why is there no modding ?!

[jawa]

i mean for real all we wanted is a DK mod for Wfto......... you devs should really put the stick out of your butt and release something usefull ?!

[Woudo]

Originally posted by Chief_Jawa:

you devs should really put the stick out of your butt

And you should pull the crayon out of your brain.

[jawa]

i remember they promised this ♥♥♥♥ a long time ago.. but fu** yourself :)

[Noontide]

Alright, guys, keep it civil I don't want to close a valid discussion thread.

The story of modding is a long and complicated one, the short version is that the original plans (Dungeoneer) didn't work and left us severely depleted in terms of our finances, we spent around 6 months on it and none of it is used in the final version of the game.

This was such a disaster that it threatened to derail the entire project.

Essentially it came down to a choice, do we continue to try and make something that is clearly unworkable work or does we start again and actually have a chance at a finished game. We knew that given the choice between a likely unworkable modding tool and a fully fledged game our community would choose the latter.

If we were to start again today with the resources we now have available we might be able to do it, but the game would definitely need to be constructed from the ground up to support it. Sadly it's not something we can retroactively implement, mostly due to the rush that was needed to recover from the Dungeoneer disaster. Ironically the pursuit of mods might have been the thing that prevented us from doing them in the long run.

If you want more information you can read the following:

A Year in Retrospect[wftogame.com] (Feb 2014), covering the first year of WFTOs development and the cancellation of the Dungeoneer toolkit.

Bedrooms to Brighton[www.brightrockgames.com] (Jul 2017) - Covering a bunch of things on our journey to a fully fledged studio. Read "The Rise and Fall of Steve" particularly to get an idea what was happening at the time.

Naturally, we really value User Generated Content and we honestly wish we could introduce Mod Support but the situation at the time was responsible for so many issues with WFTOs development that it has hampered us from doing many things we'd have liked to do with it.

[jawa]

ok you dont release idiot proof modtools thats ok ... but then why dont you release something like a light version sdk of the stuff you use to make the game ?! ... or some kind of unity sdk.... i really dont understand why you guys just do nothing about it ....

[ScorpionariusDK]

Can't you just be grateful for the game? And point your rage towards the copyright holders from the original DK, instead of trying to bash the devs and label them as lazy people. Jesus

[Khrusayder]

I can see their point. And think they choose the most wise option. But well they have the resources now, maybe we can see a editor feature in the mighty and glorius:

War for the Overworld 2

[WFTO Dev | Brightrock Cian]

Once a Unity game is compiled it's not possible to change it. Even if you go and download Unity now there's nothing (at least as far as we know) that you can do to edit any scripts or art in the game.

It's not that the tools would have been user-unfriendly, it's that on a technical level the game didn't work when it had modding support, so it was a choice between a buggy unfixable mess or a working game with no mods

[ScorpionariusDK]

Originally posted by Brightrock Cian:

Once a Unity game is compiled it's not possible to change it. Even if you go and download Unity now there's nothing (at least as far as we know) that you can do to edit any scripts or art in the game.

It's not that the tools would have been user-unfriendly, it's that on a technical level the game didn't work when it had modding support, so it was a choice between a buggy unfixable mess or a working game with no mods

And thank god for the latter

[WFTO Dev | Brightrock Cian]

Originally posted by Khrusayder:

I can see their point. And think they choose the most wise option. But well they have the resources now, maybe we can see a editor feature in the mighty and glorius:

War for the Overworld 2

WFTO 2 will be mighty, glorious and even guarantee each user a personal backrub from each member of the team

[Noontide]

The previous promise from Cian has been redacted, such promises cannot be made. Though super manly back rubs are a possibility.

In all seriousness, we would love to do a WFTO2 in the future and there's a lot more we would love to do with that game. We have a list of things to address if/when we do return for a sequel. I suspect greater variety of UGC would be high on that list :)

[jawa]

well i could come up with skylines now and how healthy their game is cause of modding.... and that they use unity too.... but yeeee you made your decisions.....

[WFTO Dev | Brightrock Cian]

Skylines barely use Unity, for them, it is just a front end renderer. They also had source code access to the engine, something that is totally unfeasible for us

[Noontide]

Originally posted by Chief_Jawa:

well i could come up with skylines now and how healthy their game is cause of modding.... and that they use unity too.... but yeeee you made your decisions.....

It's easy to recognise the value in UGC and it's certainly not impossible to support in Unity, very few things are impossible to do. However, it is much much easier if you design your game from the ground up to support it. My understanding of Skylines is that the engine is actually very different from what we use.

This was originally our strategy but the approach at the time, driven by one man, was incorrect and that caused the aforementioned problems. Now the game is so buried under technical debt that any attempt to untangle it without dedicating would just make the problem worse.

If there was any chance we could get modding in we would definitely pursue it but unfortunately, that ship has sailed. We're still looking into the possibility to expand the map editor with more features but introducing fully fledged content into the game is on the far far far end of possibility.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Noontide:

It's easy to recognise the value in UGC and it's certainly not impossible to support in Unity, very few things are impossible to do. However, it is much much easier if you design your game from the ground up to support it. My understanding of Skylines is that the engine is actually very different from what we use.

It's funny you mentioned this; another Developer said almost the same thing. They decided to use Unity for a sequel to their game and wanted Mulit-player, Modding etc. However once they began working in Unity and building their game ... they realized MP was a total no-go because of how time consuming and resource draining it would be.

Some people just don't understand how difficult it is to actually Develop a game. Half the times people think it's super easy and doesn't cost any money.

Can't wait to see what the "final" content update for WFTO is and I'm curious what your next project is going to be.

[Biervampir [AUT]]

Originally posted by Setzway:

It's funny you mentioned this; another Developer said almost the same thing. They decided to use Unity for a sequel to their game and wanted Mulit-player, Modding etc. However once they began working in Unity and building their game ... they realized MP was a total no-go because of how time consuming and resource draining it would be.

MP is playable in WFTO nowadays. But check your connection