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No Mod Tools for Fallout 3 Launch
Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Bethesda's Pete Hines about the upcoming release of Fallout 3. He talks about dealing with misunderstandings about the game prior to launch, violence in modern games, and the fact that the game won't launch with mod tools. "Folk probably took for granted that every time we make a game, there's a mod tool. We explained to folk that it takes a lot of time and effort to get that tool ready for release, and it's not on our schedule right now. We need to get the game done and out. ... Right now, we can't say definitively 'there will be mod tools, and here is when they'll be out.' We discussed some Fallout 3 gameplay videos a few weeks ago. That work remains to be done." In related news, Interplay has picked up Chris Taylor, designer of the original Fallout, to help develop their Fallout MMOG.
Fallout WITHOUT mod tools. How will i get my unofficial addon that makes it a Mad Max. I needs me some thunderdome. [and a clonedome You know, 1 will enter 2 will leave]
No modtools? That's a shame. Modtools really extend the life of a game- in fact, I'd say they probably extend the life of a game more than anything else (apart from being an MMO). How long did Half-Life 1 hang around because of Counterstrike?
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Unless modding tools were promised, and that promise was writ mile-high in the stone of the Rockies, I don't get what the fuss is about. Your assumption is not the developer's obligation.
You had to download them, so odds are they will release a set of mod tools down the road. Like they said they got to get the game working and completed before they release the tool.
I'll bet the game ships with bugs.
Even Centipede shipped with bugs, as did Mario Paint and even Crazy Castle.
Interplay destroyed Black Isle, ruined Jefferson and Van Buren, refused to pay employees, didn't pay their debts, was delisted, and without an office. How are they still around seriously making a Fallout MMO, and why in the world would Chris Taylor want to go back there?
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So... removing features here at the last minute so they can still get it out the door before the deadline. It looks like the picked a too aggressive deadline and they're trying to cover for it now instead of spec things out correctly at the start.
TFA doesn't indicate that it was ever in the schedule. Mod tools have always been nice from Bethesda, but never promised.
I'll bet the game ships with bugs.
Absolutely unthinkable that 50,000 people playing a game would find something a smaller team of developers didn't </sarcasm>. I don't doubt that it will ship with bugs, because bugless software is quite frankly something from textbooks and academia. As the time spent on software approaches infinity, the number of bugs approaches zero. I don't know how far along that curve Fallout 3 will ship, but I imagine it won't be so riddled with bugs that it's unplayable.
I'll bet the game ships with bugs.
And I'll bet the sun will rise tomorrow. Both are equally safe bets.
Keep in mind that "bugs" can range from a very minor graphical glitch or even a gameplay issue that they don't think works as well as it could - all the way to crashing issues / data corruption, etc, the most serious sort. They're all bugs, and every modern games ships with a large number of them. Obviously, developers work very hard to fix all the highest priority issues, but they always go through a triage session and decide what's actually worth fixing and what bugs they can live with before the game ships. You're kidding yourselves if you think *any* game ships with zero bugs these days.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I think Bethesda would be doing themselves a great favor by once again being forthcoming about what, if any, DRM they plan to use in Fallout 3. Before Oblivion released, some rumor about them using StarForce was going around, and they explicitly said that not only were they not going to use StarForce, but all they were putting in was a CD check when you start the game. People went out and bought the game with confidence that it wasn't going to fux0r their b0xen and that they'd still be able to play even if someone dropped a nuke on the Greater DC Metro Area the next day.
Considering how much grief EA has had over Spore, etc., they might want to preannounce their DRM plans again, as a selling point.
Morrowind's NPCs and towns were horribly boring without mods.
The dancing girls were a lot more interesting after applying the "Better Bodies" mod. It really improved the, uh, realism of the, uh, storytelling and, uh, stuff.
Is that the same Chris Taylor that was heading up Gas Powered Games (Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander), and previous created Total Annihilation?
I suppose Chris Taylor is probably a common enough name that it's likely two separate people, but thought I'd ask, in case anyone can confirm or deny?
Fallout 3 is based on the same engine as Oblivion. They even use some of the same assets, you can see the same characters and models used in Oblivion in the recent demo videos. There is already a extensive set of tools available for Oblivion, so I assume they would just have to be modified for Fallout 3.
I have this nasty feeling that the devs realize this and they just want to push the tool development effort back onto the gamer community.
The community for Bethesda games has a knack for accomplishing things Bethesda never intended.
For example, the oblivion modding tools were locked down in terms of modeling and skeletons, and other misc functions.. but the community hacked together a set of tools that met and/or exceeded the tool-set of the beth developers themselves in terms of functionality.
Shortly after Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was released, a modder released a "topless" mod for the female characters. The ESRB, fearful of another "Hot Coffee" incident, re-evaluated the game and changed the rating from "T" to "M", forcing 2K Games to republish the game with updated box art. I remember thinking to myself, "well, there goes the mod tools".
Sure enough, the next game that Bethesda released doesn't include a mod tool. The Oblivion rating fiasco may not be the only reason but I'll wager it was a factor. And if game creators are being held responsible for the actions of modders, can you blame them?
This is a very bad sign, that goes far beyond the absence of actual mod tools.
Some people don't know why Half-Life was such a great game and why Oblivion was so disappointing. The answer is just one word: play-testing. Okay, maybe that's two words.
Half-Life spent half its development life (ha-ha) in testing (and refining). And Half-Life 2 levels started being playtested before the textures were even ready (remember those "orange map" screenshots in the teasers?).
Oblivion's quests feels buggy and disjointed mainly because it was not playtested by anyone outside Bethesda, and some last-minute adjustments to the game probably weren't tested at all.
Now, what does all this have to do with the announcement that mod tools won't be available? Simple: mod tools and documentation are tipically readied for end users while the game is in the final testing stage which, even on a relatively linear game like Half-Life, should take several months or years, if the game is to be any good. During this stage only minor things are being tweaked, like map design, damage of each weapon, location and frequency of rewards, etc.. Basically stuff that doesn't keep the programmers too busy, so they can focus on polishing the mod tools (in fact, better mod tools will also make that final tweaking much easier).
So, when the official word is that "[mod tools are] not on our schedule right now. We need to get the game done and out", what that means is the game isn't even ready yet, but the release date is already set, so there will be little if any playtesting (probably, as with Oblivion, only internal playtesting, which is close to useless in terms of gameplay tuning, it'll just catch the most obvious bugs). And, of course, without mod tools we can't even expect a fan-made "Fallout Overhaul" any time soon.
I can't say this is unexpected, but it is disappointing. Considering the FPS-like gameplay shown in the demo videos and now this, I'm pretty sure I won't be buying Fallout 3 in the first few months after release, if ever.
Can someone please put the 1992 Origin team back together? I miss a good RPG.