- This is probably a bit OT, but I really wonder if the golden days of mapping, or content creation are over. I primarily attribute this to the slew of - all pretty good but almost none really really grab you - games. So that even those interested in mapping, like us, cannot really motivate themselves to create something, and even if they can, the next "new thing" comes along, basically killing the already small community for that game.
Or is it simply the higher difficulty of the creation process (learning curve), plus that you simply need much more time to create anything worthwhile?
Doom 3 and Quake 4 were both "nice", but from what I could tell never as big as the q3a mapping community. We seem to need another über-game, to which everyone will flock to again. Or is that also over? I wonder.
(OK, back to creating something for q3a
)
Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
As pjw suggested I am copying the OT discussion (I started) from the Rage thread into this new thread:
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Thanks for moving this.
Or at least I think this is the major factor. Most big games now (at least in the shooter/RPG/first-person department) are at levels of realism regarding both look and gameplay that are amazing. Especially when you compare the new Wolfenstein with Wolf-3D. That's less than 20 years ago, and in that time we've gone from:
to
(Out on Tuesday!! Good luck finding some of the collectibles I placed.
)
The options I see now, if you want to get a large number of people involved in making new content and levels for your game, are either:
a) Make a game that's stylized and/or artistically simple enough that scene complexity and asset creation are no longer gigantic issues. This, in my opinion, is a really underutilized approach. I suspect that there will be more small developers and studios going this route in the future, just because of the resources needed to compete with the big guns on the realism side.
Another option is to
b) Make your game content modular enough and your (built-in) editor elegent enough that those who wish to create new content can simply rearrange a wide variety of parts to produce an effectively endless range of new content (which, in this case isn't really "new" as such, but the granularity of the parts is small enough to make it feel that way). If you have a building model, you can't do too much with it. If you have a brick model, you can build millions of buildings with it. The sweet spot is somewhere in between...
The Trackmania series of games from Nadeo is a good example of this. There's a thriving track-building community, and nearly 100,000 new tracks to browse and play on one of the largest track-sharing sites. Since it's all references to existing bits, a new map file is literally on a few KB. The only compile time necessary is occasionally a few seconds for a lightmap in one particular environment.
Interestingly, Nadeo is working on Shootmania (out this year, maybe? Does TBA 2009 mean it will be out this year, or the date will be announced this year?) and Questmania (unknown ETA). [/fanboy]
This.AEon wrote:Or is it simply the higher difficulty of the creation process (learning curve), plus that you simply need much more time to create anything worthwhile?
Or at least I think this is the major factor. Most big games now (at least in the shooter/RPG/first-person department) are at levels of realism regarding both look and gameplay that are amazing. Especially when you compare the new Wolfenstein with Wolf-3D. That's less than 20 years ago, and in that time we've gone from:to
(Out on Tuesday!! Good luck finding some of the collectibles I placed.
)The options I see now, if you want to get a large number of people involved in making new content and levels for your game, are either:
a) Make a game that's stylized and/or artistically simple enough that scene complexity and asset creation are no longer gigantic issues. This, in my opinion, is a really underutilized approach. I suspect that there will be more small developers and studios going this route in the future, just because of the resources needed to compete with the big guns on the realism side.
Another option is to
b) Make your game content modular enough and your (built-in) editor elegent enough that those who wish to create new content can simply rearrange a wide variety of parts to produce an effectively endless range of new content (which, in this case isn't really "new" as such, but the granularity of the parts is small enough to make it feel that way). If you have a building model, you can't do too much with it. If you have a brick model, you can build millions of buildings with it. The sweet spot is somewhere in between...
The Trackmania series of games from Nadeo is a good example of this. There's a thriving track-building community, and nearly 100,000 new tracks to browse and play on one of the largest track-sharing sites. Since it's all references to existing bits, a new map file is literally on a few KB. The only compile time necessary is occasionally a few seconds for a lightmap in one particular environment.
Interestingly, Nadeo is working on Shootmania (out this year, maybe? Does TBA 2009 mean it will be out this year, or the date will be announced this year?) and Questmania (unknown ETA). [/fanboy]
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
There is another possibility: An engine that is in some respects dated, but spiced up to create beautiful and realistic maps non-the-less. I am talking about the Half-Life 2 engine. When I recently wanted to built a HL2 map, it quickly became clear that the level (.map source) code is pretty much what quake/quake2/quake3 use. There never was a need for Valve to change the .map code, thus convertion from e.g. q3a to HL2 was really easy. If you take advantage of the many many other effects you can create really beautiful maps in HL2, and their terrain (something or other), awesome outdoor areas are possible right next to indoor areas. Alas vegetation is an issue.
Ironically, that is what I would have wanted for the next gen q3a-engine... keep the good stuff (easy geometry manipulation), and add many new effects, and use a "good" lighting model (doom 3's real-time lighting seems to have been kicked out by Carmack for Rage - for me never cut it, because the lighting was a pain to do and usually looked really bad).
[Trouble is... the HL2 editor is crap... I hated wordcraft for quake and still do so for HL2. I always wondered why things had to be so inefficiently cumbersome... then came GTKradiant, the editor I still prefer. Side note, luckily you can use GTKradiant to build the geometry for HL2... if I wanted to.]
To conclude the thought: The HL2 engine will probably not change the way they handle geometry any time soon, so you would have the old with the new. Now why am I not obsessed with building HL2 maps? Probably because it ain't id
Ironically, that is what I would have wanted for the next gen q3a-engine... keep the good stuff (easy geometry manipulation), and add many new effects, and use a "good" lighting model (doom 3's real-time lighting seems to have been kicked out by Carmack for Rage - for me never cut it, because the lighting was a pain to do and usually looked really bad).
[Trouble is... the HL2 editor is crap... I hated wordcraft for quake and still do so for HL2. I always wondered why things had to be so inefficiently cumbersome... then came GTKradiant, the editor I still prefer. Side note, luckily you can use GTKradiant to build the geometry for HL2... if I wanted to.]
To conclude the thought: The HL2 engine will probably not change the way they handle geometry any time soon, so you would have the old with the new. Now why am I not obsessed with building HL2 maps? Probably because it ain't id
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phantazm11
- Posts: 362
- Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:03 am
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
AEon wrote:This is probably a bit OT, but I really wonder if the golden days of mapping, or content creation are over. I primarily attribute this to the slew of - all pretty good but almost none really really grab you - games. So that even those interested in mapping, like us, cannot really motivate themselves to create something, and even if they can, the next "new think" comes along, basically killing the already small community for that game.
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Really the only game in recent memory that has had any kind of modding success is Doom3, and that five years or so span is nothing compared to that of Q3 (or Unreal tournament 2004 which in many ways is the same, modding- and player base-wise. Sure Q3 is a lot easier to map for and that results in a ton more ppl willing to map for it, but the driving force behind mapping for Q3 is that people still play the game.
Yeah, it was a lot harder to make a great map for D3 or Q4, but there were (and are) people doing professional level things with that toolset. Many had to learn on their own time and, (like me) tried to grasp a lot of these topics and concepts from their peers in forums like this. But that sure didn't stop them from learning, or even taking things a step further and delving into 3d modelling, something that most Q3 mappers still don't do.
People are always up to the challenge of learning new things and pushing their own limits, but it is much easier to do that when there is someone around to appreciate their work.
@pjw. Great!
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
The reason I believe that the Q3A mapping community became as gigantic as it was, is because of the bots. A mapper puts out a map and everyone downloads it because it's instantly playable without need of other players to enjoy it. Other games had multiplayer ability, even Q2 with it's Eraser bot opening the door for single player deathmatch.AEon wrote:Doom 3 and Quake 4 were both "nice", but from what I could tell never as big as the q3a mapping community.
On the mapping community becoming what it had been, started from Q2 mappers to even professional mappers that worked for companies doing such a thing. Mappers making maps for portfolios in trying to get jobs, to mappers making maps which takes all of their time in hope of having 10,000 people download it..and feeling the enjoyment of having effected that many players.
Now..I'm nothing of a mapper(tryi but..)the way to bring back the scene is by known mappers returning (which the number of that is ridiculous) and finding a way of spreading the word to draw people into it. Now, the game scene is dead for everything because there are no games made for replay value.
Sure...graphics are a very important thing these days, but it's nothing without the replay value. Q3A is the top example of replay value..what drew me into it was because of that. It reminded me of Mortal Kombat, which you'd have somone over and spend a whole night of kickin each others ass...Q3 is of that same notion, except for that it was online and might as well had a telephone in it with the chatting capability, and being able to play against anyone in the world..with all prejudice put aside.
The reason I say all of this, is that it was made by mappers, that made no money off of it. Now spreading the word to people to draw them in, you practically need a preacher of sorts..someone that makes a commercial environment out of it without money being their cause..a lover of the game.
Now for example (without putting myself on a pedestal), back in 2003 to 04 I was in worship of CPMA, and spent everyday at their forums trying to get involved in the mapping scene going on, and originally being starstruck for the mostpart in the community of my favorite mappers. Everyone from Druzli to WviperW, PJW, Hubster, Lunaran, and the rising of Swelt. After spending enough time there, I felt a crazy vision of a goal for advertisment which I had taken classes for long before. I became aware that Tigger-On(who runs ..::LvL) had also made a promode map(tig_mouldy) and also loved Cpma also. I asked him if he could make a seperate section for promode maps, and he ended up putting me in charge of it. I spent everyday on it, and got to know alot of mappers in the process where some of them would PM/E-mail me to make sure that I would write the review prior to them sending it in. There were other reviewer that caught onto it also. The whole process ended up causing such a scene that there were more promode physics mappers than normal vQ3 mappers..hence it pissed off a gigantic amount of mappers making there maps towards visual rather than gameplay like Cpma had introduced. CPMA had become dominant, which I had realized was my ultimate goal, and ..::LvL became WELL KNOWN in it's process also.
The reason I put all of this in this topic , is that I want to be able to pull this off again...for Q3A, not promode. How do I do this these days? I don't play many other games...minded I don't play Q3A as much as I have in the past..but I am willing to do it for free and without paying a cent(as I'm a broke ass anyway).
You guys can draw people in...spoken of AEon and pjw being in the same thread. I know WVW is around as well as Sock. Hipshot's the bomb! ..and evillair pops in and out.
..and hmm.. just a thought
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spookmineer
- Posts: 506
- Joined: Fri Nov 29, 2002 8:00 am
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Game developers' first concern isn't making an easy to learn editor...
While some of the mapping/modding tools can considerably lengthen the life span of a game, I'm not sure how much money developers gain from the extra life span.
With increasing technological possibilities, the complexity of making a (good) map increases as well. To counter this, assets may become modular, with to some extent making maps look like other maps, or at least similar to others (a "great" example of this is the use of the same grey tile texture in about 95% of custom STVEF maps - even parts of existing maps were cut and pasted into new maps, imagine the amount of familiar textures and geometry).
It may be that Q3 is the optimum of things here: the editor is relatively simple to learn, and the maps can look quite stunning. I've read a lot of threads and tutorials on how to map for Doom3/Quake4 and thought it was just too complicated for someone to learn all that before they get any result.
[Mentioned before]: Then there is the sheer amount of new games, and how nobody nowadays seems to embrace a game like CS or Q3 or UT anymore. You play the game, it gets kinda "old" (never knew why that could happen) and you move onto the next game. The community for each new game seems to be less than the former, even though sales might say otherwise.
If QuakeLive will somehow allow for custom maps (I doubt this, it seems all players will need to download all maps in order to even log in at the moment) then mapping may have some comeback.
For most people, mapping (or beginning to learn how to map) will only make sense if they can play it online, and it will last a while - meaning it won't be forgotten after a few months because a new game has been released.
Personally, I stopped mapping because there isn't much gratification in it (other then that I can see what I made): you want people to see what you spent months on, and if people don't get to see it...
I think this goes for a lot of people who make maps.
Hm... In other words, this seems like a complete copy of AEon's initial post, which nails it pretty much.
While some of the mapping/modding tools can considerably lengthen the life span of a game, I'm not sure how much money developers gain from the extra life span.
With increasing technological possibilities, the complexity of making a (good) map increases as well. To counter this, assets may become modular, with to some extent making maps look like other maps, or at least similar to others (a "great" example of this is the use of the same grey tile texture in about 95% of custom STVEF maps - even parts of existing maps were cut and pasted into new maps, imagine the amount of familiar textures and geometry).
It may be that Q3 is the optimum of things here: the editor is relatively simple to learn, and the maps can look quite stunning. I've read a lot of threads and tutorials on how to map for Doom3/Quake4 and thought it was just too complicated for someone to learn all that before they get any result.
[Mentioned before]: Then there is the sheer amount of new games, and how nobody nowadays seems to embrace a game like CS or Q3 or UT anymore. You play the game, it gets kinda "old" (never knew why that could happen) and you move onto the next game. The community for each new game seems to be less than the former, even though sales might say otherwise.
If QuakeLive will somehow allow for custom maps (I doubt this, it seems all players will need to download all maps in order to even log in at the moment) then mapping may have some comeback.
For most people, mapping (or beginning to learn how to map) will only make sense if they can play it online, and it will last a while - meaning it won't be forgotten after a few months because a new game has been released.
Personally, I stopped mapping because there isn't much gratification in it (other then that I can see what I made): you want people to see what you spent months on, and if people don't get to see it...
I think this goes for a lot of people who make maps.
Hm... In other words, this seems like a complete copy of AEon's initial post, which nails it pretty much.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
i like to map for mapping's sake. but i know im gonna have to learn new tools to continue. 3ds max or whatever. in a way less mappers out there = less god awful box/uber crap maps... but at the same time i guess the knowledge base shrinks... all depends on how involved the companies are with engaging with the community i guess.. splash damage deserve a mention here, they are all over there forums.
i started mapping for q3 again because i always liked the arcade feel of q3. its like a fps street fighter. (more in ra than vq3) and the engine runs so smooth, online multiplayer did not have all those delays and hangs like id tech 4. and i believe that with the work of the community over the last 10 or so years that this engine still can hold its own. then when i saw rage i was like... right better learn id tech. gonna move onto quake 4 sp next. learn the whole bump mapping and asset creation skills. no one plays quake 4 multi right?
as i see it... the reason this "golden age" of mapping has gone away is because the id name has lost its shine. doom3 and quake 4 turned a lot of ppl away from this company's products as the multiplayer was just god awful. not really a good way to keep ppl interested... i guess it was not helped that new companies like valve/infinity ward etc had really stepped up there game quailty while not requiring uber systems to run ie hl2/cs/l4d/tf2/cod series all amazingly fun titles with big communities in each.
so in my opinion the trick for the future im guessing is a more team base creation process where a group does like a pass the map thing with each person focusing on different tasks or something. which i'm sure in the industries eyes would be good as when the hire someone they will know how to work in team environments etc...
sorry im all over the place and i will end now. i see the future of engines to yes require a lot more skill which turns off the casual mapper/modder.. but at the same time, those who dedicate and push themselves will have the joy of creating some of the most amazing stuff with very little limitations.
gonna need to move off this lap top and invest in a uber machine when rage comes out. then my ps3 will prolly just gather dust. ha
i started mapping for q3 again because i always liked the arcade feel of q3. its like a fps street fighter. (more in ra than vq3) and the engine runs so smooth, online multiplayer did not have all those delays and hangs like id tech 4. and i believe that with the work of the community over the last 10 or so years that this engine still can hold its own. then when i saw rage i was like... right better learn id tech. gonna move onto quake 4 sp next. learn the whole bump mapping and asset creation skills. no one plays quake 4 multi right?
as i see it... the reason this "golden age" of mapping has gone away is because the id name has lost its shine. doom3 and quake 4 turned a lot of ppl away from this company's products as the multiplayer was just god awful. not really a good way to keep ppl interested... i guess it was not helped that new companies like valve/infinity ward etc had really stepped up there game quailty while not requiring uber systems to run ie hl2/cs/l4d/tf2/cod series all amazingly fun titles with big communities in each.
so in my opinion the trick for the future im guessing is a more team base creation process where a group does like a pass the map thing with each person focusing on different tasks or something. which i'm sure in the industries eyes would be good as when the hire someone they will know how to work in team environments etc...
sorry im all over the place and i will end now. i see the future of engines to yes require a lot more skill which turns off the casual mapper/modder.. but at the same time, those who dedicate and push themselves will have the joy of creating some of the most amazing stuff with very little limitations.
gonna need to move off this lap top and invest in a uber machine when rage comes out. then my ps3 will prolly just gather dust. ha
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
I think that it is relevant to take a good look at COd4 on the PC. As it stands the games features make simplistic level design more visually appealing because of a superior lighting model. As it stands right now this is a quake based engine game that both looks amazing and is still almost entirely built with brushes/prefabs. Currently my experience when trying to play on a server for the PC I cant find one that isnt some crazy mod. Shooting silly looking zombies or newly created maps you name it.. Often you see a new type of player mandated but not actually implemented rules type of mod. its actually very common apparently. Possibly enough to coin a new term such as a "modlet" or something like that.
Its an example of modding becoming almost too prevalent.. almost to the detriment of the online experience.. good luck finding a standard team dm server! its the old days of Unreal tournament all over again...
This also brings me to another community that has been going very strong.
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/
I have been lurking as TheCastle on the fallout 3 forums for quite some time. And if anyone ever wants to get a strong incite into the working minds of a strong mod community one needs not look further than Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is a game that utilizes both the most advanced graphical features of a modern first person shooter. Virtual displacement all the way to massive out door environment LOD that takes a immense amounts of processing power to precompile. The advanced scripting involved for creating single player quests is easily, from what I can tell, one of the more complex ventures you can possibly put yourself into even accounting for preffesional game development on cutting edge games. An open ended first person shooter where the the very NPC that gave you the quest can be killed? You get hit from every angle on this front both on the side of graphics but script logic! When the standard FPS has scripts that read like choreographed piano sheet music fallout 3 gives you a giant ball of yarn and exclaims "lol it will take you years to actually fix all the bugs!"
I have also read that Call of duty 5 has a public version of radiant going for it right now.
Some other games to examine and keep tabs on are
Unreal tournament 3k
Left for Dead
Team fortress 2
Id love to see some what people think about the various existing mod community's and how they pertain to this topic. It seems to me that its less about the complexity of the game but more about the ease and effectiveness of the tools that effect people a lot. -- Wait a minute.. that cant be right because if I recall making a community COD4 map was a huge challenge due to lack of information. It felt like I needed to contact someone who worked on the game just to make the mini map function correctly.. ><
Its an example of modding becoming almost too prevalent.. almost to the detriment of the online experience.. good luck finding a standard team dm server! its the old days of Unreal tournament all over again...
This also brings me to another community that has been going very strong.
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/
I have been lurking as TheCastle on the fallout 3 forums for quite some time. And if anyone ever wants to get a strong incite into the working minds of a strong mod community one needs not look further than Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is a game that utilizes both the most advanced graphical features of a modern first person shooter. Virtual displacement all the way to massive out door environment LOD that takes a immense amounts of processing power to precompile. The advanced scripting involved for creating single player quests is easily, from what I can tell, one of the more complex ventures you can possibly put yourself into even accounting for preffesional game development on cutting edge games. An open ended first person shooter where the the very NPC that gave you the quest can be killed? You get hit from every angle on this front both on the side of graphics but script logic! When the standard FPS has scripts that read like choreographed piano sheet music fallout 3 gives you a giant ball of yarn and exclaims "lol it will take you years to actually fix all the bugs!"
I have also read that Call of duty 5 has a public version of radiant going for it right now.
Some other games to examine and keep tabs on are
Unreal tournament 3k
Left for Dead
Team fortress 2
Id love to see some what people think about the various existing mod community's and how they pertain to this topic. It seems to me that its less about the complexity of the game but more about the ease and effectiveness of the tools that effect people a lot. -- Wait a minute.. that cant be right because if I recall making a community COD4 map was a huge challenge due to lack of information. It felt like I needed to contact someone who worked on the game just to make the mini map function correctly.. ><
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Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Creating maps and game contents became much to complicated. The simple game concept (Q3: you have about 10 different guns to kill your opponent), the simplicity of making your levels in radiant AND a community that gave good tutorials (i really appreciate them) made me have a closer look at mapping (thx to Dangerzone). You can basically do everything in radiant - cut everything out of an cube. You dont really need other programs such as 3ds, blender but u can use them if you want.
If QLive won't support custom maps, the golden days of mapping for Quake are over in my opinion. If you take look around the various forums, most of the ppl doing something for the community are those who grew up with Quake and got into it.
Some "young" mappers start with quake because they can have a look how mapping works for them or because is "suitable" to start creating game content.
- Developers should create games that allow modding (creative ppl will always make the most out of it) because ppl can change the game how they (and the community) want it to be. Therefor more ppl will be willing to get into the game.
- Games have to stay simple. I dont want to write scripts for some kind of actions or convert my textures to some kind of game specific format.
- A stock of tutorials, textures and models makes it easy for newbies to start.
If QLive won't support custom maps, the golden days of mapping for Quake are over in my opinion. If you take look around the various forums, most of the ppl doing something for the community are those who grew up with Quake and got into it.
Some "young" mappers start with quake because they can have a look how mapping works for them or because is "suitable" to start creating game content.
- Developers should create games that allow modding (creative ppl will always make the most out of it) because ppl can change the game how they (and the community) want it to be. Therefor more ppl will be willing to get into the game.
- Games have to stay simple. I dont want to write scripts for some kind of actions or convert my textures to some kind of game specific format.
- A stock of tutorials, textures and models makes it easy for newbies to start.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Personally I don't really see a big Q3A comeback for mapping - and I am not really sure we need it. Though I have not followed the Quake Live (web based was it?) thing. That could indeed bring back many casual gamers, and if there is a good and easy way to run your custom maps, then map creation might take off again. But that would require something like chat + "server on the fly" tech... and bandwidth and server power never was for free.
On the subject of "appreciation": I agree... mapping for yourself is nice, and fun as we know, but it is also important that someone else actually sees and appreciates what you do. This forum and lvlworld, IMO, are instrumental in this case. Lvlword is especially valuable to get the map out there to be played - lets say 1000 times or so.
Alas, coming back to Rage - hoping for the next total smash from id - MP does not seem to be much of a focus. And huge maps are pretty useless for multi-player anyway (I am consciously excluding larger team based games)... folks like open spaces, but not when you have to spend minutes running through a huge more or less rock desert. "Buggy Racing" might be fun in some ways in Rage, but we'd prefer to also have the good old combat driven gaming, me thinks. And even if it was possible (still not clear to me) to build something with brushes, like for Q3A, what would id tech 5 bring to the table that would actually enhance the gameplay experience or the level design for that matter? Unique textures, something we always wanted... or did we? Decorative sure... but to me that is mostly a SP goody. [I am probably forgetting something concerning id 5 tech, that things run in several platforms... nice for devs, but we PC mappers count not care less, AFAICT].
What I am trying to point out... I have a very bad feeling that everyone will say "wow" when Rage is released - much like we did for the new real-time lighting and details in Doom 3 - play the game 1-2 times, and then simply drop it... because there is nothing that significant to make it worth the time and effort (I am thinking of building more than that one "test" map) to create something.
And I really wonder if the engine will sell? For some reason the Q3A engine sold really well, and was used for - of all things - SP games. Unless I am very mistaken the Doom 3 engine did not sell at all? (excluding the "outsourced" Quake 4, and Prey)... and even Half-Life 2 that has such emphasis on good official support forums, almost did not sell (Vampire, Dark Messiah, +plus Valve internal stuff: Portal, Episodes, TF2)... same happened to Far Cry (no other game released using that engine, AFAICT). [If you know of games using these engines, please point them out, might need to buy those then
]. Really makes me wonder.
On the subject of "appreciation": I agree... mapping for yourself is nice, and fun as we know, but it is also important that someone else actually sees and appreciates what you do. This forum and lvlworld, IMO, are instrumental in this case. Lvlword is especially valuable to get the map out there to be played - lets say 1000 times or so.
Alas, coming back to Rage - hoping for the next total smash from id - MP does not seem to be much of a focus. And huge maps are pretty useless for multi-player anyway (I am consciously excluding larger team based games)... folks like open spaces, but not when you have to spend minutes running through a huge more or less rock desert. "Buggy Racing" might be fun in some ways in Rage, but we'd prefer to also have the good old combat driven gaming, me thinks. And even if it was possible (still not clear to me) to build something with brushes, like for Q3A, what would id tech 5 bring to the table that would actually enhance the gameplay experience or the level design for that matter? Unique textures, something we always wanted... or did we? Decorative sure... but to me that is mostly a SP goody. [I am probably forgetting something concerning id 5 tech, that things run in several platforms... nice for devs, but we PC mappers count not care less, AFAICT].
What I am trying to point out... I have a very bad feeling that everyone will say "wow" when Rage is released - much like we did for the new real-time lighting and details in Doom 3 - play the game 1-2 times, and then simply drop it... because there is nothing that significant to make it worth the time and effort (I am thinking of building more than that one "test" map) to create something.
And I really wonder if the engine will sell? For some reason the Q3A engine sold really well, and was used for - of all things - SP games. Unless I am very mistaken the Doom 3 engine did not sell at all? (excluding the "outsourced" Quake 4, and Prey)... and even Half-Life 2 that has such emphasis on good official support forums, almost did not sell (Vampire, Dark Messiah, +plus Valve internal stuff: Portal, Episodes, TF2)... same happened to Far Cry (no other game released using that engine, AFAICT). [If you know of games using these engines, please point them out, might need to buy those then
]. Really makes me wonder.Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
The average years sees a lot of new games, and the fact is that after a while they start to look the same. We get 20 good games a year; comitting to one and saying 'this is it; my new passion for the next year' is a big deal, and we rarely do it. I DO think the biggest thing opposing the once-thriving PC games mod community though is the amount of work required.
Making a decently fun LAN party map for Quake 2 used to take me about a week of evenings. Quake 3 took more than twice as long, and Doom3 longer still. A decent Quake 4 map was a fairly major amount of time, especially if you wanted people to play it and give you feedback.
The thing is that the actual content is now enourmously detailed, to the point where making something that looks good is a huge amount of work.
Wolfenstein (finally coming out!!) is a good example. (I'm glad to see that most of the work I did is still in there, and that the MP game is looking slick; I hope to play the game with the rest of the old Threewave crowd next week.) If somebody wants to make a custom map for Wolf (and I think they should!) they will be committing to a really major amount of work to make a map that looks sharp in the engine.
I think the mod communities are smaller and less passionate because the amount of work is freakin daunting for newbies to enter... and all of us 'old hands' have actual jobs now. It's not like the Splinter Cell team is going to let me go home early so I can make ET:QW maps in the evening.
Making a decently fun LAN party map for Quake 2 used to take me about a week of evenings. Quake 3 took more than twice as long, and Doom3 longer still. A decent Quake 4 map was a fairly major amount of time, especially if you wanted people to play it and give you feedback.
The thing is that the actual content is now enourmously detailed, to the point where making something that looks good is a huge amount of work.
Wolfenstein (finally coming out!!) is a good example. (I'm glad to see that most of the work I did is still in there, and that the MP game is looking slick; I hope to play the game with the rest of the old Threewave crowd next week.) If somebody wants to make a custom map for Wolf (and I think they should!) they will be committing to a really major amount of work to make a map that looks sharp in the engine.
I think the mod communities are smaller and less passionate because the amount of work is freakin daunting for newbies to enter... and all of us 'old hands' have actual jobs now. It's not like the Splinter Cell team is going to let me go home early so I can make ET:QW maps in the evening.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
ahhhh one day i'll get a job in the industry....
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Are you at Ubisoft Montreal then?GODLIKE wrote:Splinter Cell team
[size=85][url=http://gtkradiant.com]GtkRadiant[/url] | [url=http://q3map2.robotrenegade.com]Q3Map2[/url] | [url=http://q3map2.robotrenegade.com/docs/shader_manual/]Shader Manual[/url][/size]
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
I think there isn't really any higher difficulty. At least not technically. In fact, I'd say making doom3 maps is technically easier than Q3 maps ("vising" is easier, lighting is easier, you can freely use models, etc). I think the real difficulty comes because as a mapper you want to do things that look as good as the best of the content provided by the game developers, and since new tech allows them now to put much higher levels of detail in their products, their maps contain an insane amount of hours of work, something a custom mapper finds harder or not as pleasant to do.Or is it simply the higher difficulty of the creation process (learning curve), plus that you simply need much more time to create anything worthwhile?
EDIT: Oh, I jumped into replying too soon. GODLIKE had already said the same thing I say, but better.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
An interesting point jal_ made, especially the part about wanting to create quality that rivals that of the developers.
Only I thought lighting for Doom 3 / Q4 was really difficult to get right, because you could not simply use a nice sky box as a light source, and that would simply "light" your map (yes, I am lazy). Placing large area covering lights brought the FPS to its knees, and when you try to keep things local, your overall lighting wasn't really that "great". And I had huge problems with shadows, they might have looked great in "editor" but once in the game (running from a pak file) they suddenly were off, and issues like that. Again its probably, and mainly a skill issue, but the lighting - finally in real-time - was much more of a drag than I had hoped it would be.
On that topic... how long would the mappers here say did it take for a significant amount of mappers to rival or even exceed the quality of the id maps for q3? I'd venture a guess, and say it took at least a year after release. The probably more significant question would then be, and when did this finally happen with most of the textures and models actually being custom made, and not just "clever remakes" of id designs? Should one year be correct, that would explain why you don't see that much really good custom content for new games... simply, because it takes about that long to develop the skills to that degree.
Only I thought lighting for Doom 3 / Q4 was really difficult to get right, because you could not simply use a nice sky box as a light source, and that would simply "light" your map (yes, I am lazy). Placing large area covering lights brought the FPS to its knees, and when you try to keep things local, your overall lighting wasn't really that "great". And I had huge problems with shadows, they might have looked great in "editor" but once in the game (running from a pak file) they suddenly were off, and issues like that. Again its probably, and mainly a skill issue, but the lighting - finally in real-time - was much more of a drag than I had hoped it would be.
On that topic... how long would the mappers here say did it take for a significant amount of mappers to rival or even exceed the quality of the id maps for q3? I'd venture a guess, and say it took at least a year after release. The probably more significant question would then be, and when did this finally happen with most of the textures and models actually being custom made, and not just "clever remakes" of id designs? Should one year be correct, that would explain why you don't see that much really good custom content for new games... simply, because it takes about that long to develop the skills to that degree.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
To throw my 27pence in...
I think that obviously as games move towards this hyper realistic visual fidelity the content creation just goes waaaay over the top for your average scene guy. Back when I started modding, I could make a weapon texture on a 128x256 texture with a palette and be done in a flash because it was a single piece, diffuse only. These days, if I want to make a weapon, it usually involves 2 models (High and low), plus at the very LEAST 3 textures, usually resulting in 5 or 6... So back when the big hitters of the mod world were around, i.e. Quake 2, you needed very little skill to make something that compares to the original id software world it would exist in. These days, to mod a game, you have to have a much wider set of skills to get it matching the same level of quality otherwise it sticks out. A lot of people these days are still stuck in the “nVidia filter” stage where they think they can just run a texture through that and it will come up top. It doesn’t work that way for real geometric detail. But try telling somebody who can barely model that for his work to look on par with the game he’s modding he has to do a model with a few million polygons… That’s hard work.
It's not just models and textures, either. Level creation has changed. It used to be mostly brush work with lightmaps, now its brushwork hulls with models as your detail, and real time lighting running at an acceptable frame rate while keeping overdraw down but visual aid up. A lot of people simply assume that a game like Doom 3 was dark because of limitations. Not quite. It was dark because every light consumed fillrate more and more and at the time, GPU’s were seriously limited in this regard… It was dark so we could run it. Also because it added to the mood. However, with regards to lighting the level, like AEon said, you can’t just flag a surface like a sky to light your area, it doesn’t work that way now...
On the plus side, what you CAN do is also greatly improved. So while the challenge of creating the world you want to play in has gone up, the number of possible restrictions on you as a designer has gone down. We have larger more detailed terrains, amazing detail in levels, lighting and shadow that looks very realistic, physics customization how we need it and entity scripting that we never dreamed of 10 years ago.
I honestly think Rage will ship with ID Dev Studio, or at least come with it just after launch. You may not be making Arena's for the game but that’s not what it’s about. Rage isn't "set up" like the past games we would mod, because its not the same experience as before. It’s not as simple to make a custom single player level either because there is just so much else going on. Maybe when Doom 4 hits, that will come with a more “classic” sdk, because I assume that will ship with a classic DM style mode.
But modding is STILL a huge part of gaming world and I hope it stays for a lot longer. Even OverDose has its own toolset and level editor, so I can't see why the big hitters wouldn't release them. In fact its one of our goals to give the people modding OD something damn easy to work with that they don’t have to fart around with for an hour just to do something simple… Christ I remember the days when I had to compile with a DOS box… God bless GUIS…
I think that obviously as games move towards this hyper realistic visual fidelity the content creation just goes waaaay over the top for your average scene guy. Back when I started modding, I could make a weapon texture on a 128x256 texture with a palette and be done in a flash because it was a single piece, diffuse only. These days, if I want to make a weapon, it usually involves 2 models (High and low), plus at the very LEAST 3 textures, usually resulting in 5 or 6... So back when the big hitters of the mod world were around, i.e. Quake 2, you needed very little skill to make something that compares to the original id software world it would exist in. These days, to mod a game, you have to have a much wider set of skills to get it matching the same level of quality otherwise it sticks out. A lot of people these days are still stuck in the “nVidia filter” stage where they think they can just run a texture through that and it will come up top. It doesn’t work that way for real geometric detail. But try telling somebody who can barely model that for his work to look on par with the game he’s modding he has to do a model with a few million polygons… That’s hard work.
It's not just models and textures, either. Level creation has changed. It used to be mostly brush work with lightmaps, now its brushwork hulls with models as your detail, and real time lighting running at an acceptable frame rate while keeping overdraw down but visual aid up. A lot of people simply assume that a game like Doom 3 was dark because of limitations. Not quite. It was dark because every light consumed fillrate more and more and at the time, GPU’s were seriously limited in this regard… It was dark so we could run it. Also because it added to the mood. However, with regards to lighting the level, like AEon said, you can’t just flag a surface like a sky to light your area, it doesn’t work that way now...
On the plus side, what you CAN do is also greatly improved. So while the challenge of creating the world you want to play in has gone up, the number of possible restrictions on you as a designer has gone down. We have larger more detailed terrains, amazing detail in levels, lighting and shadow that looks very realistic, physics customization how we need it and entity scripting that we never dreamed of 10 years ago.
I honestly think Rage will ship with ID Dev Studio, or at least come with it just after launch. You may not be making Arena's for the game but that’s not what it’s about. Rage isn't "set up" like the past games we would mod, because its not the same experience as before. It’s not as simple to make a custom single player level either because there is just so much else going on. Maybe when Doom 4 hits, that will come with a more “classic” sdk, because I assume that will ship with a classic DM style mode.
But modding is STILL a huge part of gaming world and I hope it stays for a lot longer. Even OverDose has its own toolset and level editor, so I can't see why the big hitters wouldn't release them. In fact its one of our goals to give the people modding OD something damn easy to work with that they don’t have to fart around with for an hour just to do something simple… Christ I remember the days when I had to compile with a DOS box… God bless GUIS…
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Well, what Odium says is also true. I mean, I think it's not the same case when talking just about mapping or about creating full mods, with models and coding. There are efficient tools for generating 2d materials now, and they are of perfectly acceptable quality as long as you know what you are doing ("make this bump and paint it" is very fast and gives good results). Making normalmaps for models is another story and the time difference is a world appart.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Just saw the presentation of the new development tools of the CryEngine3 recently presented at GamesCom. I must admit my german fellows are quite good in creating these tools, wish they would also be that good in content/game creation.
Just have a look, IMO it is a great example where mapping is evolving to especially when it comes down to terrain and texture manipulation. Especially the direct use of photoshop for texture manipulation in real time near the end is quite impressive.
Part 2 available here
Just have a look, IMO it is a great example where mapping is evolving to especially when it comes down to terrain and texture manipulation. Especially the direct use of photoshop for texture manipulation in real time near the end is quite impressive.
Part 2 available here
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Yep! I moved to Montreal three months ago, when work wrapped up on Ghostbusters MP...obsidian wrote:
Are you at Ubisoft Montreal then?
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spookmineer
- Posts: 506
- Joined: Fri Nov 29, 2002 8:00 am
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
After seeing the nice colours etc, I've seen a lot of people adjusting their config in Doom3/Quake4 just to be able to play the game.AEon wrote:And even if it was possible (still not clear to me) to build something with brushes, like for Q3A, what would id tech 5 bring to the table that would actually enhance the gameplay experience or the level design for that matter? Unique textures, something we always wanted... or did we? Decorative sure... but to me that is mostly a SP goody.
What I am trying to point out... I have a very bad feeling that everyone will say "wow" when Rage is released - much like we did for the new real-time lighting and details in Doom 3 - play the game 1-2 times, and then simply drop it... because there is nothing that significant to make it worth the time and effort.
If the shiny stuff is gone, people realise that gameplay isn't that much different then what they left behind (in some regards it was even worse, some say). Even now, when people are able to play the newer games at stable fps, what keeps them playing a game? - not the shiny stuff but the gameplay.
If that gameplay hasn't changed a lot to begin with, what are people actually looking for? Why do they move on to newer games?
If all people want is a good fps, it boils down to gameplay, and that hasn't changed a whole lot. After playing a map online for a few times, people don't really even notice the cool arch or the extensive brushwork anymore, they're too busy aiming at the enemy - and they should.
[SP is a completely other thing: this should be immersive, and filled with shiny cool bits, because most players will only see each map once.]
On the other hand, as mentioned by others, idtech5 isn't about DM, and it should look very realistic, or it wouldn't work. As this isn't a simple fps game, it's not fair to compare it to Q3 and the like.
The gameplay (from what I've seen) is totally different from Q3/D4, it's much more complex, so it's fair that mapping/modding for it is more complex as well.
O'dium I think is right: with increasing complexity in both gameplay and visuals/technical stuff, modding will become harder and needs more hours to accomplish something. In that sense, I do think it will decrease a lot, but never die out.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
For the record: I am goddamn CONCERNED that Id tech 5 "isn't about deathmatch". .. and I hope Id are not going to bring me any lame-assed design decisions (auto regen health and no health bar) that would make it impossible to include any kind of salvageable DM game from, say, Doom "next".
(If I'm going to have time to make a map, it's going to be for 1v1, and it's going to be about deathmatch, because it's what I have always loved.)
Reading this thread, I would just like to take the time to curse all y'all for making me desperately WANT to map for something on my own time. Wolfenstein is tempting, for instance. Argh.
(If I'm going to have time to make a map, it's going to be for 1v1, and it's going to be about deathmatch, because it's what I have always loved.)
Reading this thread, I would just like to take the time to curse all y'all for making me desperately WANT to map for something on my own time. Wolfenstein is tempting, for instance. Argh.
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phantazm11
- Posts: 362
- Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:03 am
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Amen. And I for one would love to see some more custom GODLIKE goodness.GODLIKE wrote:For the record: I am goddamn CONCERNED that Id tech 5 "isn't about deathmatch". .. and I hope Id are not going to bring me any lame-assed design decisions (auto regen health and no health bar) that would make it impossible to include any kind of salvageable DM game from, say, Doom "next".
(If I'm going to have time to make a map, it's going to be for 1v1, and it's going to be about deathmatch, because it's what I have always loved.)
Reading this thread, I would just like to take the time to curse all y'all for making me desperately WANT to map for something on my own time. Wolfenstein is tempting, for instance. Argh.
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
heh, looks like the id tech 3 mapping community is growing again... interesting mr bond
Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
Anyone remember the discussion for Q3A, where several folks were of the opinion that the "supposedly ugly" weapon models seen in the early shots where just placeholders and would/should be replaced in the final game... well I never had an issue with them, but that "change" certainly never happened. And our concerns regarding Doom III DM, laggy multiplayer that will simply not run properly on ISDN, and the hopes that that would get fixed... nothing doing again. Q4's MP was quite playable online, IMO, but they made it a central focus. The point I am trying to make here is this... if Carmack does not explicitly say this or that is a focus, it will simply not happen, or the implementation will not be a good as it could have been.GODLIKE wrote:For the record: I am goddamn CONCERNED that Id tech 5 "isn't about deathmatch". .. and I hope Id are not going to bring me any lame-assed design decisions (auto regen health and no health bar) that would make it impossible to include any kind of salvageable DM game from, say, Doom "next".
So... if multiplayer is not really a focus on Rage (as I understood), and neither are bots, then DM mapping is pretty much out the window for that game. It might be back for Doom IV though (my hope, or Quake V), and I seem to remember Carmack saying something like that will happen, regarding the Doom IV MP focus. Though bots will probably not make it into D4 MP either, I fear, and that is really bad. Custom bots simply never have that widespread appeal / usage. So, we can learn the "tech" from Rage in preparation for Doom IV MP mapping...
Seems the golden age of "jack of all trades" (i.e. SP maps used as MP maps, SP games with "good" MP etc.) games is gone as well. These huge projects "force" the devs to make hard decisions, and if you have "really cheap AI (tm) = players" out there, why even bother to waste one second on creating MP AI
... E.g. I'd have bought Team Fortress 2, if it had AI, just to play those nice maps and have some fun - I have no interest in playing against real players out there, any more (yes, I'm getting old).Re: Content creation & mod-ability of newer games
My initial post was stating the obvious, apparently, but it's funny to have Carmack say the exact same thing in his keynote speech at QuakeCon in 2007 (saw it the first time only moments ago):
- "The golden age of the mod-maker really has passed. Mod-making is a semi-pro activity right now.", John Carmack.