Modability of Warlock and the reasons why and why not.

[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.

 

[Fredrik II]

Actually I have, on both accounts. I created my first game in high school and went on to get a degree in video game design and programming. I know a little bit about the subject at hand.



Being made with modding in mind or not has nothing to do with the game's ability to be modded, just the ease of doing it. Any game can be modded on the deepest level if the source is released. Very few games release their source obviously, and for good reason, but to say an engine doesn't support modding is garbage. There are no engine limitations that prevent another coder from coming in and tweaking the source to create a mod. That's the worst case anyway. Very few games are developed without some sort of resource package system (if the resources aren't just out in the open) and all we need is a way to open those packages to start changing things.

Anyway, I guess the publisher was wrong here huh? Paradox is the one who told us multiple times about some silly engine limitation, all the while Ino-Co (the developer) has tools they are willing to share.

It's great news that the game just need our approval. My previous post was based on the info I had on the release version, we have all the time discussed adding mod support later but wanted to confirm this could actually be done. Looking forward to seeing what we can do with the mod tools.

Edit: and since we (Paradox) do not own the engine, the promise is not ours to make so I'm grateful Alexey could clear it for us. And just a hint; sometimes reality is more complicated than "just do it then", like legal stuff, contracts etc

I'll go back to my evil publisher torture chamber now for some snack.

F

 

[Darkrenown]

Again none of those things are an engine limitation. They are conscious decisions whether or not to release the dev tools into players hands based on other factors (security, legal, whatever). The fact remains that those tools exist and they could easily be used for modding by somebody who knew how to use them. Regardless of whether they are released or not, modders can still figure out the encryption themselves and create their own tools. There is no such thing as an unmoddable game.

I think Fred just meant it's in "engine issue" in that the game wasn't made to read data out of text files (or other extremely easy to edit formats) like most of our internal titles. I hope I don't accidentally insult him and get fired (I have no idea of his technical knowledge), but he's the CEO, not a programmer. It's entirely possible he asked why it couldn't be modded and got the layman's answer which he then repeated here. He's not trying to claim Ino Co made a magically unmoddable game, just that due to the way the game is made it's not as easy to mod as some others.