111 réponses à ce sujet

[CybAnt1]

Just a simple and serious question, although I've seen it (somewhat) addressed above. (So I know the answer for Battlefield 3 is "barely any".)

Does anybody know of any Frostbite game where there's a decent collection of mods available? (Decent meaning, more than a handful, and actually do something meaningful.)

If there's going to be any, it's going to be from dedicated modders working without a toolkit. I guess all I want to know is do they stand a chance. 

Modifié par CybAnt1, 16 janvier 2014 - 03:25 .

[CybAnt1]

Hmm. Just looked at this page.

http://www.moddb.com...ostbite-3/games

Battlefield 4 and Mirror's Edge 2 have ... 0 mods.

[grumpymooselion]

Mirror's Edge 2 makes perfect sense, really. I never really expected mods for it.

Battlefield 4 is in such a state that I can perfectly understand why there are no mods for it still (though moddb isn't the final gauge for whether there are mods for a game or not).

You see mods for all sorts of games, but RPGs are one of them you tend to see mods for more typically than others. There are reasons for that, and none are absolutes (no guarantee DA:I will have mods) but it really is about the people with the talent being interested in doing in the first place.

There's no worry that the engine " can't " be modded. Everything is game, with the right know how, talent and provided interest in doing so. So the issue is more, "Do people want to bother given the tools to make it easier won't be provided?" There are other games out there without provided tools, that have gotten mods. Just the same, sometimes, games don't get modded.

DA:I is up in the air until we see whether there's a community interest and dedication to making it happen despite a lack of provided, official tools.

[sharkboy421]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Hmm. Just looked at this page.

http://www.moddb.com...ostbite-3/games

Battlefield 4 and Mirror's Edge 2 have ... 0 mods.

I suppose I'm being needlessly anal but I would be shocked if Mirror's Edge 2 had any mods for it seeing as how the game doesn't even have a release date. 

And if you are talking about the first Mirror's Edge, it runs on UE3 not Frostbite.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

I'd rather they work on things that benefit all of the players rather than something that will only benefit some of the players.

[wtfman99]

I'll play vanilla first time but then I'll use mods, dlc, he'll I'd even use cheats in da:I to get unlimited agents or so,etching to unlock everything, I figure why not at that point

[CybAnt1]

I suppose I'm being needlessly anal but I would be shocked if Mirror's Edge 2 had any mods for it seeing as how the game doesn't even have a release date. 

I'll forgive you if you forgive me as I don't even know what that title is. RPGs are not the only games I play, by any means, but I'll also confess to only knowing about a small subsection of gaming titles.  

Only reason I brought it up is ModDB (which I've never looked at before, BTW, but it was what came up when I looked for "Frostbite 3 mods") shows those 2 as "Frostbite 3 game engine games" and doesn't mention one hasn't even been released. 

EDIT: Ok, actually, now that I look more closely, it does unlike the other one, have no "released date X". 

Modifié par CybAnt1, 16 janvier 2014 - 03:55 .

[Veruin]

ghostzodd wrote...
The modders will find a way mwhahhahahahahaha:devil:

Yea, that year(or so) it took them just to implement texture mods is very comforting.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

This is not up to Bioware. It is up to DICE. I wish it was but its not.

& rumor has it that Frosbite 3 really is not designed with modding in mind...

[Deflagratio]

A lot of people are saying DA:I uses third party software tools in addition to the Frostbite 3 Engine, I'm curious as to where that's coming from.

I was under the impression that Frostbite 3 is entirely proprietary to EA (Built originally by DICE) and Bioware has been adding all the RPG systems to it themselves, in addition to using additions added by other EA studios. (A road drawing tool was one I heard about) This wouldn't technically make DA:I's Frostbite 3 a Third Party tool.

I'm not calling anyone out as a liar, I'm just curious as where the (possibly) better informed people are getting their information.

[Sanunes]

Deflagratio wrote...

A lot of people are saying DA:I uses third party software tools in addition to the Frostbite 3 Engine, I'm curious as to where that's coming from.

I was under the impression that Frostbite 3 is entirely proprietary to EA (Built originally by DICE) and Bioware has been adding all the RPG systems to it themselves, in addition to using additions added by other EA studios. (A road drawing tool was one I heard about) This wouldn't technically make DA:I's Frostbite 3 a Third Party tool.

I'm not calling anyone out as a liar, I'm just curious as where the (possibly) better informed people are getting their information.

Allan Schumacher said that they were using outside tools.  The tools are things like shaders, lighting effects, audio, physics and other things.  If you look at the begining of a game you will see a bunch of logos at the start.

An example for BioShock Infinite (for I don't have a BioWare game installed at the moment) is Wwise Audio Pipeline.

Edit.

Both David Gaider and Allan Schumacher posted in this thread several months ago with comments about mods and their views on them when they talk about 3rd party software its the tools I have been mentioning.  Link

Modifié par Sanunes, 16 janvier 2014 - 06:17 .

[Hrungr]

I've also heard DAI is using Enlighten from Geomerics for their lighting...

[Fast Jimmy]

MasterScribe wrote...

Sanunes wrote...

Deflagratio wrote...

A lot of people are saying DA:I uses third party software tools in addition to the Frostbite 3 Engine, I'm curious as to where that's coming from.

I was under the impression that Frostbite 3 is entirely proprietary to EA (Built originally by DICE) and Bioware has been adding all the RPG systems to it themselves, in addition to using additions added by other EA studios. (A road drawing tool was one I heard about) This wouldn't technically make DA:I's Frostbite 3 a Third Party tool. 

I'm not calling anyone out as a liar, I'm just curious as where the (possibly) better informed people are getting their information.

Allan Schumacher (my appologies if I spelt that wrong) said that they were using outside tools.  The tools are things like shaders, lighting effects, audio, physics and other things.  If you look at the begining of a game you will see a bunch of logos at the start.

An example for BioShock Infinite (for I don't have a BioWare game installed at the moment) is Wwise Audio Pipeline.

Yeah, a lot of developers use third party tools. Havok and Scaleform come to mind.

And it's worth noting lots of games don't have modkits or support mods in the least. Bethesda and CDProjekt are two of the few development houses that offer such support. 

[Deflagratio]

I didn't feel like adding to the quote train, but thanks for clearing up my misconceptions. Both CDProjekt and Bethesda's Creation Engine also use third-party additions though. I guess it comes down to licensing.

[deuce985]

This will sadly be something we'll have to accept as not being in DAI, IMO. I'm expecting it to be even less mod friendly than even DA2. Frostbite is a very complicated engine to mod off and Bioware has a ton of constraints like third-party licenses.

On the bright side, if Bioware does a good enough job in all areas I won't need mods. That's how I see it at least. I'm sure minor cosmetic upgrades will still happen. Perhaps higher resolution textures, color tweaks and maybe even adding injectors for graphical bonuses. Complicated mods like DAO had, not happening, IMO.

One mod I must have if Bioware uses the old tactics system is the advanced tactics. That thing was critical for me. Added so many more strings of AI command...

Modifié par deuce985, 16 janvier 2014 - 07:00 .

[ElitePinecone]

kheldorin wrote...

That's probably not the type of tools that DG is mentioning. It's more of tech such as the creation of destructible assets, the physics-based clothing, the AI, the physics in skeletal animation, character customization, the terrain generator, the flora generator, the graphical/lighting effects and stuff like that. Those may not have been made by Bioware. It may not even been made by DICE. We don't know the relationship between EA, DICE and Bioware with regards to the use of the engine.

We actually know a fair bit about the relationship between Bioware, DICE and EA.

For all intents and purposes, Frostbite is not a third-party engine. DICE and Bioware are both EA studios, and as of last year *every* EA studio that makes HD games is using Frostbite. Bioware staff regularly travel to Stockholm to work with DICE on the engine, and the teams are so integrated that several Bioware engine programmers are credited with work on Battlefield 4. Aaryn Flynn has mentioned multiple times that Bioware's engine team are actually pushing improvements back to DICE, which have flow-on effects to games that are in production at other studios.

To quote from the article:

The closed nature offers EA's developers something unique: It grants them unparalleled access to the exact tools and support that DICE has for its vaunted Battlefield series. Everyone we spoke with said that this gives teams an incredibly advantageous starting position at the outset of a game's creation cycle. "If you look at the magnitude and complexity of a Battlefield game -- using Battlefield 4 as an example -- you can see that you can build pretty much everything with this engine to a very, very high quality," said Bach.

That quality is one of the biggest impacts EA's decision will have on gamers. Instead of developers continuously building all of their own features for each project, they have access to what many believe is one of the best toolsets in the game industry. What proprietary work they do now feeds back into the engine's toolset and can be used for all future projects, giving developers time to focus on innovation instead of busywork.

[ElitePinecone]

Hrungr wrote...

I've also heard DAI is using Enlighten from Geomerics for their lighting...

Yeah, I definitely remember hearing that too. 

Not that many mods would be especially big on lighting, I suppose, but if a lot of the dev tools are third-party proprietary software then they'd be impossible to release to the public without working out licencing issues. Would it be worth releasing a toolkit that can't do much?

And although I don't know much about it, as people said above modders did have a lot of trouble even with Frostbite itself, in the case of Battlefield 3.

[Viktoria Landers]

 If they want a big success, they better have a toolset in the game.

[Chashan]

deuce985 wrote...

This will sadly be something we'll have to accept as not being in DAI, IMO. I'm expecting it to be even less mod friendly than even DA2. Frostbite is a very complicated engine to mod off and Bioware has a ton of constraints like third-party licenses.

On the bright side, if Bioware does a good enough job in all areas I won't need mods. That's how I see it at least. I'm sure minor cosmetic upgrades will still happen. Perhaps higher resolution textures, color tweaks and maybe even adding injectors for graphical bonuses. Complicated mods like DAO had, not happening, IMO.

One mod I must have if Bioware uses the old tactics system is the advanced tactics. That thing was critical for me. Added so many more strings of AI command...

While that is to be hoped for, I would not count on it.

ElitePinecone wrote...

And although I don't know much about it, as people said above modders did have a lot of trouble even with Frostbite itself, in the case of Battlefield 3.

Which, from what I have read, seemed to be a needlessly heavy-handed approach.
Given that DA:I's selling point will be the SP where "competitive balance" isn't much of an issue (even so, recoloured textures hardly skew that in any way, either, in that specific case) I would hope that such methods and stance won't apply.

Ultimately, mods would only do the game good, and a toolset would only be a ringing endorsement of that. Still, even if it doesn't happen, I am fairly certain a way will be found eventually.

[ElitePinecone]

I don't think it's a necessarily a matter of the developers being deliberately heavy-handed - by all accounts Frostbite is just a finicky engine to try and mod without the proper tools. And providing the proper tools is - by Bioware's own statements - either difficult or impractical, given that they use so much third-party software and there's no plans to develop a public toolkit at this point.

There's a good discussion between Gaider and Allan Schumacher about the feasibility of a toolkit here: http://social.biowar.../14548838/&lf=8

Realistically, the only people who can use mods are on PC, which is at best a fraction of their total userbase. If the work required to make a toolkit is non-trivial, and comes at a significant cost to Bioware, there doesn't seem to be much sense in going to that much effort for something that all players won't even get to use.

Put it this way: if making a toolkit, or some way to make Frostbite more mod-friendly, diverted programming/engine team resources away from the actual game, how is that a good allocation of their limited time and resources?

Viktoria Landers wrote...

If they want a big success, they better have a toolset in the game.

How do you figure? Four of the consoles that they're releasing on don't have modding capability, and mods surely aren't used by every PC player - or even a majority of them.

[Chashan]

By heavy-handed approach I was talking about Dice handing out bans to said modders for something as trivial as that.

ElitePinecone wrote...

Realistically, the only people who can use mods are on PC, which is at best a fraction of their total userbase. If the work required to make a toolkit is non-trivial, and comes at a significant cost to Bioware, there doesn't seem to be much sense in going to that much effort for something that all players won't even get to use.

Put it this way: if making a toolkit, or some way to make Frostbite more mod-friendly, diverted programming/engine team resources away from the actual game, how is that a good allocation of their limited time and resources?

Given the popularity DA:O-nexus enjoys, that's a severe understatement.

Plus, with that reasoning, you do realize that a good many niche-things BW does - for one, option to choose not just gender, but race, the latter of which propbably did not make it to DA2 for that reason as well - would fall by the way-side, I am sure.

Modifié par Chashan, 16 janvier 2014 - 04:56 .

[ElitePinecone]

Sure, and it's a constant matter of balancing priorities. I'm sure there are many highly-paid people at Bioware and EA whose job it is to weigh the costs of different parts of the game with expected benefits, and we aren't privy to that information. Someone, somewhere, must have thought gender and race selection were worth the significant investment of resources - if it wasn't a sensible decision on some level, they probably wouldn't be doing it.

But clearly, they aren't rushing out to make a toolkit. We've had no indication that Bioware are prepared to divert programmers away from the actual game to work on one. Even if individual devs support modding and a toolkit in principle, the company as a whole is not proceeding down that path. Whatever the reasoning, the argument for a toolkit - at least internally at Bioware - isn't strong enough that they're willing to spare time and people to do it.

My point about the PC market was that it really is a minority of their userbase - and the proportion of PC players that would use mods, if anyone bothered to count them, would be a fraction of that minority. They're releasing Inquisition on four consoles and PC - how is it sensible or justifiable to spend significant effort making a modding toolkit that most of your players will never use? If developing a toolkit were easy, this would be a different issue - but everything we've heard said that it's not.

This is ultimately a question of judgement: the net benefits that a toolkit would bring versus the investment that would be required to create it. Given that they've chosen not to make one at this point, it seems the costs are too great or the benefits too few to justify doing so.

[Viktoria Landers]

ElitePinecone wrote...

How do you figure? Four of the consoles that they're releasing on don't have modding capability, and mods surely aren't used by every PC player - or even a majority of them.

Just look at the most successful games around. The ones that can be modded (and toolset is a great way to do that) have bigger longevity and are also more popular (than normal).

BioWare should better not neglect these facts with DA:Inquisition.

[Sanunes]

Viktoria Landers wrote...

ElitePinecone wrote...

How do you figure? Four of the consoles that they're releasing on don't have modding capability, and mods surely aren't used by every PC player - or even a majority of them.

Just look at the most successful games around. The ones that can be modded (and toolset is a great way to do that) have bigger longevity and are also more popular (than normal).

BioWare should better not neglect these facts with DA:Inquisition.

They have even acknowledged that information is the links both ElitePinecone and myself have linked in this very post.

They don't just dismiss that information, but there is probably a forumla for the cost to make mods a viable solution versus the potential profit for mods.  Even look at Skyrim if VGChartz is remotely accurate 20% of the sales of the game was to the PC, then how many of that 20% use mods or indifferent if they are there are not.

Back when they added the other races to the game there might have been the choice of mods or additional races for players, they would look at 100% of the people that play the game will have access to the additional classes versus 20% to 30% that play on a PC that can make use of a mod.

Modifié par Sanunes, 16 janvier 2014 - 07:11 .