Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Wouldn't it be easier for indie developers to mod older games instead of building everything from sc
Sengi
Member CommonPosts: 350
There are currently a lot of indie mmos in production, and it seems to me that a lot of the work goes into building the basics of the game like the art assets and so on. And at the same time there are older games that reach the end of their lifecycle and did not perform as expected. So why not bring both things together and give older games to somebody, who is doing something new with it.
For example I don't think that Lucas Arts is making much money off SWTOR anymore.
If a developer wants to do a spiritual successor of Star Wars Galaxies, he could start with a 200 mil. $ game, and then and do NGE in reverse.
He could even provide early access with a running and fully polished game on day 1 of the development.
Or do you think this would not be a good idea, because it creates more problems then it solves?
Comments
Yes, it would be easier to build a game using existing assets, always.
The problems are a) if they want money, it's going to be tough to mod someone else's MMO and get permission to profit off of it.
b) not all companies are open about modding (even if it's not for profit)
c) not all games have enough base material to warrant being modded / or to make an interesting MMO.
However, a mod of EQ / WoW / SWG / UO / etc. could certainly work (if the developers were allowed to do so). A lot of bigger developers are also trying to recycle more assets from previous games to make production times faster and more efficient.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I don't know if it creates problems, but there's a lot of risk involved in something like that. Think of all the work ($) necessary to bring a game like SWG up to snuff, fix all the original problems, and then relaunch it.
I personally think it would be a success, but I also think a new classic EQ (Pantheon) will be a success. The problem is people don't want to invest money in games based on older design philosophies because the genre trended towards casual gaming.
It is not uncommon for Indies to license assets from other Indies. It's an extra revenue stream. That's how I'm making RL2, although it's not on the scale that you're thinking of as an 'MMO'.
Another source of art is independent art studios who crank it out. There are dozens of them, and you can buy anything and everything.
I don't think major studios do it (sublicense art for profit). Probably a crapload of legal hassles and not enough money to make it worth their while.
If you're talking modding without a license, good-luck. There have been a couple Indies who have done it in the past (ripping and reusing art assets and not paying for them). The one ended up in court and the game withdrawn from the market.
One other angle in this is obsolescence. Artwork life cycle is (my guess) about 3 years until it's old, and 6 years until it is totally obsolete. If it takes you 4 years to build a game, even new artwork purchased on day one is old by the time you get it released.
On this note, have you looked at The Repopulation ?
If the game you want to make is almost exactly like some older game, then sure--if you can get the rights to the older game. But in that case, why actually create a game yourself instead of just playing the older game?
If you want to do something substantially different from older games, starting with an extensive code base that assumes in many places that you'll never want to do the stuff that you actually want to do isn't going to end well.
What makes you think that?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's good in theory, but would be hard to accomplish. A company would have to be willing to give up its old code. That is not necessarily companies will want to do because there could be a lot of proprietary info there. Also, modding old code is usually not easy and often costs more than actually producing new code.
I self identify as a monkey.
I don't think those true Indie devs are doing the work you think they are doing.They are basically modding,with already built game engines and lots of resources on the internet to get free assets.
To just take an exact game and try to continue it,doesn't sound feasible because why is that game no longer in business as is,obviously failing.
I can think of a game that is about to shut down soon that is a great game and huge,tons of content that still has lots fo room to improve.However to get that game from the developer would imo take a lot of money.
Also if we are talking about brand name IP's like the Star Wars ip,you are not getting that for cheap,it is a franchise IP name,so no a Indie developer is not touching something like that.
What an Indie dev could touch is more like Darkfall,that game never made it to fruition so the Indie dev got it real cheap and it was not a franchise IP.I don't think that team does it to make a living but more so as a hobby and does keep some employees with a job.He made his money doing computer work for the government not from gaming.
I am pretty sure a ton of those f2p Asian games you see come out,are former titles that never made it to console or old PC games that couldn't make it over seas.Most importantly,i have never seen a good Indie game.I have seen the start of something decent but you'll never see a finished Triple A product and that is what i look for.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Intellectual property rights are the biggest obstacle.
No kidding since they have an expansion coming out later this year.
Modding can be great fun and even a way to get recognized and enter the industry, but as others pointed out above, making money / commercial products with modding can be very tricky and in many cases not even possible (depending on the IP etc).
Most MMO projects see themselves as products and are made to generate profits, so they will usually not opt for the modding approach due to it's limitations.
Buying assets in itself is also a tricky issue.
If you are aiming for anything above amateur quality you can't just haphazardly buy and throw assets together. A game needs a distinct own style that fits the gameplay and the lore. All assets must fit into this perfectly and help ceate a consistent immersive believable world.
Basically, you need to put in the effort if you truly want quality, there is no way around that.
Buying assets can help to lower the budget considerably, but it's not a silver bullet and can't be overused. Plus, the bought assets will most likely need tweaking by someone who knows what he/she is doing.
If a game looks like lots of bought assets thrown together, that should be a huge warning sign.
Older games, esp those that have been patched many many times, the code is such a jumbled mess that even the games own programmers have trouble navigating it. For someone else to buy a game and mod it, they have to deal with that jacked up code. Many times it's easier just to write your own new clean code.
Now if your talking about just taking their art, sound, and animation assets and using those. That's altogether a different horse.
Older MMORPGs aren't moddable in a way where you could use their assets and then sell it as your own work. Maybe there are some minor exceptions out there which I haven't heard of.
Engines exist. These will save you a lot of time, but it'll still require lots more. SWTOR (and Repopulation apparently) were built with Hero Engine.
Star Wars seems like a bad IP for a crafting-focused MMORPG. "Ever heard of Star Wars?" "Wasn't that the series of movies about farming and manufacturing and building droids?" "You and I remember Star Wars very differently..."
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It really only saves you time in the long run. Because in the short run you still need to mostly understand how everything would work from scratch, and you need to understand how someone else decided to solve problems.
___________
Also anyone capable of actually making an MMO, is probably capable of making the game from scratch in the first place. Or at least would be capable of learning how to, quickly.
So you have the perfect storm for the "not invented here syndrome". Someone cocky enough to think they're able to make an MMO(and maybe even actually capable), someone smart enough to make everything themselves(or at least be able to quickly get there), and someone who is probably doing this for fun or at high risk anyways(what's a bit more).
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
From all the games you take as a example to reverse engineer, you pick SWG.
That code was crap to say the very least. Even nowadays some engineers on a certain Star Wars game from 2003 -which I won't mention- with all their knowledge are having burnouts because of the mess that is the code.
You're better off analyzing all the content as a dev team, the good and the bad things, and take all the good things to a new game.
With a engine that can handle the code. Reverse engineering is bound to fail. Learn from the mistakes and move on as a dev.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"