Mods

Aestus

I was thinking, the thought of making a few of my own graphical adventures for a few reasons, but in that case I'd have to settle with 2d for simplicity, being a one man development team is a pain and I did plenty of it back when I was half-life modding.

That lead me to think about the possibility of adding a modding capability to the game, not even complete modding but simple custom story scripting etc.. to expand and have user-made storylines etc.. (though opening up all content for modding would be nice for people who want to create brand new games in a great 3d engine already developed for such games)

What do you guys think? (anyone, including any telltale team around)

(Also, does the idea of a port of hit the road from the scumm engine to this 3d one make anyone else tingle inside? (with recreation of the old functions and all of course))

InvaderJim42

You'd be in waaaaay over your head, friend. Writing a complete game is not something for the faint-hearted and short-of-patience. I've tried my hand at modding a few games myself, and came nowhere near to completion. The most I ever did was add several units to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, and that game's engine is built for easy modding. The Telltale Tool would be a lot harder to figure out, considering it doesn't appear to be written for easy modding. The majority of the game's data (minus the music, speech, and sound effects) is stored in the ttarch file, and that file is compressed/encoded pretty good. Plus, I'd also assume that for every new S&M episode Telltale releases, they not only change the game's resources (ttarch file and the sound), but build a completely new binary (main executable). What I'm getting at is that the executables for each S&M ep are unique, and they're probably not written in a way to allow for modularity.

And since you're asking if Telltale would rewrite the Telltale Tool to be more modular and allow end users to make their own adventures... I have my doubts that they will. I can't speak for them, but I think the Telltale Tool could be considered a trade secret or somesuch; something that only the developers alone can access.

In summary: total-conversion mods take a LOT of work, and I doubt Telltale would take their programs in that direction.

Aestus

I've done plenty of game design and know how hard it is, but with a team, it's much easier, but the basic games I want to make would be easy, speaking from experience.

Also, I know it's unlikely they'd incorporate it, but it's still worth putting out there. I'm just asking for feedback atm.

meelWORM

Modding seems unlikely...

Modding? They need to ensure that licensed properties are treated the way their owners want. For example, they can't allow Phone Bone to do things Jeff Smith wouldn't want. They do plan to create a community focused tool to create your own adventure games.

source: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/25/pax-07-the-sam-and-max-panel-we-made-a-scene/

Badwolf

I might be just making stuff up here, but I'm pretty sure a public version of the Telltale tool was being made? I remember it being said that it'd be a long way off, but...

No idea if this is actually true or whether my mind's just playing tricks though.

Jake

It's "something we would like to do at some point," which sadly isn't the same thing as "we're working on it right now!" People seem to get those mixed up a lot.

Sir Lemming

"Modding" means a lot of things, but I think what we're getting at is what Badwolf implied: a public version of the Telltale Tool just like there's a public Source engine editor and a public Unreal engine editor. I wouldn't actually want to make a Sam & Max mod, but to make my own stuff would be pretty cool.

Aestus

I'm speaking of mod in a broad sense, it can be related to the game or something completely new. Think half-life 1 mods, you could create new half-life related content, as well as entirely new games in the engine. "mod" does not and has never meant specifically a variation based on the original game, like I said, a "mod" can be unrelated.

And exactly which editor do you speak of? When you mod you're combining your own code, models, maps, textures, essentially always using separate tools for each to create something that will run in the specified engine. I was a modeller, mapper, and texture artist in hl1 mods, so maybe that's causing bias in my view, but from what I've seen in other games with modding it's essentially the same process of combining tools.

Anvilania

InvaderJim42 wrote: »

You'd be in waaaaay over your head, friend. Writing a complete game is not something for the faint-hearted and short-of-patience. I've tried my hand at modding a few games myself, and came nowhere near to completion. The most I ever did was add several units to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, and that game's engine is built for easy modding. The Telltale Tool would be a lot harder to figure out, considering it doesn't appear to be written for easy modding. The majority of the game's data (minus the music, speech, and sound effects) is stored in the ttarch file, and that file is compressed/encoded pretty good. Plus, I'd also assume that for every new S&M episode Telltale releases, they not only change the game's resources (ttarch file and the sound), but build a completely new binary (main executable). What I'm getting at is that the executables for each S&M ep are unique, and they're probably not written in a way to allow for modularity.

And since you're asking if Telltale would rewrite the Telltale Tool to be more modular and allow end users to make their own adventures... I have my doubts that they will. I can't speak for them, but I think the Telltale Tool could be considered a trade secret or somesuch; something that only the developers alone can access.

In summary: total-conversion mods take a LOT of work, and I doubt Telltale would take their programs in that direction.

i kinda agree i'm a map maker for SWBF2 and its not easy so makeing a game would be veary veary hard! (compared to map makeing for SWBF2)
Note:SWBF2=Star Wars Battlefront 2

Guybrush Threepwood

This reminds me of the idea that someone had in General Chat (can't remember who it was, sorry!) of Telltale releasing a tool for us to make our own games.