Modability of Warlock and the reasons why and why not.

[Raxe]

Alright in the interest of making it easier to find the discussion im hoping the people who have begun discussion on mods and such move the talks of it into here.

For me when i buy most of my stuff on pc its completely based on its modability and mod community i prefer knowing if it will be modable or not and if it is able to be modded the size of its community. Honestly while i hope warlock has mods and the like it looks like i will enjoy its vanilla product far longer than i do most games so its getting purchased.

[timetogetaway]

Depends on your point of view. There is probably going to be a lot of DLC for Warlock, and I'd bet if we had any mods tools most of that DLC is going to be stuff modders could do rather easily. Just look at the Majesty 2 DLC stuff, some of it is really simple stuff that just makes your heroes slightly more powerful. Based on the low initial price for the game, I would guess they intend to make most of their money from DLC, and giving players tools that allow them to compete with said DLC is probably the most counter-productive thing they can do. That isn't even touching the subject of pirating the DLC, with mod tools it can be as simple as changing a 0 to 1 in a DLC file that allows any player to use it without paying for it. Sims 3 has thousands of dollars worth of DLC (seriously...) and anyone can rather easily find it for free because the same tools modders developed to create new content was used to remove all the protection from the DLC.

See, I find the DLC-protection argument as silly as the "Piracy is irreparably damaging our profits" argument. Look at CK2 for instance. DLC's are released and modding is very much allowed, even encouraged. I have my sincere doubts that the DLC's for CK2 are doing poorly in any way shape or form. Had I known that Warlock was made so "it's engine does not allow for modding (yeah right)" I would have not bothered buying the game at all. As someone who enjoys tweaking their game to create maximum personal enjoyment I call bull on the dev's for this one.


x-post from a different thread. I find the whole restriction on modding downright silly.


edit: And for those not in the know, see this interview for confirmation of Warlock's lack of mod-support.

[Tayran]

I think that mod support will increase sales of expansions. If an expansion adds new features the mods will follow and if you want to play the latest mod you need to buy the expansion.

If you have no mods then why should I bother buying an expansion that will offer me nothing new than perhaps a few new features but is still the same game which I have no ways of changing myself.

[Astasia]

They haven't told us we aren't allowed to mod or that they don't want us to. They simply aren't making tools for us or spending the time to format everything in an easy to decipher way. Tweaking certain things on the surface might actually be very easy. Also the CK2 DLC from what I can see has some substance to it, like a new mechanic for editing a leader, while Ino-Co DLC has in the past been mostly just a new model for your town hall, or a new passive skill, really tiny things that would be very easy to mod.

And as silly as that piracy argument may be, the anti-piracy efforts of most companies have been streaking skywards over the years, even at the expense of the players. I wont argue about it's effectiveness, but publishers these days seem to be in a blind rage over pirates and doing everything they can to thwart them without realizing they are just wasting more money. So looking at that logically is kind of pointless.

[Korror]

I think people are buying into too many convoluted theories about why there is no modding. There is no modding because it would have been hard to do and they decided to work on different priorities instead. As a programmer, I can tell you that adding a big feature like full modding support takes weeks if not months and if you don't plan your architecture to allow it from the start then it's nearly impossible.

Don't forget modding makes the QA process (which must have taken forever for a game with as many features as this one) take even longer as you now have to make sure the modding works and the game doesn't suddenly break if you tweak the parameters.

If your engine is built with modding in mind, then it's not so bad but I don't think the one for Warlock is or at least it seems similar to the Elven Legacy and I don't remember any mods for that.

Finally, the game is set to sell for $20 which means it's probably not going to make them rich so they can't afford to take too much time on it to include features that not all the playerbase will use. They need to keep the dev time low so they can get started on the next project in order to keep the money coming in.

[hadberz]

Modding support would be nice, but at this point the most important feature that must be added is multiplayer. I agree with Korror, the 20 bucks price tag will limit how much additional free features are added to this game. I have no problem spending more cash for DLC or expansions. Right now I am addicted to the game, so that is a very good sign.

BTW most of their games have limited mod support. Thou Elven Legacy does have a map editor. I would love to create my own maps in Warlock, but I am very pleased that the game has random maps.

Just to clarify I meant the dev games, not Paradox internally developed games.

[Fredrik II]

The restriction of mod support is an engine issue. We are always positive to allow modding of our games. To be frank and to the point: this has nothing to do with sales of DLC, many of our games, including Crusader Kings 2 are heavily moddable and still sell DLC. We will evaluate with the devs if it's possible to support some form of modding, but we cannot promise anything at the moment.

[timetogetaway]

Well thank you for that reply. I mean, I have my doubts, but it is good to know that I'm not just screaming at a brick wall.

[hadberz]

The restriction of mod support is an engine issue. We are always positive to allow modding of our games. To be frank and to the point: this has nothing to do with sales of DLC, many of our games, including Crusader Kings 2 are heavily moddable and still sell DLC. We will evaluate with the devs if it's possible to support some form of modding, but we cannot promise anything at the moment.

I figured it might be an engine thing. While modding would be nice in Warlock; I am really more interested in additional DLC. Thanks for considering if modding is feasible though. I also didn't mean to imply that Paradox didn't support modding in my other post. I know you do.

[aqvamare]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...cing-City-rush

original thread were we switched to modding aspect

[saroumana]

We will see if the ressource pack file is encrypted in the release.

[Tayran]

Im just saying that I think the developers will loose customers and money by not allowing modding. So I hope for the good of the game, the players and the developers that they will include modding.

[Astasia]

The restriction of mod support is an engine issue.

TBH this sounds like a nonsense PR answer to me. There really isn't any realistic reason why an engine wouldn't support modding. The devs have to be able to create content for the game, and the same tools or methods they use to create content could be used by modders, period. It's more likely as I said in my first reply on the subject in the other thread that Ino-Co simply doesn't want to share their secrets. It's their engine and they've been apparently using it for a while, and they probably just don't want to risk putting any of their stuff in player's (and competitor's) hands, and don't have the time or money to make new applications that handle it in a way that protects themselves. The quote from me earlier in this thread was taken a bit out of context, it was simply another way to look at the issue (dis/allowing modding), from a perspective of making money. Just saying "the engine doesn't support it" is silly though and why I didn't even acknowledge it as a real response before now (it's essentially what was said in the interview that sparked the discussion).

[Sunjah_Kahn]

The restriction of mod support is an engine issue. We are always positive to allow modding of our games. To be frank and to the point: this has nothing to do with sales of DLC, many of our games, including Crusader Kings 2 are heavily moddable and still sell DLC. We will evaluate with the devs if it's possible to support some form of modding, but we cannot promise anything at the moment.

Although I have seen tremendous things done with mods, with Oblivion jumping to mind as the forerunning example, if the game is as awesome as I am hoping, we really shouldn't need modding ability.

Again, I am in no way against mods, I have seen some really fantastic stuff done by communities and modders. I also can say I enjoy a good gaming experience, and if it is done correctly, in a sense there should be no need for modding the game. I never once used a mod on Baldur's Gate 2, The Ocarina of Time, NHL 11 or Demons Souls, yet each and every one of them was a fantastic game. Although not my favorite of all-time, but without question one of the best of all time, Half-Life was another game I enjoyed a a lot, especially from a story standpoint, and there was never a mod attached to it.

I bought the game. I am looking forward to Tuesday. If mods do come, they are good, and I use them, that will be awesome. If they don't, and the game is fun, awesome. One of those win-win situations to me, provided the game ends up being what it looks like and seems from the demo, a "Magical World"-based 4x-game.

Sweet!

[Raxe]

I think at this point the developers taken stance means we should lean heavy on them to provide to the community the features we would have modded in to the game if given the toools. Protect your secrets as well as you want but listen to the community and work with us to get features in that we would love to see in either free or affordable dlc. Many of us will no doubt buy there future products and through word of mouth get others to buy them as well because we shall feel that they are trustworthy.

a little off topic here on the subject of half-life the games Counter Strike and Day of Defeat started as mods and look where they are now not to mention up and coming Natural Selection 2 the first version of which was a mod for half-life as well. This is not to mention the mods and life of the community around half-life 2 and other games that support a healthy mod community through actual support and help.

[PawelS]

There really isn't any realistic reason why an engine wouldn't support modding. The devs have to be able to create content for the game, and the same tools or methods they use to create content could be used by modders, period.

It's not that simple, as some of the "content" may be hardcoded in the executable, and also some parts of the executable (for example the AI) may work improperly when the content in other places is changed. I think it's better to design games in a more moddable way that, for example, doesn't rely on existence of specific units, but analyzes the game data and makes the AI use units that exist in the current mod, but we don't know if the game is designed this way.

[zenarion]

TBH this sounds like a nonsense PR answer to me. There really isn't any realistic reason why an engine wouldn't support modding. The devs have to be able to create content for the game, and the same tools or methods they use to create content could be used by modders, period. It's more likely as I said in my first reply on the subject in the other thread that Ino-Co simply doesn't want to share their secrets. It's their engine and they've been apparently using it for a while, and they probably just don't want to risk putting any of their stuff in player's (and competitor's) hands, and don't have the time or money to make new applications that handle it in a way that protects themselves. The quote from me earlier in this thread was taken a bit out of context, it was simply another way to look at the issue (dis/allowing modding), from a perspective of making money. Just saying "the engine doesn't support it" is silly though and why I didn't even acknowledge it as a real response before now (it's essentially what was said in the interview that sparked the discussion).

I don't think you've ever modded or developed a game.

[Tayran]

I don't think you've ever modded or developed a game.

Being a paying customer relieves you from that requirement.

[zenarion]

I might have been unclear.

When a programmer makes a game, allowing modability is a concious choice.
Not all games are made with modding in mind.
And when you get told that Warlock might not have modding capabilities, because of engine limitations, blaming this on the publisher (who in this case encourages modding in most of their games) is just wrong.

Get your facts straight before posting.

[targetbsp]

You guys are aware that when they talk about an engine limitation that this isn't the first game to use this engine? Fantasy Wars was back in 2007. So the limitations they're encountering likely date back a long time. Reworking the game engine to support modding or developing a new engine may have drastically changed the development time for all we know?