What to mod...?

[Javokis]

Any company that makes a game that uses a free version of a high-end commercial development program is far better than any other company that doesn't in my book. You can have the greatest engine with all of its glorious features, but if that engine requires people to fork out massive amounts of money to mod for it, you should expect the modding community to be VERY weak and short lived.

I wont pay over $100 to mod for a game. If I have to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for the full commercial edition of any program needed to mod for a game, I sure as hell wont be modding for free. I would be going commercial in developing a game from scratch. It doesn't make any sense to have to pay for a commercial program to make mods you are required to do non-commercially.

[Azraelthe7th]

First of all, you CAN mod the CryEngine for free.  In fact, Crytek went and made an unofficial SDK (due to Far Cry being Ubisoft property now) after the fans demanded it (can't say Nihilist did the same, now did it?).  Ubisoft now supports it, but when I first checked it out (about 3 months ago), it wasn't.  You can get the CryEngine SDK here.

As for developers using the Unreal engine more, it's really simple.  The Unreal engine has been around for eight years.  Developers now know how to use it easily (since it hasn't changed much since its inception).  But support for the Unreal engine is slipping.  Have you ever tried making a stage using that engine?  If you can make anything without it crashing once, I'll tip my hat to you.  But it's impossible.  The engine is unstable, old and honestly kind of limited.  Hell, you don't have access to all of it's features unless you buy the license for it.  And that license is offered at a pretty hefty price.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft is there making Assassin's Creed using a modified version of the CryEngine at its core (like how they used a modified version of the Unreal engine for Prince of Persia and its Tom Clancy games).  Even better?  Most of the CryEngine's features are available to everyone, including bump mapping and use of other shaders, while the Unreal engine won't allow you to even think of using a bump map in anything unless you have a license.

Plus, with the CryEngine, if you're in it just to make maps to play in, at least you don't have to load the damned thing every time you want to see if that elevator you programmed works nicely.  Just press a button and voilà, you're instantly transported into the map at where you're looking, allowing you to test out whatever you just added without waiting for it to load.

So, overall, the Unreal engine is an impressive one due to it's years of existence, but Source and the CryEngine are by far superior in every way, and the fact that more developers are switching over to these engines proves that.

[ORI]

You are comparing between Unreal Engine v1 to CryEngine v1? yeah in that case you may say CryEngine is superior. somehow I doubt they are just handing it for free for everyone to use though. CryEngine v2 is not even available to modding yet.(it comes out with Crysis)

As for Nihilistic (Thier website say they are still in buisness?) they did provide a SDK but much like CryEngine SDK it required use of commercial programs for modelling (Maya 3) and  that version of Maya was long since been erased from the earth. the SDK called NODSDK still exsist and you can download it from Fileplanet or so but since the specific version of Maya is R.I.P no else bothered to renew the plugin (no sourcecode?) to export/import models and there is only a limited export/import using Milkshape3d.
So yes Nihilistic did the same (provide a SDK after the fans demanded it) if you ment Torika, the guys who developed Bloodlines, they went out of buisness shortly after shipping otherwise Im sure they wouldnt mind.

What pisses me off is that in 2006 they say what a great selling game VTMR was and how it helped them kickstart and yet they wont lift a finger to rerelease that maya plugin sourcecode or at least rerelease the plugin for the new versions

[Javokis]

One thing I have noticed is that when it came to modding Redemption, support had always been very low. The game itself had much potencial if given more thorough documentation and walkthroughs. Much of the stuff I learned about the Redemption game came from dedication and willingness to self-teach. I spent waaayyy too much time on it.

[ORI]

Yeah back when it came out most games still didnt really come with provided tutorials of how to mod ,. think they relied on having a large enough modding community for writing tutorials. And I wasnt talking about Tutorials, I was talking about the sourcecode for a provided plugin in the SDK

Looks like Publishers only officially recognized modding around 2002 and started providing proper tools on release

Actually exception of this is ID software (developers of Doom,Quake etc).

[Azraelthe7th]

Actually, I'm comparing the first version of the CryEngine with the 2.x version of the Unreal engine.  We use the Unreal engine at school as a means for us to grasp what an engine is and what usually needs to be done to get one thing working, but it pales in pretty much every possible way to the CryEngine.  At least, it does in my view.

And I was actually talking about Nihilistic.  I am fully aware of the SDK they released and it's limitations, but conversly, the Far Cry SDK gets updated every now and then.  As for modeling, if I'm not mistaken GMax was pretty much built on the same code as 3DS Max, so I think using it wouldn't pose that much of a problem.  Can't say for sure since I haven't tried using the importer/exporter, but it should.

And hey, the Unreal engine also demands use of programs like 3DS Max and Maya, but people still find other prgrams they can use to model and export. 

[Javokis]

Well I made my decision so here's what I want to mod for HL2 to start with:

(Info posted in new section link below)
http://e-mods.net/forum/index.php?topic=479.0

[ORI]

Well the difference there is that Unreal doesnt require you to buy Maya, it gives you a special freeware Maya version that allows exporting/importing to the Unreal Editor. (its important to mention that the Maya version possess the same fanctionality as the commercial version except limitations on other import/export)

CryEngine on the other hand require that you Buy 3dsmax, Im a avid user of Gmax and while it does use Maxscript the plugins that work on 3dsmax do not work on Gmax and even if they did, Gmax crash on me more than the Unreal Editor I bet and its features and tools are smaller of whats in the full 3dsmax version , not to mention it was discontinued.. its still decent for modelling but it can be a pain sometime in the way it crash unexpectedly and besides Maya is alot better all around than Gmax.

Maya PLE with the Unreal Export/import is free and I would much rather use it for my current modelling except Im not modelling for Unreal and Id like to use that model in VTMR once its finished.

So unless Ubisoft or Crytek go out of thier way to make a Gmax Farcry modelling kit you cant really compare thier level of commitment to the modding fanbase to that of Source or Unreal IMO.

In short ,only reason im using Gmax is that its free and its core interface and tools are similar to 3dsmax and Maya, will convert to using Blender once I deciede to learn it more extensively.

As for your Mod, Javokis, will we see a carcrash at the junction near your house in game? its mostly coding and levelmaking so unless I take time to study it , I cant really help and im more interested in modelling and WoD right now.

[Javokis]

Well if you're willing to model in XSI Mod Tool edition (it's free btw), then I can sure use a modeler in the future.

[ORI]

Yeah I did read about it being free before but looks like it now support Source, Unreal and Direct X which is not bad, I didnt try working with the program yet though, might do that after I finish the current model on which need to put some final touches before moving on to doing the UVW unwarp (can post a more updated screen if anyone is wondering).
Anyway if you ever get around to doing something related to WoD in HL2 I can easily output a higher res version of the model Iv just built for Redemption , gotta love meshsmooth modifier.

Edit:  I tried working with Blender 2.44 today, the improvements they made to tools are nice indeed and while I didnt see if I can do some stuff (vertex chamfer for one) most of the cutting tools are there so I think ill use it for modeling after I finish the current one in Gmax , since it has more functionality than XSI

[Javokis]

I've decided to play around with XSI myself. I noticed that Blender has done much to reduce the 'OMG Buttons' problem - Blender is much simpler now. After looking at XSI I have come to find Blender EXTREMELY simple. There's no way I could have figured out XSI without the awesome tutorials provided by Valve, but Man!  XSI is an awesome program.

[Azraelthe7th]

Fair enough to all that was said earlier. 

I'd like to help in some way with your mod.  I'm getting the XSI Mod tool (always wanted to toy with Softimage tools), and I also have the Maya PLE, as well as GMax and 3DS Max (which I can't say is fully legal, but as far as I can tell Autodesk doesn't mind if you're not trying to make money off of it).

[Javokis]

I'm kind of not motivated to work on modeling and mapping right now so I'm just going to play with some coding and write documentation and pretty much plan out what to do from here.

I've been considering doing Wodal for Redemption whenever I have a writers block on this HL2 project.

[Azraelthe7th]

Like we always say here: whatever you choose to do, we're behind you!

And like I said on SnE:

If there was one project I wanted to see completion since the WoD Mod, it's this one.  I'll beta test, spread the word and dance my ass off to see this thing work.