CNCNZ.com Roundtable #19 - C&C Modding Special Options

[Sonic]

Slightly late but, since its already May, but here is the Roundtable for April. And just like we did last year this Roundtable is a Command & Conquer modding special. We have assembled some of the best mod leaders in our community to get their ideas about the current modding scene. Some of the topics covered are the RA3 Mod SDK, Worldbuild/Mod SDK Learning Curve, Closed Source Modding, Best Mods in the Past 12 Months and more.

Here is the panel for this month.

• Banshee - Project Perfect Mod
• Mastermind - Revora/EALA
• Koen - TibEd.net
• Blbpaws - CNC Labs
• Mighty BOB! - CNC Source
• jonwil - CNC Mods
• Smurf Bizkit - Derelict Studios
• Daz - Games Modding
• Golan - Thundermods.net

Click here to read Roundtable Discussion #19. And special thanks to Banshee from Project Perfect Mod for his help in organising this month's Roundtable.

[Mighty BOB!]

Oh wow I just happened to be checking for the Roundtable just now as you posted it up and I was going to tell you about the mistyped URL but you already fixed that while I was typing lol.

I think I am the most junior modder of the entire group.

Now if only I could read it right now instead of leaving for class...

[Daz]

Well I'm glad none of us came off as overly harsh.
*cough*
Thanks for the opportunity to contribute, I've posted about this on http://gamesmodding.com/.

And good shout about the art style issue Mighty BOB!, that was one of the things that occurred when I chose not to buy RA3 (that you can't do anything vaguely serious without redoing every bit of art in the game) but it skipped my mind when I was doing my answers.

This post has been edited by Daz: Friday 1st May 2009 3:36 PM

[chickendippers]

A very interesting read, I do hope EA are able to take some of the comments into account

[Lauren]

Sorry for the ranting I will do with this post but I think this is one of the worst roundtables ever.50% of what was said seemed to be generic answers as who has written them hasn't touched the RA3 SDK.

I tested the SDK in depth with Dibelius and have to say we are impressed how much stuff EA has broken what worked perfectly in Tiberium Wars. Also the options they gave us to do are more limited as in Tiberium Wars, for example why did they cut lightrays? They were one of the most impressive graphical features in Tiberium Wars. Units even blocked the lightrays, that was one thing Tiberium Wars had what only high end shooters like Crysis did.
Also as ever the UI.. only one special ability button.. many Tiberium Wars mods got impacted that there where only 4 and now.. 1? That doesn't make that much sense.. I don't see the point why EA couldn't release a UI with more buttons. It should be a work of about 10 minutes for them, at least if they didn't screwed the engine code for that. Or maybe they could make a UI for mods like Tiberium Wars that shows as much buttons as you have in use..
Golan said it that the part with the broken modules etc was easy to misunderstood. The main directive I want to express with this is not about ranting on EA. It is more that TW offers more or better options and if you want something big, go mod TW and not RA3.

Another point I think was for me "EA repeated their largest two mistakes: a high learning curve..." I was like wtf.. The GUI should be very easy to handle even for unexperienced modders, but Mastermind could have added some description to it. New people sure wonder "Create SDKUDEF" what? skudef? what's that? and will leave it on for all the time making that you can choose what you want to do useless.. experienced modders will stick to the batch files. They are faster and easier to change. Then the learning curve of xml.. ya its xml.. nothing more or less. Easy to learn and master. Structured way better than ini files and you have the schemas of what you can do everywhere. The problem here are definitly the users of the SDK who don't want to learn. 80% of all in the commandandconquer.com forums are even too lazy to use windows search, asking every hour about stuff that can be found without a problem using the windows search in about 10 seconds... If someone want to use the SDK, TW or RA3, they only need a basic knowledge about XML (how it is structured) and then all comes from self within a month or less.. I won't call that a high learning curve.

I for some parts agree with Banshee who said that the art and mod.xml should be generated automaticly, but only in a newbie mode. In my Tiberium Wars projects I have a huge amount of xmls that I didn't want to include for testing or other stuff I did with them.

This post has been edited by Sonic: Saturday 2nd May 2009 12:58 PM

[BioBen]

Disclaimer: The views expressed by each individual in the Roundtable Discussion are their own, and do not reflect the official view of CNCNZ.com, unless otherwise stated.

Debate individual answers from members of the roundtable not the entire roundtable.
Not everyone has the same opinion.

This post has been edited by BioBen: Saturday 2nd May 2009 11:57 AM

[Lauren]

1. There is a agreement that says the SDK has improved since Tiberium Wars so I have posted my thoughts about that.
2. The same goes for the learning curve and is stated in one of the questions that it has a high learning curve.. so where is the problem in commenting that?
3. Here I just stated that I agree with Banshee..

I don't see your problem. I just posted my thoughts about the questions and stated that most are somewhat generic answers and I didn't like that. There is nothing in my post where I disregard the disclamer. And if you are upset because I said its one of the worst round tables that is because some of them stated that they didn't worked with the SDK so they have only a generic amount of knowledge and that makes their statements useless. And of course this is just my opinion on this, and there is nothing that forbids me to write it down here.

[hagren]

I guess he was upset about how you made judgement without knowing the experiences of the participants with the RA3 ModSDK for certain, thus questioning the integrity of the individuals and the roundtable as a whole. Btw, he didn't really treat you in an unfriendly demeanour, so where's your issue?

I'll just add that I was certain about smurfbizkit finding some space for a little EALA bashing Which I do not share.

[Mighty BOB!]

Well I stated up front that I don't have any first-hand experience with the RA3 SDK, so I did rely on a mix of my experience as a Tiberium Wars modder and a bit of speculation.

I did have my suspicions that modders' options would be more limited and/or broken in RA3 than in TW like you said in your post, but they were only that, suspicious so I didn't say anything about them without foundation. Although I have no first-hand experience with the new SDK I have been staying informed on the RA3 modding scene by watching the most prominent modding forums, by which I mean the official EA RA3 section, and the RA3 sections on PPM, Revora, and Fallout Studios, and I have to say there isn't a whole lot of activity outside of the EA forums. It was hard to draw concrete certainties about whether it was really less functional or not.

I never said the SDK had improved. I said it was good that it was finally out and pointed out that the community is giving feedback in jonwil's requests/feedback thread on the EA forums. I applauded EA for trying to make the process easier for beginners with the GUI, but never said it was better (although I am saying it now: the GUI is a better solution for new modders, although as I also mentioned in my answers, I and probably most of the other experienced modders will stick with the batch files.)

-----Moving on...

Being the most junior modder of the roundtable I think when I'm talking about the learning curve it still stands as being legit, despite myself being far from a novice¹. I think what Blbpaws said about new modders having to learn many new concepts all at once instead of maybe only a few new concepts spaced out over time is quite true. The learning curve does not have to deal with whether there is a GUI or not, it is mainly about novices having several new concepts thrown at them all at once. And some of these are not just simple concepts, but actual industry-grade high-level production concepts. Joe-schmo might not have what it takes to understand all of those concepts, especially all at once.

I think that the data/file structure is probably the most daunting aspect for newbies. It is much more complex than .ini editing ever was. Banshee and Golan touched on this in question #2. Banshee mentioned organization and lots of files, Golan spoke of customizable/non-standardized mod structures. What's needed is thorough documentation/explanation. I mentioned in my answer to question #5; the need for explanation as to what modules do what, how they are related to each other, and how you can string them together. You yourself Lauren mentioned the .xsd shemas. I forgot to mention the schemas, but there should be official documentation on the schemas as well since they define what is allowed in different modules.

In all, documentation/tutorials was/were mentioned by: Banshee in question 1 (need AI documentation), jonwil in question 1 (need more technical documentation and sample code/art), Golan in question 1 (lack of documentation that covers complexity), Banshee in question 2 (AIData.xml is one of the few properly documented files), myself in question 2 (need extensive documentation), Golan in question 2 (documentation of step-by-steps for first-timers), Banshee in question 4 (documentation doesn't cover the flexibility), myself in question 5 (advanced stuff not covered, explain modules). When people were talking about them, and the learning curve in most of the answers, they were almost exclusively about the data/file/code structure.

You may have forgotten what it is like to be a novice Lauren (and I imagine so because I know you are really good at what you do) but I haven't modded a game before Tiberium Wars so the TW SDK is my first venture into actual modding. I have most of the fields already covered in my areas of knowledge except for the coding. The basic stuff is easy to pick up on for me and people on the more experienced level, but if learning were not as easy for me --like it certainly isn't for everyone; remember: lowest-common-denominator-- then it would be a lot harder to understand. I'm thankful that I pick up on things as easily as I do.

¹As a bit of back-story I'm an intelligent person and find learning to be rather easy. I did fool around with gmax and the Renegade Level Editor a teensy bit when I was roughly 14. I've been hanging out in the modding communities for years so I've picked up on the terminology and pipeline process ideas over that time, which was pretty easy. I self-taught myself a few things in various fields from some Flash animation and ActionScript to Macromedia Fireworks (yeah back before Adobe bought Macromedia) and some Photoshop and a bit of gmax. Now I am receiving a formal education in the industry field for the art-side of the production pipeline to actually follow that as my professional career, which just leaves code.

[purplescrin]

Maybe next time Sonic should have puffed in this additional question in the Roundtable I would have recommended:
There have been rumors of CoreAngel and DarkSynth Productions doing a custom KW mod sdk under their C&C3 mod, The Ultimate Revenge. According to the mod leader, she says she and the team will release most of the art assets and codes from KW when released. Do you think this kind of work is real when it'll be released?

If you want to know about this, see here:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/kanes-revenge

We have opinions about this in the PPMsite and Revora forums. There's not much luck for now since the mod has been temporarily being put into the archives but it's still currently developing.

[Lauren]

Sorry it wasn't meant to be something personal.
I've only modded Generals ini code before (never made something big, the ini files were at the most parts too confusing, for example I didn't had any idea how to make some new animation coding in Generals, I learned it and most other stuff with Tiberium Wars because it was better structured), then was only gaming in the years of BFME and BFME II. When the Tiberium Wars SDK came out it seemed familiar as it directly reminded me of the ini code (because of the keywords) but more like html (in these days I didn't exactly know what xml really is and that html is just like a derivation of it).
I had no problem doing stuff like changing prizes etc (ok I never had problems with that in Generals) as I picked some random unit and looked through the file. I never had these problems many many topics in the official forums are about. Stuff like changing damage etc was instantly clear for me. I just looked at the structure and it was like this for me: "ok this points there and this.. uhm .. windows search.. ahh in this file". This is how I learned most stuff, even stuff I never got in Generals but the structure let me realize how it worked (as mentioned the animation for example)
Then some day.. maybe 1 or 2 months after the TW SDK release I looked in the xsd and noticed that names of behaviors and other stuff is in there (really, I didn't know what xsd files are and why they were there) so I compared again with code of TW units and got things together. (Then at that time I began with Tower Defense)... What exactly xsd files are and the purpose of them to define the xml files I learned approx 8 months ago. (at my first semester at university, I am now 19 years old) If I knew that sooner it would even be easier.

As a summary: for me learning the stuff I know how to handle the xml files took me under two months with only knowing some limited amount of keywords and no idea about the structure and without any tutorial. My experience is simply: do learn a bit about xml/xsd structure and how they work and everything else will come with some looking through the code.. shouldn't take more then two months to be as good as I am with the knowledge about how to mod TW/RA3. (Maybe excluding shaders and batches I also taught completely myself) (btw at school my marks where something about uhm C? dunno exactly what it is in English school system, here in Germany it is 3 (from 1 with being the best mark and 6 the worst) so I don't think I am thaat good at learning stuff (or it just didn't interested myself xD))

This post has been edited by Lauren: Saturday 2nd May 2009 5:26 PM

[Doctor Destiny]

Maybe next time Sonic should have puffed in this additional question in the Roundtable I would have recommended:
There have been rumors of CoreAngel and DarkSynth Productions doing a custom KW mod sdk under their C&C3 mod, The Ultimate Revenge. According to the mod leader, she says she and the team will release most of the art assets and codes from KW when released. Do you think this kind of work is real when it'll be released?

If you want to know about this, see here:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/kanes-revenge

We have opinions about this in the PPMsite and Revora forums. There's not much luck for now since the mod has been temporarily being put into the archives but it's still currently developing.

There's a reason why it wasn't asked: it's not going to happen and it's not even close to being official. Even if it is released, I sincerely doubt it will even be useful. Then again, it has to be released before anything can even happen.

Now. Stop spreading this garbage. It's starting to grate on my nerves, and many others.