You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?
Mod tools are probably a lot of time and effort to create. Games have deadlines, often rather short ones.
Solution: Discard DLC's, make mod tools
I'm sure DLC's cash-ins are a part of it, but getting the licenses for the shitload of middleware games use nowadays to put in mod tools would cost a huge amount.
"Hey you want to release our super expensive middleware, for free, with full documentation? Yeah man that won't cost much at all"
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
and this isn't even the most underhanded business tactic in constant use
[QUOTE=Shibbey;41775616]Mod tools are probably a lot of time and effort to create. Games have deadlines, often rather short ones.[/QUOTE]
It depends on how you program your games, you can choose to make them easy to change, or you can make it difficult. In many instances, developers only need to release less fleshed out versions of the tools they themselves use to create content. (e.g. hammer editor with valve)
People do seriously underestimate how difficult it is to crack a game open in a way that allows for moddability, even for the devs. Black Ops, that was a mess pure and simple; we shouldn't of expected a mapping system of any sort, but they just eventually threw out the promised mod tools in a beta state with no documentation and left it to die. But nowadays it's just not so easy to include some sort of modding with how complex this shit can get - especially as to prevent mods that could affect everything in a rather negative manner.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
Except ID didnt made tons of dlcs,released the mod tools and the only dlc they did for rage was high quality.
[QUOTE=Xmeagol;41775646]Solution: Discard DLC's, make mod tools[/QUOTE]
That will totally solve all of the problems that he outlined yes
I'm positive that there's more to this than just DLC. The engines are getting very complex. For example: Frostbite games having to be recompiled just to add a few new lines of code and textures. That and mod tools are notoriously difficult to create when the developer is under stress to make a good game under a rather hasty schedule. I'm not saying that developers shouldn't release mod tools, but I can understand that there are certain situations where they simply can't even if they wanted to.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
No, not really.
I love how none of you actually read the article.
The problem is the way a lot of game engines handle content these days to create the "next-gen" looking visuals, is that it involves basically creating assets under a render-farm. This is what companies like Pixar do when making movies, scenes are rendered on a massive distributed computing platform instead of all being rendered on one computer.
What id is saying, is that the problem with mod tools are that they need to work on one computer, but the engine and next-gen tech requires compiling the assets through distributed networking (basically, a render farm) to get an output.
Imagine if when you compiled a map in HL2 instead of it being a reasonably quick process, it took days to complete to have it playable (at the benefit of running smooth but looking really next-gen), so the solution is to make it so your editing suite runs through that render farm so it doesn't take days to compile, implement, compress and "render" assets inside the game engine in order to produce next-gen visuals. Thus, getting such tools to work on a small scale is hard.
Of course this is why engines like Cryengine 3 are so nice in that it doesn't use distributing computing at all and is purely WYSIWYG, but arguably an engine that does rely on distributed computing in order to compile the engine can run at a greater degree of performance and visual fidelity, which allows shit like The Last of Us to look so damn nice on such old hardware. The question is, if the distributed computing method is really "necessary" to create next gen visuals. Maybe not, but if thats how their workflow is (and it might be a quicker workflow to do it that way), then thats how the engine handles it.
It's stuff like this that makes me hope Source 2 (and accompanying tools) will focus on being modder-friendly and scalable (and modular like Source 1 already is), rather than focusing on raw power and spectacle support.
Would greatly benefit Valve's Workshop and Pipeline (and to some extent Greenlight) projects as well, not to mention it seems status quo for the company to recruit modders and turn their projects into full-fledged new franchises/sequels.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
But Id isn't even remotely like this. Hell, if Carmack could have his way he'd just make all his games ever open sourced. Id is one of the few companies that really tries.
id games are a prime examples of consistent modding support and declining user participation
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
yeah i agree, fucking id continuing to release SDKs in the face of problems that will only get worse as time passes, when all this could easily be solved by them not caring about doing something 'good' for their fans. seriously, what kind of shitty company releases the source code to their games and wastes time trying to make a good experience for the consumer at the cost of raking in the cash from DLCs
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
no i think he means the fact that compiling usable game files be it assets or just source code on a large, modern project like the ones id is involved in is now being handled with farms of CPUs to distribute the workload, ie much more intense and complicated than hitting "compile" in hammer on your 07 computer running windows xp.
i know you guys have a boner for crying about DLC like its /v/-micro-edition in here but in reality what they're saying is totally reasonable. just because you guys can make maps for source engine with relative ease (despite all the issues and complications involved in such a simple and outdated toolkit) doesn't mean that modern developers are just bullshitting when they say shit is complicated
[editline]9th August 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;41775967]It's stuff like this that makes me hope Source 2 (and accompanying tools) will focus on being modder-friendly and scalable (and modular like Source 1 already is), rather than focusing on raw power and spectacle support.
Would greatly benefit Valve's Workshop and Pipeline (and to some extent Greenlight) projects as well, not to mention it seems status quo for the company to recruit modders and turn their projects into full-fledged new franchises/sequels.[/QUOTE]
im sure valve realizes the importance of source modding so yeah source 2 will probably have a really nice toolkit and might make me interested in source again, hopefully they address some of the more obvious issues with the engine itself with the new version (like how there are missing files in the source project you download from valve themselves and you cant compile without going on the wiki to get these files)
and yet the most advanced SDK on the market, CryEngine's, runs on one machine
[QUOTE=KorJax;41775854]Imagine if when you compiled a map in HL2 instead of it being a reasonably quick process, it took days to complete to have it playable (at the benefit of running smooth but looking really next-gen), so the solution is to make it so your editing suite runs through that render farm so it doesn't take days to compile, implement, compress and "render" assets inside the game engine in order to produce next-gen visuals. Thus, getting such tools to work on a small scale is hard.[/QUOTE]
I'm just wondering how they managed to reduce the compile time from days to a reasonably quick process..
[editline]9th August 2013[/editline]
Maybe it's just really easy to get lazy with optimization when you have a compiler farm
[QUOTE=CapsAdmin;41777005]I'm just wondering how they managed to reduce the compile time from days to a reasonably quick process..[/QUOTE]
I thought for Source maps every computer in Valve's office, even the receptionist's, is hooked up to the VMPI thing.
[QUOTE=BrainDeath;41776924]and yet [B]the most advanced SDK[/B] on the market, CryEngine's, runs on one machine[/QUOTE]
thats debatable and not to mention cryengine was designed with modding and licensing in mind so they built it from the ground up with the intent of making it run everywhere. its a different workflow when you're working in a studio with teammates in an office where everyone is connected and using cloud computing (or whatever you want to call it) to optimize the numerous changes and compiles that need to be made during development, it works well for the studio but doesn't translate well to the mod market, which is why they have to go back and optimize it for singular users, like they did with the Rage toolkit.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;41777065]I thought for Source maps every computer in Valve's office, even the receptionist's, is hooked up to the VMPI thing.[/QUOTE]
"They" meaning id, not valve. I realize KorJax is just making an example.
But I guess they are so they can reduce the compile time from a reasonably quick process to almost instant. I was talking about reducing the compile time on a single PC.
The article doesn't really say much other than it takes an awful lot of CPUs and distributed computing.
[editline]10th August 2013[/editline]
[url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1245885]There's actually another article[/url] that says they use a 300 core render farm.
i love how people think they know more than the actual people who spent years making the engine
Honestly I wouldn't mind paying for something like Source SDK Base so the end user can play mods to help pay for the licensing of the middleware. That way, developers could develop for free but it'd cost the end user to enjoy that content.
I know it sounds crazy but it's what's right. Why should they pay for the licensing?
Remember first you're talking about iD, the same guys that released sources for all their previous engines.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41775583]You mean the economical trend of releasing three tons of DLC for $5 a pop with quality far under that of many of the mods that came for entirely free, and good modding tools undercutting your business?[/QUOTE]
Oh shut up. Id actually released a kit for RAGE, despite the fact they use a render-farm to produce their megatextures. Engines do get more complex over time, it's an undeniable fact.
i like how you guys disagree with id software
theyre the reason mods are even a widespread thing, have a bit of respect rofl
I was blown away by Quake 1 when I discovered you could join a server and be playing a completely different gamemode, like CTF, thanks to the relatively new concept called "mods"
I think part of the problem isn't just that engines are getting more complex, but that a lot of engines that facilitate user mods, like Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Source/GldSrc and ID's earlier games were pretty much built from the start with modding in mind.
Nowadays, especially considering Publishers are a lot more strict now in regards to modding, the higher costs of production, and other factors I would imagine the development pipeline has shifted greatly from allowing, or expecting, the general user to be able to mod, considering how much easier it is to make something that just does what you/your team need it to, instead of polishing and changing it to work for what everybody needs.
It may not be good for us but it probably helps with the quality of the games they can make.
[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;41778854]On a related note does anyone know how to set VMPI up? Specifically for Alien Swarm? I've got some servers with do almost no job at all and I'd like to take advantage of them[/QUOTE]
[url]https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/VMPI[/url]
[QUOTE=Asmaedus;41775667]I'm sure DLC's cash-ins are a part of it, but getting the licenses for the shitload of middleware games use nowadays to put in mod tools would cost a huge amount.
"Hey you want to release our super expensive middleware, for free, with full documentation? Yeah man that won't cost much at all"[/QUOTE]
This right here is what i try to explain to people. Everyone points to the source engine and the unreal engine, but what they forget is that source engine was made in 2004 and is slightly modified every so often, and the unreal engine is specifically made to be user-friendly.
a Dice dev had said before on the BF Forums that they're not trying to avoid modding but it's too time consuming and costly to make modding tools. Their engine is made to be used by Dice employees and not regular people. It uses multiple third-party programs that they would have to license if it was to be given out as a modding tool.
The few game that i can think of that don't release mod tools but have all the resources to do so are the Call of Duty series, the engine is only slightly modified each year but the games don't have the modding tools like COD 4. Black ops had a beta for mod tools halfway through release, but it's only good for making mods comparable to small mutators for unreal tournament.
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