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id Tech 4 (Doom3/Prey/Q4) => id Tech 4 Discussion => Topic started by: aphexjh on October 24, 2014, 01:05:03 PM

Title: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: aphexjh on October 24, 2014, 01:05:03 PM
I was just wondering why mods are usually made for existing properties.  For instance, Hexen: EOC, Arx: End of the Sun, Dark Mod, Shamblers Castle, Bladeghost's recent incredible works and others I can't think of, all are based on already established IP's and universes. Why is this?

There are exceptions, some of BloodRayne's mods come to mind.  Obviously Quadrilateral Cowboy and Phaeton, are other notable exceptions, but maybe I should be making a distinction between full games and total conversions at this point.

Is there something about the various usage licenses of doom 3 that makes people uncertain about putting there own ideas out there? Are authors afraid they won't be able to protect their IP?

I have been thinking about games like Team Fortress, Portal, Stanley Parable, etc. that started out as mods and then became (successful) full games. And the workshop system on steam, that allows artists and designers make their hobbies into jobs.  I would like to see the mods in the Id tech community, go from mod to full game, and I am just wondering if there is something in the way of that, other than the work of rewriting scripts etc.

One possibility I can think of is that some of you may work in the game industry, or be under a non-compete contract, which would explain why you don't want to violate that and openly develop a project, just to have it contested.

Another reason might be that people can get others to help them if they have a common interest, like a great old game they want to see revived, to get behind. But having been reading your posts for a long time, it seems obvious that many of you are capable of creating a smaller game experience on your own, which makes it even more of a shame that if you want to take your project to steam for publishing, you would be violating copyright in doing so.

Anyway, please share your thoughts and happy modding.



Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: The Happy Friar on October 24, 2014, 02:51:02 PM
Established IP's bring more players in.  You can make a class based team game, or you can make a TF clone.  One will get you more players, one won't. 

Established IP's already have 1/2 the job of making a mod done: the design of the assets.  Want an Aliens mod?  Just look at the movies, books, images, etc. and based your assets on those.  Want a mod where you find hordes of monsters?  Design the monsters, then start where the people making the Aliens mod started and be behind.

Established IP's can be a lot of fun.  Watching the movie Aliens and liking it would (most likely) make you want to simulate the situation in the movie with your buddies (Aliens Doom did this best imho).  You can't get that with a brand new IP, unless you do all sorts of media which costs more time.

You can already be a fan of an established IP and want to make a fan project.  The Aliens and Predator universe has lots of fan stories & art, mods would be the next step.  Still an IP owned by someone other then you though, so if the owner doesn't want you stepping on their toes you should say "ok".

Originals are very fun though.  Steel Storm: BR & it's DLC are awesome.  I tell anyone who likes top down shooters to get it.  I also recommend Flotilla by Blendo Games and, if you want a good short story, Thirty Flights of Loving.  That's why I'm excited about more stuff by those creators, the current stuff is fun.   
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 24, 2014, 04:01:39 PM
Quote from: The Happy Friar on October 24, 2014, 02:51:02 PM
Established IP's already have 1/2 the job of making a mod done: the design of the assets.  Want an Aliens mod?  Just look at the movies, books, images, etc. and based your assets on those.  Want a mod where you find hordes of monsters?  Design the monsters, then start where the people making the Aliens mod started and be behind.

Agree. Coming up with original design that makes at least some sense is not easy.

Quote from: The Happy Friar on October 24, 2014, 02:51:02 PM
Originals are very fun though.  Steel Storm: BR & it's DLC are awesome.  I tell anyone who likes top down shooters to get it.  I also recommend Flotilla by Blendo Games and, if you want a good short story, Thirty Flights of Loving.  That's why I'm excited about more stuff by those creators, the current stuff is fun.

Thank THF :) One day I would like to make Steel Storm 1.5 (better version of SS:BR) using our new engine :D
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 24, 2014, 04:03:11 PM
Quote from: aphexjh on October 24, 2014, 01:05:03 PM
... and Steel Storm 2, are other notable exceptions ....

Thanks man. Although it's Phaeton. Steel Storm 2 was a working title ;)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: oneofthe8devilz on October 25, 2014, 04:59:41 AM
Just like you once said yourself, it is exponentially more comfortable to be "standing on the shoulders of giants" compared to "be the giant yourself".

Of course I think it is safe to say, that it is the dream of every indie/hobby developer to completely build a project from scratch, but once you get down to how the sausage is being made, you quickly realize, that there is a reason why games like Doom3 took 4-5 years to develop.

Now when we take a look at the credits (http://www.allgame.com/game.php?id=38989&tab=credits) list of Doom3, I count roughly a number of at least a 100 names. Now not everyone on that list was working on the game over the entire dev period so let's take that list-count and divide it by 3.

That way we get to a number of roughly 30 guys. 30 guys working on Doom3 for roughly 4 years. Simple math tells you that the work of over 120 man-years has been invested into Doom3.

So let's pretend for a second I would be as skilled as all the guys at id software (which certainly no single individual can be) and wanted to develop something like MCS (http://www.moddb.com/mods/mars-city-security) completely by myself from scratch. So it would take a single superiorly talented person roughly 120 years just to develop Doom3.

On top of that, the work that went into MCS by the community (http://www.scared-pixel-studios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=565) would needed to be added, which are also several years of work and research.

So IMO it becomes obvious really quick, why modders tend to stick to modding rather than going fully commercial/independent.

It simply is a question of what is technically and economically feasible.

Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 25, 2014, 11:00:46 AM
The thing is you don't have to go for Doom 3 complexity/quantity on art level. If it's an action/adventure (3-rd/1-st person) game, the code is there for the most part. Just figure out interesting gameplay and make simpler art in lesser quantity and it won't take 10+ years to make. And regardless, usually 3D (even 2D) games made by small teams. It's a collective effort.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: aphexjh on October 25, 2014, 02:08:36 PM
Motorstep has a point here, smaller teams make most games. Devilz, its true that we have the advantage of a lot of pre-made assets and stuff, when we are using doom 3 as a base, but everything is there for us to make our own, and if you continue to use those assets, that will keep you in mod-land, but for someone like Bladeghost, he buys and makes a lot of his assets, so if they weren't based on alien or preditor, he could likely sell those games for money.

My main point is that, many of the designers here, can make a simpler game, that they could potentially sell for a few <currency> and likely sustain themselves partially on that income. So I know that I am not a genius for thinking of that, I imagine other people have thought of this.  My question more broadly is what is standing between people taking their projects to market right now?  Things don't need to be 180 hours of gameplay.  I'll pay a smaller amount for Stanely Parable, and I don't know if you ever played that game or not, but there isn't a lot going on, someone like bkt could definitely pull that off, and very likely zombie could as well.  More to the point, that is what i want to see.  I want to see these guys make these small gameplay experiences, and I want to pay for them.

So motorstep, you will probably know this, what do people need to do to legally distribute their own game based on the gpl BFG or whichever?  They need a compiled engine to use, and they need their assets.  What about libraries, I know a lot of these engines require external libraries to compile, do these dependencies pose a potential problem to developers who want to sell their games?
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 25, 2014, 02:58:30 PM
Quote from: aphexjh on October 25, 2014, 02:08:36 PM
So motorstep, you will probably know this, what do people need to do to legally distribute their own game based on the gpl BFG or whichever?  They need a compiled engine to use, and they need their assets.  What about libraries, I know a lot of these engines require external libraries to compile, do these dependencies pose a potential problem to developers who want to sell their games?

You'd need someone to distribute your game on Steam, as they are getting away with Greenlight (unless they'll make it free-for-all deal). You'd need to be clever about PR and marketing. Nowadays it's not really about making a game, it's about overall product-service and marketing. Market is quite saturated.

From the technical standpoint you need nothing but GPL engine, solid design and a small team (programmer and artist at least). We don't use any external libs on Windows. Just whatever comes with the system, like DX and XAudio. On Linux it's OpenAL / SDL2. That's all. RBDoom 3 BFG uses FFmpeg, and that might be an issue.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BielBdeLuna on October 25, 2014, 07:56:01 PM
according to wikipedia FFMPEG is LGPL if You don't include support for AAC audio in it's internal libraries, if you do it you're in LGPL territory, therefore you're free to go. and I bet that if you don't include any Bink videos you're even freer (but I don't know the specifics in-between Bink, FFMPEG, and LGPL)

so technically you're at least GPL all the way.

the level of complexity of the assets depends on the project, a fantasy or sci-fi project will require a level of design that a current-world project won't.

a single individual will have more work than a community sharing efforts.

maybe the worst case scenario is remaking the scripting and the defs (doors, triggers, lights...) that should be there if you don't want to redistribute idSoftware asserts, but that kind of work should be easier to be accomplished by a community than by a single individual.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 25, 2014, 08:49:58 PM
Quote from: BielBdeLuna on October 25, 2014, 07:56:01 PM
according to wikipedia FFMPEG is LGPL if You don't include support for AAC audio in it's internal libraries, if you do it you're in LGPL territory, therefore you're free to go. and I bet that if you don't include any Bink videos you're even freer (but I don't know the specifics in-between Bink, FFMPEG, and LGPL)

You can't use Bink without licensing it (at least to encode videos). Using libav (part of the FFmpeg I recall) to encode/decode mp4 videos is illegal without obtaining license for h.264 codec. So while FFmpeg itself is LGPL, it all depends what format you are going to use. Since most of the cinematics nowadays done in-engine (as no one wants to see prerendered cinematics in quality less that what Blizzard offers), and Doom 3 is well suited for it, I don't see a need to risk it. That's why we went back to RoQ. Made it high res, and can use it in a few places, like logo and some tiny videos that can be really simple.

Quote from: BielBdeLuna on October 25, 2014, 07:56:01 PM
a single individual will have more work than a community sharing efforts.

If aphexjh is talking about commercial game dev, community shouldn't really be involved as far as supplying assets and making core design decisions. Legal liability and copyright mess. Better reserve community for modding your game :)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BloodRayne on October 26, 2014, 04:10:12 AM
Quote from: aphexjh on October 24, 2014, 01:05:03 PM
I was just wondering why mods are usually made for existing properties.  For instance, Hexen: EOC, Arx: End of the Sun, Dark Mod, Shamblers Castle, Bladeghost's recent incredible works and others I can't think of, all are based on already established IP's and universes. Why is this?

There are exceptions, some of BloodRayne's mods come to mind.  Obviously Quadrilateral Cowboy and Phaeton, are other notable exceptions, but maybe I should be making a distinction between full games and total conversions at this point.

Is there something about the various usage licenses of doom 3 that makes people uncertain about putting there own ideas out there? Are authors afraid they won't be able to protect their IP?

I have been thinking about games like Team Fortress, Portal, Stanley Parable, etc. that started out as mods and then became (successful) full games. And the workshop system on steam, that allows artists and designers make their hobbies into jobs.  I would like to see the mods in the Id tech community, go from mod to full game, and I am just wondering if there is something in the way of that, other than the work of rewriting scripts etc.

One possibility I can think of is that some of you may work in the game industry, or be under a non-compete contract, which would explain why you don't want to violate that and openly develop a project, just to have it contested.

Another reason might be that people can get others to help them if they have a common interest, like a great old game they want to see revived, to get behind. But having been reading your posts for a long time, it seems obvious that many of you are capable of creating a smaller game experience on your own, which makes it even more of a shame that if you want to take your project to steam for publishing, you would be violating copyright in doing so.

Anyway, please share your thoughts and happy modding.

It's funny you took Hexen and my mods as an example, considering I started the Hexen:Edge of Chaos total conversion back then. :)

So in answer for that particular TC, it was very simple. I had wanted a new Hexen game for a long time and it wasn't coming any time soon. I was in contact at the time with Raven software and a lawyer from ID and several other people connected to the franchise. The basic issue is this: Everyone that was involved back then with Hexen/Heretic adores the franchise. And they all want a new game, but the pressure is so high on it that no one ever came up with a format that they felt would work for all those involved. It was very much loved, but also very controversial (much like Quake was at the time).

I wasn't planning on a Hexen TC at all, I had only made the wraithverge as a proof of concept. Screenshots of that little mod ended up on Brian Raffel's monitor, he forwarded those to his staff and my mailbox exploded with emails from Raven explaining how they loved the mod and were hoping to see more. So in the case of Hexen, the Total Conversion was actually planned and started because of positive feedback from the original creators.

(http://s30.postimg.org/4yv5lukal/wv01.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/4yv5lukal/)

(http://s30.postimg.org/rc2w8nl8d/wv02.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/rc2w8nl8d/)

But in hindsight I am far, far, far more proud of Grimm as it is completely my own from beginning to end. Everything from the monsters to the world to the story is my own 'IP' so to say and I can't describe how good that feels, for that alone I consider Grimm a huge success.

The thing is that Hexen had a big audience, but it's an existing audience. In the end I wasn't entirely sure people were liking it for nostalgic reasons or for it's quality. I wasn't even sure if we'd have an audience with this mod if it hadn't had the name Hexen.

Grimm showed me that you can get a 'big' audience based solely on the merits of the game and not it's name and that feels plain good.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: nbohr1more on October 26, 2014, 12:42:50 PM
I think it comes down to the ability to draw in developers to a common cause.

With an existing IP, you don't need to convince other developers that your dream idea is one that they
should help come to fruition. The IP already indicates the intended end result and sets up the creative
goal-posts and boundaries. For "The Dark Mod" you know it's going to be set in an alternate historical
era, that the main game-play focus will be stealth, and that the characters of the world will act in ways
considered to be orthodox to the Thief game series. With all that narrowly defined, there is far less room
for the developers to argue about. Nobody joining the project will suddenly go "this isn't working, let's
add Laser guns to the player arsenal and have the AI antagonists drive tanks around the city." Which
is what often happens with brand new IP's. All the contributors feel they have a stake and as time goes
on, developers will start to demand their personal vision of the end-result changes the scope of the project
or it's very nature. Even with these strictures in-place, The Dark Mod team have had many disagreements
and have even lost developers or content contributors over differences about the nature of what TDM
is and "should be".

That said, I have seen quite a few original IP ideas from the Doom 3 community. They simply don't get the press
coverage that "existing IP" mods do.

Examples:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/pathways-redux

http://www.moddb.com/mods/ruiner

http://www.moddb.com/mods/daze

Also, if you count Doom 3 as the "existing IP" that more or less answers your question. By definition, most
"mods" are just a slightly altered version of the game they came from. I think you could agree that stuff
like "Phobos", or "Doom 3: Evolution" is more akin to original work than some group aping an existing IP, no?
Even these types of mods, which should be a natural extension of the demographic for Doom 3, get poor
coverage.

I guess that comes down to the fact that Doom 3 vanilla was not widely admired by the FPS community.
It had more of a niche appeal that crossed over into survival horror fans. The Doom 3 modding community has
spent a great deal of effort trying to "fix" Doom 3 itself. Some of the fixes, were targeted at the perceived shortcomings
of the visuals compared to light-mapped titles (hence the explosion of shader mods shortly after release), some
were game-play tweaks, and ultimately the most well received mods were like "Classic Doom 3" or "in Hell" where the map
layout and game-style was more about being a balls-to-the-walls FPS blaster rather than the (somewhat) nuanced survival
horror ways of Doom 3.

A final take is that modders looking at Doom 3's asset base often overlooked the organic "Hell" assets and focused on
the sci-fi assets that make up the majority of the game. With that perspective, much of what could've been done with
the game was waylay-ed in favor of seeing the platform as only being a good fit for claustrophobic "Aliens" style mods which
would be hard to distinguish from minor Doom 3 tweak mods. The modding community mostly wrote-off Doom 3 save
a dedicated elite coding crew who knew that it had far more potential than it was given credit for. These folks posted
all sorts of ingenuity at Doom3world but almost none of it was adopted by actual mod-game designers.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 26, 2014, 01:00:03 PM
Doom 3 sold  3.5 million copies by 2007 (per Wikipedia). And I bet sold more by today, through Amazon and Steam. So if that number means Doom 3 wasn't admired by FPS community, I don't what it means to be admired o.O

There are many factors why Doom 3 modding didn't take of as Quake / Quake 2, but it's all irrelevant to the topic :)

The fact is it's easier to build hype using existing IP (especially a cult one, well known), it's infinitely easier to build something using existing content and existing framework. Whether it's easier to get people involved into existing IP mod or brand new game is questionable, especially nowadays, and especially using an obscure technology.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: solarsplace on October 27, 2014, 08:53:42 AM
Quote from: aphexjh on October 24, 2014, 01:05:03 PM
I was just wondering why mods are usually made for existing properties.  For instance, Hexen: EOC, Arx: End of the Sun, Dark Mod, Shamblers Castle, Bladeghost's recent incredible works and others I can't think of, all are based on already established IP's and universes. Why is this?

...snip


Hi aphexjh & all

With regard to Arx End Of Sun:

The idea for the game / mod / total conversion came about before ever using IDTech4. So rather than having already produced any kind of mod for the engine and trying to come up with a popular idea for a future mod - this mod came about because I loved Arkane Studios "Arx Fatalis" (http://www.arkane-studios.com/uk/arx.php) so much I specifically wanted more content based on the magical world of the original game.

Being a programmer who always wanted to make a real 3d game and having made some maps for Half Life and Quake 3 that were no way near good enough to release. I thought how hard is this going to be? - so we asked permission from Arkane who gave the go ahead with strict conditions not to sell it and off we went...

If only I knew then what I know now...

The established IP that the mod is based on never seemed to attract much attention on Doom3world in its time. We have gained a few followers on ModDB and I suspect it has only been noticed on this new fine forum due to the early stages of the forum and relativly few posters. I would imagine a dungeon crawling RPG is not really a typical interest of first person shooter gamer in general.

Thats the kind of background on the IP basis. Hope it kind of answered the question.

Cheers
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 27, 2014, 10:20:12 AM
Quote from: solarsplace on October 27, 2014, 08:53:42 AM
The established IP that the mod is based on never seemed to attract much attention on Doom3world in its time. We have gained a few followers on ModDB and I suspect it has only been noticed on this new fine forum due to the early stages of the forum and relativly few posters. I would imagine a dungeon crawling RPG is not really a typical interest of first person shooter gamer in general.

You should promote your game on the following forums:

http://forum.rpg.net/
http://www.rpgwatch.com/
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php

The second and the third link is where we got more interest for Tomes of Mephistopheles when it was in works.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: solarsplace on October 27, 2014, 11:01:20 AM
Hi motorsep

Many thanks for the links, much appreciated.

Cheers
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: aphexjh on October 27, 2014, 12:13:28 PM
First off, it occurs to me that I might have been a bit judgmental in the original post. I don't mean to minimize the important and amazing things that people have contributed to this community, so I want to emphasize how much I appreciate all the great mods you all have worked on. This community, (e.g. doom3world, mod wiki, etc) has really meant a lot to me in the last 8-9 years, so you all deserve my respect and thanks. Thank you.

Quote from: solarsplace on October 27, 2014, 08:53:42 AM
We have gained a few followers on ModDB and I suspect it has only been noticed on this new fine forum due to the early stages of the forum and relativly few posters.
I have been aware of your mod for a long time, since doom3world, it has always looked promising. Your reply was helpful, yes, thank you.  I mentioned it in the original post because your team has put so much work into the mod that it bears mentioning. Keep up the great work.

Quote from: nbohr1more on October 26, 2014, 12:42:50 PM
A final take is that modders looking at Doom 3's asset base often overlooked the organic "Hell" assets and focused on
the sci-fi assets that make up the majority of the game. With that perspective, much of what could've been done with
the game was waylay-ed in favor of seeing the platform as only being a good fit for claustrophobic "Aliens" style mods which
would be hard to distinguish from minor Doom 3 tweak mods. The modding community mostly wrote-off Doom 3 save
a dedicated elite coding crew who knew that it had far more potential than it was given credit for. These folks posted
all sorts of ingenuity at Doom3world but almost none of it was adopted by actual mod-game designers.
nbohr1more, thank you for your reply.  There are so many things I would like to talk about in response to your post. The assets and existing game, which are very alien-like, do lend themselves toward that style of gameplay and level design.  I don't think it has been written-off, but i take your meaning, and I agree that Doom 3 does not benefit from the same audience numbers as some other communities, which has a lot of effects.
There is another thing, that is not immediately apparent from the outside, which is that doom 3 is designed with an almost minimal design aesthetic, which lends itself to people familiar with coding, but will likely alienate primarily artistic people, who are obviously a very necessary part of the equation.
Quote from: nbohr1more on October 26, 2014, 12:42:50 PMWith an existing IP, you don't need to convince other developers that your dream idea is one that they should help come to fruition.
Wow, this, so much this.  I am sad to say that this is one of the most relaxing aspects of working alone.  I have worked on a few teams, mostly smaller games using unity3d for school, but it infuriates me so much when someone doesn't show up to meeting for 2 weeks and then says they don't like the game anymore, or they talked to their Uncle Virgil and he thinks the character should be a cyborg. Guess what Virgil, I don't give a fuck.
Quote from: BloodRayne on October 26, 2014, 04:10:12 AM
Grimm showed me that you can get a 'big' audience based solely on the merits of the game and not it's name and that feels plain good.
BR, really awesome post here, such a great insight into the Hexen mod, I love all the work you guys have done. Its a shame that the old forum was dissembled, it would have been an interesting read/resource. Obviously you don't need me to tell you that you have made some amazing mods. I think its natural to enjoy something that comes from your imagination more than recreating something that already exists, but this is coming from someone who spent many days remaking CS maps, so it's all about what motivates the individual. I don't know if you have heard of the tests done on Orb weaver spiders with lysergic acid or certain blood serums, but I find them to be a profound corollary of my own behavior, so that is probably worth mentioning here. Thanks for the reply.

BielBdeLuna and Motorstep, those are the things I was concerned about, but it sounds like that shouldn't be much or an issue. If there is anything I can do as a modeler or artist to help you guys make a safe release of the engine, please let me know.

Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on October 25, 2014, 04:59:41 AM
Just like you once said yourself, it is exponentially more comfortable to be "standing on the shoulders of giants" compared to "be the giant yourself".
...
That way we get to a number of roughly 30 guys. 30 guys working on Doom3 for roughly 4 years. Simple math tells you that the work of over 120 man-years has been invested into Doom3.
I think that making a shorter and more interesting experience is feasible, and I think there might be a market for it. It's when I try to make a magnum opus, on the level of Doom 3 itself that I get into trouble. I do think there is a benefit to working with the stock assets as a base, not having to create enemy and mover behavior and a library of functions from scratch is what makes doom 3 modding (and all modding) so fun. So if the motivation is to create a beautiful and engaging experience with a similar visceral core to Doom 3, I think that the parts are all there. MCS and Venture videos look really awesome. Thank you for all your guidance over the years.
Quote from: The Happy Friar on October 24, 2014, 02:51:02 PM
Originals are very fun though.  Steel Storm: BR & it's DLC are awesome.  I tell anyone who likes top down shooters to get it.  I also recommend Flotilla by Blendo Games and, if you want a good short story, Thirty Flights of Loving.  That's why I'm excited about more stuff by those creators, the current stuff is fun.   
Thanks Friar, you're right, and you are also right about the popular IP's bring in players, I just want people to get money for their work. That's what I am getting at. There are ways in other engines for content creators to make money doing what they love, I want that for Doom 3.

Friar, I would like it if you did more contests, like some of the mapping and weapon contests you have given in the past.  We could think of it as a Id-Tech 4 Mod-Jam. Well, its just an idea, but I would like it.  Thanks again for this forum.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 27, 2014, 12:36:52 PM
Quote from: BloodRayne on October 26, 2014, 04:10:12 AM
Grimm showed me that you can get a 'big' audience based solely on the merits of the game and not it's name and that feels plain good.

How big is Grimm's audience ? Can you reach your audience directly ?
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BloodRayne on October 27, 2014, 02:50:26 PM
Quote from: motorsep on October 27, 2014, 12:36:52 PM
Quote from: BloodRayne on October 26, 2014, 04:10:12 AM
Grimm showed me that you can get a 'big' audience based solely on the merits of the game and not it's name and that feels plain good.

How big is Grimm's audience ? Can you reach your audience directly ?

I have about 40 visitors per day. 137k views since I started the mod on Moddb. I basically consider my followers those that subscribed which is steady at 280. I once did a massive e-mail and marketing campaign to all indie sites and game sites, but only 3 of say 30 mails were answered and resulted in posts on the net. I have around 4500 downloads for the mod on Moddb, I can't measure other sources, but I know there's some mod sites out there that are releasing it with similar numbers (Moddb isn't that popular). It's also available on Desura, I have no numbers from that either.

The Linux release really created a big audience, when it became known that it ran on Linux it instantly popped up on many Linux gaming websites. But after the 'final' release the audience staled, which was a big let down for me. The last release was radically better than the first, but some of the audience had already left, not patient enough for all the new maps and features.

I used the 'minimum viable product' approach with Grimm, releasing something as soon as I could. That worked well at first, but it's not a good thing for a fresh IP and product. You can't get people to stay and hold out during development that way if there isn't something inherently binding them to the product. That approach would have been great for Hexen, but not for Grimm. I should have waited the months and kept it secret until release, then should have released it with a large bang.

Which is what I'm doing with my next release. :)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 27, 2014, 03:00:18 PM
Once momentum is lost, it's virtually impossible to get it back :(

Btw, I am surprised to hear Moddb isn't popular. I actually was hoping it would be one place where I could get some numbers :/

What are the other alternatives to Moddb out there  ?
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BielBdeLuna on October 27, 2014, 07:09:17 PM
no one has tried yet a crowd-sourced approach,which could be that connection that Bloodrayne spoke about.

besides, @Motorsep, you can create a GPL-comercial game, so this way the community can be involved.
No need then to claim any copyright then, as long as the content the community creates is fully GPL your content can be proprietary if you want (that means, to receive a different legal treatment that the content from the community)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 27, 2014, 07:35:33 PM
Quote from: BielBdeLuna on October 27, 2014, 07:09:17 PM
no one has tried yet a crowd-sourced approach,which could be that connection that Bloodrayne spoke about.

besides, @Motorsep, you can create a GPL-comercial game, so this way the community can be involved.
No need then to claim any copyright then, as long as the content the community creates is fully GPL your content can be proprietary if you want (that means, to receive a different legal treatment that the content from the community)

History doesn't have any successful examples for 100% GPL games. There is no incentive to pay for those games when they out as it's all legal to download it for free.

What if 50 people participated. How are you gonna share the profit ?  What if 49 people assume it's non-paid contribution, but 1 asks for money, and then the rest 49 realize they were ripped off.. It's an awful mess, Sir.

So while, yes you can make 100% GPL commercial game, it will not succeed.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BielBdeLuna on October 28, 2014, 05:38:17 AM
you can't apply the copyright mentality to GPL, with GPL you're free to use the "thing" as long as a rule is met (usually involves giving credit, and sharing with the same freedom of copy it came out with)
The author of a GPL "thing" can't change the legal framework of the distributed "thing" once it's distributed, at least not with the current copy of the distributed "thing", he can distribute other copies with a different legal framework, but then it will only apply to that copy no to all (that's the case of OpenAL 1.0 being GPL and the next versions of OpenAL not being GPL).

one has to be responsible of his own actions, therefore, you can't ask for money (feeling ripped off) if you distributed your "thing" within a GPL legal framework

so someone wants to gain money if they share their assets with you? they ask for it, so you end up with a clear list of who wants money an who don't, you could also ask to whatever author of a GPL "thing" you're using (which you should be collecting a list of authors for giving due credits anyway) if they want money from you on grounds of using their authored content, not because you're forced to ( because you're not, it's GPL replicable content) but because you want to be in good relations with those same authors (which in the future could create a new "thing" which you could be really interested)

I think you should look at it more from the point of view of exclusivity. if you use GPL content you're accepting that whatever is GPL in your project can be used by others also, therefore it's not exclusive to your project. you want exclusivity you use copyrighted/proprietary "things", whether it's code or assets, they won't be replicable without your consent, but for the good and for the bad (people won't be able to look at the code to repair whatever works badly, or to adapt it to newer platforms in the future)

so it's up to you, there is no law stopping you.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BloodRayne on October 28, 2014, 07:45:42 AM
Quote from: motorsep on October 27, 2014, 03:00:18 PM
Once momentum is lost, it's virtually impossible to get it back :(

Btw, I am surprised to hear Moddb isn't popular. I actually was hoping it would be one place where I could get some numbers :/

What are the other alternatives to Moddb out there  ?

Only one thing: Contacts.

You need contacts in the media or the industry, preferably both. Nothing else than that besides a miracle lucky shot (minecraft, counterstrike etc..) can help you towards the big leagues. And for that you need to stand out, have luck, be at the right place at the right time, say the right things at the right time and get the funds you need at the right time with the right people available.

As for numbers, you get those when you hit a sweet spot, don't ask me, I didn't hit it yet. But I imagine it must be something towards the Linux thing. I think that Linux (and to a lesser extent) Mac games are a big (not untouched but not saturated either) market. Your best bet would be to target that audience, or follow the mobile hype that's going on with Android and such.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: Bladeghost on October 29, 2014, 01:30:31 AM
There's a lot I like to say on the subject and the first post...Washing Dishes sucks!, if I could've made money on any of my mods I'd be grateful. It's also a lot of work for one person to create a work of art that gets attention. even teams struggle. I'm losing track here..
but yeah, idtech4 is great stuff, sad more can't understand it. one thing I think is the bones in entities facing all in one direction that scares most folks interested in developing stuff and are too accustomed to the bi-ped from 3dsmax. in some cases not all I believe but a simple skeleton for characters and things it may seem too complicated. for most it can be without proper instruction on how to use the tech, yet once learned it's amazing stuff limited by imagination. I still believe it's a great platform to make art with other than unrealengine, unity,or even source. so making your own game and making some food money is nice but doesn't usually happen unless a console disk is made and sold in stores. anything digital or on a computer and always can be reproduced, hence copy and paste. it's a base function that's common for all. if it's on the net anyone can get it. if it's available no matter what it is electronically
(media, music, images, etc...) If I wasn't so overtired I'd probably make more sense, however I'd like to make a living doing what I love to do and that's working with digital art. and painting on the computer with sense and accomplishment, It's good therapy to build something whatever it is, on a computer out of wood or metal. now to get paid for that is something that one never knows.
working on projects with this tech still presents 2 things.
1. it's idtech we did not build it. id did. great to use and works well.
2. using content that others have made before. (I believe it's always easy to copy something, then being original comes from within and seeing it through and hope it works. it's risky and tricky as not everyone can do that. I dread a star wars D3 mod as I don't really care for Starwars, just an example (using other content than your own) as an experiment or hobby for self challenge, creating a commercial product from the beginning matters in the beginning. sure I'd like to make a game I could earn money from, it's a difficult endeavor to be a computer (game) maker and make a living unless the right elements are in place to do so. my mods I made them because I wanted to and was happy to share them with everyone. funny how some wound up on filefront and megagames without my knowledge or permission for download of my latest project.  I'll write back when I get some rest but that's been a few things that comes to mind.
Happy cheers everyone....
:o

edit:
I like idtech4 over other engines because it works. short sweet and simple. I know nothing about mobile games, fartphones or portable programs. using idtech4 as your own game platform is a great tech but would have to use D3 as a base (basic stuff only of course to build from) as it has everything one could need. I still feel there are still restrictions even with gpl to commercial with your own stuff . but using other property has to be used carefully, like with I have with my mods.
some have restrictions, try making a battlestar galactica mod, I have and it's not allowed. go figure. anyways make great stuff everyone no matter what and be artistic in all you do.  haytime..  ^-^
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 29, 2014, 09:30:54 AM
This isn't a personal attack on mighty Bladeghost (mighty because he is awesome :) ), but an attempt to clarify things from an angle of modern times, if I may say so, and since Bladeghost brought up these points, I am quoting him for clarify purposes.

Quote from: Bladeghost on October 29, 2014, 01:30:31 AM
... idtech4 is great stuff, sad more can't understand it. one thing I think is the bones in entities facing all in one direction that scares most folks interested in developing stuff and are too accustomed to the bi-ped from 3dsmax. in some cases not all I believe but a simple skeleton for characters and things it may seem too complicated. for most it can be without proper instruction on how to use the tech....

idTech 4 is great in a sense that it's all real-time, all formats are ascii and can be understood if new tools need to be made. The greatness of idtech 4 ends there. Nowadays, hardly a few people willing to work with it because tools are lacking, animation system is ancient, code is heavily duplicated, something that middleware does better is done mediocre in idtech 4 (networking, physics, animation system, sound, etc.) compare to UE4 / Unity / CE3+. So neither programmers nor artist willing to waste their time with the engine. It doesn't add much to their portfolio for once, and it also pain to work with after working with UE4 / Unity / CE3+, especially on the art side.

So while I am nostalgic too, and still work with BFG engine (although heavily modified and with all tools being stable), I have no misconception about other engines, that were mentioned (except Source), allowing to get stuff done faster, more efficiently.

Any engine requires understanding. It's just there is no good reason for many devs / artists to understand/use idTech platform. If Prey 2 was released, and was great, and had a mod kit / SDK, then things might have been different. So the only people who stick with idTech are fans, old school modders, or handful of indie devs.

Quote from: Bladeghost on October 29, 2014, 01:30:31 AMI still believe it's a great platform to make art with other than unrealengine, unity,or even source. so making your own game and making some food money is nice but doesn't usually happen unless a console disk is made and sold in stores. anything digital or on a computer and always can be reproduced, hence copy and paste. it's a base function that's common for all. if it's on the net anyone can get it. if it's available no matter what it is electronically (media, music, images, etc...)

Eeh, for a loooooong time retail (disks) drags behind digital content. Everything is on Steam / consoles online stores. Most of the stuff is digital nowadays before it's easier to DRM it. Sure AAA titles still come out on disks for consoles, but pretty soon that will be over. Publishers have gotten tired of used games markets, and that is something you can prevent going digital.

So thinking you can only make money with console games on disks is a massive misconception. Making living as an indie game dev is not only possible, it's been done several times by quite a few devs, me including, without having any publishers.

You can't stop piracy, so to be realistic, you just don't count pirates as your customers. There has been a numerous articles written about it. Your customers are your customers, and pirates are sales that would have never happen anyway. So you don't lose money with piracy. Creating a service around the game is a way to persuade people who are borderline pirates ("casual copiers") to buy your game, during sales or at full price. The times when you could make a game, toss it out to the customers and be done with it are long gone.

So in short, do you have to release on consoles on disks to make a living - no; can you make a decent to great living with PC-only-digital-only-games - yes, very much so.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: aphexjh on October 29, 2014, 01:41:03 PM
It would be nice if Id Tech 4 could offer a cheap or free alternative to teams and designers, that didn't want license fees or royalties cutting into their profit, that could potentially build interest in it as a platform. That is undermined in some ways by not allowing developers certain protections under the GPL, since they will have to provide the source upon release of their product, which would make pirating the game quite simple. It might also introduce vulnerabilities in the security of their software, particularly if it has any networking components. Now there are definitely arguments to be made against me here and I welcome them, since I really don't know much about open source development paradigms, so please educate me.

As to it being old, lots of things are old, lots of things are clunky compared to more modern engines and tools, but people still play games from different era's and based on older technology because those things have something unique to offer. Something about a sprite-based game is still satisfying, and I don't think it ends with nostalgia, though it may. Id tech has always had something that makes it satisfying, it could be the way the engines are tuned, I don't know.  Obviously there is something about them, since companies like Valve and others still use them as a foundations and their games make money and are generally well received. Obviously the doom 3 engine is an exception to this in some ways, but I am not sure why that is.

As to what is best in your portfolio, if you are aiming at being an artist, pick an engine that is comfortable to you and displays your art in the best way. If you make 3d art, that will probably be one of the modern engines.  I emailed a game dev a long time ago asking for pointers to getting hired as a level designer, and he said this:

Quote"doom 3 isn't so widely used in the industry, but the package isn't a dealbreaker.  software can be learned, and if you can become proficient in one engine, you can become proficient in another.  having said that, if you can find out what software your target companies use, and make yourself familiar with it, that can only stand in your favour.  a lot of companies use unreal 3, so that's a good place to concentrate some effort."

As I said this was some 4 years ago, but I think it probably makes less sense now to use tech 4 from a AAA perspective, but then again, it depends what you want to show. Obviously the IW engines and the Doom 3 engine have a fair amount in common, so its not totally irrelevant to show brush-based or scripting proficiency in Doom 3, but I think the point is what you are showing.  If you can show something interesting, creative and evocative in any engine, then that will help you, but if you require less training in a companies engine, that will also help.

I think the larger issue here, and call me out if I need to grab the ol' tinfoil hat, is that ideas are valuable.  Companies want ideas, modders make ideas and give them away, but they should think of themselves as developers and try to get paid for them. Who gets paid for ideas is largely dependent on who has access to distribution and media channels, which might be easier to access if you have lots of money. This is one aspect of Valve's economics I really like, they loop the external components of their game system into the profits, that has worked wonders for their recent games and I would like to see more of it for id tech 4.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 29, 2014, 02:15:19 PM
There is no difference between pirating games using GPL engine and non-GPL-engine games. Please don't mix up "GPL game" and "game using GPL engine". Lack of DRM in game using GPL-engine  (although you can still DRM them externally or via Steam) makes it easier to copy casually. But no amount of DRM will stop pirates releasing it 2 days later on torrents.

I've yet to see an indie game (or non-MMO game) which was used to take down server / steal data via its unsecure networking. One can ass OpenSSL to idTech 4 networking protocol to be safer, but really, most games don't have anything like that. Only games with microtransactions take network security measures.

Making commercial games is about efficiency. Old tech, new tech, etc. doesn't matter. What matters is tools, and assembling team who will embrace the tech. So far it was quite hard for me to convince people to use idTech 4, because it doesn't add weight to portfolios of many people. Speaking of portfolio, idTech 4 (rather BFG) is a good foundation for programmers (graphics, networking, AI, tools, etc.) as there is a lot of room for improvements.

Companies want to see you working in what they use - UE4 / Unity / CE3+ (to a lesser degree). They don't want to retrain you. They want you to come and start working as efficiently and effectively as possible. Doesn't mean such thing doesn't happen - ID Software had all kind of folks with UE3 background and retrained them to use idTech 5.

As for "people play old stuff", Steam has all kind of charts and it's quite good from educational perspective to look up what people play the most. It's not Doom 3 or any such old game (nor any of ID games).
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: Bladeghost on October 29, 2014, 06:07:00 PM
some quotes from my mod:

QuoteNoobSaibot Sep 18 2014, 3:16pm says:

I don't want to nit pick too much, but why not use a more advanced engine like UE3?
Quote

douglas_quaid Sep 19 2014, 4:53pm replied:

Hahaha, priceless!
Great One! Quaid! love it!
Quote

Halloween4 Oct 11 2014, 12:46pm says:

That is priceless, & hearing that will never get old, as what's the age of a game engine got to do with how good a mod or T.C is going to be lol, it's not the game engine you are using but what you do with it that counts.

If you don't believe me just look at how many mods are still being made for the original Half-Life.
my reply was a good artist doesn't blame his tools.
I've tried UE4,unity,cryengine3 etc, and always come back to D3's idtech4, idtech 5 is still a mess in my opinion as I was really looking forward to building with it, but found it terrible.
again one reason I find idtech 4 still a good platform to create from, aside from all the eye candy other engines may provide it's the core of that game that really matters . being was it fun and challenging as well as exciting. only the artist can provide that with a good plan right from the start. of course it's not easy but anything that is worth it never is.
and thanks guys for the respect I appreciate that.
I have more to say but that's all for now. Thanks! rock always!


at 0:20 in this clip tim willits explains that almost anything is possible with idtech 4 and I can see that, from what is said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvBNQWyziYs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvBNQWyziYs)
still who knows.....




Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BloodRayne on October 30, 2014, 04:40:12 AM
Guys I'm gonna be honest here. The only reason I use Idtech4 is because it's the only thing I ever used. I started with Quake and went up from there. I tried to work with Unreal engine but just didn't grasp it. Right now everything I download and try out is completely ALIEN to me. I downloaded Unity, didn't get it. Downloaded the Unreal thing, didn't get that at all.

I know I'm pretty good in asset creation and game building. But I'm just so focused on idTech that I have no idea how to even make a simple BOX map in Unreal or Unity.

Does anybody have any descent step by step instructions for the Unreal engine, how can I build something with it? How does that stupid mapping for unreal work.. wait.. the world is mapped inside out? Carved out? WTF is that all about? Etc..etc.. I just don't grasp those alien to me engines.

And this is why I am so confused when people tell me that Idtech4 is hard to work with. Not for me, I find idtech4 a thousands times more intuitive than Unreal or Unity. So what am I missing here?
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on October 30, 2014, 09:34:02 AM
@BloodRayne: There is no trick to it. It's a learning process, just like when you have to learn anything new.

Unity doesn't have level editor per se out of the box. All levels have to be modeled. If you want something similar to Radiant (CSG geometry), you have to buy a module for Unity. Some people made .map file reader or converted, so you could map in Radiant derivatives and then import .map to Unity.

UE4 has CSG, but indeed, it's opposite to Radiant way of mapping. In Radiant/idtech4, the world is void, and you add geometry (brushes) to it. In UE, the world is solid (rock? :) ) and you carve (subtract) from it to make rooms. Nothing mind boggling, just a different concept to get used to. Plus, the amount of training materials for UE4 (even for UDK) is massive. There is no excuse not to learn it, if you have desire/time.

Good example is ahead. When I was 3DS MAX user (a way back in the days) and I wanted to switch to Blender, I found it to be ALIEN^1000000 to me. It took me a good month or two to wrap my head around it and become more or less proficient with Blender.

If you are really being honest, you should see why idtech 4 is hard to work with. There  is no conspiracy. The reasons are on the surface.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: The Happy Friar on November 14, 2014, 12:10:38 PM
I used the forum "split topic" tool to make a new thread for the Unreal vs id mapping discussion.  Here: http://idtechforums.fuzzylogicinc.com/index.php?topic=157.0

Cool discussion btw.  :)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: oneofthe8devilz on November 14, 2014, 02:35:29 PM
I never considered content creation with unreal engine based editors to be my true problem... but what personally bothers me most about the UDK/UE4 engines, is the lack of proper AI navigation showcases/kits for indie developers...

I've seen proper AI Navigation done right in UE-games before (AAA games examples like Gears of War, Hunted:The Demons Forge, Spec Ops The Line to name just a few) but all those developers had source access to the engine and were probably re-writing the AI navigation from scratch...

When we look at the showcases that are being released with the UDK/UE4 (and community), they look nothing even remotely close to that...

You either have really dumb utbots that mostly move along static navigation routes being 100% of the time predictable (that is unless for some reason they get stuck and their navigation goes completely down the drain) or you end up with custom hacked AI showcases that desperately try to make use of the Navmesh feature and fail to do so... Either way you end up with an AI behavior that looks tediously generic, repetitive and amateurish...

I still have to see an indie UDK/UE4 video clip showcasing doing something useful regarding AI navigation sharing the method to implement it...

In short, IMO the default unreal engine "Nav-Point", "Pylons", "Navmesh" methods produce terribly awkward behaviors prone to bugs, are hard to implement and IMO produce intolerable results...

With idtech4 instead, I simply build my map and the system automatically compiles the AAS navigation file for me and unless I violate a few basic rules at the end of the day I always end up with AI  that perfectly navigates around that new environment...

In combination with proper AI doom-scripting, one fairly simple gets to achieve dynamic and unique group AI behavior that looks and behaves naturally to the eyes of the players and works great in a multiplayer/coop environment...

In case anyone here knows a clever way how to apply the same quality of AI behavior to unreal engine games with the same ease, I am all ears because the rest of the unreal engine/tools are pretty easy and comfortable to work with...


Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: Chosker on November 23, 2014, 07:56:46 AM
Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 14, 2014, 02:35:29 PM
When we look at the showcases that are being released with the UDK/UE4 (and community), they look nothing even remotely close to that...

You either have really dumb utbots that mostly move along static navigation routes being 100% of the time predictable (that is unless for some reason they get stuck and their navigation goes completely down the drain) or you end up with custom hacked AI showcases that desperately try to make use of the Navmesh feature and fail to do so... Either way you end up with an AI behavior that looks tediously generic, repetitive and amateurish...
I have to say I haven't really seen "showcases" released with the UDK/UE4 that feature AI navigation, but then again I haven't been looking too much :)

with that said let's explore the core of the problem a little.
when it comes to AI movement I'd say it can be reduced down to two elements: pathfinding and behavior.
- pathfinding is what allows the character to move from A to B without getting stuck
- behavior is what drives the character to what they do and for the reasons they do it

in UDK for pathfinding you could use Pathnodes (which required strategic placement and produced somewhat robotic pathfinding, the curves of movement were not smooth), and then Navmeshes (which required less human input for better results, and produced much smoother movement curves for movement). Pylons are the same as Navmeshes btw.
in UE4 pathnodes are gone for good but navmeshes are supposedly better (you can build them at runtime, but I doubt there's any other improvements that affect the visual quality of movement)

now let's assume you used navmeshes because they are more recent/better tech than pathnodes.
is the core of the problem about moving from A to B? do you experience characters getting stuck, moving in linear routes, move in jerky ways, losing their way?
or is the problem about the behavior?


in UDK behavior pretty much didn't exist in a usable way. there's no such thing as a "behavior coding tool" and this is understandable (writing AI is not trivial, much less for a multi-purpose game engine)
the only example that came with UDK was the UTGame AI. you could modify the UTBots which had some obscure and very UT-dependant ways of determining the behavior. back then when I did this I realized it was a pain to get them to do what I wanted them to do so I just wrote my AI class from scratch.
also most tutorials cover the basics of pathfinding and barely scratch the surface of behavioral AI. it's a complex matter that even AAA game titles have trouble with, so it's understandable that UDK AI behavior tutorials hardly ever went beyond a "Zombie AI" implementation.

UE4 now comes with the Behavior Trees feature. there's already at least a couple of tutorials around, and I heard that the ShooterGame sample project uses them for their AI (though I don't know if it's true and if so, how much developed it is)
I haven't tried it myself, but it's a recent feature so I don't think it's usable for production yet. but at least some effort is being made.


to sum it up I'd say there's more than enough information to get a pathfinding implementation up and running, but then I'd agree with you that there's hardly any behavioral AI showcases/kits for UDK.
however getting an AI to patrol, pursue an enemy in a non-kamikaze way, use the environment to his advantage, or have group behavior, are all non-trivial tasks that require some effort.

Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 14, 2014, 02:35:29 PMWith idtech4 instead, I simply build my map and the system automatically compiles the AAS navigation file for me and unless I violate a few basic rules at the end of the day I always end up with AI  that perfectly navigates around that new environment...
I've never done any maps for idtech4, so can you describe a little better what you mean with this? the AI perfectly navigates around that new environment, which means he can follow you on sight? patrol the area? strategically camp around powerups? have multiple enemies act as a group that can surround you or block the exits?
and how would it reflect to the AI if someone wanted to mod idtech4 into a tower defense game or a sniper vs. sniper hide n seek?
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:40:54 AM
Quote from: Chosker on November 23, 2014, 07:56:46 AM
I've never done any maps for idtech4, so can you describe a little better what you mean with this? the AI perfectly navigates around that new environment, which means he can follow you on sight? patrol the area? strategically camp around powerups? have multiple enemies act as a group that can surround you or block the exits?
and how would it reflect to the AI if someone wanted to mod idtech4 into a tower defense game or a sniper vs. sniper hide n seek?

The camping & group attacking would need to be built in to the AI's code (like the "smart" strogg troopers from Q4).  Q4 even had helper entities for stuff like what you described (ETQW has amazing AI that does near what you say).  What the D3 tech Area Awareness system does is different: it tells the AI where it can go.  It says "that area is to short, don't try to go down there."  It says "That drop is to tall, don't try to walk off."  It says "that area is to high, find another way around."  It says "those are steps, you can walk down/up them to go where you need to go."  It says "that's a ramp, you can go up/down it."  All this opposed to an AI that isn't aware of it's surroundings that trys to go up/down steps it can't navigate, then trys somewhere else.  Or walks off a cliff to go somewhere, or if not off the cliff, keeps trying to "walk" past the cliff but can't.  So in another system you might but an entity at a cliff saying "monster can jump off here" D3 doesn't need that, the compiling process already registered that information and the appropriate AI will jump if it can.  Or it will crawl, or walk up/down stairs, or run, etc. 

So when a monster sees the player & he's on a lower level & can't attack the player, it will find the proper way to get down and attack w/o any extra entity placement.  It won't walk to a staircase & not be able to go up because it's to steep and keep trying to "walk" up, it won't even try.   It won't fall off the edge of a cliff (unless it's allowed to) and die, it will go around.  However, most monsters in D3 are range monsters and have a "fire first" AI, so they do all this cool stuff very rarely.  Q4 greatly expanded on it & ETQW even further.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: oneofthe8devilz on November 23, 2014, 09:33:26 AM
I would say the major difference between modding AI behavior and navigation for Doom3 versus UDK/UE4 is that Doom3 was released as an AAA commercial game with an opensource text based file structure, whereas the UDK/UE4 devkits are more of a Sandbox "anything is possible" solution directly targeting indie and professional developers.

So while technically it certainly is possible to achieve AAA quality AI behavior and navigation with the UDK/UE4 kit, it will actually require top notch state of the art programming skills and/or significant resource-investments to realize it.

In contrast to that, while from a business point of view certainly not being the best idea, using Doom3 comes with a number of significant advantages over the UDK/UE4 regarding AI behaviour and navigation...

The open textbased file-system in combination with the various Monster enemy presets that can easily be extended (inherited) in combination with the quite flexible doomscript AI behaviour, make it very very easy even for beginners to generate new and complex AI entities that benefit from all the work that id software invested in the first place...

Here quite an old video from 2011 as an example where an AI entity has been re-programmed to act as a bodyguard to human players (human players have a green triangle "head icon" and friendly AIs have a rotating green dot "head icon), protecting the human players against the enemy AI monsters at all costs. And while the video might be nothing impressive visually, I am convinced that trying to re-create such an AI behavior and navigation in an environment of similar complexity with the UDK would technically almost be impossible for me to do due to the lack of technical ability on the one side and the lack of already implemented sub-behavior-routines (that come with the Doom3 game) on the other side...



btw... the youtube movie example I have posted here actually is a very bad one.. as this custom created map was still early wip in 2011 being converted into a playable coop-map and most ".ase" based models were not yet marked to be obstacles for the AI and so they keep constantly bumping into them not being aware of them... this has been fixed by now

Doom3's AAS (Area Awareness System) seems to be the equivalent of UDK's/UE4 navmesh system with the difference that it was developed in the early 2000's and released in 2004.

And it might be just my personal opinion here, but I find it way more simple to apply and work with the AAS system producing reliable AI navigation results with custom maps compared to the UDK's navmesh, where the AI still constantly either bumps into static/dynamic obstacles, looses complete track of the current tasks/enemies or simply denies to work at all...

Now I think the situation might be completely different if we had complete source and asset access to one of the major AAA unreal engine powered games like "Gears of War, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Spec Ops: The Line" which we then could put into direct comparison with Doom3. But since this is VERY unlikely to happen I am judging from the current situation.

Doom3 was developed by id software, a company that significantly influenced the history of computer games (in pretty much every regard be it "3d rendering, networking or cooperative gameplay") and while most people might scream that the AI featured in Doom3 is one of the most primitive ones (attack the enemy at any cost ignoring cover or damage), thanks to the open text based way in which every asset, script and code is written in Doom3, it is predestined to serve as a perfect tutorial in itself giving the modder infinitive possibilities to modify the existing assets and codebase while at the same time having access and inheriting all the AAA assets and code (including the AI behaviour which in intself might skilled people take a very signifant amount of time to develop) to base his mod work on.

I am convinced one of the main reasons why idtech modders find it difficult to learn and work with UE devkits, is the fact that over the years working with Doom3, they got used to this very "open-source-ish" way of working with the assets and codebase...

Now I did not yet try out the UE4 kit but with the UDK, every tiny peace of asset, code and script gets instantly compiled/binarized on runtime which sometime makes understanding and quickly editing/experimenting with assets or code take longer than it really needs to...

Of course the UDK has a ton of features and tools that totally blow the Doom3 tools out of the water when it comes to efficiency and complexity, but I always felt that with the UDK, there is this extra layer of "binarization" which keeps me from working at the same "low-level" asset-access that I got used to while working with idtech4.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: Chosker on November 23, 2014, 10:28:51 AM
Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:40:54 AM
What the D3 tech Area Awareness system does is different: it tells the AI where it can go.  It says "that area is to short, don't try to go down there."  It says "That drop is to tall, don't try to walk off."  It says "that area is to high, find another way around."  It says "those are steps, you can walk down/up them to go where you need to go."  It says "that's a ramp, you can go up/down it."  All this opposed to an AI that isn't aware of it's surroundings that trys to go up/down steps it can't navigate, then trys somewhere else.  Or walks off a cliff to go somewhere, or if not off the cliff, keeps trying to "walk" past the cliff but can't.  So in another system you might but an entity at a cliff saying "monster can jump off here" D3 doesn't need that, the compiling process already registered that information and the appropriate AI will jump if it can.  Or it will crawl, or walk up/down stairs, or run, etc.
UE's navmesh system also accounts for this, but not in such a flexible way.
if you take a look at this (https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/images/Resources/ContentExamples/NavMesh/1_3/NavMesh_1_3_001.jpg) very standard navmesh, you can see it already accounts for ramps (which really are the same as stairs), and areas that are too high to walk up to, or too low to jump down from.
there's a few limitations though. if you have an isolated area of the navmesh (like the top of the box in the screenshot) it will never be reachable by any means. some guy (Rama) made a system that allows jumping up/down such places but I believe it requires significant effort. I'd be suprised if Epic doesn't include such a thing in the future though, as I'm sure the new UT game will need it.
aditionally, the navmesh is the same for everyone. if a cliff is just too high to jump for character A, it doesn't matter if character B is twice as tall, he still won't be able to jump it.
also I haven't tested this, but I suspect that if you make a narrow passage that character A can fit through, character B who is twice as fat won't realize he can't fit and will keep trying. I hope I'm wrong on this one though :)

Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:40:54 AMSo when a monster sees the player & he's on a lower level & can't attack the player, it will find the proper way to get down and attack w/o any extra entity placement.  It won't walk to a staircase & not be able to go up because it's to steep and keep trying to "walk" up, it won't even try.   It won't fall off the edge of a cliff (unless it's allowed to) and die, it will go around.  However, most monsters in D3 are range monsters and have a "fire first" AI, so they do all this cool stuff very rarely.  Q4 greatly expanded on it & ETQW even further.
this is still "getting from point A to point B" which is no different from any proper pathfinding system. in the case of navmeshes, the steep stairs won't even be computed as 'walkable' so no one will ever attempt to walk up them. but again this is only okay if all the characters have a similar size.




Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 23, 2014, 09:33:26 AMwhereas the UDK/UE4 devkits are more of a Sandbox "anything is possible" solution directly targeting indie and professional developers.

So while technically it certainly is possible to achieve AAA quality AI behavior and navigation with the UDK/UE4 kit, it will actually require top notch state of the art programming skills and/or significant resource-investments to realize it.
exactly my point

Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 23, 2014, 09:33:26 AMIn contrast to that, while from a business point of view certainly not being the best idea, using Doom3 comes with a number of significant advantages over the UDK/UE4 regarding AI behaviour and navigation...
sure, UDK's one is limited and also multi-purpose, while Doom3's is much more geared towards the FPS kind of monster AI so it's very natural that the behavior tools are easier to use in that context.
but like I said how would it hold up if you wanted to create a sniper vs. sniper hide and seek AI, or a tower defense AI? or what about someone makes a mod of doom3 to make a chess game, or an RTS?

Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 23, 2014, 09:33:26 AMAnd it might be just my personal opinion here, but I find it way more simple to apply and work with the AAS system producing reliable AI navigation results with custom maps compared to the UDK's navmesh, where the AI still constantly either bumps into static/dynamic obstacles, looses complete track of the current tasks/enemies or simply denies to work at all...
I never tried UDK's navmeshes (made my own pathfinding solution), but in my brief with UE4's pathfinding the navmeshes always felt reliable, even if modified dynamically. keeping track of the current tasks/enemies is a matter of the AI programmer's code, and "simply denies to work at all" is an unacceptable scenario that I never had.

Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 23, 2014, 09:33:26 AMNow I think the situation might be completely different if we had complete source and asset access to one of the major AAA unreal engine powered games like "Gears of War, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Spec Ops: The Line" which we then could put into direct comparison with Doom3. But since this is VERY unlikely to happen I am judging from the current situation.
exactly. you're comparing the AI of a full and finished AAA game that is open to modding, with that of a multi-purpose engine (and an incomplete one, both UDK and UE4). it's only natural the one in Doom3 is better.

Quote from: oneofthe8devilz on November 23, 2014, 09:33:26 AMI am convinced one of the main reasons why idtech modders find it difficult to learn and work with UE devkits, is the fact that over the years working with Doom3, they got used to this very "open-source-ish" way of working with the assets and codebase...

Now I did not yet try out the UE4 kit but with the UDK, every tiny peace of asset, code and script gets instantly compiled/binarized on runtime which sometime makes understanding and quickly editing/experimenting with assets or code take longer than it really needs to...

Of course the UDK has a ton of features and tools that totally blow the Doom3 tools out of the water when it comes to efficiency and complexity, but I always felt that with the UDK, there is this extra layer of "binarization" which keeps me from working at the same "low-level" asset-access that I got used to while working with idtech4.
this also striked me as weird when I started working with UDK. they have this approach where you cannot create or modify any content without having the editor open.
in UE4 it's still the case but with two slight but powerful differences.
- first one is the assets no longer live in packages, but each is now their own (yes, binarized) file of its own. this makes it easier to deal and manage them, and have multiple people work together
- second one is that with the 'coding' being done primarly in the editor for many people (via blueprints), and the inclusion of hot reloading of the C++ code modules, iteration times are much faster because you don't really need to close the editor (or wait for longer game launch times) to test new stuff
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on November 23, 2014, 12:04:36 PM
Doom 3 AAS system is much more prosaic than what TheHappyFriar wrote about it :) It simply defines areas (volumes) for AI to use and their reachability.

Doom 3 monsters don't jump, at all. MOVETYPE_WALK and related types of movement don't even account for verticality. MOVETYPE_FLY is the only one type of movement that does that. So all in all AAS system is the same thin as nav mesh, just in 3D (verticality, which isn't even utilized for the most part). Technically AAS could be used for 6D navigation, a la Descent, but it needs to be heavily revised/improved.

AAS also doesn't care for meshes. It only works with brush based world. So every model has to have brush hull inside or manually clipped. Dynamic obstacles avoidance is in primitive state.

AI itself is a simple FSM (leaning toward HFSM) and is animation dependent. If you don't have a frame of animation - you can't call event / script.

One could probably go a way beyond what Doom 3 and AI mods for Doom 3 offer, but it requires tons of animations per character and/or significant rewrites of the engine (and that's why ETQW's and idTech 5's AAS systems are quite different from what Doom 3 has).

So objectively speaking, if one has dedicated programmer and time, one should be going with Unity or UE4 (although it is still a quite raw engine for production). Doom 3 could be built on UE4 and it will be in all aspects better than Doom 3 on idTech 4 :P (except the modding part).

One thing that idTech4 GPL has that no other engine does is full game code, tested by time and modders. It's heavily underutilized in Doom 3, and there is so much more that can be done with the code out of the box (with some fixes and addition, but nothing too major). To create such code base in UE4 it will take a massive effort and time. So if we are talking about time savings, it could be easily half of the dev time saved using Doom 3.

As for non-binarized assets... Well, if ID Software cared about modders as much as Epic cares for devs, we would have massive amounts of documentations, which would negate necessity of having ascii format assets. Not to mention now much inefficient ascii assets are for RAM and loading times. That's why BFG engine converts it on the first run into binaries, so that it takes less RAM and level loading times are _much_ faster than with old Doom 3.

So to prospective indie devs - stay away from original idTech 4 as game dev platform (it's good to mod Doom 3 and get a feel what it offers as far as gameplay code and what can be done with it). Either use Doom 3 BFG engine (which will still require effort to bring it to production ready level) or go with Unity or UE4. Or wait until Storm Engine 2 is out to the public ;)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on November 23, 2014, 12:07:12 PM
Quote from: Chosker on November 23, 2014, 10:28:51 AM
Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:40:54 AMSo when a monster sees the player & he's on a lower level & can't attack the player, it will find the proper way to get down and attack w/o any extra entity placement.  It won't walk to a staircase & not be able to go up because it's to steep and keep trying to "walk" up, it won't even try.   It won't fall off the edge of a cliff (unless it's allowed to) and die, it will go around.  However, most monsters in D3 are range monsters and have a "fire first" AI, so they do all this cool stuff very rarely.  Q4 greatly expanded on it & ETQW even further.
this is still "getting from point A to point B" which is no different from any proper pathfinding system.

Indeed. Even Quake 1 did that, and it has no actual navigation routine ;)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:29:02 PM
All my experience with Quake 1 & 2 stock AI methods (not new GPL versions or other games based on their code) shows the AI to be pretty dumb in surroundings.  Both will try to do things it can't do (like walk off a cliff or up a cliff).  Never encountered that with stock D3.  They just follow commands or go straight for the player w/o "knowing" what's around them.

But when comparing D3 to UE4, devils is correct: there's nothing to REALLY compare as D3 gives us a full game & UE4 gives us nothing.  We get less with UE4 really: with D3 you can load up the stock assets to see how you can improve things.  With UE4 there's nothing to test with or improve upon as the developers gave us nothing (they have stuff, they make games with it, they just didn't release it for us to see).  Everything being talked about here with UE4 is theory, with D3 it's fact.  I'll take fact over theory any day.  Maybe Epic should GPL their UDK code so people can get a better look at it.   O:-)

And motorsep, you should know that D3 monsters DO jump.  Imp (and those weaker Imp wanna-be's) and that baby thing do.  :)
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on November 23, 2014, 10:40:25 PM
Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:29:02 PM
All my experience with Quake 1 & 2 stock AI methods (not new GPL versions or other games based on their code) shows the AI to be pretty dumb in surroundings.  Both will try to do things it can't do (like walk off a cliff or up a cliff).  Never encountered that with stock D3.  They just follow commands or go straight for the player w/o "knowing" what's around them.

Quake 1 and 2 don't have navigation system. Quake 1 has findradius() function which tests in real-time available path. Doom 3 only has that precompiled, just like navmesh. So AI in Doom 3 doesn't need to test path, it only needs to follow it. Thus you don't see "dumb" behavior. But, get up on the table in Doom 3, and you will see AI running around it ;)
There is really nothing magical or awesome about Doom 3 AI. It was, like many other things, underdeveloped, and that's why it's almost all trigger based.

Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:29:02 PMBut when comparing D3 to UE4, devils is correct: there's nothing to REALLY compare as D3 gives us a full game & UE4 gives us nothing.  We get less with UE4 really: with D3 you can load up the stock assets to see how you can improve things.  With UE4 there's nothing to test with or improve upon as the developers gave us nothing (they have stuff, they make games with it, they just didn't release it for us to see).  Everything being talked about here with UE4 is theory, with D3 it's fact.  I'll take fact over theory any day.  Maybe Epic should GPL their UDK code so people can get a better look at it.   O:-)

UDK has no gamecode either. They should really release one of the games they made. After all, UE4 is a development platform, not modding platform. It doesn't really help small indies to go after large games, but it does help developing small games quicker, more efficiently, and not get stuck in the engine fixing. They only need to worry about gameplay and art.

Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:29:02 PM
And motorsep, you should know that D3 monsters DO jump.  Imp (and those weaker Imp wanna-be's) and that baby thing do.  :)

That's not jumping, that's leaping ;) By not jumping I mean not jumping off/up a ledge in pursuit of the player. They only perform melee attacks horizontally or with projectiles.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: BloodRayne on November 24, 2014, 09:24:57 AM
Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 23, 2014, 08:29:02 PM

And motorsep, you should know that D3 monsters DO jump.  Imp (and those weaker Imp wanna-be's) and that baby thing do.  :)

Actually, Motorstep is technically correct. The 'jump' is nothing more than an animation that's alled on the monster, if available. The AI doesn't actually 'jump' anywhere. It tracks the origin, sees if a jump animation is possible (without the origin moving in height!) and then executes the animation after which the new origin point is read and the AI goes from there.

The AI doesn't know how to navigate heights like a player would be able to, jumping on obstacles and properly allowing for all (or even some) jump mechanics in navigating the map vertically.

But I believe it's actually not very hard at all to program such behaviour into the AI of Doom3. I mean all code is available. And you can quite quickly hack some stuff in there that will allow for greater and smarter movement. I've added coded in Grimm for example that allows creatures to recognise more of their surroundings, when they are surrounded by breakables they will attempt to break them, thus breaking free.

If you don't want to include horizontal pathing you'll have to trick monsters into using a ladder. You can do this by making the monsters aware of their relative height distance to the player. If for example it is 100 units below the player (and the player cannot be reached by normal travel) then it could try to find the nearest ladder and attempt to traverse it. A simple hack like that could actually work quite well without having to re-invent the AAS pathing system.

In fact, this sounds like a very fun challenge to work on because I've been thinking about creating a 3D Lode Runner mod for Doom3.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: aphexjh on November 24, 2014, 11:14:11 AM
Quote from: BloodRayne on November 24, 2014, 09:24:57 AM
If you don't want to include horizontal pathing you'll have to trick monsters into using a ladder. You can do this by making the monsters aware of their relative height distance to the player. If for example it is 100 units below the player (and the player cannot be reached by normal travel) then it could try to find the nearest ladder and attempt to traverse it. A simple hack like that could actually work quite well without having to re-invent the AAS pathing system.

In fact, this sounds like a very fun challenge to work on because I've been thinking about creating a 3D Lode Runner mod for Doom3.

The method of having AI search for certain volumes, in this case the ladder volume, is similar to the way ai and players navigate "Mantle over" and "Mantle on" objects in the IW engines (CoD games). 

(http://wiki.modsrepository.com/images/2/23/Interactives1.jpg)

You just place these brushes in the map and the ai finds them and uses them when needed. If BR is correct, it shouldn't be hard to implement a similar technique in Tech 4.
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: Sir Blackington on November 25, 2014, 12:08:40 AM
This is more specific to the etqw bots, but aren't the strogg ai with the jetpack able to use that to navigate the map vertically in ways undoable without it?
Title: Re: Why are so many mods existing IP's?
Post by: motorsep on November 25, 2014, 09:23:04 AM
Quote from: Sir Blackington on November 25, 2014, 12:08:40 AM
This is more specific to the etqw bots, but aren't the strogg ai with the jetpack able to use that to navigate the map vertically in ways undoable without it?

Where did you see Stroggs in Doom 3 ? ;)