So I haven't been here for a while, are there mods yet?

[Joël]

This thread should be closed asap. This must be the dumbest discussion I've read on these forums. A modding conspiracy? Come on...

Also, no one is preventing you from trying to mod the game yourselves.

Thanks for the suggestion, but we’re not closing a thread simply because a single user likes to think that there is a non-existing conspiracy going on.

However, if someone does continue that non-existing conspiracy thing, it could be seen as trolling.

Reasons for a thread closure could be;

• On request of the OP (report the first post of the thread and provide a valid reason).
• Discussions that break the Forum Rules and Guidelines.

 

[hos]

There's a very handy feature on the forums that can be used ....

I'd appreciate if people would use the private message function if they obviously have a question to a specific member.

(not addressed to you, Joël)

 

[ojonas]

Yep, excellent idea! So why is any attempt at cooperative effort (lets do it WITH Frontier instead of AGAINST them!) being mischaracterized as "demanding"?

I can make low-poly 3D models and tileable textures, including animated tileable textures -- not magnificent, but probably good enough for the game, and I'm hardly the only one. I don't have the skills to make mods or import UGC, and I don't have the time to develop such skills, even if I'm able to (not sure). I'm caretaking my 70+ year old mother while working, so anything I contribute has to fit around that.

Have you ever thought about that there might be a reason why Frontier does not talk about this publicly very often or at all? Why would they work with us on this at this point of the game? Would be a horrible financial decision. Point still stands that if anyone (not saying you) want to work on mods, they are free to do so. Frontier won't stop you. If you don't have the time or skills that's fine, but they you have to put your hope in that someone else (not Frontier at this point) will. As far as time, we all have things in our lives that takes time from this, you have an older mother, someone else might have cancer or going through personal problems, someone might be working too much. That's life., same for everyone.

Happy to help! [up]Every flat-eather wants their assertions taken at face value, which seems reasonable to them -- their belief that the world is flat is based on their personal experience, why shouldn't that be respected? Doesn't mean it's true. If somebody (not Gregor, per his request above) chose to stop participating in a controversial activity for personal reasons, OR was pressured out of it by those who wanted it stopped, there's no way for others to tell the difference, and silencing tactics against others discussing it just makes it look more ominous. [wacky]

So basically you are saying that unless he tells you the one answer you have already made up your mind on. Seems like not matter what he says you won't believe him unless he says flat out: Frontier came to my house and forces me to take down the post or they would kill me (dramatization). This is not the mob we are dealing with. There are literally thousands of good, valid reasons why he wanted to shut down the thread. What would it take for you to actually believe him?

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

*doubling-down conspiracy post removed*

Wow. [rolleyes]

 

[tyczj]

This has to be trolling now....

 

[dragons]

As someone who is working on mods and have posted a bunch of information on here about the file formats, I can tell you that Frontier has not said anything to me either way privately. I haven't worked on it lately due to a combination of the Holidays, being incredibly busy at work, and now starting my last semester of college. That being said, it appears to me that the new encryption they added made adding new objects much more difficult due to one of the needed data structures being included in the encrypted part. I haven't spent much time looking into it so I very well could be missing another way to do it. It's also possible they changed that in newer versions after I pointed it out in the locked topic.

 

[pwc1]

I'm perfectly fine with how Frontier is handling Planet Coaster. Would this, this, or that, be great to have or needed? Possibly, and it may or not happen. But there is NO need to get so freaking upset about how Frontier goes about their company decisions, unles they start acting like some certain American gaming companies, that likes loot boxes.

 

[AndyC1]

That being said, it appears to me that the new encryption they added made adding new objects much more difficult due to one of the needed data structures being included in the encrypted part. I haven't spent much time looking into it so I very well could be missing another way to do it. It's also possible they changed that in newer versions after I pointed it out in the locked topic.

So, I can't go into detail on what is and what isn't included in the encrypted parts of our game resources for obvious reasons. However, I can categorically state that the encrypted parts of the data in no way prevent modding activity from continuing. Any data structures that were previously present in the unencrypted resources can continue to be added / updated in any of the other "overlay" files. It's possible some prefab data was included in the encrypted overlays, but they can continue to be stored in other overlays and the game will continue to read them.

Any database mods will continue to work as they did before.

Cheers

Andy

 

[Ramm]

Very well said, Bitter Jeweler!

I've been saying the exact same thing on many of these UGC threads. Why on Earth would Frontier shoot the cash cow?

I'm on the designer spectrum, and business spectrum.

To the first part, this is a creative endeavor. This is Frontier's creation. They have a plan for what they want it to look like.
Sure, they've listened to the fans input. I'm also sure they weigh that input against their vision for PlanCo. Let them do their thing. It's been a fun ride. Sometimes I'm surprised. Sometimes I'm disappointed. Such is life, eh? Enjoy the ride.

To the second part, if Frontier are smart business people, they aren't going to ACTIVELY support modding/UGC until they are done with their creation. They have a plan, that plan includes making money, like any business. Let them execute their plan.

If Frontier offered up the tools to mod and import UGC right now, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, because that next paid DLC could easily be replicated buy a user, and offered for free. Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? It's realistic to believe mod/UGC will come at the end of the projects life, which would actually breath new life into the game, and probably drive more sales. Real life example? RCT3.

Instead of a great conspiracy theory surrounding the closure of Gregory's thread, how about taking a couple things from that thread...the first being a security issue, in that it was discovered how the paid DLC could be exploited, and second..."is it done yet?", "How about now?", "Can you do the thing yet?", "How about how?" Are we there yet, Are we there yet, Are we there yet, Are we there yet, Are we there yet, Are we there yet...

As far as the many lists of the thousands of "things I want"... is there a point that that just becomes white noise?

But this is simply not the case.

The obvious example and comparison is of course Cities Skylines: Full mod support. And yet they still make DLC and people buy the DLC.

Why? Because obviously they deliver quality and poses skills of creating content no modder is capable off.

So saying mods will mean they earn no more money is simply not true. Unless modders of course have higher skills and then they deserve to be hired by frontier.

 

[ojonas]

But this is simply not the case.

The obvious example and comparison is of course Cities Skylines: Full mod support. And yet they still make DLC and people buy the DLC.

Why? Because obviously they deliver quality and poses skills of creating content no modder is capable off.

So saying mods will mean they earn no more money is simply not true. Unless modders of course have higher skills and then they deserve to be hired by frontier.

Yes, but also, pretty much all useful mods also break every time the game gets updated. The trend lately is that the majority of the causal players are moving away from all but maybe a few mods, if even that. People got tired of having their save games breaking all the time. Then you are in the hands of the modder to update his code in a timely manner in order to keep playing. Until then, assuming he does in fact update his mod, you are stuck. In some cases Colossal Order decided to do their own version of a certain mod, making the mod unusable in the process, forcing you to buy whatever update they included it in. Not sure that is a good way to go as well.

In the end, mods are not frowned upon or illegal in Planet Coaster. Anyone is free to develop whatever they want to as long as it does not bypass any paid content (current or future). For the mod part (all?), the mods in Cities: Skylines are all based of knowledge gained by the community, not by any documentation Colossal Order has released. We are all free to do the same here, but Frontier probably won't help you, same as Colossal Order did not help much with the Cities: Skylines mods.

 

[Citytrader]

Yes, but also, pretty much all useful mods also break every time the game gets updated. The trend lately is that the majority of the causal players are moving away from all but maybe a few mods, if even that. People got tired of having their save games breaking all the time. Then you are in the hands of the modder to update his code in a timely manner in order to keep playing. Until then, assuming he does in fact update his mod, you are stuck. In some cases Colossal Order decided to do their own version of a certain mod, making the mod unusable in the process, forcing you to buy whatever update they included it in. Not sure that is a good way to go as well.

In the end, mods are not frowned upon or illegal in Planet Coaster. Anyone is free to develop whatever they want to as long as it does not bypass any paid content (current or future). For the mod part (all?), the mods in Cities: Skylines are all based of knowledge gained by the community, not by any documentation Colossal Order has released. We are all free to do the same here, but Frontier probably won't help you, same as Colossal Order did not help much with the Cities: Skylines mods.

This.

The community was able to mod and create UCG in that other game developed by Frontier for Atari without issues because Atari no longer supported the game. Anything created could be used without fear of being outdated, and the game had a what, 12 year run because of the community.

However, PC is still an active game still being worked on by Frontier, (we assume), so yes, broken UCG could and would backlash against Frontier. With luck, they will continue to release more content until sales do not warrant the labor cost. At that point, if they are smart, they release the UCG creator, and that pumps up interest, gets more people involved, and could possibly result in even more content being released by Frontier, or even, dare I say it, Planet Coaster 2?

 

[danijami23]

Yes, but also, pretty much all useful mods also break every time the game gets updated. The trend lately is that the majority of the causal players are moving away from all but maybe a few mods, if even that. People got tired of having their save games breaking all the time. Then you are in the hands of the modder to update his code in a timely manner in order to keep playing. Until then, assuming he does in fact update his mod, you are stuck. In some cases Colossal Order decided to do their own version of a certain mod, making the mod unusable in the process, forcing you to buy whatever update they included it in. Not sure that is a good way to go as well

I couldn't disagree more with your assessment of the Cities: Skylines modding scene. For one, all the useful mods as you describe them are always updated within a day or two with an update, where in some cases the developers are in communication with the modders before the updates are even released. My saves never break, unless I introduce game changing mods that weren't there on the old map, which is about as good as it'll ever be on any game. Not only that, but mods implemented by Colossal Order themselves are never introduced in paid DLC. Basic gameplay updates are patched in for free, while actual content is paid.

Also CO actually DID provide both hooks for modding in their game (ie the modding API), and a pretty much complete guide to the hooks themselves in the wiki on their website: https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Modding_API#Official_Modding_API .

Finally, the other bonus is that Skylines was built in Unity, which is a fully documented C# based engine, with yet more hooks to allow you to access Unity's own scripting API. The possibilities are endless. I don't think it's possible to argue that Colossal Order could have been any MORE helpful, short of paying for their customers to go on full courses in Unity and game development.

It's great to know that Frontier aren't going to hinder us in any way from modding the game, but to draw comparisons between them and CO are just plain wrong [haha]. For one, their engine is proprietary and can't be licenced, so no one except them has a clue how to use it, and nobody but nobody can compile in it. You're basically completely limited by what you can manage to reverse engineer.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Instead of comparing what other companies do/did, why not look at what Frontier does?
Did they actively support mods in RCT3?
How about Elite Dangerous?
There are mods available for it.
Did Frontier actively engage the modders?
Did they release support or tools to make modding easier?

 

[Ramm]

Instead of comparing what other companies do/did, why not look at what Frontier does?
Did they actively support mods in RCT3?
How about Elite Dangerous?
There are mods available for it.
Did Frontier actively engage the modders?
Did they release support or tools to make modding easier?

So because they haven't done it they should never do it?

No point in comparing something with itself.

 

[Lazerus101]

I worry by the time mod support comes, the community will have slimmed to the dedicated few.

But maybe it's on the horizon. Who knows.