id: New technology making it harder to create mod tools
While id software has always been a forerunner in advanced technology and engine development, it is that very technology that is making it harder for the studio to continue to purse the creation of mod tools and easily moddable games, id studio director Tim Willits said.
Quake Live will continue to get development updates
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, id: New technology making it harder to create mod tools.
While id software has always been a forerunner in advanced technology and engine development, it is that very technology that is making it harder for the studio to continue to purse the creation of mod tools and easily moddable games, id studio director Tim Willits said.-
Much of this interview was questions from chatty. Thanks guys.
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We all <3 you, Keefs
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they learned from games like BF3 that you can make loads more cash selling DLCs rather than let enthusiasts make content people can download for free.
It's hard to compete with free.-
I agree with you to a certain extent, but then take a look at Skyrim. That game has got mods coming out the wazoo, and DLC. DLC that is probably fairly successful.
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"probably fairly successful"
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The DLC if story based would fare better against community content that's directed towards multiplayer like new maps.
Also with BF3 the lack of mod tools was due to not wanting to deal with the added cost of making mod tools IIRC. -
We know this, but publishers like EA and Activision don't.
Just look at how EA's been treating its customers lately. They couldn't give two shits about the quality of their consumer experience. All they want is your money now, and they'll do any short-sighted (SimCity online access) idiotic (Origin) thing to get it.
They cannot think in the long term and they don't understand how the future is a service-orientated game's industry, not a boxed-product industry.-
I wonder if modding will come back in any way with the new consoles. I bet a big part of the reason big pubs don't support modding over DLC is that modding is still a PC dependent thing.
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Perhaps on the PS4. Microsoft will have to relent on their Live strictness to allow it. Given how hard they're working on addressing the flaws in Live, I could see it happening if enough devs ask.
Keep in mind that modding isn't 'coming back.' There are more mods and game engines with mod support coming out now than there ever have been. Every single game I've bought in the last year except Assassin's Creed 3, Paper's Please and Misamata.
The real problem it getting idiotic publishers (UbiSoft, EA, Activision) to accept it. Most likely, they won't since they are so heavily tied to big-box thinking and not service-oriented thinking like Valve and CDProject and every other non-published tied developer.-
"Every single game I've bought in the last year except Assassin's Creed 3, Paper's Please and Misamata. "
Any examples? I have hard time thinking about any game released in this day and age with as comprehensive mod support as id's pre-Rage releases or UT2Kx for example.-
Shadowrun Returns, Gunpoint, FTL, Natural Selection 2, Saint's Row 3 (now), Dead Island, ARMA 3/ARMA 2, Star Citizen (lol, whenever it comes out), Trackmania 2, Magica, Torchlight 2
Exceptions: Dishonored, BioShock: I, Mark of the Ninja, Superhexagon
It's legitimately difficult to not find a modded game. You basically have to play AAA only to miss the fantastic games with fantastic mod support.-
What are some good FTL mods?
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Endless Fucking FTL MODE is my #1 for it. That's really all I needed.
It removes the rebels and the rebel fight at the end and lets you just endlessly proceed through the game, explore, encounter, and get fucked by big nasty ships.-
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and it is been published by id's sister company and publisher Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda/ZeniMax approved the release of mod tools for Rage, approved the release of the Doom 3 source code, approved the release of the Doom 3 BFG Edition source code very shortly after its commercial release and have let Carmack do Web/iOS games/ports with source code available day one.
You can say a lot about Bethesda and ZeniMax but they are not mod/community unfriendly and have them selves shown the compatibility of mod tools and DLC. Unlike the absolutely mod unfriendly publisher that is Take Two Interactive. -
yep. id doesn't know how to scale. mods in skyrim can scale from tree textures to new NPCs and towns and weapons and quests and everything. so how does skyrim, via new technology, make it EASIER to make mod tools and then... so many mods that you need a fucking external mod manager to load them!?@#!? that's how huge the mod scene is in skyrim. they are awesome mods.
id just is throwing words around at this point. the "spirit of rage" and now this? come on.
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This is bullshit for the case of Rage. Their tools are built to take huge huge huge amounts of content, far greater than other games and then use a cluster of servers to bake all that shit down into something useable for games. That pipeline doesn't really work all that well on one powerful gaming PC.
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as games get more complex they require more complex dev tools. The work necessary to get those dev tools into an even higher quality form for public consumption and with appropriate documentation goes up as the tool complexity goes up.
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"The work necessary to get those dev tools into an even higher quality form for public consumption and with appropriate documentation goes up as the tool complexity goes up."
In the old days game development studios would release tools in an as-is rough state and the community would do wonders with that. That old state of affairs is much better than having no mod tools.-
even getting them to an "as-is" rough state that can run at all outside your own setup takes more work as the tool complexity goes up.
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Generally speaking-
A lot of tools are talking to other tools over a network, looking to open assets from source-control (which home users won't have), that kind of thing. They're made under the assumption that the environment is the one at work. Not to mention compatibility issues; most places order bulk machines with the same specs/OS so hardware config combos aren't as much of a concern. Then you release it and it's this sound card with that OS and that video card with that mobo, etc.. It's a slippery slope to support that stuff.
Menus and interfaces in the wild need to be user friendly. Tools at a dev dont need to be *as much* because you can talk to the guy next to you, or read local documentation.
Not to mention raw horsepower which is what Tim sounds like he's talking about.
It's not a "fire and forget" thing, you have to support it over time, which costs resources. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, just mentioning what's involved that folks might not be aware of.
Having said all of this I'm a large supporter of mod-tools, the MW1 tools allowed me to learn a ton. I'm pro mod tools for sure personally.
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"It's not a "fire and forget" thing, you have to support it over time, which costs resources. I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing, just mentioning what's involved that folks might not be aware of. "
You don't HAVE to that at all. Historically it has exactly been a "fire and forget" thing with mod tools released on an "as is" basis. "Here is what we made the game with, have a go at it but be warned use this at your own risk".-
For sure, if you want to release them and not support them you can.
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my bullshit detector just lit up.
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At QuakeCon a few years back Carmack mentioned how they had built out their server farm in the building for rendering to the point where they couldn't add any more hardware because they were running up against the power limits for the entire building.
Just because you're cynical and you don't understand something doesn't make it wrong.-
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If only there was a kind of service EC2 which would allow for elastic use of resources Azure where smaller devs/modders could make use of Rackspace Cloud resources only when they need to do large data work.
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because UDK is a product of its own in a way that very few games engines are or aim to be. Epic plans for UDK to be licensed all over the place and be a significant source of revenue, so it is engineered and resourced appropriately, quite unlike an engine and toolchain that really only exists for the developer themselves.
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I mean, to be fair, maybe they never were in that position internally and technologically, but strategically they found themselves in a position where many developers would have been willing to buy their game engines from. however, some time during the quake series they let that possibility slip away from them.
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From Masters of Doom I really got the impression that Romero was the one pushing more to go down that path...he also wanted to get into publishing in a weird sort of way.
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Yeah, I got the impression that they intentionally got out of the licensing business because they didn't want to continue taking time away from their own products to support licensees and this allowed them to work in hodgepodge tools for longer.
It sounds like they're finally starting to go back and clean up their dev pipeline as it was getting too cumbersome now that they're sort of in a spun-down support for Wolf: New Order.
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I say that like the companies chose different paths years ago. With Doom 3 iD opted to stay small and focus on the tech they needed, Epic opted to become an engine company with a flagship franchise of their own to show off the tech. It takes a lot of resources to support tons of licensees, iD liked being a small company.
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just because I'm cynical doesn't mean these corporate people never say anything without going through a PR department first and it's usually a lie or half truth in the end.
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I think part of the problem is that people still expect something easy and mod development has always been a trainwreck. Just look at HL, super popular but you always needed the weirdest programs to do conversions between the weirdest file formats. That was ok 10 years ago when people just make it work with whatever they had or created their own tools. Today.. not so much.
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I'd rather they focused on actually finishing their next game as opposed to even considering mod tools for it.
And on that same note, if they plan to return on returning to Rage maybe they can release a free DLC for Rage 2 that fills in the 4 o 5 hours of gameplay that I'd strongly suspect got cut from their design docs near the end sections of Rage 1? -
eh.... they chose a path that made it a lot harder.
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The engine and gunplay were great. The was shit. Total fucking shit. Do something like you're suggesting.
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Agreed. Seems strange that it was a very definite "No" with all the different development options now.
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Well I don't know if you remember but they did make a new Keen game on GBC back in 2001. It was a dud.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/gameboy-color/commander-keen
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I loved Commander Keen :(
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did people even bother making mods for RAGE?
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That's sad :|
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The only mod out and he can't spell amazing right.
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Doom3 was easy enough to mod in, it's where I got my start as a mapper. I don't think there's as a good a climate for mods in general today as it was back in the late 90's, early 00's which is also another reason (one of many) why I think some of us developers are not finding it worth the time to put out the tools required.
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Well, that and there's enough toolsets and markets out there that if you're going to go through the effort of making an involved mod... you might just consider making your own free/for pay indie game instead.
I really did kind of lament the death of the mod scene, until I realized it kind of gave birth to the indie game scene, or at the very least the indie game scene kind of filled the environmental niche.
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Ding fucking ding!! I think he was demoted after the whole Rage debacle. He should have been fired.
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Interesting... id needs to bring back the crazies. Willits is too level-headed. Hairmero ftw!
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Quake 4 was definitely better than Doom 3, for what that's worth. Although that's probably the one he had the least say in.
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I'm the opposite. I didn't care much at all about Q1's single player to be honest...Q1 was a multiplayer game and on of the best...and it was an ok single player game (but no DOOM).
You've always been super single player guy and I respect that...but not everyone is.
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No, I'd rather Id didn't do another competitive fps because it'll just turn out badly. They've consistently focused on dumbing down rather than keeping the skill ceiling as high as possible. They've balanced the life out of Quake 3 to a point where Quake Live isn't even worth playing. They've illustrated in the past that they don't really care that much, particularly when they never even bothered with a real deathmatch mode for Doom 3. They've also shown that they don't really know what the community wants.
I'd rather Id stayed away as that would leave the market open for Reborn. While there hasn't been much progress yet, 2gd has said all the right things and shown that he knows what made Quake good. I'd much rather play a game made by somebody who likes and understands the genre than by a company that has shown both complete incompetence and a total disregard for the community.
There's supposed to be an announcement about Reborn next month, so hopefully we'll see some gameplay footage and information about a Kickstarter campaign.-
I've been keeping an eye on Reborn. I'm hoping it shakes out to be something impressive...as I'd like to have a fast badass deathmatch game again. I agree with you on QLive...it really feels like a blander Q3...weaker rockets, weaker everything.
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