Thief 4 vs. The Dark Mod - by Bulgarian_Taffer
SubJeff on 1/6/2009 at 19:47
Quote Posted by van HellSing
I haven't seen anything I could react to otherwise yet. I'm sure I will though eventually
hahahahaha you've reacted enough now thanks
pavlovscat on 1/6/2009 at 19:58
Quote Posted by Bulgarian_Taffer
When did I say that the others are bad?
You did not, but this sort of thread opens up the opportunity for more Us vs Them bickering. Not your fault, it's just the way it goes here.
sparhawk on 2/6/2009 at 06:58
Quote Posted by Peanuckle
If, upon release, Thief 4 proved to be inferior the The Dark Mod, EM would be red-faced with shame. A group of volunteers beating out a professional company? That would definitely make people wonder who messed up their game. And it would probably make some bigwigs think about offering the Dark Mod team some employment.
I don't really think so. After all, they ARE professional developers. Now my opinion of professional developers is not as strong as most gamers, because, in the end they are jsut programmers like you and me. So being a "professional developer" is not something that inspires particular awe in me, especially since I am one myself.
Anyway, EM is a company, so they work like companies do. They make some market analysis and some presentation to convince the poeple with money that T4 makes sense commercially. They will develop it or not, quite independent of the existence of TDM. Maybe they might take some ideas from us, but then again, maybe not. I don't know how well aware they are of TDM or what their opinion of it is.
And if EM chooses to ask TDM developers for assistance, they already might have done so. However it is not unusual that developers have to sign an NDA, so we wouldn't even know about it, because if a developer were asked for it, and blurts it out, even on our internal forum, there is a high chance that this info would still be leaked. So if I were such a developer I would certainly not tell it. And if EM is positively aware of TDM, then why would they wait to contact us? They know that we pulled that off, so if they would be interested in us helping them, they would likely ask beforehand IMO.
And concerning help from the community, they could just as well ask a lot of FM creators, because even though they are using an outdated machine, there are still a lot of them with high quality missions, up to a professional level as well.
Well, that is only my speculation, because I'm not aware of any contacts in that regards, so don't put anything in my posting which is not in there. ;)
Quote Posted by charpe6
For some reason game developers like to drag their heels when it comes to modding. I guarantee you a game like Oblivion would not have been nearly as successful if it weren't for all the mods that came out that allowed you to change the mistakes of the developers into something fun. It baffles me why more developers don't follow Id and Bethesda's examples when it comes to moddable games.
That's a bit unfair on the developers. To make a game moddable for Joe Average, it means quite a different approach. The moddabillity has to be designed into the game engine from the start. If not, then it will be just a lot of hacks and make the engine unstable. This also means that the budget is higher than for a game that is just that. Of course good developers can write the code in such a way that makes it easier to make it moddable, and this can even save budget in the end, but games have quite a high pressure so I wouldn't count on it. I don't know about EM, but I contacted Piranha Bytes (Gothic series) because they are living next door to me. Their answer was that they would happily employ me if I were working for the same salary as a student. So they rather take cheaper students with smaller experience to save money, then to spend it on more experienced developers. But this is not really particular to Piranha Bytes, it works like this in most software branches.
MoroseTroll on 2/6/2009 at 07:37
Quote Posted by sparhawk
So they rather take cheaper students with smaller experience to save money, then to spend it on more experienced developers.
OMG:eek:! How unprofessional!
sparhawk on 2/6/2009 at 09:13
Depends. If you have a good managment it works. Of course, not all students are bad, so this may sound worse then it could be. And of course a lot of students are quite eager to work for such a company for small money just for "the fame". :D
SubJeff on 2/6/2009 at 09:41
It helps if you think of it like an internship. Sure, the pay may suck (or not exist!) but its experience and something to put on your CV.
rainynight65 on 2/6/2009 at 10:43
Then again, that's pretty much the economical climate in Germany. Companies are highly reluctant to pay people what they should be paying them. And seeing that most students have to take a job to pay for their studies, there's quite a high number of semi-skilled (and often well-skilled) people around who are willing to work for small money.
MoroseTroll on 2/6/2009 at 11:52
Quote Posted by sparhawk
Depends.
Maybe, but Gothic 3 performance and quality were...not so good as it should be. So I think that a game coder must be the professional. Yes, he or she might be a student (or even a school pupil :)) at the same time, but he or she definitely must be the professional.
Tainted on 3/6/2009 at 01:22
I think the Dark Mod's departure from the original canon due to not wanting to violate Eidos' IP is both a bad thing in a small way, and a good thing in a major way.
On one hand its a shame the regular stuff, such as the Builder and the Keepers and their related mythos cannot be directly replicated and built upon, but at the same time, they can be used as a basis for completely new mythos.
This excites me, as the quality overall of FMs released by the shut-ins in this community leaves me in no doubt that some stellar stuff will come about :thumb:
