What should Kickstarter funds be spent on?

[pid]

Flexible engine option

 

Requirements:

• more algorithms
  
• more data structures
  
• more, better and cleaner coding
  
• at least an API or even open sourced portions of the engine
  
• no limitations on content creation whatsoever (maps, NPCs, bitmaps, sounds, items even some event providers that can be plugged-in)
  
• dedicated website where content is uploaded and retrieved from, with voting system much like Steam's Workshop
  

Advantages:

• community will use the same tools as the devs
  
• over time, content will grow beyond what a single studio can ever do
  
• no end to variety
  
• years after release there will still be NEW content to play
  
• project eternity will actually be "eternal" as a *platform* for old-school RPGs
  

Disadvantages:

• crowd sourced content is often of scarce quality
  
• balancing may be poor (overpowered weapons and excessive rewards), spoiling enjoyment for some players
  
• Steam's Workshop voting system proved to be not very reliable (see Portal 2's map sprawl and relation between actual quality/enjoyment of maps and votes given by players)
  
• no guarantee ever that good content will actually be produced by the crowd
  

Less flexible engine option

 

Current target, so no additional (or different) requirements to be met.

 

Advantages:

• released content will be more and of better quality
  
• the "official" game content will be the actual "game" (play as the devs intended) and mods will be something to toy with only on a later time
  
• a sequel by Obsidian will be much more likely
  
• at least the base game content will have top quality as we are accustomed to from games like Icewind Dale and similar
  

Disadvantages:

• longevity will be based on "replay value", not "additional content"
  
• community modding tools will still be released but on a lesser scale then the full-blown content creation tools used by the devs, allowing modders STILL to spoil fun with unbalanced content
  
• website will be generic (nexus) from which to download mods as seen in prior art (look at the mods for those games on nexus)
  

THIS IS AN ACTUAL POLL. I'd like to know and see what you all think about it. It is not an attempt to manipulate opinions, I tried to express pros and cons in an objective way, and am wondering myself what I'd prefer.

[Monte Carlo]

OK, here's my take as a prodigious end-user (NOT a modder) of IE mods. I am an unashamed fan of the G3 and PPG. I am an aVENGER fanboy.

 

Make the tools accessible enough for the folks who know what they are doing be able to use them. I am an elitist. Lots of mods are crap, but the ones made by the credible, peer-reviewed modders are great. So the tools should be suitable for them.

 

I would also like more developer-generated content for hopefully obvious reasons.

[pid]

Your reasons are obvious. In fact, I can't say what I voted myself or I'd be accused of trying to form opinions. But I can tell you I was uncertain and maybe still am.

[Karranthain]

I'm in favour of a

OK, here's my take as a prodigious end-user (NOT a modder) of IE mods. I am an unashamed fan of the G3 and PPG. I am an aVENGER fanboy.

 

Make the tools accessible enough for the folks who know what they are doing be able to use them. I am an elitist. Lots of mods are crap, but the ones made by the credible, peer-reviewed modders are great. So the tools should be suitable for them.

 

I would also like more developer-generated content for hopefully obvious reasons.

 

I, too, prefer this solution.

 

Total War : Medieval II wasn't released with a toolset, and this is what the community was able to come up with :

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lky9diYN6Qo

 

 

Most mod tools were actually provided by the modders themselves; the developers just made the game's content easily accessible.

Edited October 6, 2012 by Karranthain

[anek]

Modders don't need a "toolset", nor a "dedicated content website".

They can come up with that themselves.

 

What they need, is a very flexible engine design and data file structure that makes it possible to freely add maps/entities/scripts/tables and override existing ones.

Edited October 6, 2012 by anek

[Ieo]

This poll confuses me.

 

"What should workload (Kickstarter funds) be spent on?" --> The game content itself, obviously?

[JWestfall]

Flexible engine option

 

Requirements:

• more algorithms
  
• more data structures
  
• more, better and cleaner coding
  
• at least an API or even open sourced portions of the engine
  
• no limitations on content creation whatsoever (maps, NPCs, bitmaps, sounds, items even some event providers that can be plugged-in)
  
• dedicated website where content is uploaded and retrieved from, with voting system much like Steam's Workshop
  

 

While the poll may be useful as a theoretical discussion, it has already been said that they are using Unity3D as their engine, which likely rules out some or most of these bullet points.

 

Unity3D is a toolset + engine combo, and it uses C# (or a form of Javascript) as its API, which would not be exposed in a built and packaged game. Also, Unity3D is closed source (unless you pay $$$ and can convince them to give you the source code).

 

I'm not positive, but I imagine that certain assets could be exposed externally, however, which may make modding easier - but I wouldn't count on there be any toolset or scripting.

[pid]

This poll confuses me.

 

"What should workload (Kickstarter funds) be spent on?" --> The game content itself, obviously?

 

A game is not just content it is also an executable program (data and code).

With a limited budget (albeit very high) you have to decide what to spend money on.

[Osvir]

Most mod tools were actually provided by the modders themselves; the developers just made the game's content easily accessible.

 

That which is bold.

 

That's what is most important. Obsidian doesn't need to make a mod editor, they only need to leave some doors open so modders can access the files :D I am so looking forward to mod for P:E :D

[NerdBoner]

Most mod tools were actually provided by the modders themselves; the developers just made the game's content easily accessible.

 

That which is bold.

 

That's what is most important. Obsidian doesn't need to make a mod editor, they only need to leave some doors open so modders can access the files :D I am so looking forward to mod for P:E :D

yes, yes yes...yes yes yes yes!

 

Why don't developers today get this? you don't need to release mod tools, just don't lock the game resources in a f*cking uncrackable safe!

Edited October 6, 2012 by NerdBoner

[pid]

While the poll may be useful as a theoretical discussion, it has already been said that they are using Unity3D as their engine, which likely rules out some or most of these bullet points.

 

Unity3D is a toolset + engine combo, and it uses C# (or a form of Javascript) as its API, which would not be exposed in a built and packaged game. Also, Unity3D is closed source (unless you pay $$$ and can convince them to give you the source code).

 

I'm not positive, but I imagine that certain assets could be exposed externally, however, which may make modding easier - but I wouldn't count on there be any toolset or scripting.

Unity as a development environment frees you from a lot of technical stuff without restraining you too much. It does not exclude those bullet points unless you don't want to break their paradigm for cost reasons.

 

For example you can create a map right inside Unity and import models and animations from Blender, code C# with Mono and "stitch" it all together with as least coding as possible (btw, that "other" language *IS* javascript at 100%, it's context is not a browser but it still is javascript, just as a pointer look at Rhino, which is javascript server-side, or actionscript running in the shockwave flash VM -- language and context are two separate constructs, so Unity has not a "form of javascript" but *actual* javascript).

 

But you can also plug in anything you like, just run Visual Studio 10 and code away 10 months in C#, then plug it into your game and profit from that extensions to Unity. As an example, see Castle Story (was also on Kickstarter). The voxel space data is processed into a model of the terrain that is then rendered by Unity, and modifying the terrain causes a tiny portion of the model to be recomputed and updated inside Unity. The conversion from voxel data to the model, rendereable by Unity, is not part of Unity, it was coded outside of it.

 

Generally, Unity's maps are pre-processed up to the shadows, ambient occlusion and trees to speed up real-time rendering. This is fine, but when you want to break that paradigm (modifiable terrain) you have to code it.

 

The poll was just about this: stick to Unity's quite static approach or make it as dynamic as possible (which requires much more work).

 

There is absolutely no need to open-source Unity, the engine and the game are two different things. You can open-source the game that runs on Unity without having to open-source the engine itself. This way, you YOURSELF can use Unity directly to "change" the game. This is very different from modding, because modding is restraint by how much the game uses documented data structures (they don't need to be really open like XML or plain-text, they just have to be documented, see the WAD fileformat for Doom which was reverse engineered and opened up the doors to modding). Btw, that was one of the first modding communities. I remember it was quickly clear to all that the documentation of the data was the culprit of modding.

 

So what I said is not just "modding" by delivering the documentation of the fileformats, but allowing us to use directly Unity to change an if() in the code and recompile the game... (and NOT recompile Unity itself). That and modding are two very different things.

 

For scripting outside Unity it would be possible if the Javascript was compiled at runtime. Instead, it's precompiled and only JIT compiled at runtime (just-in-time compilation). Reference: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/index.Script_compilation_28Advanced29.html

 

As you can easily see, without Obsidian coding to circumvent this limit of Unity and open up scripting, this will not happen. You'll just be able to change data. Admittedly a data-driven engine can be very flexible, but it won't still be the same as true scripting. WoW's LUA scripting for the GUI as an excellent example. With LUA, XML and images you can obtain next to any kind of GUI in WoW. But it's just the GUI, you can't change the innards of the engine, which also is running server-side, so it's twice no dice.

 

That said, modders or coders (I'm a software engineer myself but I don't work in the games industry, I work in the management software field, that's totally different) should very well understand all I wrote and confirm that the poll makes sense.

 

TL;DR: the poll makes sense, both ways are possible and good, it's more a matter of what backers want or maybe to push the boundaries of how games are designed today in contrast to 20 years ago.

[pid]

Modders don't need a "toolset", nor a "dedicated content website".

They can come up with that themselves.

You're right. The point is that it's not about just "modding" but digging deeper into the game and changing more then what is envisioned to be modded.

[anek]

Unity3D is a toolset + engine combo

 

But it handles only the low-level stuff like sprites and 3d models, right?

 

I would guess it's still up to the game developer's to implement how e.g. they store and load map and character scripts, spell definitions, XP progression tables, save-games, etc... as that is different for every (type of) game, and Unity is not bound to any particular type of game.

 

So the actual "game engine" of Project Eternity - on the same level as the Infinity Engine was the game engine of Baldur's Gate - would not be Unity itself, but rather a custom RPG engine developed by Obsidian on top of Unity. I think that's also why in one of the updates or interviews they spoke of using a combination of tools provided by Unity, and specialized in-house tools they already have.

 

and it uses C# (or a form of Javascript) as its API, which would not be exposed in a built and packaged game. Also, Unity3D is closed source

 

Well, the Infinity Engine was also closed source. It was probably written in C++, but that doesn't really matter - because all the actual rules and behaviors of the game's character classes and NPCs and items and areas and quests were not hard-coded, but rather bundled as (compiled) LUA scripts, plus simple text files for dialogs.

 

Modders came up with a tool ("Near Infinity") that could parse the bundled data and extract and decompile those LUA scripts and text files, so they could be studied and modified.

 

Modified versions of scripts and dialog files (or additional ones) could be placed in the games "Override" directory, and the game would automatically use the ones it found there instead of the corresponding ones bundled inside the main game archive(s) - this allowed mods to be easily installed and uninstalled without having to modify the shipped game data.

 

And it gave *a lot* of flexibility as to what modders could do, like

• continue fixing bugs in quest and dialog scripts, even years after the publishers have stopped releasing official patches
  
• translate dialogs into different languages for which there was no official translation
  
• mods that replaced the high-level abilities of playable classes with completely different, innovative ones
  
• mods that added new joinable NPCs into the existing game
  
• mods that painstakingly modified pretty much all encounters in the game to become more difficult and tactically diverse
  
• mods that created completely new maps/adventures
  

Unfortunately, in the later (mostly 3D) games, the focus of modding has almost exclusively been only on the very last point from the above list: allowing players to create new addon maps/adventures.

 

While having that is of course nice, I think it was actually all the modding possibilities for modifying the actual main game itself, that contributed the most to the longevity of the Infinity Engine games. And remember that those games didn't provide any modding tools at all - fans created them all by themselves, like they saw fit.

 

 

The point being:

 

For simple "user created addon maps", having a crappy engine design and merely shipping a "map design tool" (with obtuse internal workings) with the game is enough.

 

All the other interesting modding possibilities, however, will require a well-designed, flexible, accessible, and data/scripts driven engine - whether tools to work with it are provided by the devs or instead by fans is then pretty much irrelevant.

 

So that is what we should be asking Obsidian for - not simply "modding tools".

Edited October 6, 2012 by anek

[Monte Carlo]

I haven't got a clue what any of you are talking about, but wow it sounds sexy.

[pid]

All the other interesting modding possibilities, however, will require a well-designed, flexible, accessible, and data/scripts driven engine - whether tools to work with it are provided by the devs or instead by fans is then pretty much irrelevant.

 

So that is what we should be asking Obsidian for - not simply "modding tools".

 

You, sir, expressed my thoughts better than I did myself

 

And, I want to add, we backers should have more power in those decisions and be allowed to decide if we want more content or an engine that is more open. We pay their bills now!

[dlux]

What should Kickstarter funds be spent on?

Kerfluffles.... and gummy bears. :3

[anek]

Generally, Unity's maps are pre-processed up to the shadows, ambient occlusion and trees to speed up real-time rendering. This is fine, but when you want to break that paradigm (modifiable terrain) you have to code it.

 

PE won't be using 3D terrain though, it will (mainly) use pre-rendered backgrounds shipped with the game as 2D images.

[JWestfall]

stuff

 

Interesting, thank you. I think it would be great for them to open it up as much as you say, I'd certainly love to contribute on the programming side if they expose C#.

[Superdeluxe]

More content on release.

[JWestfall]

I am still unsure of how I would vote between the two options, however. I suppose it depends on how much resources would need to be diverted into opening up the scripting side (as opposed to just data side). While I loved mucking around with NWN, and I'm a hobbyist programmer, I'm leaning towards wanting a fully fleshed out game with lots of content this time around, as opposed to what NWN had on release.

[anek]

I am still unsure of how I would vote between the two options, however. I suppose it depends on how much resources would need to be diverted into opening up the scripting side (as opposed to just data side).

 

True. However, note that designing the engine like this may not only benefit modders, but also Obsidian themselves - at the very latest, when it comes to creating expansions or additional games based on that engine in the future.

 

Edit: As for NWN, yeah, I wouldn't want that repeated either. But I'm also confident that this won't happen in the case of PE. Just look at everything the devs have written about it so far - they clearly have a strong vision for the story and world they're designing, so that will obviously come first, no matter what they commit to in terms of opening up the engine to modders.

When the choice is between

awesome story and world + 60 optional sidequests

and

awesome story and world + 50 optional sidequests + modder-friendly, accessible engine design

though, I would definitely choose the latter.

Edited October 7, 2012 by anek

[Gyges]

Smack and hoes.