Need Help Modding Saints Row the third

[Corrodias]

Considering the game's practically useless without mods, i can see why they made an exception. They don't actively try to keep us out. There's not much else nice i can say. They're wholly owned by THQ, so it's not exactly surprising that things aren't run the way i'd like.

Note that Volition was purchased by THQ in 2000. That's after they released Freespace 2, apparently an extremely moddable game. They even released the source code in 2002 since they no longer had the rights to the Freespace IP, so they couldn't make any more games with it. Volition used to be really cool. It's been 10 years since 2002... man, i hope that doesn't make me sound dated.

 

[Gondar]

Nah, it's not an uncommon thing, for the companies that make it big to end up getting bought out and killed, particularly with regards to fans and modding. Consoles are the ultimate grab after all, and you can't mod on those, so why bother? It feels sometimes like Bethesda only allows modding because they HAVE the toolset ready, and everyone expects it it's practically a marketing bulletpoint they don't have to pay for. "Look at this game! It's gonna be sweet when modded!" because the only time you should play a Bethesda game without heavy modding is when it's segregated to the consoles.

On the other hand... sometimes the new up and comers still show the spirit is alive and well. Who here has played Minecraft? Yeah, I'll bet a large part to the majority of the forum users here have. The game is minimalistic.. it's a sandbox. And what better thing to give a sandbox than some new areas and new types of sand? Thus modding. Notch (and then later Jeb when Notch moved on to other projects) has said he wanted modding tools and sdk. In the meantime, people reverse-engineer the code for the game since it's all java, and then develop lots of mods. Many have developed mod loaders and frameworks to make that easy, so they can co-operate. Heck, if you've played minecraft online the chance is the server is probably running bukkit, which is really a modloader and mod-functionality extender.


So, yeah. There's always hope.. but for the older game developers? The best we can typically hope for is something like Volition here, where they don't support mods, but they tacitly condone them and let them go on. Moreso they have a little level of dialogue with the modders.. how many companies would have actually said something about custom mods screwing up the character upload system so the *modders* could fix it, instead of "fixing" it by banning all mods, all discussion of mods, and banning players who do any modding? It's not the same as giving us even a few design docs to say "This is the file structure" but it's far better than most companies give to their "fans" (read: mobile wallets)