15 réponses à ce sujet

[Tystone]

Greetings:

I have been playing ME2 off and on for awhile and it seems to be a very good game...
What could make it even better is mods...Now I understand that there is a topic on modding here, but its rather full of alot of infomation (I think it has 2 parts now) and slightly above my head...

My questions are rather simple... Are there basic mods out there that change your toons body type, clothing type maybe even have them run around naked... You know, DA type mods...

Is this even possible?

Other than the cashcow reason...why did Bio make it so hard to mod?

Modifié par Tystone, 23 juillet 2010 - 05:39 .

[Don Moar]

Hey,



Given BioWare's history with games like Neverwinter Nights and, more recently, Dragon Age: Origins, we understand the value of providing tools to the community. However, each game project makes its own decisions regarding community support. For example, the Baldur's Gate series, MDK2, SW:KotOR, and JE didn't ship with tools. In the case of the ME series, we decided to spend the development budget that could have gone into providing tools on making the best game experience possible instead.





Don M

[Don Moar]

Neofelis Nebulosa,



It's an interesting idea, let me think about it for a few minutes...









> ... shudder ... <



Yeah, it's just not going to happen.



(Anyone else feel that chill?)





Don M

[Don Moar]

Sorry about my sarcasm failure, Spartas.

Let me explain. Given that we've made modifications to UnrealEd, created a bunch of other tools, and have dedicated links in everything to systems like client/server databases and version control systems, getting all of that into a nice package that would allow the customer to create his or her own adventures would be a daunting technical challenge. In addition, we would have to look at what we could charge for it given the months of work it would take and how many people we think would actually buy it given that it would probably be a year or more since ME2 shipped by that point. Finally, we'd have to consider the impact on our existing DLC and ME3 plans.

This is not something we can just whip together and I think I can safely say that as cool an idea as it is, we probably won't do this.


Don M

[Edit: edited last sentence a little bit.]

Modifié par Don Moar, 23 juillet 2010 - 10:15 .

[Don Moar]

bjdbwea,



The override folder was created for the benefit of the development team. The fact that it allowed customers to mod those other games was a coincidence. The fact that it was not removed demonstrates that we did not want to spend time either supporting or disabling that ability.



In the case of ME, the Unreal Engine 3 does not support an override folder and we did not want to spend the time modifying the engine to support anything that wasn't required to produce the game.





Don M

[Don Moar]

Water Dumple

We don't need to look at Valve to see the value of supporting community modding, we did it with Neverwinter Nights back in 2002 and again with Dragon Age in 2009. As I said before, each project is given the freedom to make its own decisions on how it wants to support its community. With the ME franchise, the decision was to focus our development budget on making the best game experience possible. As far as what will happen in this regard for ME3, I can't really comment.


Don M

[Edit - fixed some grammar.)

Modifié par Don Moar, 26 juillet 2010 - 05:09 .

[Don Moar]

Burdokva,



I appreciate what you're asking for but at this point, we have no plans on releasing a .pcc compiler.





s0meguy6665,



Actually, it's a perfectly reasonable explanation.



As I already indicated in an earlier post in this very thread, it's not that simple. We've made modifications to the UnrealEd and created other tools all of which tie into client / server databases (both SQL and version control). So, we could give you the tools as-is and you either, wouldn't be able to use them at all or you'd have to invest in additional hardware / software. Alternatively, we could spend a lot of time and money to remove those dependencies but then we'd have to come up with some replacement data back-end.



----



The way I see it, it's a no-win situation for us on this issue. Either we make some people upset because we didn't give them tools, we make other people upset because we gave them tools optimized for internal development and are difficult (or impossible) to use, or we make still other people upset because we gave them higher-quality tools but our single-player experience was somehow diminished.



I think that people pay for a game and they should get the best game experience possible. In the case of NWN and DA, the tools were part & parcel of the GAME experience we were selling but in ME and the other games that we've made that have shipped without tools it wasn't. As a result, since ME was a game that was focused on this one story about Shepard, we chose not to include modding tools and instead focus all of our energy on making that experience as fantastic as we possibly could.





Don M

[Don Moar]

bjdbwea,



Look at my post 4 above yours. Look at my other posts in this thread.



BioWare is very well aware of how providing the customer with tools can help the community with our experience making Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins. That's simply not the direction we wanted to go with Mass Effect, and it's not because we thought it would hurt DLC sales it's because it would take time and money that we wanted to spend on making the best game possible.





Don M

[Don Moar]

javierabegazo,



No problem. I remember when I was working on NWN that I thought customers would be expecting equivalent (or probably better) tools with all our future games. I think between NWN, and the fact that some other very popular games have come out since then and built very successful modding communities, that I may have been correct.









Don M

[Don Moar]

Hey,



I would like to add that I, personally, love the idea of providing modding tools. I'm reminded of some of the software Maxis used to put out as "toys". Their manuals would say something like "Baseball is a game, a ball is a toy. A ball can be used to play many games." SimCity, SimEarth, SimAnt, all that stuff was great; I loved that concept. I think the modern equivalent is providing tools to allow the customers to manipulate the game, either in terms of content, rules, story, etc.



Not only do tools provide a game with additional longevity, in the case of NWN, it gave us a great tool for helping evaluate potential designers during the interview process.





Don M

[Don Moar]

OnlyShallow89



I didn't mean to ignore your question. First, let me say that I am not a graphics programmer, but I will try to make an educated guess.



In general, games made with the same engine will look similar. This is because the engine will be optimized in a such way that it makes sense for content to be created in a certain fashion. The end result will be that, in the game, the content from different games will look similar.



Now, not all UE3 games look alike. For example, Borderlands uses UE3 but in that case, I believe the developer made significant modifications to the renderer to achieve their desired effect.



Anyway, I hope that answers your question (if not, please start a new thread, perhaps in the off-topic forum) and if anyone more knowledgable than I am about graphics programming sees an error in anything I said there (which wasn't much) please feel free to correct me but let's not derail the thread too much.





Don M

[Don Moar]

BlackbirdSR-71C,



I won't say anything is impossible or will never happen. However, at this point I am not aware of any plans for BioWare to release modding tools for ME2.





Don M

[Don Moar]

PoliteAssasin,



I am one of the lead prograrmmers at BioWare (and I think I said I was NOT a graphics programmer).





Don M

[Don Moar]

sOmeguy6665,



My experience in this industry tells me that given what we've done with NWN and DA : O if we provided the tools as-is we'd get roasted. Unfortunately, I doubt we will be able to prove who's right since, as I have said before, we have no plans to release the tools for ME2. Therefore, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.





Don M

[Don Moar]

s0meguy6665,

There are tons of issues around giving out the tools (even as-is). First, we'd have to figure out what tools are required (this would depend upon what kind of modification we wanted to support). Then, we'd have to look at licensing issues for any third-party software we're using as well as come up with a EULA for our own software. Next, we'd have to figure out how to get it onto a computer without access to our internal update utility. After that, we have to look at how customers can extend the game (we are very restricted in how we can do that) and this may result in having to change existing content. Finally, we'd have to look at whether or not it would be necessary to include source content and if so, licensing issues around that because some content was out-sourced and the use of VO from actors who are members of the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) is very restricted.

(I'm sure I'm missing stuff.)

At the end of the day, releasing tools (even as-is) is just not that simple and, as you said, there will always be some people who are unhappy with whatever choice we make. For ME, we decided that we weren't going to release modding tools, even as-is.


(Thanks, Raxxman)


Don M

Modifié par Don Moar, 26 juillet 2010 - 11:06 .

[Don Moar]

Kaiser Shepard,



I think a Hammerhead tool falls into the same category as other community modding tools for ME2.





Don M