Tuesday, Mar 17, 2009
Construction Kits
To get to open source, we need to start with open, because openness is, indeed, the principle of open source software, or anything deemed "open."
Over time, putting tools in the hands of the common man, the game player, has become one of the hallmark trends of modern gaming. The concept has been around since the Construction Kit games for the computers of the 80s. The concept also has different levels of access, depending on how much of a game is fueled by content, or how much of a game developers want to be player-accessable.
Personalization
Since the original Zelda, in which players were allowed to name their character, games have consistently offered a way to personalize a gaming experience, making at least part of it unique to the player. With the advent of 3D graphics, games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or any number of sports games.
In some cases, however, designing characters can seem a little superfluous. In World of Warcraft there are a small handful of sliders - which leads people to complain - wheras in Everquest II, you have at least two dozen, including eye color and cheekbone angle. Unfortunately, I'm staring at my character's back the entire game, and if anyone has their camera zoomed in to see the front of his face, chances are a helmet is obscuring it anyway.
User-Generated Content
UGC (may or may not be an actual acronym) is the hotness these days, and said hotness extends even to the consoles with games such as LittleBigPlanet, in which UGC is everything. All of these various levels of non-developer access are, in essence, user-generated content, but the whole point of user-genarated content these days is that anyone can use it.
LittleBigPlanet is one of the best, most recent examples of UGC in action. While there is an excellent single-player mode available, the main draw of the game is its extensive level editor, which allows you to make anything from a Mario clone, to a mock Schmup, to a fully-functioning calculator.
UGC is something that will continue to gain steam as time goes on, especially in conjuction with the whole "social games" thing, as well as content sharing, which has defined the modern internet experience.
Level Editors
Level editors are another hallmark of player development. These, too, have exsisted for a while; players were editing levels in the 90s, mostly on the PC with titles like Doom, but even on the NES with Excitebike's track editor. Too bad you couldn't save your tracks in the US version.
Level editors vary in terms of flexibility, depth, and ease-of-use. In general, the more a level editor will allow you to do, the harder it is to use and the more time-consuming the process is. You could learn to develop content with Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, the very tools they used to develop Oblivion, but are you going to put in the time and effort? And even if you do, how do you know your game will be any good?
On the other hand, you can jump into Halo 3's Forge mode to design your own maps for multiplayer use. Forge is interesting, because it is only for multiplayer use, and while you can't adjust map geometry, you can do just about anything else.* In my mind, when combined with the game's extensive mode editor, Forge is most interesting when you can use it to create some sort of off game mode - like the popular Rocket Ball.
On the PC, many major releases will come with a level editor, usually to create multiplayer maps. finish
Add-on Mods
Do you have all of your achievements yet in Fallout 3 on the PC? No? Never fear, there are mods out there that will, say, line up all of the bobbleheads for you. Actually, to cut out that middleman, beefing up your Game[s for Windows]r Score is as easy as calling up the in-game console and asking nicely.
Add-on Mods are partial conversions, rather than a total conversion. In general, they don't always create new content, but instead modify exsisting content. These mods could be something harmless and basic, like the ones that change car skins in the Grand Theft Auto games on the PC. Or, they could change up the game in such a way that makes it easier.
Don't call it hacking; the way these kinds of mods are made doesn't differ at all. But, in a multiplayer game, installing an aimbot or a wallhack will get you banned from a server or possibly even a larger service like Steam (since the Scout weapon pack for TF2 was released, several thousand people were banned for using external applications to auto-unlock achievements; not quite modding, but close). Now in a single-player game, who cares? All you're really doing is dampening the experience for yourself anyway. If you're into that, sure, whatever.
In general, these types of small-scale mods aren't easily developed by anyone. The scope of partial conversion mods is much, much broader than that of, say, a level editor, in which the developers know what the tools are being used for, and can develop a program that creates a specific kind of content. No developers are making "module creators" or anything like that. You might have APIs, you might have an SDK, but you need the programming experience to develop a small-scale mod.
Total Conversion Mods
These are the big guys, the software that, depending on the mod, may have an entire team of people each working on different parts. With a total conversion mod, the mod team intends to create an entirely new game based on the code of an exsisting one. Many popular PC games started life as mods, chief among them being original Half-Life mods Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, and the Quake mod Team Fortress, which evolved into the HL mod TF cIassic, and eventually Team Fortress 2.
Contructing a full-scale mod requires extensive knowlege of all aspects of game design. It really is "actual" game design, only part of the work is done for you. However, you still need capable programmers, artists, and audio engineers, not to mention the dedication to take the game from the planning stages to version 1.0, and the design skill to make a game people want to play. Unfortunately, even popular, well-designed mods, which may have had years of work into them, will have ghost towns for server browsers soon enough, maybe within a few weeks of the mod's official release. Try and find a game for Fortress Forever or SourceForts, two excellent HL mods which have, at this point, an incredibly small userbase, which is a shame.
There's no chance that the development of total conversion mods will ever be simplified to where the common man can use those tools. Which, I think is fine, and most people probably agree with me. We can leave this facet of the gaming community to the experienced.
The Next Step: Open Code?
With this article we've seen the various levels of access developers will give to wannabe game designers. But what would happen if developers let loose the reigns and released the full source code of a game to the general public?
Question: Are level editors and the like the type of thing to keep you playing a game longer? Are you more of a creator or a consumer?
Link Monday: Introduction
Tuesday: Construction Kits
Wednesday: Designing By Community
Thursday: Why Open Source?
Friday: Why Not Open Source?
Saturday: Open Games
Sunday: A Social Experiment
To get to open source, we need to start with open, because openness is, indeed, the principle of open source software, or anything deemed "open."
Over time, putting tools in the hands of the common man, the game player, has become one of the hallmark trends of modern gaming. The concept has been around since the Construction Kit games for the computers of the 80s. The concept also has different levels of access, depending on how much of a game is fueled by content, or how much of a game developers want to be player-accessable.
Personalization
Since the original Zelda, in which players were allowed to name their character, games have consistently offered a way to personalize a gaming experience, making at least part of it unique to the player. With the advent of 3D graphics, games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or any number of sports games.
In some cases, however, designing characters can seem a little superfluous. In World of Warcraft there are a small handful of sliders - which leads people to complain - wheras in Everquest II, you have at least two dozen, including eye color and cheekbone angle. Unfortunately, I'm staring at my character's back the entire game, and if anyone has their camera zoomed in to see the front of his face, chances are a helmet is obscuring it anyway.
User-Generated Content
UGC (may or may not be an actual acronym) is the hotness these days, and said hotness extends even to the consoles with games such as LittleBigPlanet, in which UGC is everything. All of these various levels of non-developer access are, in essence, user-generated content, but the whole point of user-genarated content these days is that anyone can use it.
LittleBigPlanet is one of the best, most recent examples of UGC in action. While there is an excellent single-player mode available, the main draw of the game is its extensive level editor, which allows you to make anything from a Mario clone, to a mock Schmup, to a fully-functioning calculator.
UGC is something that will continue to gain steam as time goes on, especially in conjuction with the whole "social games" thing, as well as content sharing, which has defined the modern internet experience.
Level Editors
Level editors are another hallmark of player development. These, too, have exsisted for a while; players were editing levels in the 90s, mostly on the PC with titles like Doom, but even on the NES with Excitebike's track editor. Too bad you couldn't save your tracks in the US version.
Level editors vary in terms of flexibility, depth, and ease-of-use. In general, the more a level editor will allow you to do, the harder it is to use and the more time-consuming the process is. You could learn to develop content with Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, the very tools they used to develop Oblivion, but are you going to put in the time and effort? And even if you do, how do you know your game will be any good?
On the other hand, you can jump into Halo 3's Forge mode to design your own maps for multiplayer use. Forge is interesting, because it is only for multiplayer use, and while you can't adjust map geometry, you can do just about anything else.* In my mind, when combined with the game's extensive mode editor, Forge is most interesting when you can use it to create some sort of off game mode - like the popular Rocket Ball.
On the PC, many major releases will come with a level editor, usually to create multiplayer maps. finish
Add-on Mods
Do you have all of your achievements yet in Fallout 3 on the PC? No? Never fear, there are mods out there that will, say, line up all of the bobbleheads for you. Actually, to cut out that middleman, beefing up your Game[s for Windows]r Score is as easy as calling up the in-game console and asking nicely.
Add-on Mods are partial conversions, rather than a total conversion. In general, they don't always create new content, but instead modify exsisting content. These mods could be something harmless and basic, like the ones that change car skins in the Grand Theft Auto games on the PC. Or, they could change up the game in such a way that makes it easier.
Don't call it hacking; the way these kinds of mods are made doesn't differ at all. But, in a multiplayer game, installing an aimbot or a wallhack will get you banned from a server or possibly even a larger service like Steam (since the Scout weapon pack for TF2 was released, several thousand people were banned for using external applications to auto-unlock achievements; not quite modding, but close). Now in a single-player game, who cares? All you're really doing is dampening the experience for yourself anyway. If you're into that, sure, whatever.
In general, these types of small-scale mods aren't easily developed by anyone. The scope of partial conversion mods is much, much broader than that of, say, a level editor, in which the developers know what the tools are being used for, and can develop a program that creates a specific kind of content. No developers are making "module creators" or anything like that. You might have APIs, you might have an SDK, but you need the programming experience to develop a small-scale mod.
Total Conversion Mods
These are the big guys, the software that, depending on the mod, may have an entire team of people each working on different parts. With a total conversion mod, the mod team intends to create an entirely new game based on the code of an exsisting one. Many popular PC games started life as mods, chief among them being original Half-Life mods Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, and the Quake mod Team Fortress, which evolved into the HL mod TF cIassic, and eventually Team Fortress 2.
Contructing a full-scale mod requires extensive knowlege of all aspects of game design. It really is "actual" game design, only part of the work is done for you. However, you still need capable programmers, artists, and audio engineers, not to mention the dedication to take the game from the planning stages to version 1.0, and the design skill to make a game people want to play. Unfortunately, even popular, well-designed mods, which may have had years of work into them, will have ghost towns for server browsers soon enough, maybe within a few weeks of the mod's official release. Try and find a game for Fortress Forever or SourceForts, two excellent HL mods which have, at this point, an incredibly small userbase, which is a shame.
There's no chance that the development of total conversion mods will ever be simplified to where the common man can use those tools. Which, I think is fine, and most people probably agree with me. We can leave this facet of the gaming community to the experienced.
The Next Step: Open Code?
With this article we've seen the various levels of access developers will give to wannabe game designers. But what would happen if developers let loose the reigns and released the full source code of a game to the general public?
Question: Are level editors and the like the type of thing to keep you playing a game longer? Are you more of a creator or a consumer?
Link Monday: Introduction
Tuesday: Construction Kits
Wednesday: Designing By Community
Thursday: Why Open Source?
Friday: Why Not Open Source?
Saturday: Open Games
Sunday: A Social Experiment
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