155 réponses à ce sujet

[DahliaLynn]

werwulf222 wrote...
I still haven't figured out how to make an animation play in the toolset, but I suppose it will all come with experience.

Try this:

social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Cutscene_tutorial


And no. The toolset does NOT suck.

[Arttis]

No Problem.And your Welcome.

[DahliaLynn]

werwulf222 wrote...

I never said the toolset did, only that it has a steep learning curve, but that link you provided illustrates my point exactly. That link deals with cutscene animations which are NOT what I'm interested in at all; my area of interest is in combat animations which seem to me to be an entirely different thing.

But here is my point: from a quick skim of the cutscene tutorial page, nowhere on the page does it mention that you press the spacebar to start the event editor working. I might be wrong, as I say, I just skimmed it, but it's little details like that that can save newbies hours of trial and error frustration. Anyway, I'm off to see if I can get the event editor to play an animation.

EDIT:  After another quick skim of the wiki cutscene page, maybe that is what I was looking for after all, even though my animations will be used during the combat phase of the game rather than in cutscenes.  I suppose I should have read the page more carefully, but I saw the word "cutscene" and assumed that it was not what I was looking for.

Live and learn.

A word of advice, regarding previewing animations. You might want to start the toolset fresh without anything else open. Sometimes the animation editor does not work, when opened as a *second tab*.

Sorry I didn't not mean you. I was simply angered that anyone on this thread (mainly it's title) could say the toolset sucks. Didn't mean to direct it at you personally.

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 18 juillet 2010 - 02:02 .

[Arrtis]

Toolset might be a bit too complicated...

[Kesaru]

If you don't think this toolset sucks, then what would make it bad, wiping out your hard drive every time you run it?
It's buggy, I'm not sure it could be more unintuitive if they had deliberately tried to make it so, and it requires 3rd party programs to do a lot of things. Including simple stuff like altering the cost of a talent.
The mod packaging system it comes with flat-out breaks a lot of mods.
Mod compatibility is extremely low because of how resources are handled.
It also has god-awful support in the way of patches and tutorials.

Modifié par Kesaru, 24 juillet 2010 - 12:43 .

[Brumbek]

In order to judge the toolset, we must ask, "What is it's purpose?"

If it's purpose is to allow professional game developers to create an awesome RPG, then the Toolset is quite good.

If it's purpose is to allow non-professionals with a generally decent understanding of scripting/modding/modeling/texturing a chance to tweak DA and create new content, then I'm afraid it does come dangerously close to "sucking".

As has been pointed out, it takes great effort to change even minor things and makes no effort to help you figure things out. Is this not the very definition of poor tools? I'm an Oblivion modder and using the DA Toolset has REALLY helped me appreciate the simplicity and genius of the Elder Scrolls Toolset. Is the ES Toolset less powerful? Not really for what matters: creating good mods.

For me I decided not to invest the time in the DA toolset because it was clear the developers weren't willing to take much time to invest in it either.

What would have been great (or will be great for DA2), is if the developers would take a week and devote themselves to creating video tutorials on how to do things. And don't make us have to create third party tools to export/import when you already have those tools created but for some reason don't release them!

The bottom line is a good Toolset should encourage the user to create great mods. The DA Toolset mocks you to just try and figure it out...

Modifié par Brumbek, 27 juillet 2010 - 12:41 .

[ChewyGumball]

They didn't release them because they were legally bound not to. It is not just their malignant desire to make us suffer

[Proleric]

As a means for dedicated enthusiasts to build games to a modern professional standard, the toolset is a success.

It was never going to be a quick-and-dirty tweak kit for the average player.

It's a pity that the marketing for DAO didn't gently set that expectation, but we are where we are.

Saying the toolset sucks is like saying Photoshop sucks because it's not as simple as Paint.

[Griffon_]

What really disappoints me in the toolset is that since the date of its release the problem with the Russian in the game is not solved yet, which means that for many Russian modders the toolset is useless toy.
Yes, the game was localized but it was done by simple translation of TLK file.

You can write dialogs in Russian, create NPCs, items, etc. but once you save it the toolset immediately converts all Russian letters into ????????????

This problem was raised on these forums many months ago but looking at Bioware's attitude towards the issue it's very unlikely that anybody in the dev team wants to address the problem.

It's sad.

[Kesaru]

Proleric1 wrote...

As a means for dedicated enthusiasts to build games to a modern professional standard, the toolset is a success.

It was never going to be a quick-and-dirty tweak kit for the average player.

It's a pity that the marketing for DAO didn't gently set that expectation, but we are where we are.

Saying the toolset sucks is like saying Photoshop sucks because it's not as simple as Paint.

A real expert could carve a statue out of wood with a screwdriver given enough time, that doesn't mean it isn't a crappy tool for the job.

The Photoshop > Paint analogy would be more apt if Photoshop's options were deeply embedded in various menues and submenues with only minor logic to them and some would not even show unless you had the proper settings active/inactive. If it randomly changed the selected color in the middle of painting. If some of the tools randomly failed to work. And if the images you made occasionally failed to save properly so they became corrupted and could not be viewed.

Modifié par Kesaru, 27 juillet 2010 - 03:49 .

[Talisander]

I really hope my toolset doesn't start to suck at some point and I start agreeing with the pessimists in the thread. Because right now it's the most powerful and exhilarating RPG toolset I've ever used, and I've used a lot of them.


*edit*

That said, the problem with Russian (and I think other languages as well?) is really a shame, and in my opinion by far the most dissapointing problem with Bioware's support of their otherwise great tools.  I don't even really mind the Lightmapper, but not getting the toolset to work at all for many languages is very bad, and almost certainly hurts the community more than a wonky lightmapper in the long run.

Modifié par Talisander, 27 juillet 2010 - 05:00 .

[ladydesire]

Kesaru wrote...

If you don't think this toolset sucks, then what would make it
bad, wiping out your hard drive every time you run it?
It's buggy, I'm not sure it could be more unintuitive if they had
deliberately tried to make it so, and it requires 3rd party
programs to do a lot of things. Including simple stuff like
altering the cost of a talent.

A lot of modders from Neverwinter Night and Neverwinter Nights 2 already have used external tools to do these things, so it's not unusual.

The mod packaging system it comes with flat-out breaks a lot
of mods.
Mod compatibility is extremely low because of how resources
are handled.

I disagree, since even in the previously mentioned games, there were mods that were incompatible in many cases.

It also has god-awful support in the way of patches and
tutorials.

I also disagree on this; while they haven't been updating it, and there are some issues that the users have reported, this because the team has been working with the DA2 team on that game. There were tutorials available as soon as the toolset was released and numerous player created video tutorials within weeks after that.

[Brumbek]

@ChewyGumball: Didn’t BioWare have to write their own tools for exporting/importing into Max? It’s their engine so they need their own tools.



@Proleric1: I won’t argue that awesome content can’t be created, although I’ve only seen maybe 2 or 3 semi-professional standard mods so far. However, I do believe we shouldn’t have to pick between power and accessibility. All the best tools are both powerful and as easy to use as possible.



And the Photoshop comparison is quite inaccurate because Photoshop is probably the best example of a very, very powerful program that is also very, very intuitive. Photoshop is fantastic for both simple tweaks any average person can do and full-scale professional artwork creation.



@Kesaru: Well said about the statue example! The bottom line is truly passionate and creative modders will create great content no matter how bad or good the tools. But this reveals more about the modders than the quality of the tools.



@Talisander: Fair enough. I’m seriously glad you love it. Maybe I would too if I invested a lot more time into it. Although I will say I find it quite ironic that the owner of your most popular project recently said he had to take a break because he “got really frustrated with the toolset.” That made me laugh.



@ladydesire: The fact that prior games also required 3rd party tools is not a point in the Toolset’s favor. Likewise, citing prior games’ incompatibility problems to defend the current issues is a not a point in the Toolset’s favor. And again, citing the fact that DA developers have moved on to DA2 is not a point in the Toolset’s favor. All three statements are in fact points against the Toolset.



Anyway, it appears BioWare is getting away from the more open and mod-able worlds and is rather pushing for quick releases of closed games like ME2 or DA2. I understand that. Plus, the plain fact is modding is a threat to DLC.



But anyway, it’s a fact that none of us are as creative as all of us. This means we all benefit by having the widest modder base possible. The non-technical newbies can have awesome ideas we would all benefit from, however, a Toolset like DA’s only allows for a very small group of hardcore modders. That is my issue with the Toolset; it discourages so many potentially great mods. So I’m always pushing for developers to do more to support and help mod communities.



With that in mind, my purpose in posting is to hopefully encourage everyone to have higher standards for Toolsets. It was awesome how Bethseda supported the Fallout3 toolset with great basic tutorials on their website. It would be great if BioWare did the same. If they took two hours writing documentation, that would save us end users 10 hours of experimentation.

[Marcy3655]

thing is...   by the time most builders get a chance to learn it and create anything, the next thing will already be out and it'll be obsolete....  lol

M

[BioSpirit]

There is a huge number bugs those will make the toolset very unfrienly for a user. For an example there is a bug that prevents viewing a vegetation in a toolset which will make a level design harder. There are a lot of problems with lighting and with the lightmapper. Without these bugs the toolset would be very easy to use and it would allow to do almost anything.

The issue that will make the whole thing to sucks is BioWare's lack of ability to deal with the problems in a toolset and project management. I suppose the BioWare (EA) could distribute a high quality mods with the official DLC system and pay the modders, but no.

Using the toolset is just a waste of time. If you make a whole campaign with 120h of playable content then what ?  Nobody's going to find it from the BioWare's fabulous project management system. Also, If you are really capable to do something great with the toolset then why not just do something else and get paid.  

Modifié par BioSpirit, 30 juillet 2010 - 02:28 .

[elevul]

 I think it sucks because I get the "out of memory" message when trying to edit a savegame, even though I have 4GB of ram...

[edmogt1]

If Bioware isn't going to release another patch for the toolset since they are busy with DA2, they might as well make the toolset open sourced, so that the community can fix the bugs itself.

[BioSpirit]

edmogt1 wrote...
If Bioware isn't going to release another patch for the toolset since they are busy with DA2, they might as well make the toolset open sourced, so that the community can fix the bugs itself.

You really think that ? I belive the lightmapper is already open sourced and everybody who is capable to deal with that, is already busy in a "real" life work. 

Modifié par BioSpirit, 30 juillet 2010 - 07:27 .

[CID-78]

No a open source toolset would cause havok, you would get so many conflict and compability issues. I would suspect that you would have a hard time getting a good QA and source management system from the community.



And infact that is impossible. they are using frameworks bought from other companies. so they can't release the source. that would voilate their licence deals.

[AmstradHero]

BioSpirit wrote...
Using the toolset is just a waste of time. If you make a whole campaign with 120h of playable content then what ?  Nobody's going to find it from the BioWare's fabulous project management system. Also, If you are really capable to do something great with the toolset then why not just do something else and get paid.  

Believe me, if I could, I would. I'd love to get paid for doing this stuff... it's just that whole "getting hired" thing that is the problem.

Brumbek wrote...
As has been pointed out, it takes great effort to change even minor
things and makes no effort to help you figure things out. Is this not
the very definition of poor tools? I'm an Oblivion modder and using the
DA Toolset has REALLY helped me appreciate the simplicity and genius of
the Elder Scrolls Toolset. Is the ES Toolset less powerful? Not really
for what matters: creating good mods.

Then we have a difference of opinion. I find the Elder Scrolls Toolset a horrible disgusting mess that I don't want to touch with a ten foot pole. Maybe if you want to make "mods" as in mods to the mechanics or items it is better. But I don't. I want to make story mods, and I found it hideously clunky for that. I also experimented with the GECK and was disappointed at how grossly conversations were handled in it.

I think it comes down to what you want to do with your modding.  For me, coming from a NWN/NWN2 modding background, I had to get used to the new layout and some new terminology for the DA toolset. The other thing was dealing with conversation scripting through plot flags instead of individual scripts.  Yeah, I find that a little more clunky, but I can kind of see where they were coming from. I love quest mods driven by dialogue and choice. Sure, if I wanted to do pure level design, there are better things are (Unreal Editor is awesome, for example) but DA's toolset current probably represents the best tool to get the biggest audience for quest mods at the moment.

[ladydesire]

AmstradHero wrote...

Brumbek wrote...
As has been pointed out, it takes great effort to change even minor
things and makes no effort to help you figure things out. Is this not
the very definition of poor tools? I'm an Oblivion modder and using the
DA Toolset has REALLY helped me appreciate the simplicity and genius of
the Elder Scrolls Toolset. Is the ES Toolset less powerful? Not really
for what matters: creating good mods.

Then we have a difference of opinion. I find the Elder Scrolls Toolset a horrible disgusting mess that I don't want to touch with a ten foot pole. Maybe if you want to make "mods" as in mods to the mechanics or items it is better. But I don't. I want to make story mods, and I found it hideously clunky for that. I also experimented with the GECK and was disappointed at how grossly conversations were handled in it.

I also feel this way; when I first tried The Elders Scrolls Construcion Set, I couldn't figure out how to do anything. The only reason I was able to make a mod with the GECK is because I found a tutorial that told me I had to associate the main game file (Fallout3.esm) with the mod I was creating (say what???). The Aurora, Electron and Eclipse toolsets are set up in such a way that things like that are not needed, which to my way of thinking is much more effective for modders.

[tmp7704]

BioSpirit wrote...

Using the toolset is just a waste of time. If you make a whole campaign with 120h of playable content then what ?  Nobody's going to find it from the BioWare's fabulous project management system. Also, If you are really capable to do something great with the toolset then why not just do something else and get paid.  

Just as reality check, "120h of playable content" means a full game the size of DAO or larger. It's an amount that takes many professionals many months if not full years to make. If you expect that much from a mod.... scale your expectations down by a lot, or remain perpetually disappointed.

As for the get paid bit... one, you can apply this logic to 3rd party content for any game and it pretty much puts into question "why release a Toolset at all, then". And two, there's people out there who already are paid for what they do, and they tinker with these games in their spare time as entertainment. Much like some other people paint pictures, sculpt or write stories. While others find their entertainment in crying "why do anything, there's no money in it and the tools suck". Horses for courses.

Modifié par tmp7704, 01 août 2010 - 01:40 .

[Mordaedil]

And still, when I mod modules, I use the Aurora toolset.



I'm sorry, but there's some things tilesets allow us to do what "true freedom" does not. NWN2 had a good idea with placeable stacks you could make, and having every corridor be pretty barren, but the problem was that they made it too barren AND introduced complications that the NWN's tileset didn't have: Corners and walls. That means for every one click I had to do in NWN1, I have to do seven clicks and look through a menu for the wall facing in the right orientation I want.



DA's toolset isn't much better that way, though it might be a bit better than NWN2's toolset.



But these toolsets mean we will never see another "Dance with Rogues" quality module for a newer platform. Because they are so aggressively unintuitive.