I had a discussion earlier with @INovaeFlavien regarding our tools and modding and we decided to solicit some feedback from the community. We know there are a lot of people out there who are interested in getting their hands on our technology and our first step to a public SDK will be modding Infinity: Battlescape. I had an idea that we should release our tools immediately upon successful completion of our Kickstarter to those who pledge a certain pledge tier. The current thought is that early access to the tools would be included for anyone who pledges the alpha testing pledge tier which will basically give them immediate access to the entire development process for I:B.
The one issue with this is that the tools will still be very rough. Basically weāre only polishing them up to the point where we can ship this Kickstarter so the downside is that in the near future the tools will be very buggy and probably crash a lot. The upside is that you will be able to get a head start on building meshes and skins for our engine so that once the game ships you can have content ready to go as soon as we get our virtual marketplace up and running.
Let us know if you think this would be a good idea or if we should just wait until the tools are in a more polished/usable state before releasing them to all modders instead of just those with alpha access.
Iād suggest having access to the tools as a separate tier or an āadd onā so that only people who are actually interested in modding and development would get them.
Yes it will be similar to the old contribution system except instead of being a part of the core game contributions will be provided as standalone mods/skins/etc. Contributors can optionally set a price for their mods/skins/etc as well so that we can incentivize the community to provide higher quality content.
Both however the part of our editor that is the most mature/usable is the models/skins part. Also, while you would technically be getting the I-Novae Engine binaries there will (initially) be absolutely no documentation and therefore it wonāt be immediately helpful to those of you who are programmers. That being said those of you who have learned the fine art of reverse engineering will probably be able to put something together pretty quick.
Personally I suggest that provided you set the right level of expectations, releasing them in an early, buggy form is fine.
Provided the tools have the primary functionality and a reasonable level of stability, getting them out to a wider audience gets feedback (though not always useful feedback) a lot quicker. Having more people with access to it also increases the chance that these users will exercise edge cases you may not have anticipated and provide feedback on those as well.
Also, and most critically, they can tell you which features theyād prefer you to focus on and which they feel are less important. They can even help write some of the documentation for you if they do manage to āreverse engineerā the tools.
Thanks for your quick reply Keith. I have been following you guys since your first tech demos on YouTube - was it 2006, 2007 or 2008? Time fliesā¦ Personally, Iām really not an artist - programming is more my thing - so itās true that Iām eagerly awaiting to put my hands on the engine to take it out for a spin, so to speak. Iāll be patient and wait until you are done with the API.
By the way, concerning space exploration games, Iām more interested in the explorating/discovering/cataloging thing rather than in the mining/trading or the combatting/pirating/political managing. I was a fan of Noctis, so your engine makes me dream of a kind of next-generation Noctis. To be honest, the dream of a game where we can explore a realistic virtual infinite universe has always been at the no.1 spot on my list since my youth (Iām 50 now) - I just hope it will come true before I drop dead. So you could hardly find a bigger fan of your project. Thanks and keep up the great job!!!
Prices in real money or in game currency? I know that people sometimes sell 3d models for real money. Iām expecting that they will be sold for in-game currency, but just curious.
My feeling is that the tools should be a level above the alpha testing access level. The reason being that not all people that want to alpha test the game will have the skills to be able to do anything with the toolset. Those that have the desire to create mods and models are likely to be cool with paying a little bit more for the privilege. You also avoid having to support those alpha testers that have just decided to dabble with the tools and donāt really know what they are doing.
As for releasing them when they are still a bit buggy, Iād say do it. My experience is users are very understanding about such things and would rather have early access to something with problems than wait for the finished article.
Currently we support anything that exports to fbx, 3ds, dxf, dae, obj, png, jpg, bmp, dds, gif, and hdr (I might be missing 1 or 2). Max, Maya, and Photoshop can all export to those formats. Iām also considering adding support for OpenGEX (http://opengex.org) which has exporters for both Max and Maya (Blender is on the todo list).
Yeah, just want to add on I agree with what others are saying - releasing the tools in a rough state is fine, as long as you are clear they are also in development alongside the game.
I also think you should make it separate somehow, so it would be more likely that people who want the tools get it, and those who only want access to the alpha game donāt. Iām not an expert on Kickstarter though so Iām not sure how easy that would be to do.
No, theyāre paying costumers - probably paying a lot more than anyone else - whoās purpose is to find what entertainment they can in the product. If they find reporting bugs entertaining, so much the better. If they can recover some of the extra cost by developing in-game content, great.
I wouldāve agreed with your position back when games like this charged less for alpha access (full game included). Ye know, the Minecraft and KSP era.
Strictly speaking, theyāre investors, not customers. INovae arenāt actually obliged to provide the finished game as a reward (unless theyāve said that itās a reward), but obviously a game KS that didnāt end up with giving you the game probably doesnāt appeal to that many.
On the other hand, thatās why KS annoys me. Most of the game KS projects set alpha/beta access at the higher tiers, when realistically they should be as low down as possible. The higher tiers should be reserved for things like physical rewards and site visits and the like.
Alpha/beta is set higher because the traditional game development process excludes anyone outside the dev team from having early access. Therefore early access is typically seen as a reward. In the age of crowdfunded games it also accomplishes a few extra things:
The person paying extra is more likely to be one of your die hard fans. Not all die hard fans are super vocal on forums so this helps you identify those people so that you can reward them with extra goodies in the future.
You donāt want as many people to be beta and alpha testers thus you are restricting it to those who actually really want to test the game
The likelihood that these people understand what alpha/beta testing means and what the state of the game will be like increases dramatically. That way you donāt have a bunch of people firing up the game, it crashing, and them going across the internets saying your game is a buggy piece of crap
I think charging more instead of less for early access, as long as it comes with greater interaction with the dev team, is a win for both parties and naturally those who donāt think itās a win arenāt going to pay for it anyway - which is fine =).
Yeah, I see your point. But I think thereās kinda a sensible limit to that. It also depends on whether that reward is solely Alpha access or additional goodies as well. If they only thing on offer at 3 times the expected retail price was alpha access it probably doesnāt represent the best of deals, even for hardcore fans.
That may not matter so much from the developerās perspective, but it might if those that are intending to participate in the Kickstarter campaign are also expecting early access but not expecting to have to part with that much more money to get it.
So you could hardly find a bigger fan of your project. Thanks and keep up the great job!!!