Concerned?

Calego

On a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned are you about the future of the modding side of NS2?

I know a lot of people just camp certain categories, so I'm plugging this discussion here, kill it if you reckon it's uncessary/spam.

Soul_Rider

With the NS2 dev team that is in place, it is fairly clear that improving the tool chain for modders, and making the overall process of getting stuff into the game easier, is what this team is targeted at.

With that in mind, I'd have to say the future of NS2 modding looks brighter than it has ever done.

Of course, over the years many great modders have left the community, so there has been a bit of a brain drain, so to speak, but on the other hands, some modders are now much more au fait with the system, and thus can produce much more impressive works.

From a personal perspective, I will only be contributing smaller mods to NS2 these days, but I will still be around to offer help and advice whenever I can.

_Grendel_

The biggest issue I see for modders/modding/mods is the lack of content to choose from. What I mean by that is there's a limited number of art assets to use if you're making any other mods besides a balance/tweak mod. Sure you can reuse the same model over and over, but it kinda breaks the immersion aspect. There always seems to be tons of coders, but very few people capable of bringing new, visible/usable content into the game. Even with huge games, like fallout 4. I was browsing their mod forums and you see 100 wip/planned mods that tweak stuff or mess with attributes for every 1 mod that's introducing a whole new weapon/asset model. Don't get me wrong, you NEED the coders to work their magic and some of the mods that I've seen for ns2 are amazing (CompMod!), but I'm wondering what the new team will do to attract more asset modders to ns2? (Yes i have seen the new blender tool announcement, but that doesn't really help if there's no one around who knows how to make models in the first place)

Soul_Rider

The modellers from the community drifted off in general because it was so hard to get models into the game.

I would hope that as it becomes easier to add models, the community would pick up again, and modellers etc from the community will come back, as well as us gaining new ones.

Of course, none of that is guaranteed, but if @BeigeAlert can get the .fbx support added that he talked about, expect to see a massive increase in the number of models and modellers available.

McGlaspie

FBX support has been added to the CompileModel utility and will be included in Build 280
Builder will run the models just as it did before, and a full usage-guide for FBX support will be released in conjunction with the update.

Soul_Rider

I feel like downloading a metric crap tonne of .fbx models and making a mod that is just hundreds of models randomly scattered around NS2 maps, in the most blocking and impossible to play the game way possible, to emphasise custom models can now be added...

Kasharic

Soul_Rider wrote: »

I feel like downloading a metric crap tonne of .fbx models and making a mod that is just hundreds of models randomly scattered around NS2 maps, in the most blocking and impossible to play the game way possible, to emphasise custom models can now be added...

How about just compiling a lot of models etc into a mod so that mappers who have no clue how to build props have a lot more to work with?... because personally, I would love you much much more for that :P

Saffron_baker

I just got unconcerd about this

Soul_Rider

Kasharic wrote: »

Soul_Rider wrote: »

I feel like downloading a metric crap tonne of .fbx models and making a mod that is just hundreds of models randomly scattered around NS2 maps, in the most blocking and impossible to play the game way possible, to emphasise custom models can now be added...

How about just compiling a lot of models etc into a mod so that mappers who have no clue how to build props have a lot more to work with?... because personally, I would love you much much more for that :P

@Kasharic The point of the new update is that anyone can just download the fbx models and put them in the modelsrc folder, run builder and they are compiled. I can't build models either, that's the point of the update

BeigeAlert

BAM! NECRO!!!

Soul_Rider

I felt rude that I hadn't replied

Calego

Obligatory "I totally saw all this spat coming and made two threads in an effort to prevent it" comment.

Wyzcrak

Faster releases aren't what caused our recent melodrama.

http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2273482/#Comment_2273482

xDragon /can't/ mod anymore -> some players /can't/ have gameplay they want -> #omgwtfbbq

UWE will correct the flaw that put code where it didn't /belong/, and they'll continue with a /modern/ release cadence and the dialog/feedback/growth it enables.

No way we return to waiting months between releases. Occasionally, sure, but not as a matter of course.

Calego

Wyzcrak wrote: »

Faster releases aren't what caused our recent melodrama.

The releases themselves didn't but the method of their implementation and a breakdown somewhere in the communication line did. As long as everyone's learned from this everything will move forward at a correct pace (I just had to claim credit for my prophetic powers somewhere and since SoulRider was so nice to necro this, I went for it ).