modkit should really be divided into three different modules with corresponding ease of use.
The writer module should be the easiest to use, enabling them to create dialogues easily, creations of locations and npc behavior should be practically automated. Writers should also be able to release 'story modules' that contain all the text they created, and that is easily reused by other modders who flesh out the stories, art content and npc behavior.
The artist module would be for art asset creation. This individual usually has more familiarity with pc's than does the writer, given their use of complex illustrating software.
The programmer module would be the most difficult and aimed at advanced things like scripting and modifying A.i and game mechanics.

This approach would encourage teamwork on mods, which is the only way to get high quality ones.

[imhotep]

I agree that the best scenario would be those three types of people working with tools suited for them. That is the classical division of work we hear from software companies developing these games too.

But frankly, requiring too much teamwork at the beginning will leave a lot of content uncreated. I am just pointing out that the game, when shipped, already has a huge amount of graphics done by artists, there is no immediate work needed on that to provide good stories and dialogue. Just reuse an already animated non-essential NPC and clone a building or a tent or two. If you can play Evil Genius, you can do that with the right tools. What is more, there is actually a suggestion for reuse in the Moderator. The game will also have a good engine with basics that do not need to be modified to provide stories.

A main problem is that you cannot make quests without any programmatic tools. Things just need to happen in certain fashion and order to make sense. You need to be able to control the flow of things, and hence, need some tools to do that. If the system would provide nice and accessible tools within the game, a talented writer could interactively play out the story he/she is making and make changes on the fly. This would offer a nice productivity boost. It would also lower the bar for many to try it, and later on these people with all these different talents could find each others and those teams could form.

[dmazz]

The main problem with modkits so far, and crucially in RPGs is that there is no writing software in a modkit that's easy to use.

So a modkit should come with pseudo writing software, where a writers can make dialogue trees, item descriptions, without needing to mess with art or programming. Then they would release his story into the modding community to be used by other modders.

What's missing in the mod community is quality writing. But not due to a shortage of writers, it's just that for writers the learning curve for creating text content for games is too high.

[imhotep]

Yes, better writing utilities is an approach that can work and requires not too significant a change in the tool set.

Still it is a whole different thing to see one's writing in action within the game and to interactively change and tune the writing based on how it plays out in the game, than to just submit text for others to put into use. I'd rather see the writers produce a roughly working story including flow control and effects on attributes. That can be then fine-tuned by artists and programmers if necessary. The modders just don't have good tools for this sort of work-flow.

[SXX]

The main problem with modkits so far, and crucially in RPGs is that there is no writing software in a modkit that's easy to use.

So a modkit should come with pseudo writing software, where a writers can make dialogue trees, item descriptions, without needing to mess with art or programming.

Do you really think developers are really different with you and they usually use some "hard to use" software?
I think no, most of them ( in inXile team ) will be not programmers and they need some tools anyway.
Today there is 2012 year and right now there is no developers who don't use tools when creating game.

So nobody of mod community die if inXile release some internal tools.
These tools will be less polished, but they shouldn't be very hard for understanding and using.

Anyway "hard" tools its better than nothing.
And if inXile give us source code of their tools we can improve it and add functions we need, its not problem as I think.
If game will be interesting and successful as old-school RPG there will be lot of people who want work on it, I sure.

Then they would release his story into the modding community to be used by other modders.

I think we'll need special website for cataloging and sorting of different content.

What's missing in the mod community is quality writing. But not due to a shortage of writers, it's just that for writers the learning curve for creating text content for games is too high.

Be more positive.
Creating of text content or scripted quest its much easier than 3D modelling, making of art or music, voice.
You (not me, cuz I not a native speaker and I have problem with grammar) can spend week and it will be enough to write well-styled text with deep atmosphere feeling.
I don't think everybody can done it well, but creating of text content is much easy than create any other kind of content.
Its doesn't need to learn for years to write interesting story with 5-6 situations.

[SXX]

Yes, better writing utilities is an approach that can work and requires not too significant a change in the tool set.

I don't think we need anything special, because special polished tools cost money and better to spend this money to core parts of game.
If game will be nice and interesting we'll have lot of programmers here.
We need just some source code or good documentation to create tools that we need.

So I always say that is basic game is most important, but some thinking about modders can help to increase community faster.
Even with no tools, docs and source code we'll try to change something, but its big barrier and sometimes its too big for most of people.

Still it is a whole different thing to see one's writing in action within the game and to interactively change and tune the writing based on how it plays out in the game, than to just submit text for others to put into use. I'd rather see the writers produce a roughly working story including flow control and effects on attributes. That can be then fine-tuned by artists and programmers if necessary. The modders just don't have good tools for this sort of work-flow.

I seen lot of cool fan fiction in years and I sure lot of people can write complete scenario with notices about ingame events.
I don't think that complete mod can be done with one person without scripting knowledges, but it's should be simple to understand limitations of scripting system and then we'll see lot of interesting story's.

[Kiya]

I don't think we need anything special, because special polished tools cost money and better to spend this money to core parts of game.
If game will be nice and interesting we'll have lot of programmers here.
We need just some source code or good documentation to create tools that we need.

So I always say that is basic game is most important, but some thinking about modders can help to increase community faster.
Even with no tools, docs and source code we'll try to change something, but its big barrier and sometimes its too big for most of people.

I seen lot of cool fan fiction in years and I sure lot of people can write complete scenario with notices about ingame events.
I don't think that complete mod can be done with one person without scripting knowledges, but it's should be simple to understand limitations of scripting system and then we'll see lot of interesting story's.

I agree with SXX. People here also need to remember that Brian and his team are primarily game developers and this is a favour to the community that we are asking for - if it look's like creating tools is going to take major time away from getting on with the next game they want to make then they would be perfectly within their rights to turn round and say 'sorry - no'.

Always adhere to the KISS principle - keep it simple. The simplest thing will surely be to give us as much of the toolset that they use themselves that they can allow so that it can be done with as quickly and easily as possible. Templates and additional tools can and will always be provided by more knowledgable members of the community itself.