Saints Row 3 petition for toolset?

Unfortunately, this is highly unlikely to get anywhere - it's not just -v- stuff that you'd need, it's also tools they've licensed off of others - and they may not be able to redistribute these regardless.

We tried this for SR2, just didn't get anywhere :(

(When I say this, I don't mean an internet petition - we tried getting hold of the tools).
 
Also, Internet petitions are a joke. They simply don't ever work and only serve to make signers look blissfully ignorant about how the real world works.
 
I've seen some cases where this comes up.. and can think of a specific reason not to distribute the toolset.
What's the physics system used in-game? If you're nodding, then yeah you know the issue. If you don't know what it is, well.. in some cases the models etc might have some physics stuff baked into them for the engine to utilize. Hitboxes etc, weight, friction coefficients, the like, I'm not a 3d modeller. But anyways, what that means is that when you work, you might have a plugin for whatever 3d software to export as your personal engine format.. that includes libraries compiled in from your physics engine. Those libraries (and many others, ever seen a game using Granny? Same thing) cause a rights issue.. because you can't redistribute them as they're the ones you have to pay a developer license to get to use. If they gave them out they'd be breaking the license and would get pants sued off them for using the physics engine in-game. By the way, this can apply even if you own the full sourcecode to your tools and want to open them up. If they use proprietary stuff that can't be redistributed, they'll either have to strip it out to make the tools not actually usable, or just not distribute them.
So it doesn't matter, some of the people at Volition could WANT to give us the tools, would love for a modding community to spring up, it shows people love your game and want to stick with it, and people who love a game will share it with others to make everyone see what you built and get out some of what you put in. Regardless of that, they likely aren't legally allowed to give us the tools, so they just don't. I would bet if you emailed them and got them to give a specific reason why they won't give the tools, it'd be that, licensing restrictions.

Sadly this isn't that uncommon either. Modding isn't a big thing, there's very few games that actually officially condone it, everyone else, just like here, has to work in the background and reverse-engineer stuff and work on what we have. I'd LOVE the tools. We won't get the tools. They probably also don't have ones that can be pulled apart, say a "Volition Texture Converter" which is independent of the model exporter, meaning we can't even get the parts they could give us because they're tied up with what they can't. :(


(Edit addendum) What MIGHT work, however, and I'd say ask if you can find the right people to ask, would be some info on their internal file formats. If we use that info on headers/contents/etc ourselves, well, they didn't give out anything worrying. Even if it's finding say a coder who did the file formats and getting him or her to shoot off a quick email saying "That file? Yeah, six bytes of header, a hash table for contents, a file tree as archived, and a CRC listing" or "The export tool handled that but I think it's a header, a filename, then vertex data followed by texture mapping data and a block of physics data". It's not a full tool, it's some propiretory data, but it's stuff that is of low importance, won't be the same as giving sourcecode, and while still requiring someone to write a tool for it would be a great boon in deciphering and making a tool for it. Just a thought.
 
I suggest that the real world is whatever we believe it is and acting contrary to the status quo doesn't make one ignorant it makes one a radical.;)
 
Gondar said:
I've seen some cases where this comes up.. and can think of a specific reason not to distribute the toolset.
What's the physics system used in-game? If you're nodding, then yeah you know the issue. If you don't know what it is, well.. in some cases the models etc might have some physics stuff baked into them for the engine to utilize. Hitboxes etc, weight, friction coefficients, the like, I'm not a 3d modeller. But anyways, what that means is that when you work, you might have a plugin for whatever 3d software to export as your personal engine format.. that includes libraries compiled in from your physics engine. Those libraries (and many others, ever seen a game using Granny? Same thing) cause a rights issue.. because you can't redistribute them as they're the ones you have to pay a developer license to get to use. If they gave them out they'd be breaking the license and would get pants sued off them for using the physics engine in-game. By the way, this can apply even if you own the full sourcecode to your tools and want to open them up. If they use proprietary stuff that can't be redistributed, they'll either have to strip it out to make the tools not actually usable, or just not distribute them.
So it doesn't matter, some of the people at Volition could WANT to give us the tools, would love for a modding community to spring up, it shows people love your game and want to stick with it, and people who love a game will share it with others to make everyone see what you built and get out some of what you put in. Regardless of that, they likely aren't legally allowed to give us the tools, so they just don't. I would bet if you emailed them and got them to give a specific reason why they won't give the tools, it'd be that, licensing restrictions.

Sadly this isn't that uncommon either. Modding isn't a big thing, there's very few games that actually officially condone it, everyone else, just like here, has to work in the background and reverse-engineer stuff and work on what we have. I'd LOVE the tools. We won't get the tools. They probably also don't have ones that can be pulled apart, say a "Volition Texture Converter" which is independent of the model exporter, meaning we can't even get the parts they could give us because they're tied up with what they can't. :(


(Edit addendum) What MIGHT work, however, and I'd say ask if you can find the right people to ask, would be some info on their internal file formats. If we use that info on headers/contents/etc ourselves, well, they didn't give out anything worrying. Even if it's finding say a coder who did the file formats and getting him or her to shoot off a quick email saying "That file? Yeah, six bytes of header, a hash table for contents, a file tree as archived, and a CRC listing" or "The export tool handled that but I think it's a header, a filename, then vertex data followed by texture mapping data and a block of physics data". It's not a full tool, it's some propiretory data, but it's stuff that is of low importance, won't be the same as giving sourcecode, and while still requiring someone to write a tool for it would be a great boon in deciphering and making a tool for it. Just a thought.
Click to expand...
You're pretty much 100% correct with this post.

Unfortunately, -V- are not particularly forthcoming with any format information - everything we know we've had to work out ourselves.
 
IdolNinja said:
Also, Internet petitions are a joke. They simply don't ever work and only serve to make signers look blissfully ignorant about how the real world works.
Click to expand...


I agree.
I will also add that the Real World and its evil retched 'real TV spawn-lings also suck. Real world just sucks. MTV sucked since the early 80's
when it stopped being a music vid carousel and became what it mutated into today. Garbage for pin heads.

Is my inner chimp showing again. Dammit.
I should form a protest.
 
LoL.
Okay, see I remember watching MTV in the 70's back on cable then. It was all crazy n stuff. Nonstop Videos of mostly
rock and contemporary rockish music. None of the Reality show bs. MTV today is a shadow of that. No politics. It was just rock man. GOod old rock vids from real bands.

It mutated into
some horrible thing.
As for Real World. I discovered that via a Google search. The shoe fit, So i threw it. It is one show II managed to miss as I had
given up on MTV the decade before.
Seems to my limited research, that reality show crap we are burdened with today mayahps began with the stinking Real World show.

Now, you ruined my pun-nish attempts by making me try to explain it.

Bah.
 
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