[Micky C]

DNF is really far behind us now so it's interesting to reflect on whether the ability to mod the game has made the slightest bit of difference to its reception or longevity.

It's fairly safe to say that hardly anyone plays the game on a regular basis any more, especially the single player, at least compared to those who play Duke 3D. But would the ability to add custom levels, and maybe mod the game have given it a much bigger fanbase? Keep in mind that the engine and art assets are below average for a 2011 game. Personally I don't think a huge amount of people would have bothered learning the map maker due to the relatively small audience that DNF would have, and that those who would have done so would have stopped after 6 months or so, but what do other people think?

[OpenMaw]

There were people who were trying to mod the game in spite of the obstructions put in place by Gearbox.

So, I think yes. I can imagine people trying to transform the game into what they perceived it to be back in 98/2001. I can see people doing recreations of classic Duke 3D mods. Higher resolution packs (Like the SIkkmod for Doom 3, or the hyper realism pack for Crysis). I could see someone making a mod for the PC version where you could carry all the guns you wanted, and removing the infinite ammo crates from the game. Nude patches exist even in spite of the lock outs.

So yeah. I think the game would have a stronger cult following had the modding functionality existed.

[Micky C]

Even if they did add the ability to hold all the weapons though and other things like that, they just wouldn't work with the gameplay of the original levels because of how they were designed. Level design was one of the biggest problems with DNF, so people would have to make completely new levels with gameplay mods in mind.

[Tea Monster]

If the tools had been released, then that wouldn't be a problem. New maps, in the spirit of Duke 3D, would probably be the first order of the day.

Later on, texture packs, models and shader patches would follow.

The really sad part is that I don't see it changing for the next Duke game.

[----]

Tea Monster, on 09 November 2012 - 04:40 AM, said:

The really sad part is that I don't see it changing for the next Duke game.

Yep, Randy said about Borderlands 2 that several months of extra work wouldn't be worth it.

But then it is again Randy talking shit. I mean, the ROTT remake based on the same engine will have an editor, made by a smaller team with a much smaller budget in much less time.

[Darkus]

I intended at the beginning to upgrade my PC and buy DNF only for modding, but when I saw that there was no map editor or modding tools, I prefered to save my money, and stay on Duke3D/EDuke32.
As the game was highly anticipated, I think the game will be even "alive" today, not only for new 'non-linears' maps, but also with game enhancers (possibility to carry all the weapons, restore the old health counter with medikits), and why not new multiplayers game modes such as co-op, invasion...

[Tea Monster]

fuegerstef, on 09 November 2012 - 04:51 AM, said:

Yep, Randy said about Borderlands 2 that several months of extra work wouldn't be worth it.

But then it is again Randy talking shit. I mean, the ROTT remake based on the same engine will have an editor, made by a smaller team with a much smaller budget in much less time.

Yeah, but that is a different team with a different parent company. Besides all that, they are working with a 'vanilla' version of UDK.

[MetHy]

We would have seen countless of bad Hollywood Holocaust and Hotel Hell remakes and after a couple of months it would have faded away and there would have been even less maps for DNF than we have for DN3D.

I'm glad there isn't a map maker or editor of any kind, at least it doesn't divides the small DN3D community.

[OpenMaw]

MetHy, on 09 November 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

We would have seen countless of bad Hollywood Holocaust and Hotel Hell remakes and after a couple of months it would have faded away and there would have been even less maps for DNF than we have for DN3D.

I'm glad there isn't a map maker or editor of any kind, at least it doesn't divides the small DN3D community.

Which would have been more of a life span than what it got, which was nothing.

Not to mention, having the editor for some of us would have been good for us, and nothing to those of you who seem to get annoyed whenever the idea is brought up. Like wanting editing tools is somehow heresy or some shit.

With all due respect, It's just a ridiculous statement. The community is all for the most part in one place. Here, on Duke 4 net. It wouldn't have caused any division for the simple fact that much of the work would have been happening here.

[LeoD]

Darkus, on 09 November 2012 - 05:02 AM, said:

I intended at the beginning to upgrade my PC and buy DNF only for modding, but when I saw that there was no map editor or modding tools, I prefered to save my money, and stay on Duke3D/EDuke32.

Hehe, that reminds me of this. Nowadays I wouldn't thank Gearbox for the game but only for providing a charged ending of the waiting time.

MetHy, on 09 November 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

We would have seen countless of bad Hollywood Holocaust and Hotel Hell remakes and after a couple of months it would have faded away and there would have been even less maps for DNF than we have for DN3D.

I'm glad there isn't a map maker or editor of any kind, at least it doesn't divides the small DN3D community.

Commando Nukem, on 09 November 2012 - 05:59 AM, said:

Not to mention, having the editor for some of us would have been good for us, and nothing to those of you who seem to get annoyed whenever the idea is brought up. Like wanting editing tools is somehow heresy or some shit.

With all due respect, It's just a ridiculous statement. The community is all for the most part in one place. Here, on Duke 4 net. It wouldn't have caused any division for the simple fact that much of the work would have been happening here.

Uh, quite some overreacting, isn't it? If a reasonable amount of mappers/modders had switched to DNF tools I'd call that a divide, indeed.

[rasmus thorup]

yea but dnf modding editors would attract even more people than there currently is for duke3d. + dnf editors would maybe looks into what duke3d editing is, and be amazed.

[LeoD]

rasmus thorup, on 09 November 2012 - 07:22 AM, said:

yea but dnf modding editors would attract even more people than there currently is for duke3d.

Even if DNF were a better game and provided modding tools I doubt that the engine would have attracted many new modders.

[Tea Monster]

The community is already split between those who want to work on modern engines and those who dont. At the moment their only choice is to go elsewhere.

[Jimmy]

I don't honestly see it making a difference. Who wants to make a mod for a broken piece of shit?

[Hank]

Considering the current level of new maps, TCs, mods and Eduke32 upgrades, (none of which seem to be note worthy by our news reporters, and get posted on the front page of duke4) I say this community is quite strong and will be around for a long time, and would've been even with a DNF editor.

If Randy would have provided an editor, it would have attracted more people, not split this community. (We are talking like decades of friendships here, nothing will split this) And as for engines, we have the technology to borrow the Duke and get him into Crytek SDK right now. This would get closed down by Gearbox like in two seconds. And this is the catch, the scary possibility of the precious Duke Nukem name and entire franchise in the little hands of ehmm, amateurs. The official reasons for the lack of editor is not believable. Gearbox does not wish to have modders – period – in my never humble opinion.

[Kristian Joensen]

IIRC, Gearbox has now shipped 4 games in a row without official mod tools (BIA:HH, Borderlands, DNF, Borderlands 2). Borderlands is a bit of special case though since they did ship with an embedded editor hidden away in the exe which they tolerated member of the community digging out.

[Tea Monster]

Captain Awesome, on 09 November 2012 - 08:14 PM, said:

I don't honestly see it making a difference. Who wants to make a mod for a broken piece of shit?

Because, As broken as it is, it's the only way to make a modern looking Duke game. If you use another engine, you get shut down.

[RichardStorm]

Definitely yes.

DNF is a sort of piece of shit but with a great and active community like this, modders and not modders. I don't know what marketing strategy by Gearbox (or anything else) there is behind the decision of releasing no SDK kit and make impossible to modify the game. It could attract people many many times than an old DOS game with a modern port...
I also remember it's based on a sort of Unreal engine, and it would be relatively easy to be modified.

At this point i think that we need to write an entire unofficial (maybe illegal?) SDK software from scratch (maybe impossible?).

[Micky C]

It's absolutely too late to do that though. For all the time and effort put into making it and encouraging people to use it, the next Duke game wouldn't be far off and for all we know might use a vanilla UDK.

[Tea Monster]

Yeah, but who wants to put any modding ideas they have on hold till GBX decides to release a new game, and then be entirely reliant on their good will to release mod tools, which we already know is not going to happen?
I'm not advocating spending time on de-constructing DNF, I'm saying that generally, if you have a mod idea and want to make something that looks like it was made in the 21st Century, then don't bet on Duke.

[Rellik]

Can anyone think of a bad-to-mediocre game with mod support, that has a very active modding community?

[necroslut]

I think there would have been a lot of people wanting to mod it to be more like their vision of DNF. We all had one.

[rasmus thorup]

necroslut, on 14 November 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

I think there would have been a lot of people wanting to mod it to be more like their vision of DNF. We all had one.

This is 100% correct.

[Jimmy]

It's exactly like Rellik says. Tell me one broken piece of shit people mod for. Let's face it, modding for a modern game is hard. Who would put in the effort?

[Tea Monster]

That is like saying "Who would use UDK or Crysis? I mean, really, Who would do that?" Go to the Skyrim and Half Life 2 modding community and ask that question.

[Jimmy]

You're forgetting the part where those games don't suck.

[Mr.Deviance]

If DNF would have been fully moddable from day 1, the DNF section of this site would be up in flames with activity by the people that cared for DNF and wanted to improve it to fit their vision.
I would have personally contributed to the game one way or the other.
Those that know me, might remember that I did some topics here and I showed everything that I discovered with the game, including the bump map intensity settings and other such shit.
I had a great fucking creative drive when this piece of shit came out and I was really looking forward toward modding it or contributing to other mods or projects related to graphics improvements for the most part.
After I saw that not only modding was cut from the game but gearbox even started patching and removing your ability to enable the console or do other shit, I got so sickened and disgusted with the game and with Randy that I completely lost all interest in it.
And when I look back at it, man it's just a bad fucking game.
I am not talking about bad graphics (which were horrible) I am talking about the overall game that fucking has no replay value whatsoever to me.
I can pick up duke 3d any day and it just feels cozy to be inside it's world and walk those maps back and forth.
Maybe it's just me but I'm not that big of a fan of Las Vegas's ambient in general, especially at day time...
Maybe if DNF would have taken place in the same areas where Duke 3d took place I might have liked it instead of hating it.
DNF simply didn't impress me at all and it also lacks replay value so in the end I am not sure if mods could have saved it.
If it would have been moddable, maybe somebody would have started remaking duke 3d inside it, who knows...

[Tea Monster]

I wanted to mod my vision of Duke3D, not DNF. I was going to use DNF to do that.

[rasmus thorup]

But why can't you mod with another newer program instead of the one that would come with DNF?

[Tea Monster]

Because the nice people at 3DR were a wee bit happy with the old C&D order. From others experience, it looks like not much has changed. I don't want to spend a year getting something to a point where it's coming together when suddenly some arsehole suit at GBX decides to pull the plug on my mod.