[BG Official] Brickadia Hate Thread

Author Topic: [BG Official] Brickadia Hate Thread  (Read 50920 times)

only real ones remember mr wiggles

also literally 70% of this thread is full of horse stuff, ike is right

i bet none of you have every developed anything near brickadia in your life and all of you are baselessly speculating off of the vague assumption that "modding support HAS to be built into the game from the start" which is ridiculous surface level stuff.

the actual topic of discussion a modding api is incredibly nuanced and can't just be summed up to "huuu they didnt add modding rn duuuuuuu they are gonna fail"
anything made in UE4 is inherently moddable from the start so long as you know what you're doing, which I think the devs do. I've talked to multiple developer friends now about the stuff phantos said and most of what he was talking about was technological shrapnel probably with the intent to overwhelm me if I tried to respond

anything made in UE4 is inherently moddable from the start so long as you know what you're doing, which I think the devs do. I've talked to multiple developer friends now about the stuff phantos said and most of what he was talking about was technological shrapnel probably with the intent to overwhelm me if I tried to respond
Could you point out exactly what parts of phantos' tirade was made up? You just completely ignored his arguments and said he was full of stuff, that is something Deus Ex would do. I want this game to succeed as much as the next guy but please be realistic here. If mod support isn't their number one priority, then it's going to be nowhere near Blockland's level of support. A lot of people would be discouraged if they had to download an entire 20gb game engine just to make a small modification, when you can literally open the console in BL and make pretty sophisticated changes/additions without even leaving the game, with a scripting language that you can learn in it's entirety in an hour.

Even with full flexibility of a mod support system, runtime modding is always superior to baked mods and they do require reflection and interfaces made specifically for dynamic changes

Nothing PhantOS said in that post was technological shrapnel. It was actually all very clear and easy to follow. He even did a good job of explaining the concepts. I especially liked the house brown townogy. That's the exact same brown townogy my professors used to explain software architecture to me. If your position is that PhantOS is intentionally trying to confuse you by using basic industry concepts, you probably shouldn't be attacking him on the grounds that he "doesn't know what he's talking about".

All good software starts with a solid foundation. This isn't even a hot take, it's the first thing they teach you in software engineering. You can still be friends with the Brickadia discord and hold this opinion. Is it possible to tack mod support onto Brickadia late in development if the devs "know what they're doing"? Sure. A construction company that "knows what they're doing" could probably turn a log cabin into a skyscraper. How much of the log cabin's original design is going to end up in the skyscraper? A dev team that is building software on poor foundations does not know what they are doing.

Something being possible doesn't equate to it being feasible. If you employ bad design techniques you get bad software. In this case, you get stuff mod support. Nobody here (except the stuffposters) are doubling down and trying to see Brickadia get canceled. Many of us have countless hours of development time invested in Blockland, which may not transfer to Brickadia like the community will. That's a legitimate concern, and one that deserves attention.

They are designing all the game systems with the eventuality of modding in mind, as such it'll be easy to add new content to existing systems. The only reason you can't make mods right now is because you would need their unreal toolkit to create compatible assets, and they're not ready to work on making a releasable toolkit for the purpose of modding yet since there is a lot of logistical issues that need to be considered with that which will actually be easier to consider once the game is more complete. Also, as Electrk mentioned earlier they are also waiting to see if unreal will end up having its own official scripting language, since anything officially added to the engine will obviously be a superior solution to any scripting language they could add later. And even if an official scripting language never pans out for unreal they can still add their own.

Talk is cheap! I'll form an opinion about the modding tools when we get any information about it other than the fact that it exists(? Is planned to exist?)
« Last Edit: August 18, 2019, 04:23:36 PM by Robot »

dont you need the game first

Nothing PhantOS said in that post was technological shrapnel.
Coming from someone who has worked with UE4 and from various people I shared this topic with who have a whole host more experience than I do, the conclusion was the same. If you want to defend his position, go right ahead. With the context I have of how he's argued positions before and what I know about his experience as a developer, I doubt his position of authority and your whole post doesn't really change my mind.

No need to change your mind. If that's how you feel about PhantOS that's how you feel. But he made an intelligent post which clearly shows he's educated about the topic, and it deserves more respect than it got.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2019, 04:51:17 PM by Robot »

PhantOS's entire argument literally is based on "they need to implement modding support first or make it a #1 priority" which is sometimes true in certain cases and is an incredibly nuanced discussion that entirely depends on what they have left to develop on their roadmap.

There's literally zero point speculating what kinds of changes need to be made at what time when none of us have access to the codebase or the current state of the game.

All of you sound like the absolute smooth brains on stackoverflow that mindlessly tell people to use X design pattern all the time because it's the ONLY way to do anything.

Regarding PhantOS's concern about how UE4 mods are additive by default, they're absolutely looking into how to add hooks and ways to modify existing content—this is something that is planned.  There was an extensive conversation on this about a month ago.  They're not just going to slap together some half-assed superficial mod support system and then be done with it; that's not how they work.

Also, there's going to be a scripting language.  Stop saying it's just going to be blueprints.

Many of us have countless hours of development time invested in Blockland, which may not transfer to Brickadia like the community will.
A lot of people would be discouraged if they had to download an entire 20gb game engine just to make a small modification, when you can literally open the console in BL and make pretty sophisticated changes/additions without even leaving the game, with a scripting language that you can learn in it's entirety in an hour.
Even with full flexibility of a mod support system, runtime modding is always superior to baked mods and they do require reflection and interfaces made specifically for dynamic changes

This whole conversation is pointless because you guys basically just want the developers to turn Unreal Engine into Torque.  Unreal Engine is not Torque.  Like Ike said, Torque was an enigma and unique in its moddability.  Unreal Engine has an entirely different architecture and way of doing things, so it's not going to be the same.  Of course, that's not to say there aren't things to improve on, and they do have plans to improve on it as I mentioned above, but writing mods for an 18-year-old indie engine is not going to be the same as writing them for a modern AAA one.  You're going to have to get used to a new way of doing things, sorry.

Regarding runtime modding, you're essentially asking a development team of 7 people to fundamentally change how the engine works.  Runtime modding works in Torque because it was written to support that, but even then it was pretty hacky.  Let's not act like Torque was some pinnacle of modding lmao it definitely has its issues.

I understand people like their Torque and how moddable it is, but the fact of the matter is that there are no modern engines that have that level of moddability built into them.  Maybe there are some esoteric ones but none that are at the level of Unreal.  Again, they're planning to make mod support as flexible and extensive as they can, so don't think it's going to be some surface-level addition at the last minute like some of you keep insisting.  And like Aide said above, stating everything in absolutist terms is not productive nor is it realistic.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 11:49:50 AM by Electrk.. »

Here is my main concern with the mod support. I went to the discord and looked at all the news and the dev gallery. You will see things like special brick grids, water graphics, overlapping bricks, player emotes, the in's and out's of the options menus. These are all very cool and impressive. But it seems your biggest source of criticism is skepticism surrounding modding, so shouldn't we be seeing something related to that? The closest thing I saw was a re-imagined state system, something that obviously came about to support the weapons update. If the developers have been working on it since the beginning, shouldn't there be something to show, even if it is a little too technical for the average user? Have I missed something?

I'm not on the Brickadia dev team, nor am I on their test team. So I can't speak in absolutes about their code, for or against. Speaking candidly, it's actually pretty frustrating how little you get from the horses mouth. I've heard a lot of talk regarding their plans for modding. It's not very reassuring to hear "We are gonna do modding, shut up about it" over and over again. Would like to see something. If that's not appropriate or possible, fine, but until then I'm reserving my skepticism that mod support is even a priority.

And if it isn't a priority, it's understandable. I don't think anyone has any disillusions about Brickadia being a highly professional product being worked on by people with tons of experience, it's not always logistically reasonable to start developing at such a complicated level. I'm not going to lambaste the developers or their supporters if mod support is taking a back-seat to some other things. I'm not trying to get everyone to go throw their Brickadia keys in dumpster fire. But most of us understand that the longer it takes a back-seat, the more tedious and complicated it's going to become. Mutability is very different from things like guns and option menus and graphics and other things that have comparatively high cohesion. It's something that branches out and touches every part of your system, meaning it has to be accounted for every time the system is changed, so it should stand to reason we'd have something to look at by now. If that's not the case, we'd like to know why.

you guys basically just want the developers to turn Unreal Engine into Torque.

Not really. I think a lot of people just wanted you to admit that Unreal Engine is polymorphically inferior to Torque. Which I think you did, so thanks. And I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. Like you said, I think Unreal brings a lot of other benefits to the table, but it's modding ability is not really one of them. That's a big enough problem to warrant discussion when talking about Blockland's spiritual successor.

Edit
I'd like to clarify my statement that you responded to: I'm personally excited to leave the idiosyncrasies of Torque behind to develop on a, albeit less convenient, more modernized platform. But I'd like it if the community were directly involved in this process and were able to influence it to better suit everyone. When Brickadia comes out, Blocklanders are going to flock to Brickadia, leaving everything we made for Blockland behind. If modding for Brickadia is not intuitive or requires a level of skill most Blockland developers don't possess, the greater community is not going to understand that.

...incredibly nuanced discussion ... mindlessly tell people to use X design pattern all the time because it's the ONLY way to do anything.

Game development is nuanced, definitely. It's actually not nuance I possess. But game development is just a level of abstraction of software engineering. The great thing about UE4 and Unity is that you don't have to be a software engineer to make games with them, but any game developer worth their salt has done their research in the area. I do actually have faith the Brickadia dev team is going to come out with acceptable modding ability come hell or high water. Because it's absolutely necessary. Everybody is saying that the Brickadia dev team has been developing mod support and keeping it in mind from the beginning, that's a great thing! Can't wait to see some of the fruits of that labor.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 02:18:30 PM by Robot »

I don' know anything about brickadia lol
ok just read the thread and basically this thread is useless
« Last Edit: August 19, 2019, 01:40:04 PM by Boomsticks Alt »

Regarding PhantOS's concern about how UE4 mods are additive by default, they're absolutely looking into how to add hooks and ways to modify existing content—this is something that is planned.  There was an extensive conversation on this about a month ago.  They're not just going to slap together some half-assed superficial mod support system and then be done with it; that's not how they work.

Also, there's going to be a scripting language.  Stop saying it's just going to be blueprints.
the thing that gets me is that apparently phantos was a tester so how would he not know this? leads me to think he's just being disingenuous

When I was in the discord at the time the general knowledge was that the content was being made using blueprints and a lot of code was optimized to be interfaced with blueprints. I didn't know about a scripting language but I assume that that's the only logical step towards flexible modding. It still is guaranteed to be more expensive to implement at this stage in development as opposed to a year or so ago