7 réponses à ce sujet

[gw2005]

I missed the toolset while playing DA2, had to rely on a whole bunch of third party softwares just to do the most miniscule modding. Haven't Bioware already realised the power of the fan base when it comes to creative ways to make the game better?

Even the supposedly unmoddable ME series had dozens of mods made. Mostly texture mods, but as we can see with all the awesome mods/fan films/custom campaigns made for DA:O, it could have been much more.

So toolset for DA3???

Update: Just want to comment on something that's come up during the three months i've ignored this thread: ME3Explorer.
See for yourselves how regardless of how supportive the devs are, modders will always find a way. Again.Best to cultivate all this creative energy that acts in SUPPORT of the game, generating additional values from it, rather than to try and contain it no?

Modifié par gw2005, 12 février 2013 - 09:30 .

[Allan Schumacher]

A large issue comes from the types of middleware that Frostbite intrinsically uses. The source control schemes and so forth that are already a sunk cost for a game developer, but actually require licensing for people to use (or we sell the toolset at a hugely inflated price) it.

Finding a way to strip this stuff out and still have it work is a completely nontrivial task.

While for the end user this can be kind of "well crap," it does provide huge savings in manpower investment compared to creating our own engine and whatnot. DAO's engine has its roots in Neverwinter Nights. Much of that infrastructure was still there, but increasingly we found ourselves licensing things and spending less time on making sure the workflow was ideal for end users especially if it was "more than good enough" for our content creators.

So those are some of the risks posed that influence whether or not we'd release the toolset for public use, without even factoring in things like "What does DICE have to say about it?" since that's stuff I have no visibility into.

Mark Darrah I believe made a comment regarding "never say never, but..." and that's probably the safest way to look at it. If we can make it happen without requiring gigantic amounts of investment of our time, then it's much more possible. It's just not a priority. Sorry.

[David Gaider]

jillabender wrote...
Thanks for the info, Allan! I admit that I would love to see a toolset for DA3, but I appreciate your explanation of why it's not being made a priority so far.

Yeah, just an additional comment that "not a priority" shouldn't be taken as "the modders aren't important to us". Sure, their potential audience consists of PC users only, but that's still a significant number of people... and, despite comments about DLC, they're really not competition on that front. Mods are, in fact, a boon that extends the lifespan of the game on PC's. Players who are still playing a game are more likely to buy DLC for it. So it actually helps us on that front, if you think about it.

So ideally we'd do it. The priority that trumps everything else, however, is just getting the game we're making out the door. And for that we need the toolset to simply work... with a new engine, that's a herculean task unto itself which fully occupies our tools programmers and then some, and they're the guys who would be needed to retrofit said toolset for public use. And that's assuming the middleware issues can be resolved, which neither I nor Allan could speak to.

So, yes, that would be exceptionally cool. But, no, like Allan said I really doubt it can happen-- certainly not on release, anyway.

[Allan Schumacher]

When Allan says, "(or we sell the toolset at a hugely inflated price)" that means too hugely inflated to even try to pin down, right?

Is that cost for user end licensing or making the toolset work without middleware?

My original thought is with the types of middleware integration. I have no clue how that sort of stuff would really work, but I know that we pay licenses for them, and we'd have paid for those licenses regardless of whether we'd use Frostbite or not, so that's not an additional cost to us at all.

I'm not familiar enough (nor technically proficient enough) to really make estimates on how much it would take to make it work without that stuff, but it would be timely for sure.


But yes, I don't think anyone here feels that moddability is a detriment to the game. I certainly don't. When fans fix bugs for games and add more content to it, it typically is only "free reward."

[Allan Schumacher]

From my understanding, the third party licensing is much less of an issue now with Frostbite, since DICE is a subsidiary of EA.

3rd party application integration often still exists even with an in house engine. It existed with Eclipse and I literally mentioned it still being an issue in this very thread.

Sure, we don't run into a "we've licensed this engine from idSoftware, so we have to deal not only with the 3rd party apps but ALSO id" but that's only part of the puzzle.

[David Gaider]

The amount of money we could potentially recoup by charging for the toolset probably wouldn't be worth the problems in doing so. Never mind the rage from PC users that expect to get this sort of thing for free (if and when it's provided), it'd also have to be incredibly expensive to actually have an impact on the cost-- not unless you were required to own the toolset in order to use the mods? Gosh, I really can't even imagine how that would go.

It's generally considered a goodwill project, one with the added benefit of helping a game's community. That community will develop even without it, and they will mod whether there's a toolset or not, but something to help them from our end can help that along a great deal.

Personally, I'd say this is something to start asking for after release-- though it probably doesn't hurt to keep asking regardless. Not that the company is unaware of the desire, but it never hurts to keep awareness up.

[Allan Schumacher]

We all understand that if someone turns magic with a toolset it can do wonders for sales.

People want a value for the money, being able to replay a game helps with that so very much. I hope Bioware gets that eventually and stops inventing reasons why they can't.

It's important to make a distinction between what you want and what the gaming population wants (or rather, feels is important).

A large part of the problem is people are very tunnel visioned in their perspectives, in that they'll see the price of something like Skyrim, see it has a toolset, and conclude that the toolset is why.

At the same time, someone will champion Skyrim's success for whatever reason that they feel is most important.

Tell us that you hope that we "get it" eventually is a bit silly. BioWare has in fact released games with toolsets. Two of them. It's not like we're just making random guesses as to the difficulty or "inventing reasons."

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 26 novembre 2012 - 01:40 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I understand, but if you are using an EA owned toolset, it should be legally easier than say, an unreal integrated game?

I don't know if it'd be easier (because I don't know what strings may be attached to doing it with Unreal), but it certainly wouldn't be harder. It probably would be quite a bit easier though.

Anyway, a toolset mitigates a lot of risk, because with Skyrim, for instance, a lot of people on PC simply didn't worry about the design decisions because they knew how easy it would be to have it modded out.

One bad thing about this, though, is that this only helps the PC players though.

I personally cannot see any barriers as to why a toolset is a bad idea, I guess that is the main point of this thread.

Source control middleware that is a part of the engine. Makes our job way easier (and it's no additional cost to us since we were already using it) in many ways. Oh hey, it has an annual license in order to use it... (or a higher cost single payment).

Is it fair to ask people to slap down $700 for a license and take the time to set up the source control server as well?