Mod tools

[Lord Grievous]

Will you release some form of modding support for the Outer Worlds? Like the TES and Fallout games, this game really deserves mod tools.

It keeps the game and its community alive!

Hopefully, we will be able to enjoy some great mods soon :)

[Criimson]

3 minutes ago, Lord Grievous said:

Will you release some form of modding support for the Outer Worlds? Like the TES and Fallout games, this game really deserves mod tools.

It keeps the game and its community alive!

Hopefully, we will be able to enjoy some great mods soon

This. As someone that codes and designs game spaces I would love this. It would be a blast to allow the players to create added areas, quests, etc to the game.

[Clawdius_Talonious]

This game is built on UE4, meaning Epic owns the Unreal Engine editor, and any tools they created to streamline their work flow would rely on proprietary code that doesn't belong to Obsidian. That's not to say that it can't be done, but it may require an agreement between Obsidian (Or Microsoft now that they've got a parent company) and Epic on what form that would take.

Obsidian didn't encrypt the pak files, or anything that would make it more difficult to mod this game than any other Unreal engine title, and the base tools for UE4 are available to anyone who wants them for free. That doesn't mean that everything Obsidian used is available for the public, streamlining their workflow has generated a tool set known as "OEI Tools" that they could theoretically release with Microsoft's consent. Or, at least, release any bits relevant to this project. Their tools team has likely generated a lot of things that wouldn't be necessary or even useful for TOW modders.

Josh Sawyer talks about the tools here (Warning: Spoilers for PoE2:Deadfire) : https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/175082312536/im-curious-as-to-what-the-conversation-editor

It's a tricky situation, working with a third party engine, and on top of that technically all their IP belongs to Microsoft now... I'm sure there are further complications that aren't super apparent to me as a total outsider both to Obsidian and game development in general... Still, it's not always quite as easy as "Release the hostages mod tools!"

Even if Obsidian doesn't release e.g. the OEItools set there's no reason to expect that there isn't a third party solution available to mod teams if they want to generate the same file types, and I've seen projects that put a ton of effort into making and releasing a tool set that gets little traction and rebuffs many people who are interested in working on mods for a title due to how complex it is. Really all the lack of e.g. OEItools does is make it harder for players to e.g. mod in a new companion that would react to all the same triggers in normal companions. 

I'd be more specific if I could, but when I try to view the files for the game install through the Gamepass I'm told I don't have ownership of the windows apps directory. That's pretty definitely intentional and I can only imagine bad things happen if you take over ownership on your account and don't feel strongly enough about being correct to experiment with doing so. So, take this with a grain of salt.

Right now I think the most useful thing I'd like to know is if the game is set up to grab mods as plugins, if it's set up to utilize the UE4 early mod pipeline that will make things a lot easier on modders in the long run. If it isn't it could be extremely tricky to add anything new to the game, so, fingers crossed.

[Lord Grievous]

I realise it might not be as straightforward compared to when they use in-house tools. But back in the ue2 and ue3 days there were other developers who released mod tools for their game made in ue.

Lucasarts made Republic Commando with ue2 and it came bundled with a custom level editor.

I assume they used some custom plugins for ue4 to make this game, these would belong to obsidian and not to epic. Since we can freely download the ue4 engine we could use it with their custom plugins.

Anyway, I hope that obsidian sees the potential for these tools and tries to release them in some shape or form.

[Clawdius_Talonious]

I'm sure Obsidian is aware of the outpouring of community support for The Outer Worlds, and I'm excited that so many people feel so strongly about modding the game. That said, even if Obsidian wants to and plans to release tools to make modding the game easier, they have two corporations who they need to deal with in order to get it done. That means that the last person who could make the announcement is Obsidian.

That said, Microsoft's shareholder meeting is in December, so there is reason to hope that they are working on an announcement bigger than "The first release from our newly acquired subsidiary sold well!" regarding The Outer Worlds. I'm personally waiting to see someone tell me whether The Outer Worlds is set up to utilize the unfinished mod path Unreal Engine supports (attaching mods as plugins) so I have some idea whether the game is already built to support modification inherently because if it isn't modding the game is going to be much more difficult. If it's built to attach mods as plugins, then the modular nature of the game world etc. will make it an amazing title to mod. If it isn't, I'll be disappointed, but that won't mean that The Outer Worlds 2 won't support modding from the ground up and I'd rather the game get development focus than the mod tools.

TOW was made on a budget, any sequel would have Microsoft's support. I'd liken it to the difference between Shadowrun: Returns (and the story Dead Man's Switch) which was similarly built on a budget but the focus for the team was modding and mod tools. The story itself was... not good, it was actively bad in the sense that it was an RPG with no choices nor consequences, just a linear set of missions to take your character through. They managed to do a good job with fleshing out various paths for different types of characters to progress, but the mod tools were kind of a bust. They were complex, intimidating, and not much of the better Shadowrun content was released for Returns. Dragonfall, without the need to focus on a tool suite for public consumption and documentation was a much more enjoyable story. Hong Kong was even better than that, and while Battletech (HareBrained Schemes' newest game) is not built to support mods it has none the less been the recipient of more impressive mods and support from the community than any of the Shadowrun titles had been.

I want the game to get mod tools, but Kingdom Come: Deliverance promised mod tools and then they took until earlier this month to release them because it can be a complicated process. Even if The Outer Worlds got mod tools, UE4 content isn't easy to generate for people working on mod projects (often in their spare time.)

My point here isn't that we need to wait and see exactly, either. Building worldspaces in the Unreal Engine is something that can already be done, and what is the worst that could happen if you went to all the trouble of building an elaborate space station and it's not possible to mod it into The Outer Worlds? With UE4 it can be a standalone project if it can't be integrated into the game, map design and writing, iterating on enemy designs and positions... there's a lot of work good content mods would need that basically definitely wouldn't be wasted effort even if you couldn't make use of them for a mod for The Outer Worlds.

I'm just trying to give people realistic expectations regarding the game and mod tools, I've seen commentary to the tune of "If someone is asking [about modding unsupported UE titles] they already don't understand what it takes to do so to the point it would take multiple years learning the Unreal Engine to even understand the difficulties inherent in the problem" which I personally find kind of dismissive.

[Lord Grievous]

True, but even if they don't release a world editor. I do hope we get some tools to import custom armor and weapons into TOW.

This would be much less hassle for them I'd wager:)

Edited November 1, 2019 by Lord Grievous

[thomasrika]

mod apk tool is also very simple, just need a phone or computer and cod mod we can conduct mod

[Ommamar]

On 10/31/2019 at 4:46 PM, Lord Grievous said:

I realise it might not be as straightforward compared to when they use in-house tools. But back in the ue2 and ue3 days there were other developers who released mod tools for their game made in ue.

Lucasarts made Republic Commando with ue2 and it came bundled with a custom level editor.

I assume they used some custom plugins for ue4 to make this game, these would belong to obsidian and not to epic. Since we can freely download the ue4 engine we could use it with their custom plugins.

Anyway, I hope that obsidian sees the potential for these tools and tries to release them in some shape or form.

Using these facts what I deduced is that Obsidian could of built and released a editor in some form with the game.  The fact that they didn't tells me they have no interest in going down that path. While there is likely to be renewed interest when they release the DLC I am not sure if there will be enough interest in TOW after the majority have completed the content to support a modding community.  Maybe if they make a TOW 2 it will have some modding tools but I think unfortunately the time for a modding tool to be released for TOW has passed.

[Thepimped1]

Would love to see mods come to console for outerworlds it would be epic. Pun very much intended

[BrandyPark]

I like your article, I also really like the mods