Unity Pro Required to Mod Pillars

[Grizlock]

I spent a lot of time modding Neverwinter Nights 2. From my preliminary research, I've gotten to the point where I need Unity Pro to save a POE asset I've modified. Am I missing something here? It seems silly to have to buy a $1500 piece of software just to experiment with modding. Even a 30 day trial would help to let me know if my mod will even work. 

[Guest]

That's on Unity. Obsidian has said that they will try to make the game as modder friendly as they can, however the priority is getting the game patched. Anything coming from them is probably going to be something we'll have to wait for.

[danielkx]

It is doubtful Obsidian will switch this game over to Unity 5, but no doubt the sequel will use Unity 5+

 

Unity 5 allows you to use it for free I believe. I know Wasteland 2 is/did convert the game over to Unity 5.

[Bryy]

Are you... trying to imply Obsidian is forcing you to buy Unity?

[gkathellar]

Personally, I think it's a damn shame that Pillars doesn't use anything like the 2da file type. That made certain forms of simple modding much easier.

 

Are you... trying to imply Obsidian is forcing you to buy Unity?

 

I don't think that's what the OP is saying, so much as they're complaining about the fact that they will need to buy Unity if they want to do serious modding.

[Grizlock]

Take it easy, I'm just asking if there is another avenue I can take to mod the game. Unity Pro is probably well worth the cost if I was going to write my own game, but I simply want to make what is the NWN2 equivalent of a few script files and a 2da change. 

[Daemonjax]

Take it easy, I'm just asking if there is another avenue I can take to mod the game. Unity Pro is probably well worth the cost if I was going to write my own game, but I simply want to make what is the NWN2 equivalent of a few script files and a 2da change. 

 

A lot of the game rules are in Assembly-CSharp.dll, which can be dissassembled and modified if you know how.

 

There's also Bester's modding framework: https://bitbucket.org/Bester/poe-modding-framework

 

I don't know much about it, but I would definitely look into that.

 

 

All the conversations can be modded with a text editor.  Someone could make a mod that adds unique might conversation options for spellcasters using just notepad.

 

The game isn't very mod friendly, but it could be worse.  It could easily be better, though.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Daemonjax

[Sabin Stargem]

I spent a lot of time modding Neverwinter Nights 2. From my preliminary research, I've gotten to the point where I need Unity Pro to save a POE asset I've modified. Am I missing something here? It seems silly to have to buy a $1500 piece of software just to experiment with modding. Even a 30 day trial would help to let me know if my mod will even work. 

 

 

From what I recall, Unity now allows anyone to use Pro features for free until they have sold $100,000 worth of a game that was made with Unity.  Modding shouldn't be an issue, assuming that Obsidian didn't secure the assets and code.

 

Here is a copy of what was said on Unity 5 Personal:

 

 

 

Unity 5 Personal Edition

Democracy is something we believe in. It’s in the DNA of those that work at Unity. It’s one of the things that drew me to the company. It’s also one of the things that is most important to the games industry. So with that in mind, we are launching Unity 5 Personal Edition. Unity 5 Personal Edition provides all the power of Unity 5 engine and editor. To clarify — this is important — it is the same Unity 5 engine and editor as in the Pro Edition.  It comes with all the features including  Profiler, Occlusion Culling, Render-to-Texture, and Post-Processing Special Effects as well as all the big Unity 5 features like Physically-based Shading, Enlighten, reflection probes and much more.

 

Unity 5 Personal Edition is free.  No royalty.  Free.

Unity 5 Personal Edition is for professional developers, Indies, hobbyists and studios with revenue under $100,000 and funding under $100,000.

You can see a full comparison of the licenses here.

Download Unity 5, play with it, experiment with it, and create something beautiful and lasting.

Today is a big day.  I hope you are as excited about it as we are at Unity.

 

John Riccitiello

 

However, there may be a bugbear:  Pillars of Eternity uses Unity 4.6 if I remember correctly, so later versions of Unity may have difficulty working with POE.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Sabin Stargem

[Grizlock]

I'll take a look at the modding framework as an alternative, that might work. Yes, Pillars of Eternity uses 4.6. There used to be a 30 day free trial for this version, but I'm guessing it's no longer available since Unity 5 gives you all the features in the Personal edition as long as your revenue is under 100k. Thanks for the tips.