about the mod stuff all he was saying was, he’s going to do what he always does, dump his source and let people fuck around with it. He was saying that the engine was too complicated for people to be able to mod with it without tools, he wasn’t saying that people wont be able to make mods with similarly complex games, he was saying that people will need tools to do it, which they will, the mod support for hl2 is down to the tools.

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Wow, there’s just an unholy amount of factors to what makes a game popular to mod.

I’d also say that the “vanilla”-ness of the base game is an issue. The more finely balanced/intricately designed the game is (i.e. the more special case/non-generic it is with behaviours) the easier it will be to “break” the game. If there are more general case things going on, then the game responds well to tweaks and additions which make use of those hooks.

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I think it’s interesting to compare the Neverwinter Nights 2 modding with for example Half-Life 2 modding. NWN2 has 2D level design because it has no movement in the z-axis, its interiors are tile-based, and its exteriors are made with really user friendly terrain editing tools. It includes hundreds of objects and enemies for modders to use in their own work. And finally, the game has some really robust storytelling mechanics and tools – a great dialog editor, a really easy scripting language, good camera controls, etc.

My point being, I think because it’s so easy to create the world in-editor and set up a pretty complicated narrative, the focus in the NWN community is on modules with new stories rather than tons of new content. And since the tools are so powerful and user friendly, it’s way easier to create huge mods for NWN2 than to create even a small level for a game like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3.

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Major tools weren’t so necessary back in the Quake 2 days because there wasn’t such a hurdle for quality. Now, yes, being able to leap that raised hurdle easily is almost totally down to tool sets making increasingly complicated tasks easier.

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1. Flood of FPS. Nearly every month a new FPS gets released so there is simply no demand for another team deathmatch mod with an M16 and an american marine.

2. Short lived industry. You have to base your mod on a game that is still alive by the time you are done with your work. How many games outside HL2, UT and maybe a few others are still played by a lot of people 6 months after release?

3. No dev support. Where´s the little big planet of FPS where every noob can klick together a level or multiplayer mod in a few hours? Where are online asset databases everyone can use so no team has to ever do a crate or a spacemarine again by themselve and can only slap thogether assets already made. I mean how many more times do we have to moddel an M16. By now thousands of those moddels should exist why not simply bring them all in one place and let everyone use them.

Basically making it easier for the people is needed if the modscene is to survive and ever get a success like Counterstrike again.

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Why doesn’t RPS have their own cannabis strain! This is an outrage! I demand you make your own strain and put lots of THC in it!

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But I also agree that there are now technical hurdles that get in the way for mod teams to do well. Part of that is the player base of games wanting stuff to be more shiny and professional looking – we released our first version using CSS assets and got ripped into for “just being a CS mod” by people who clearly never bothered to actually try the game. Look at the Living Legends, who have brought in a set of professional artists to do their mech models for them or Insurgency who got time in a mocap studio for their animations. The bar has been raised not only by the relevant tech level of the engines but also by the player base and the mod teams, which is why so many mods die on their arse these days having released a handful of ‘clay’ weapon renders.

Making content for a modern engine is a bastard, Source has the worlds worst tool chain for instance while a map in UT3 relies on about 90% mesh work to add detail and layout, all of which needs a normal map to be created for it or else it looks out of place. Creating a good normal map tends to require experience in a program like Mudbox or zBrush, which are whole new mysteries for an amateur to get their head round (but also basic requirements for artists wanting to get into the industry at this point).

Wow, that got a bit rambling, I’ll stop.

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I think the future of mods lies in smaller and more experimental stuff rather than these vast and sprawling TCs with 20 guns, 8 maps and all the other associated code and content.

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There are a couple of interviews about where he talks about this stuff, but I’m too tired to look. Any volunteers?

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