Judith on 22/3/2013 at 10:11
Quote:
The modding community, for games like Unreal Tournament 3, is typically small but active immediately after the games are released. Compared to the heydays of hobbyist level design around 1998-2002, it’s only a fraction of the size it used to be. While level design as a profession will not disappear anytime soon, it’s becoming less attractive to get into it through modding.
The increasing complexity across the field of level design also increases the difficulty for people trying to get into it. Despite more support available, and more user-friendly tools, the complexity has outstripped these advances which means that the regular hobbyist who just wants to create something fun may find it too complex these days and give up. This rising complexity may very well scare off the majority of interested people. It may also reduce the general level of quality of community-generated content as the talent pool shrinks in response. This lower quality level design may eventually hinder the development of level designers and modders. (…)potential drop of interest from commercial developers could, in turn, discourage community involvement and thus perpetuate the community’s decline – a vicious circle. (…)The widening gap in quality may do more harm than good to community-driven level design in the future.
This is the introduction from “Hows and whys of level design” by Hourences, which was written around 2008, but I think these observations are still (if not even more) valid. I think it applies in particular to our community, since making FMs for T1/2 and TDS (to some extent) relies on techniques that were already outdated around 2002.
Making everything from brushes is not an option. If you want to create custom environments, you need to be proficient in one of the most popular modeling software: 3dsmax, Maya, XSI, Modo, or Blender. You'll need to learn the high-low poly workflow and at some point you will need to use one of the digital sculpting apps like Mudbox or Zbrush, plus complimentary software like xNormal, MeshLab and other tools. This is pretty much the minimum right now, and it takes months or years to learn on your own.
And this is just the graphics. You'll need to learn the whole new editor, the lightning workflow (Lightmass, I hope?), materials and shader operations (it's not just "textures" right now), probably a new scripting system, or at least some modified version of Kismet, and so on.
Even today, the best T2FMs are done in teams, so I think we can assume those teams be bigger or the time needed to make such FM will increase substantially. Like half a year o more per one small mission or something like that.
So, with all that in mind I wonder, how long will it take for the community to be able to use the editor in a proficient manner? Is such powerful tool needed at all? On the other hand, the devs could release it anyway — they probably would want to sell a few DLC missions throughout the next year, and there won't be much competition with fan-made works in terms of quality.
I hope we'll get it, sooner or later, since time is not an issue for FM makers. Still, in last few years only Epic proprietary games (UT3, GoW) were shipped with editors, so that makes me a bit worried. I'm sure EM wouldn't want to have additional licensing costs for releasing the editor to the community.
jtr7 on 22/3/2013 at 10:53
It would be a huge deal for Square-Enix to okay and fund EM giving us their editor. They are not friendly to the modding community, or at least, their reputation precedes them. Maybe their desire to break into the Western market and be among the top ten game publishers will soften them up to the idea. If not, I hope they don't bury and encode the assets too deeply so our awesome taffin' coders can pick those locks.
Vivian on 22/3/2013 at 10:57
Although Judith has a very good point, I do think the tech skills available in this or any other group of videogame fans shouldn't be underestimated. People made the Dark Mod. I'm sure if the SDK for the new Thief was released it would get a fair amount of use.
jay pettitt on 22/3/2013 at 11:33
It's interesting stuff. Valve, who've been playing around with encouraging user made content, seem to reckon that hats are pretty much at the pinnacle of what folk actually enjoy making and sharing and using.
Volca on 22/3/2013 at 13:17
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
It's interesting stuff. Valve, who've been playing around with encouraging user made content, seem to reckon that hats are pretty much at the pinnacle of what folk actually enjoy making and sharing and using.
Where do you get that feeling from? Particulary the (
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=730) CS:GO workshop seems very active adding new maps.
demagogue on 22/3/2013 at 13:37
Complexity my ass. There's more documentation and tools than ever before. Gamers have just been hand-held and spoonfed so much by the whole gaming-iPhone-console complex that the idea people could make their own levels is terrifying to them.
This generation of gamers is the living embodiment of the last men that Nietzsche said have been so coddled with a padded-wall world that they've grown up to be like sand, soft with rounded corners. They almost deserve the pathetic small hell they've landed themselves into where creativity is only for the commercial class, not sad little waifs like them.
:colbert:
Edit: There won't be a T4 editor anyway. Get off the forums & back to your T2 & TDM FMs & tutorials, you lazy bums.
Sir Taffsalot on 22/3/2013 at 13:52
Quote Posted by demagogue
Complexity my ass. There's more documentation and tools than ever before. Gamers have just been hand-held and spoonfed so much by the whole gaming-iPhone-console complex that the idea people could make their own levels is terrifying to them.
This generation of gamers is the living embodiment of the last men that Nietzsche said have been so coddled with a padded-wall world that they've grown up to be like sand, soft with rounded corners. They almost deserve the pathetic small hell they've landed themselves into where creativity is only for the commercial class, not sad little waifs like them.
:colbert:
Edit: There won't be a T4 editor anyway. Get off the forums & back to your T2 & TDM FMs & tutorials, you lazy bums.
As there's no Like Button on these forums this will have to do. :thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:
Judith on 22/3/2013 at 14:55
Quote:
Complexity my ass. There's more documentation and tools than ever before. Gamers have just been hand-held and spoonfed so much by the whole gaming-iPhone-console complex that the idea people could make their own levels is terrifying to them.
This generation of gamers is the living embodiment of the last men that Nietzsche said have been so coddled with a padded-wall world that they've grown up to be like sand, soft with rounded corners. They almost deserve the pathetic small hell they've landed themselves into where creativity is only for the commercial class, not sad little waifs like them.
Hah, good one :D Unfortunately it's true, but I think the complexity itself isn't the biggest problem. As you've mentioned, there are docs and video tuts everywhere, UDK has a giant doc database itself. The problem is time. Time before you see the final result, time you need co commit yourself to a project, etc. Switching to a new tech would triple or quadruple the time requirements for quality FMs. It's easier than ever to burn out, forget the direction you were heading to etc.
There's also another issue that came to my mind when Vivian mentioned DarkMod. It was a great effort, there's no doubt about that, even though I'm not a fan of the gameplay mechanics. The result is, well, from my perspective it's a TDS where everything works, for a change ;)
Anyway, look at the quality of FMs released there, both in gameplay and audiovisual terms. People still treat TDM editor as Dromed on steroids, making everything with basic shapes and tileable textures. I thought that the initial package (one with the editor and 1-2 example missions) sets a pretty nice visual and gameplay standard. And I thought that would be a great starting point, not a pinnacle of design that is beyond reach.
I certainly wouldn't want the same to happen when T4Ed comes out. I know there are people here who keep up with modeling/texturing/level design tech and workflows, like Renzatic, Yandros, Sliptip and a few others, but everyone else will have to learn a lot to keep up. Starting like, yesterday ;)
Renzatic on 22/3/2013 at 19:47
Depending on what you're doing, modern game design is all at once more difficult, and a good bit easier than what it used to be.
If you're an asset designer, it's much, much, MUCH more indepth. You can't just make an 800 tri object and paint a simple texture on it anymore. If you want a nice looking piece of scenery, you have to make a high resolution mesh with all your little details crafted onto it, create a low res object for the game, bake it down to a normal/height map, paint a diffuse, specular, and export it to the editor. That takes time and skill to do. It's not something someone can pick up brand new and get decent at within a couple of months.
On the other hand, level design is a much more streamlined process than what it used to be. You're not doing that much with BSP anymore. Now, you're blocking out the basic shape of your building and nothing more. You wanna make a room with a surrounding balcony? It's just a square within a square with your BSP. All the detail work is left to the static meshes you'll be bringing into the engine. Think of it like building a model railroad. You'll have to spend time working on the basic shape of the landscape, but you've got all these boxes filled with little houses, trees, bushes, water towers, street lights, and what have you to plop down and bring the whole thing to life.
The good news is that Thief 4 will have tons upon tons upon tons of these assets that can be used a thousand and one different ways ready to go right after install. Someone moving up from Dromed won't have to learn a proper 3D editor to make an awesome level. All they have to do is learn the basics of the UDK, and start plopping in all these detail pieces. They can learn to do that in two weeks at most.
But if someone wants to step out beyond what's already there in Thief 4. Like they want to make an Egyptian set or something. That's when things will start getting difficult.
edit: And I should add that the reason why we rarely ever see editors released for games these days is because almost every studio out there uses at least 10 proprietary pieces of sofware to make their games these days. No one reinvents the wheel and releases their own custom made engines for their games anymore. It'd cost millions upon millions and add years to their schedule for them to do so. Now they use UDK or Unity as a base SDK, Houdini for their character animation, Max, Maya, or Modo for their editors. Then you've got random extraneous stuff like licensed physics engines, facial animation technology packages...it goes on and on. All this stuff is designed with very expensive pieces of software, and it's difficult for studios to release a free way for the fanbase to use it all. Not without huge amounts of sacrifices, or closing off entire portions of the design process to them.
