Through my gaming experience, I have found out something in particular with respect to the end-user moddable games. I had my hands on a possibly hached version of the old Command & Conquer Red Alert. It had editable INI files. But once I was able to change the VALUES of weapons and speeds of vehicles, I just felt that the game was empty and that the uniqueness of OBJECTs in the game was severely lost. I want to ask if other people feel like me about this particular subject.

First, I want to ask you why did you change those values the first place?
The uniqueness lost you're talking about is caused by yourself by making the game unbalanced. Just like in a game of D&D, when the Dungeon Master abbusing it's power and kill all the players, the players lose interest and leave.

Second, games today cannot be altered that easily now. Almost all the games that have a publisher have their files packaged and compressed into one big file that no other program can decode it, even those sound files.

Much depends on how you're modding them. If you're screwing up the balance of the game, then yes, it will usually feel empty. Modifying the medics to walk about with tesla coils or 8 inch guns was fun for a while, but the amusement factor rapidly wore off as it spoiled the challenge of the game.

Quote:

Much depends on how you're modding them. If you're screwing up the balance of the game, then yes, it will usually feel empty. Modifying the medics to walk about with tesla coils or 8 inch guns was fun for a while, but the amusement factor rapidly wore off as it spoiled the challenge of the game.

Yep, that's what am talking about..
So anyway, can we create a moddable, balance preserving game?

My first experience with game programming was on a MUD I had been a player on for a year. Yes, once I saw the back of the stage and started mucking with the code, my interest for playing the game itself greatly diminished.

Quote:

Original post by arithma Yep, that's what am talking about.. So anyway, can we create a moddable, balance preserving game?

I dont think so but if you want to create a moddable game I dont think you should worry about it as long as your version of the game is balanced.

Quote:

Original post by arithma So anyway, can we create a moddable, balance preserving game?

Maybe, but any such system would automatically limit its moddability.

It's best for the modding community for the mod tools to give them as much power over the game as possible; that includes the power to make things unbalanced.

As spiderman would say, with great power comes great responsibility. To make a mod which doesn't spoil the gameplay, you have to balance it yourself. Balance is a really important issue in most games, and it takes a lot of playtesting and careful tweaking to get it right.

Creating a usefully moddable game that maintains game balance would require some kind of algorithm to detect and correct imbalances. If you can do that, why are you posting here? You'd be better off getting a job with any game dev company you care to choose.

In other words, game balance is an extremely subtle problem. If you're going to allow people to change your game, then you're going to have to give up on being able to preserve the balance of the game. I rather suspect that most people who play third-party modifications to games know that they'll be different in terms of gameplay; you yourself won't be faulted if your third-party developers can't make playable content. Just so long as the content you provide is well-done, there'll be something worth playing, and that's what's important.

I think that in allowing modding the game can become *more* balanced than the original game. Look at the number of 'balance' mods for Morrowind. As Bethesda said: 'It's your game, do what you like with it'. Seems that balance is an issue for modders as well as developers to me. If a player wants to destroy the gaming experience, that's their problem.

when game designers do their work, the game should already be as balanced as they can be...
if you want to allow the user to change parameters, two things can happen
1)the game loses balance, then the fun is taken out
2)the game readjusts the balance in some way, giving a different (and worse) gaming experience

game designers are there for a reason...people shouldn't play with game objects
or else it'll just be a cheat like we used to do back in the Contra days...
it's fun to try once, but makes the game boring afterwards