Carmack: Rage is too advanced for modding.

So this interview I found on RPS kinda bothered me. He says that they do not plan to release any proper modding (mapping?) tools for Rage to the public.

It wouldn't be unusual for singleplayer games to not include an SDK, but this is id. The inventors of the FPS modding community.

I remember us having this discussion ages ago, how the Source engine destroyed the "amateur mapper" by requiring 3rd party modelling tools for proper content creation. I would say however, that HL2's community turned out to be quite healthy.

What do you think? Will modding die out eventually?

Half-Life 2 is clearly a solid tool for developing modifications on. The tools are well rounded, and the code is all open. The technology is all based on older variations of the Quake engine. I mean, sure there are more things to worry about now in Source, but the tools are simply evolved forms of older tools that the community was used to.

What Carmack is saying is that, the tools they're developing here are completely new and too numerous for there to be a thriving community on them. That's not to say their tools are completely locked down from the public (I think he mentioned something about people who want to dig in it may still do so). I suppose this is proof that their is a limit on modding community patience with game technology. In essence this interview can finally put a lid on that old discussion we had about that.

I think what will happen to modding is what will happen to the movie industry. The movie industry still thrives on it's budding amateurs making short films in its shadow, and their films aren't anywhere near as big budget or time-spent as the big titles, but they still pursue with limited technology and resources. I think there will be a limit on the advancements of a modding community, and I think there will be a fallback rate. There will end up being one day a majority of people who simply stick with the last understood technology rather than move on with the industry. The gaming industry will have to survive on those people who need to mod for it and gain the experience. That's not going to change. So no, modding won't die, but certainly the average technical prowess of those participating in it has a limit.

Despite saying all that, I think it breaks down to the tools for the technology. A simple enough tool can have anyone modding with technically more complicated technology just like old-school technology. As long as there are people out there willing to write intuitive tools for the advanced software these games may be using, then a thriving community might be able to stick with the current tides of the game industry.

/wall O Text

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

reaper47 said:
What do you think? Will modding die out eventually?

I don't think so. I see modding as a major aspect for pc gaming that continues to grow and get closer to being a standard thing for most pc games.

Basically, by not releasing the modding tools for Rage, Id's sort of stabbing them self in the leg with a blunt knife. Who cares if the modding tools for Rage are complicated? That's no reason to not release the tools, people are smart and figure things out.

Look at the Halo Editing Tools, the tools where designed to be used by Bungie only, the levels are built in 3DS Max and the Halo engine uses a tag system which is really weird to get used to plus the tools aren't documented at all and people have managed to figure them out.

I don't see why Id can't just do what Bungie did and release the tools as they are and eventually the community will figure things out.

"Riven" said:
There will end up being one day a majority of people who simply stick with the last understood technology rather than move on with the industry.

Interesting, certainly I think this is possible. It's defiantly taking more effort making a game, what could be achieved by one person a few years ago might take multiple people to achieve with current standards but also I think that tools are getting better too, that is it's getting easier to do simple things and that this is/can compensate for this extra effort required. Compare trying to make hilly terrain in Half-Life 1 to Half-Life 2. What about the days where you didn't have a WYSIWYG editor for level design?

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Aaron's Stuff

From watching the videos I didn't get he impression that Carmack was saying that id wouldn't release modding tools. He was saying that in the gold ol days you could throw code out into the community and they will add their own "stamp" to the game through a mod, however the amount of code now a days is on such a high level that modding community might be dwarfed by it. He said that yes people will look at the code, but only for research, not necessarily for modding.

What has me more concerned with id is they are following a trend of "everyone has $2000-$3000 gaming rigs by the time we release our new graphics engine," which isn't really possible because I know I don't have 2000 to spend in 2+ years on a new computer. Im also a little concerned about his "you can have terabytes and terabytes of texture budget".... I don't really have enough space right now to install a game a terabyte big, nor will anyone in the year 2012 (I have a feeling they will release doom 4 on 06-06-12 or something due to the significance of the date ;P).

Part of what made HL2/Source so popular is it could have drop backs to directx 8, or even 7 if your computer was old enough, sure the game wouldn't look as pretty, but at least your not limiting your target consumer to directx 10 only games.

Riven said:
There will end up being one day a majority of people who simply stick with the last understood technology rather than move on with the industry.

I've pretty much resigned myself to this as I've found UnrealED and Radiant both excruciating to use and I'm apparently too dumb to understand modeling. It'll only get more complex from here on out.

I actually do think that modding will die, but not because of the difficulty of the tools but because of shifts in the gaming community:

-The general perception towards mods has changed to where players expect it to be commercial grade from release and have no patience for anything else. One bad beta will sink your ship. Using placeholders or heaven forbid default content will get you railed. Just read through any single player mod on ModDB and you'll find comments demanding a total conversion or else, modder be damned.

-The [Half-Life 2, at least] editing community has become more insular and decentralized, with people more interested in making it big in the industry than helping others make quality work. For example probably a couple thousand different prefabs were created for Half-Life, and they were all free to use. Currently the site with the most free Source props for download is the Snarkpit(?!), and of the props you can find in the wider community many come with some sort of 'creative commons license' that restricts usage in mods (hey, uh, almost every single player release is in mod form) or changing them in any way. Apparently many authors are more interested in displaying their skill as opposed to having their creation actually used in a map.

I mean look at this garbage: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
If I used that for my prefabs they would have never been used period (some may argue that would have been a good thing). Anything that is meant to actually be utilized by a mapper cannot have a 'no derivative works' restriction. Or maybe I should just stop looking at FPSBanana...

These two things together are bad news for modding, demanding impossible heights for a release while restricting the education, freedom, and creativity needed to reach those heights.

A game too advanced for modding?

Hahahahahahahaha.

Seriously, it's obvious that the developers are just too full of themselves and their game, that they have to throw that bullshit out?

Not even crysis is 'too advanced for modding', no wait, actually crysis is kinda a bad example because it uses lua scripting, which isn't really hard to learn.

Also, yak_fighter, didn't you leave a long time ago?

If so, welcome back i guess.

EDIT: I'm a idiot, "A game too advanced for modeling?" fixed.

nah, just very long periods of inactivity punctuated by short bursts of annoying everybody

The main reason I think the complexity argument lacks is that even us Half-Life 1 kids, if you remember, started out on a horrible, horrible program called Worldcraft, poorly documented, with awkward rules, potential crashes and 6-hour compile times. What motivated us (and the players) were the possibilities, even with the standard content provided.

I started mapping doing simple singleplayer maps for HL1. There are 18 completely different enemies, 14 weapons (most of them never seen before in an FPS) and texture sets for military bases, deserts, cliffs, factories, high-tech labs, offices and xen. I still get ideas for new, fun scenarios just thinking of these.

On the other hand, I recently dug a bit into HL2 singleplayer mapping. It was fun, but also... bleak. I found it hard to come up with a single original enemy setup. Combine soldiers are the only relatively smart opponents. Manhacks, rollermines, antlions and striders the only truly unique enemies since the first game. Weapon variety is spiced up by the gravity gun. But from there on, it's getting stale as well. All you can do is script, script, script and hope it will distract players from shooting the same enemies over and over again. It reminded me that even Minerva shines more through the creator's impressive vocabulary and knowledge of ancient gods than actual gameplay.

[kitten picture as a motivation to read on] It's no coincidence the only commercial mod for HL2 so far is built around the physics system, the part of HL2 that is the most innovative and provokes creativity. Garry's Mod proved that the claim that the masses need custom content to be happy and accept a mod is simply false.

The main reason for mods to have become so custom-content heavy, is a lack of inspiration. Inspiration that was provided by the games themselves in the mid-90ies, with scenarios that were fun, varied and focused on gameplay. The "more" is lacking in games today. Content is built around a simple-as-possible, perfectly polished, linear path. When I look at HL2, I feel like there is little to add. Everything that you can possibly do with the content and gameplay, has been done in the main game. You can not help but feel like repeating yourself if you don't create additional content.

Calling for a death of modding as we know it, is IMO, a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Let's lower support for modding, it's getting unpopular"... "Oh, see, we were right, nobody's modding". Now, is that because the internets grew tired of modding or because of the lack of support in the first place? I think it's more of the latter, but ultimately neither. It's because games do not have enough content anymore to fill additional mods. They do not inspire.

I'm not really worried about Rage. I'm more worried about an eventual new game that brings back the inspiring freshness and variety of the Half-Life days, but decides to go the same route. Only because it will not be "fashionable" to support a mod community anymore.

PS: Research & Development? Let's just say, exceptions prove the rule. It is also built around both physics gameplay and the newer content provided with Episode 2, so I'm not even sure whether it is an exception...

PPS: Now, that's a wall of text, Riven!