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hardcore_gamer

How long until video game mods are just banned?

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5 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

I never said otherwise. Obviously nobody is going to make an awesome game with some crap like RPG maker.

says someone who has never looked into rpg maker games

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1 hour ago, Arctangent said:

says someone who has never looked into rpg maker games

I mean I'm sure SOMEBODY has made something decent with it. But you know, I'm also pretty sure somebody has been able to make a decent game out of nothing but unity asset packs. Maes already explained why good games are rarely made using these type of programs so just read what he said if you haven't already.

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54 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

I mean I'm sure SOMEBODY has made something decent with it. But you know, I'm also pretty sure somebody has been able to make a decent game out of nothing but unity asset packs. Maes already explained why good games are rarely made using these type of programs so just read what he said if you haven't already.

say someone who has never looked into rpg maker games

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My impression is that making "cutting edge" games is a lot more time consuming and less accessible to the hobbyist than used to be the case, mainly due to much greater amounts of programming.  On the other hand, as asset tools improve with time, it tends to get easier and more accessible to create games that were considered "cutting edge" in a given earlier era, and on occasion these can be highly successful (Minecraft's graphics are pretty retro for example).

 

We see this with mapping too- it is easier to map for Doom 1/2 today than it was in the 1990s, but making good looking maps for modern titles is often harder and more time consuming.

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It indeed took us over 5 years to push Arx End of Sun out the door, but there was basically 5, mostly 3 of us working on the game.

Of course we didn't build the engine or the editor, was a tech4 source game, a TC if you will, but works out of the box without owning Doom3.

We'd probably still be working on it if we didn't have modelers at the time. ~ as well as a super dedicated programmer. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Mr.Rocket

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2 hours ago, dmg_64 said:

RPG Maker games look like shit to me, full of anime girlies and Hentai crap.

 

Clearly you have never played "i am a tree. you are not. ha ha".

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2 hours ago, dmg_64 said:

RPG Maker games look like shit to me, full of anime girlies and Hentai crap.

I wonder if you've ever noticed your title.

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No I didn't notice what's written right below my username, Must be something wrong with my eyes, would you please suggest a good doctor ? you seem to know better.

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7 hours ago, dmg_64 said:

RPG Maker games look like shit to me, full of anime girlies and Hentai crap.

RPG maker does has their share of terrible games but there are some good gems out there worth playing.

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The question with RPG maker, or any other "-maker" tool, really, is if they can produce something up to the contemporary industrial standard. Always has been, ever since the days of "pinball construction kit"or "arcade game construction kit" on the C64 (yes, it existed), or 3D construction kit. Sure, all those allowed a total layman to make a working game. But could they ever make the next Mario, Sonic or Doom using those kits? As it has been mentioned a lot of times already, by me and others, the ante is upped astronomically, and an amateur using copy & paste in an editor cannot compete with what professional do using unconstrained coding.

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>Creation Club releases

 

>"OMG How long until video game mods are just banned???"

 

Holy shit lol 

 

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2 hours ago, Maes said:

 As it has been mentioned a lot of times already, by me and others, the ante is upped astronomically, and an amateur using copy & paste in an editor cannot compete with what professional do using unconstrained coding.

 

On the other hand, some programmers are now saying that in the future programmers will be obsolete and that literally everything will be possible to do with more user friendly tools that require no programming. Already we have some tools such as Unity playmaker and blueprints in UE4. These are not yet good enough to replace all programming, but many programmers believe it's only a matter of time until the need for programmers will go the way of the dodo..

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13 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

On the other hand, some programmers are now saying that in the future programmers will be obsolete and that literally everything will be possible to do with more user friendly tools that require no programming.

Been hearing that since the 1980s, and there were two major flaws with this view that still hold today:

 

  1. There will still be a need for "real programmers" to make such tools, so even in such a scenario, the "real programming" shifts to tool-making, rather than coding final applications.

  2. Either such tools were excessively dumbed-down to the point of being just toys or were so restricted in scope that they could only be used in a very specific setting (e.g. making games using a specific template, make database-driven applications, etc.)

  3. Getting good at using thost tools still requires dedication and specialization, so if anything they tend to create sub-classes of specialized programmers. Depending on the market demand, being so specialized can either be an asset or a crippling situation.

Edited by Maes

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Yeah but Blueprints aren't DeHACKed ya know, It's far more advanced than that, there are games built entirely out of Blueprints, not a single code line written.

Edited by dmg_64 : Nevermind, you removed the other half of your post lol

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Well, derp, I made ONE edit to the list and the rest of the post where it mentioned DeHACKed went poof O_o

 

In any case, it was about e.g. how well Heretic and Hexen would be received if they were literally just Doom TCs with -at most- some DeHACKed changes, and none of the improvements that Raven made to the engine in cold, hard -gasp- code.

 

If Blueprints is anything like how the visual editing in Macromedia/Adobe Flash worked, there too, you could do a lot "without a single line of code", only that those that DID use code (ActionScript) were the ones that got ahead and produced richer animations/games with it.

 

Again, it's not a matter if you CAN make a game "with no code", but how will it compare to a professionally made one that does. Think of a race between two crippled athletes (the non-developer game makers), both using crutches (the visual tools), but one of them is smart/coordinated enough to use a scooter or a pogo stick (the "lines of code"). Who would pull ahead then?

 

But let's avoid metaphors here: could something like Doom 2016 be made in Unity today? Could it be made while maintaining system requirements and resources at a reasonable level, and the end result be playable enough to sell for big $$$? If yes, how come we aren't seeing a whole series of Unity games flooding the market, and traditional AAA devs like id going down?

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True, Programmers will always be needed if you want to push the quality of the product ahead, Simplified programming methods are just means to speed up development process and will not replace the need for Real programmers.

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1 minute ago, dmg_64 said:

Simplified programming methods are just means to speed up development process and will not replace the need for Real programmers.

Exactly, and historically, whenever such time- (and by extension, cost-cutting) methods were adopted, the result was always an oversaturated market with mediocre, run-of-the-mill products. In the case of games, those were usually the ones that ended up in your local K-Mart's bargain bin and/or Something Awful's ROM pit, being torn a new one by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka  ;-)

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On 10/7/2017 at 9:57 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

 

This is actually an interesting topic. How much sense does it even make to make your modern game moddable now anyway? Look at Doom modding Vs Quake modding (well ok, Quake is a bad example since it has tons of mods, but still fewer than Doom), and then look at Quake modding vs Doom 3 modding. As games become more complex the effort and technical skills needed grow, and we are now at a point where most people just won't even bother.

Yea, this is so true. I remember when I first started playing around with map making for Doom back in the late 90s, early 2000s, I tried my hand at modding Quake and after hours of frustration, I managed to make a cylindrical room with pillar in the middle which had a hole in the in it. I remember that simple room being so incredible difficult to create. I stuck with modding Doom only ever since. I can only imagine how complicated modding modern game is.

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On blueprints and "with no code": the whole "with no code" is just buzzwords that I'm not even sure if they actually use. It's still 100% coding, it's just code visualized as a flowchart of variables and procedures rather than as text of variables and procedures. Really, there's basically no way to make a game "with no code," because nearly every tool for making video games involves some sort of coding, even if it's a type of coding that's simplified and intuitivified at the expense of power.

 

On 10/22/2017 at 5:11 AM, Maes said:

But let's avoid metaphors here: could something like Doom 2016 be made in Unity today?

Yes.

 

On 10/22/2017 at 5:11 AM, Maes said:

Could it be made while maintaining system requirements and resources at a reasonable level, and the end result be playable enough to sell for big $$$?

Yes, although definitely not without sacrificing some graphical fidelity and even then it'd still probably require a somewhat beefier system. That's really more of a testament to idTech 6, though.

 

On 10/22/2017 at 5:11 AM, Maes said:

If yes, how come we aren't seeing a whole series of Unity games flooding the market, and traditional AAA devs like id going down?

Because AAA devs tend to prefer UE.

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59 minutes ago, Arctangent said:

Because AAA devs tend to prefer UE.

 

And I can see why. Frankly, the only real reason Unity even became the most popular engine at all is because it was the first engine to be released for free in addition to having large amounts of porting power. Unreal 4 is now free also (though you will have to pay about 5% of any profits you make of your game to Midway I think). And then there is also the asset store which allows people to download not just art assets but even code and game mechanics so they don't have to do any of the hard work themselves. This combination of being free and having huge amounts of porting potential made it the ultimate game engine of choice for mobile developers and recreational game developers alike. 

 

However, as an actual GAME ENGINE, unity is a piece of crap. The graphics suck compared to alternatives such as UE4 (spare me this nonsense of how only the quality of the art assets is what matters and that good assets look the same in all engines), and performance is shit. This is why the developers of the System shock remake dumped unity half way through development once they realized that they weren't able to good good framerates for the console version of their game, so they switched over to unreal 4 instead.

 

I also consider Unity's supposed ease of use compared to other engines to be a myth. Sure it's easy if you just abuse the asset store, but otherwise it's no easier or faster to use compared to something like the unreal engine.

Edited by hardcore_gamer

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3 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

(spare me this nonsense of how only the quality of the art assets is what matters and that good assets look the same in all engines)

Well at least you admit you shove knives into your ears so that you can live freely with absolute certainty that the sky is green.

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1 minute ago, Arctangent said:

Well at least you admit you shove knives into your ears so that you can live freely with absolute certainty that the sky is green.

 

I actually meant to say System shock not bioshock.

 

And yes, there is a difference. System shock remake in Unity:

 

 

System shock remake in Unreal 4:

 

 

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1 minute ago, Arctangent said:

That's nice evidence that supports barely anything about your thesis.

 

If you think that the graphics are identical then you don't have a functioning pair of eyes.

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I'm not so sure that's criticism you should really be lobbing at others, considering your eyes seem to be reading words that don't exist anywhere.

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1 hour ago, hardcore_gamer said:

System shock remake in Unity

You aren't showing us what you think you're showing us. You are showing us a demonstration in one and a pre alpha in a different engine in another. None of this is suitable for any comparison to anything else.

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11 hours ago, Arctangent said:

On blueprints and "with no code": the whole "with no code" is just buzzwords that I'm not even sure if they actually use. It's still 100% coding, it's just code visualized as a flowchart of variables and procedures rather than as text of variables and procedures. Really, there's basically no way to make a game "with no code," because nearly every tool for making video games involves some sort of coding, even if it's a type of coding that's simplified and intuitivified at the expense of power.

 

And yet, the idea of "programming without knowing how to program" is older than dirt.

 

All-programs-you-need-BIG.png

 

(source: The Daily WTF) (more info on The Last One)

As for flowcharts, it was and still is a very common approach for the many "codeless programming" suites that appeared over the years. One that I used recently (read: some 4 years ago) was the "Programming Blocks" environment for the Lego Mindstorms:

 

J9vcl.png

 

And you can already see a major drawback: a program that would take 10-20 lines of code results in a multi-page patchwork of abstract art. Anything beyond one screenful was really hard to follow, so this is really a way of programming that doesn't encourage writing large, complex programs and, by consequence, expanding one's skills.

 

But in the end, lashing against such tools is like lashing against e.g. hobbyist power tools or cars with automatic transmissions, vs professional tools & methods or trucks with unsyncrhonized transmissions: different solutions, different ease of use vs versatility/robustness for different needs. The only mistake is claiming that you can just use the simplified/dumbed down version "to rule them all". Real-world economics or just simply plain old "getting the job done" dictate otherwise :)

Edited by Maes

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Actually programmers aren't fully thrown out yet, even with Blueprints and stuff like that it's still somewhat limited, they even provided tools to convert all of your Blueprint work to c++, you can still make some pretty good stuff with it though, check out UE Marketplace for examples.

Edited by dmg_64

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