What do we know about modding X-Rebirth?

softweir · Post by **softweir** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 01:43

Actually, there are people who only buy some games (Bethesda's games for example) to mod them. My brother got Fallout New Vegas mainly so he could adapt his hoverchair mod to work with it. He isn't so mod-mad that he would buy Skyrim and not play it - but there are some who quite probably will.

Modding is a game all in itself.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 02:24

softweir wrote:Modding is a game all in itself.

I never thought of it that way, but very true.

builder680 · Post by **builder680** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 03:13

I see references to "playership" in one of those files linked in the OP. I wonder if that counts as confirmation that it's a space game. Or a water based ship game. I'd go with space though. Especially with the other stuff about "dogfighting" in there. Water ships don't dogfight, only spaceships do, afaik.

I'm no modder, so I have no idea what you guys are talking about. But that caught my eye.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 03:48

builder680 wrote:I see references to "playership" in one of those files linked in the OP. I wonder if that counts as confirmation that it's a space game.

Based on that, and interview with Bernd Lehahn, I don't think there's any doubt it will be a space game.

gamefocus wrote:Q: On which project are you working now and what can you tell us about it?

A: See above. The ultimate space simulation game

builder680 · Post by **builder680** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 03:49

I hadn't seen that, heh. Thanks.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 15:37

I notice in the cutscene example: <bias_relative reference="titan">

Does reference to "titan" mean they will be using existing models? If so, they will probably give them face-lifts for appearance.

I realize those code examples will have been preliminary, and highly "sanitized" for Apoch's presentation, so anything we try to glean will be rather far-fetched.

Also, I can't remember where, but it seems to me I read somewhere that while the X-series is finished, we may still see the X-Universe in some form?

gmargaro · Post by **gmargaro** » Thu, 24. Mar 11, 16:02

Observe wrote: Also, I can't remember where, but it seems to me I read somewhere that while the X-series is finished, we may still see the X-Universe in some form?

So we'll play the ufos (so no weapons) and i'll be "sim X-universe explorers"

edit : to stay on topic, they probably reuse what they have done in the X series for making the tools for TNBT, rather than creating the new ships/station/potatoes before creating the "toolset".

killerog · Post by **killerog** » Sun, 27. Mar 11, 00:43

Observe wrote:I notice in the cutscene example: <bias_relative reference="titan">

Does reference to "titan" mean they will be using existing models? If so, they will probably give them face-lifts for appearance.

I noticed that. Chances are its either an X3 ship being used for testing, keeping a name we know but its a completely new ship or it was just randomly chosen. No real point in reading too much into it.

Apoch · Post by **Apoch** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 06:21

The "unannounced" script examples from the presentation were very heavily modified prior to posting on the web to use familiar terms from the old X games. Aside from a few syntax and style issues, very little of that code has any resemblance to what's actually in the game project mentioned. The point was to make it clear what kinds of things are going on for people familiar with the existing games, not to indicate what's going into future work.

As for modding, we've been committed for a long time to providing opportunities for people to mod and extend our games, and remain so going forward, as Bernd reiterated recently (sorry, no link handy, but a little search-fu should turn it up easily enough). It's way too early to be commenting on the mod support we plan for future games, but I think it's fair to say that you can expect some pretty cool toys to play with.

Just keep in mind that our focus is first and foremost on building the "primary" game experience, and that for a handful of reasons we can't always release all of the toys for general mass consumption. But we'll see what can be handed out in the future

For the curious, I might be able to answer some questions on the new content creation tools we're using, although I can't promise much in the way of details.

gmargaro · Post by **gmargaro** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 11:07

Thanks Apoch.

That's not really a surprise, seeing what Bernd said Here, but great news anyway.
Perhaps I'll start serious modding / scripting with TNBT, if I can fight my procrastination (and find the time to).

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 17:12

Apoch wrote:For the curious, I might be able to answer some questions on the new content creation tools we're using, although I can't promise much in the way of details.

Thanks Apoch!

Please let us know anything at all your are able to convey about new content creation tools - so we may be thinking about these things in the back of our minds.

Note: This thread was originally placed in Scripts and Modding forum, but was moved here (OTE) because there is no forum for TNBT. Thread title changed from "What do we know about modding TNBT" to "What do we know about TNBT". I will attempt to keep OP current as info becomes available.

Apoch · Post by **Apoch** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 18:13

As I've said before we're using three XML-based tools for content creation: one for MD-style mission/storyline control, one for cutscenes, and a new one for AI control which is very roughly analogous to the script editor in X2/X3. Can't say too much about the third yet but its existence is now officially revealed (post-GDC) so... speculate away

We are internally using a fairly rich set of debugging functionality and such to make things easier, but it remains to be seen how much of that can be exposed for the modding community to play with. Stay tuned; once we're officially announced and such it should be possible to say a little bit more about that.

Last but not least... those of you concerned about the power of the new content tools need not be worried

We've got several games worth of experience in building these tools and suffice it to say they're pretty powerful (full disclosure: a lot of them are my responsibility, so some bias may exist

)

Flexibility and control are always top priority for our content tools, so there should be no cause for alarm there. You'll be able to do some pretty sweet stuff with the new toys.

Documentation is also something we're trying hard to keep up to par, and it's again one of my personal areas of responsibility for the AI systems in particular; so hopefully we'll have a nice end-to-end detailed document on how to build your own goodies with the new tools and how to deploy them. It should be safe to say that anything we have internally in terms of documentation will be made available for the mod community at some point, and probably a fair amount of extra how-to guides and such as well. Of course the scripts shipping with the game can always be peeked at for inspiration and guidance, and thanks to the XML (and some deftly-placed schema files) we can also offer inline hints for each command as to how they work and how they should be used.

All in all, I am personally pretty excited about this one, and look forward to seeing what you lot can dream up

supakillaii · Post by **supakillaii** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 19:05

Oh god the bias is burning my eyes! MY EYES!

Can't wait for more information/hints/teases/excuses/bias

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 19:22

Apoch wrote:As I've said before we're using three XML-based tools for content creation: one for MD-style mission/storyline control, one for cutscenes, and a new one for AI control which is very roughly analogous to the script editor in X2/X3.

What is the purpose for separate mission and cutscene content creation? Is it because of some performance reason?

Thanks

Samuel Creshal · Post by **Samuel Creshal** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 19:34

Performance? With interpreted XML-scripts? There is no performance...

X2-Eliah · Post by **X2-Eliah** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 20:19

I might be in a minority here, but I do hope you guys are also focusing towards the game's content and not just the tools

Sure, modding is great, but the vanilla experience also matters a lot

Post by **Ketraar** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 20:28

Nothing really good can be done without proper tools. Vanilla or otherwise.

What is the purpose for separate mission and cutscene content creation?

No idea about the purpose but they were/are separate in TC already. Just saying.

MFG

Ketraar

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 20:47

X2-Eliah wrote:I might be in a minority here, but I do hope you guys are also focusing towards the game's content and not just the tools Sure, modding is great, but the vanilla experience also matters a lot

I guess focus will be according to available information. No doubt discussion will change as new facts are released.

softweir · Post by **softweir** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 22:25

Samuel Creshal wrote:Performance? With interpreted XML-scripts? There is no performance...

Who says the game interprets the scripts on-the-fly? XML files can be parsed to much more efficient code when they are first loaded, and the game can cache the optimised code and only replace it if the XML is updated.

X2-Eliah wrote:I might be in a minority here, but I do hope you guys are also focusing towards the game's content and not just the tools

Creating tools like those is not all that big a deal, especially since two of the three were created for X:TC. My guess is they were ready even before TC came out.

Apoch · Post by **Apoch** » Mon, 28. Mar 11, 23:34

Observe wrote:What is the purpose for separate mission and cutscene content creation? Is it because of some performance reason?

Thanks

Missions and cutscenes require very different types of logic. Missions are all about controlling objects, checking for conditions (Is the bad guy dead yet? Did you sell all the Tuna Fish to the Zoo?), and responding to game situations. Cutscenes are more about displaying a particular event or sequence of events.

Just as in X3TC it is possible to link the cutscene and mission systems so that a mission-controlled event can be played as a cutscene, but the two are separate because they do fundamentally different jobs.

Samuel Creshal wrote:Performance? With interpreted XML-scripts? There is no performance...

Much of X2, X3R, and X3TC's game logic is implemented using XML-based scripts. What do you think the MSCI is?

In any case, softweir is correct - there's nothing saying the XML is loaded and interpreted on the fly. In reality it's actually compiled into an in-memory representation (similar but highly more performant than the solution used in X2/3) and executed from there directly.

As I've said elsewhere, our performance issues are basically never related to the scripting tools in the game. They're plenty fast, and easy enough to make even faster if it becomes necessary.

X2-Eliah wrote:I might be in a minority here, but I do hope you guys are also focusing towards the game's content and not just the tools Sure, modding is great, but the vanilla experience also matters a lot

As Ketraar pointed out, the tools are useful for a lot more than just mods. In fact, the tools we're developing and using now are designed primarily with the "vanilla" experience in mind, and mod support basically nothing more than a nice bonus. We're keen on getting that bonus maximized for you guys, of course, but it's not like mod support is the driving goal of the project. We're making a game, not a tech demo

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

What do we know about modding X-Rebirth?