I've never heard of a company actaully supporting a moding community! (If not support, at least they don't go against it). Because most gaming companies always go against the moding community and start hard-codding stuff so it's alot harder to modify. Especially companies like Rockstar Games; they've only figured out how to modify meshes last year for GTA, and they still haven't figured how to mod L.A. Noire in any way.
Does Volition/THQ support the modding community?
- Thread starter SWEETNESS T 17
- Start date
skyrim has its own tools for modding, released by the devs, and so do many other games, these mods sell their games, ARMA II is one of the most popular games on steam atm because of a mod and that game was released a few years ago, GTA4 sales also increased with the release of iCEnhancer and I know many devs release tools to mod their game
But they don't actually support the moding community, your just talking about the community making mods, and how sales increase with them.
Rockstar have stated a while back they approve the modding community, also EA support modders creating unique items and clothes meshes for their Sims!
PS. Remember Rockstar released Max Tools with Max Payne 2 so us gamers can make custom games.
PS. Remember Rockstar released Max Tools with Max Payne 2 so us gamers can make custom games.
O_O .......
Rockstar doesn't seem to approve of the moding community. They're making everything harder to mod. L.A. Noire came out in (was it around 2009-2010?) and they still haven't even one mod for it.
Corrodias
Generally Awesome
Back when Bioware was not part of the EA Money Machine, they had Neverwinter Nights, with its toolset and DM client, and actively promoted user-generated content. Holy shit, right?
You couldn't get away with that now. Somebody might make a nipple!
If the Elder Scrolls games don't count for what you're talking about, i don't know what does. Bethesda even hosts official forums where (at least in the age of Oblivion, i don't know about now) much of the modding discussion took place.
You couldn't get away with that now. Somebody might make a nipple!
If the Elder Scrolls games don't count for what you're talking about, i don't know what does. Bethesda even hosts official forums where (at least in the age of Oblivion, i don't know about now) much of the modding discussion took place.
Wow. I don't know what to say. I've never seen a supported modding community.
Rockstar USED to support the modding community. Back when it was DMA, they actually gave out their toolset for free for people to edit cars/maps/handling/etc for GTA1. Same for GTA2. GTA3 series (GTA3, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas) all used the same internal format.. which Rockstar released to the modders who happily built their own tools. That's why there's so much stuff done for them.
Then Hot Coffee broke. Rockstar, rather than admitting they had left the content in the game, fully runnable, and only blocked by a single 'censor bit' (literally, you changed a bit in the script and it would run the mini-game) threw the modders under the bus and claimed they added it. Afterwards, they specifically tried to make sure modders couldn't work with the game. Changed their formats (sort of, it was similar enough people caught it), refused to allow changing of the archive files (people came up with a loader that bypassed that protection), constantly updated with "performance fixes" that did nothing but block the modding bypasses that let people load modified files, and so on.
They've mostly come to quiet down and sort of conceded defeat, but only in part. Expect GTA5 to be impossible to mod at first before people come up with asm loaders or the like to do more code injection and bypass the locks. (Oh, and LA Noire? Different company than the GTA series, just under Rockstar name. I don't know how much even relates between the two. A better comparison would be Red Dead Redemption, were it out for PC)
Bioware used to be good.. they had the toolset for Neverwinter Nights because the game was MADE for it. It had a bare-bones singleplayer story, but the real draw was multiplayer so GMs could make modules, and have gaming nights using their engine to handle the nasty grunt-work and so on. Naturally, it's a massive community even now a decade later. Dragon Age 1 also had a fully fledged toolset, showing they didn't forget their roots.
Key thing to remember is most of DA1's development was done before the EA buyout. AFTER that buyout? Dragon Age 2 is in theory moddable but they changed formats, never updated the toolset, and people are picking through it with less luck. Nothing for the Mass Effect games (but they're primarily console based so forget them). Any Dragon Age 3 will most likely never have tools either. The Bioware of Baldur's Gate era (which by the wayt is still one of the most moddable games, with some former developers making mods for it too! All fan-engineered tools!) is long long gone.
And then Bethesda, who is the one company that loves their modders and understands the draw they have.. even as they try to shaft them by insisting only the consoles are the platforms worth anything, then releasing crappy console ports (seriously, there's no excuse for Skyrim's default UI on a pc). On the other hand, releasing tools and encouraing a modding community by never rewriting their internal engine (they change the graphics engine, but the internals have code back from morrowind days, meaning learning to use the toolset for Skyrim is a lot like Oblivion, or even Fallout 3) means that they can have said modding community FIX their mistakes. Ironic in a way.
So long story short, Volition not outright supporting us is nothing new. On the other hand, theyt're far nicer than some companies. Their stance seems 'live and let live' in regards to this. There's been cases where stuff modded has caused them problems, so they've asked politely and it's been fixed (uploading characters for instance). Other companies would just ban and pull out the litigation-minigun to saturate-lawsuit the modding community. Considering the fine line legally modding has, that's as close as you'll get to being officially approved without a full toolset/format release for us.
Although I do wish they'd give us at least a bit of the internals of some files, notably the compressed binaries of say car configs and customization, or the full model info.. even a little leak under the table. Problem is any person there who leaked that to us would be looking for a new job and probably face being sued under breaking their NDA, so it won't likely happen.
Then Hot Coffee broke. Rockstar, rather than admitting they had left the content in the game, fully runnable, and only blocked by a single 'censor bit' (literally, you changed a bit in the script and it would run the mini-game) threw the modders under the bus and claimed they added it. Afterwards, they specifically tried to make sure modders couldn't work with the game. Changed their formats (sort of, it was similar enough people caught it), refused to allow changing of the archive files (people came up with a loader that bypassed that protection), constantly updated with "performance fixes" that did nothing but block the modding bypasses that let people load modified files, and so on.
They've mostly come to quiet down and sort of conceded defeat, but only in part. Expect GTA5 to be impossible to mod at first before people come up with asm loaders or the like to do more code injection and bypass the locks. (Oh, and LA Noire? Different company than the GTA series, just under Rockstar name. I don't know how much even relates between the two. A better comparison would be Red Dead Redemption, were it out for PC)
Bioware used to be good.. they had the toolset for Neverwinter Nights because the game was MADE for it. It had a bare-bones singleplayer story, but the real draw was multiplayer so GMs could make modules, and have gaming nights using their engine to handle the nasty grunt-work and so on. Naturally, it's a massive community even now a decade later. Dragon Age 1 also had a fully fledged toolset, showing they didn't forget their roots.
Key thing to remember is most of DA1's development was done before the EA buyout. AFTER that buyout? Dragon Age 2 is in theory moddable but they changed formats, never updated the toolset, and people are picking through it with less luck. Nothing for the Mass Effect games (but they're primarily console based so forget them). Any Dragon Age 3 will most likely never have tools either. The Bioware of Baldur's Gate era (which by the wayt is still one of the most moddable games, with some former developers making mods for it too! All fan-engineered tools!) is long long gone.
And then Bethesda, who is the one company that loves their modders and understands the draw they have.. even as they try to shaft them by insisting only the consoles are the platforms worth anything, then releasing crappy console ports (seriously, there's no excuse for Skyrim's default UI on a pc). On the other hand, releasing tools and encouraing a modding community by never rewriting their internal engine (they change the graphics engine, but the internals have code back from morrowind days, meaning learning to use the toolset for Skyrim is a lot like Oblivion, or even Fallout 3) means that they can have said modding community FIX their mistakes. Ironic in a way.
So long story short, Volition not outright supporting us is nothing new. On the other hand, theyt're far nicer than some companies. Their stance seems 'live and let live' in regards to this. There's been cases where stuff modded has caused them problems, so they've asked politely and it's been fixed (uploading characters for instance). Other companies would just ban and pull out the litigation-minigun to saturate-lawsuit the modding community. Considering the fine line legally modding has, that's as close as you'll get to being officially approved without a full toolset/format release for us.
Although I do wish they'd give us at least a bit of the internals of some files, notably the compressed binaries of say car configs and customization, or the full model info.. even a little leak under the table. Problem is any person there who leaked that to us would be looking for a new job and probably face being sued under breaking their NDA, so it won't likely happen.
Corrodias
Generally Awesome
That's why Zenimax is my ideal situation for when THQ dumps Volition for being so embarrassing (and presumably profitable, which in Bizarro THQ World is bad). Valve doesn't buy game studios, so Zenimax is really the only good option. Otherwise you are really just left with... all the other publishers.
Valve support a majority of modding back when they released the first Half-Life and then Half-Life 2.
Game Freak have stated that they in noway support modding for Pokemon, but still keep anti-modding barriers down, odd.
Game Freak have stated that they in noway support modding for Pokemon, but still keep anti-modding barriers down, odd.