Maximum PC

I'm looking over at some of my fave games and gear and i keep seeing the same thing, the developers with tons of money can't get the little things right but some indy with just his own pc does. I look at Champions Online and in the first Nemisis arc we have a cowboy who's lips move indepentent of his VO. Then i look at a fan cgi star trek piece and all the cgi cast have perfect lip sync AND hier poly models. Yet both are static non interactive movies. the Star Trek one can be watched offline while champions is streamed by streaming won't cause that much a desync.

Then there's the Unreal mod that turned it into DBZ complete with special attacks and free flight or Vampire: Redemption that has Garus who can free shif between wolf, Homid and the war form.

Time and again moders out do the creators on litterly pennies to the dollar in development cost.

Why is that?

Moving this to the gamers forum.

It depends on a lot of different things. I have seen a LOT of shit mods too.

Keep in mind, Unreal was not developed to be DBZ.

The modders also have a pretty big base to start with and in most cases are doing more tweaking than pure content creation or modeling etc.

I agree with both of you. For instant, Oblivion and Fallout mods have made that game 10x better than the original version and most of it is done by someone with some spare time (a lot of spare time) and some dedication. However, there are also some AWFUL mods out there that crash the game constantly.

Maybe in the future we'll see more open source games that are developed from the ground up from mods that the community gives thumbs up/down to. Bethesda relies heavily on the mod community to keep games going years and years after release (Morrowind is still going strong) so maybe they'll give the modders more of a say in the future.

Indeed. Another reason is that the modders aren't getting paid to do it. This means everyone on mod teams does what they do because that's what they love to do, and as such are very careful about getting everything just right. I myself was a coder for a mod team for the strategy game Star Wars: Empire At War- the Ultimate Empire at War mod team, if you happen to know it. They've got one pre-release that just adds stuff, and the final release that significantly reworks the game is still limping along slowly. It's really that simple. First, the devs don't really know what to fix and change from experience. A mod team sees things that were done in the game that didn't work out in the end and tweaks them as they see fit. The original devs don't have that resource. The models are a good place to show this. The Petroglyph models for that game look decent, but they could have been done much better and if you tear them apart in 3dsMax, there's all kinds of nasty, hasty things about them. The models done by our modders, however, are beautiful, elegant creations, and the code for them is carefully tweaked and implemented to be perfect.

Developers need to put out a solid product that they can make money with. Most of the time this means sticking to a formula, and only just tweaking it.

Mods on the otherhand are developed without the kind of marketing pressure devs need to adhere to. They can take much larger risk with far less consequence and if the mod is decent it will find an audience and if not, no money lost and it can still be changed as the modders see fit.

Much the reason why you have Valve making a lot of their games open-ended, like Counter-Strike, which in itself is a mod, so anything based on the Source or the original HL1/Quake engine can be modded into anything you want, basically. That was one of the first examples of modern FPS games that has that total opportunity for having an imagination. Of course, modding goes all the way back to Duke 3D, and Doom II, so it's been around a lot longer than you think. I, myself, had been modding games since 1995 or so, and haven't looked back. Well, I've been attempting more modernized versions of mods and maps for games from days gone by, just to revive old classics, but I've always been having new ideas along the way as well.

Then you have those maps for games that are just... insanely amazing...

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/ ... a3ac45.png

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/ ... 1aa3c9.png

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/ ... 02cc7c.png

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/ ... a8eeaf.png

Being simply one example.

Can a modder build a game from the ground up? I am sure there are a few cases out there. But, for the most part, modders are just building off of someone else's already existing work.

Modders are mostly designer-like and less developer-like.

A developer will focus on making sure the game does not collapse and crash, instead of how cool it would look if you did back flips off of a wall.

Not to mention developers are very different than designers. Game studios have both devs and designers. Modders sometimes change code or add stuff but for the most part they are taking advantage of things already there and adding new textures, maps, etc. Not that it isn't hard... but it is different.

i always thought that some game add-ons/mods were cool, cause sometimes the original game doesn't include them. game makers try to make stuff that will sell, even if it means skipping out on features and certain ideas. so some mods actually enhance gameplay later on, which is kind of cool.

of course, not all mods are great, but at least the idea is then put out there for further modding by the community.

the thing is the devs have budgets in the thousands/millions and yet i can spend 4 bucks at daz3d for Victoria 4 (well 3 at the time), export it for free to 3ds. Import that to Dark BASIC ($50) with Bones rigging and have a high poly demo up in a few hours for less then a c note yet developers with so much more give us...so much less.

Hell the lip synching on my psp's Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core blows away the lip synch in Champions, and it's several years older on a portable console vs a PC.

Okay, let me put it to you like this.

Go develop a game. Then come back here and tell me it is "easy" and only takes "a few hours". Having developed a game, I know a little bit about it.

It ain't easy. It ain't cheap.

Why do you think some game developers pull 60 hours weeks normally, and 80 or more during the weeks before a release?

Modders have 95% of the work done for them.

So i take it you didn't read my post above where i specifically said i can get a demo up and running in a few hours on a budget of 60 bucks, cause you know...I did that...

wrote the engine in a couple hours? right...
I simply fail to believe you wrote a 3D game from the ground up in a couple hours. I've been modding for years, and the amount of work it takes just to set up. I've developed two mods and one full game, OpenGL rendered from the ground up. That project is a two-man project that's been going for two years on the side, and we're not even close to being done. I simply don't believe you've made an entirely original game in a couple hours. Crash has got more experience then myself apparently, and I have to agree with him.

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i'm not repeating myself again

I said with a budget of 60 bucks i created a demo in a few hours. If you need more clarification thats

"basic environment with collision detention and a 3d figure to walk around in it"

If i can do that in a few hours for less then a c note why do devs with THOUNSANDS of dollares fail so utterly to do one better?

You really don't get it?

Nobody will play your "demo". It isn't even a game. You imported a single model. There are thousands in a real game.
There is no "story".
You used someone elses code and models (in the "real" world, that will never fly).
Nobody gave a game with a "basic environment" a good review.

Do you know anything about path finding? Collision detection? I can guarantee you the best algorithms and implementations are NOT free (for games anyway). What do you know about buffering and or sprites?

You have imported 1 model and been able to move it. That isn't a game. What you did is meaningless.

Like I said before I want you to develop a full game that can be played. Release it so we can play it, and then tell me it is easy to do. Your ignorance is blinding and you really shouldn't be trying to speak to a subject you know very little about.

I would say modders have 100% of the work done for them.

All they are doing is adding or swapping out content.

Not to put down modders, but their crowing means nothing to me. They do come out with great ideas, but said great ideas are built off of someone else work - which, as already noted, is worth millions of dollars AND years and years of work.

Some developers evem make the modding software extremely user friendly.

So, the only thing I can think that would a modder look great, is if they used the mod to pitch/demo their own IP to a developer/publisher.

Actually i've coded short games in 2d and 3d using RPGMaker, C# and Dark Basic. The first i'll admit is hardly point but the later 2 are full object oriented programing languages. My point is this though. In about 16 hours i can create a new IP, and it would be playable, in a week roughly have a short demo out.

I can do this all on a budge of less then $100 and it's 90% polished. So why is it studios with orders of magnitude more staff, resorces, and people doing this as their job not free time, and will access to the same languages i use can't get something as simple a not getting stuck in a wall (Torchlight) or lip synching (Champions) in a pre rendered CGI.

Hell Daz 3d with Mimic cost less then $100, and auto lip synces audio to imported models. Were not taking lip synch in real time it's PRE rendered and streamed like a youtube vid and a giant company like Cryptic/Atari can't get that right?

Metal gear solid 1-4 were big name titles, uncharted 1 and 2 are big name titles, god of war is a big name title, world of warcraft/starcraft/diablo are all big name titles, battlefield 2 and a hundred others are all big name titles and I love those games and think they are of great quality.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being a big name game or developer on some games, and alot of the time the big budget super titles suck terribly.

Then again I have seen alot of mods that were god awful. Most of them are just "Yeah lets do super mario brothers on the source engine" or "Yeah lets take this game and put zombies in it". Most mods are trash with some exceptions like killing floor which is fun.

So there are some really good big name titles and mods, and there are also alot of shit big name games and mods.

To just automatically assume big name sucks and mods rule is very short sighted.