The Long Dark Roadmap First Impressions

[FINDarkside]

If you mean that Unity would make In-game level editor it's most likely not going to happen. It's not really even possible to make Generic in-game level editor that fits all games. Keep in mind that level editor needs to do more than just edit the ground and adding objects. You will also need to specify item spawn points and other stuff like that.

[Viktor Kvasnica]

24 minutes ago, FINDarkside said:

If you mean that Unity would make In-game level editor it's most likely not going to happen. It's not really even possible to make Generic in-game level editor that fits all games. Keep in mind that level editor needs to do more than just edit the ground and adding objects. You will also need to specify item spawn points and other stuff like that.

Yes, you are right.

The in-game editor does not need to be universal in the true sense of the word and fit every game. The Unity developers can create a strong base for an in-game editor (using the same principles which are used in the main Unity editor), so game developers does not have to start from the scratch if they want to include an in-game editor suitable for their titles.

[FINDarkside]

What do you actually mean with this "strong base"? Maybe you think that the actual level editing is harder than it actually is? It wouldn't take too many minutes to make the user able to spawn trees by pressing q for example, but the biggest problem would probably be the format how the maps are stored. Then again games are so different that it's really hard to make somehow universal format. Very simple example is that if you had some very simple 2d block game you could save the maps like this:

111111111111
100010001001
100010001001
100111001001
100000000001
111111111111

These could be edited with a text editor, or you  could make a separate map editor for it. But the point being that this brings us these restrictions that are good. Editing a text file is much more conventional than letting user add gameobjects in unity editor where you could mess pretty much anything or even make another game inside the game.

But then again I'm not sure if I'm even on the right tracks, because I'm not sure what you actually mean with this "strong base".

[Viktor Kvasnica]

20 minutes ago, FINDarkside said:

What do you actually mean with "strong base"? It's pretty hard to argue against since I don't really know what you actually mean with it, but It's pretty sure that Unity team is not going to do in-game editor for Hinterland.

With a "strong base" I mean give the game developers an ability to use some of the main Unity editor's basic tools in-game (or bundled with the game) and expand on them according to the game developer's needs.

20 minutes ago, FINDarkside said:

What do you actually mean with "strong base"? It's pretty hard to argue against since I don't really know what you actually mean with it, but It's pretty sure that Unity team is not going to do in-game editor for Hinterland.

Not only for Hinterland, but for any interested game developer.

 

Or, just a fresh idea... The Unity developers may create and license a basic editor package. The game developers will then modify/expand the package according to their needs and bundle it with the final game. Some examples of similar approach are Epic Games titles - they all had an (Full, as I can remember!) game engine editor: Unreal and Unreal Tournament (all versions).

[FINDarkside]

2 minutes ago, Viktor Kvasnica said:

With a "strong base" I mean give the game developers an ability to use some of the main Unity editor's basic tools in-game (or bundled with the game) and expand on them according to the game developer's needs.

But then again, what are these basic tools? Adding objects? It's only one line of code already.

Instantiate(prefab, position);

 

[Viktor Kvasnica]

27 minutes ago, FINDarkside said:

But then again, what are these basic tools? Adding objects? It's only one line of code already.

Instantiate(prefab, position);

 

Not just adding objects. Imagine a full Unity editor, accessible to the user/player in such a way, that he/she can create and/or edit a level (environment, meshes, paths, textures, triggers, spawn points, scripts, shaders etc.) but not create a full game (or, technically, may be able to but is prohibited to according to the license agreement). See the Unreal Tournament for instance: it has an built-in full fledged editor as separated executable, which the player can use to create a level (but it is not licensed to create a full/new game).

[FINDarkside]

19 minutes ago, Viktor Kvasnica said:

Not just adding objects. Imagine a full Unity editor, accessible to the user/player in such a way, that he/she can create and/or edit a level (environment, meshes, paths, textures, triggers, spawn points, scripts, shaders etc.) but not create a full game (or, technically, may be able to but is prohibited to according to the license agreement). See the Unreal Tournament for instance: it has an built-in full fledged editor as separated executable, which the player can use to create a level (but it is not licensed to create a new game).

I haven't used Unreal Tournament editor, but as you said it's a custom editor. It's not something that works on every game. Now that I think of letting players make maps in unity editor might be possible with Asset Bundles,. I haven't heard of any games that would let users to create maps with unity editor though. But anyway, even if it were possible it's obviously not as good as a separate map editor (like the Unreal Tournament editor). Kinda hybrid solution would be Unity editor with custom extensions (You can write scripts for unity editor to make things easier).

[SteveP]

1 hour ago, FINDarkside said:

If you mean that Unity would make In-game level editor it's most likely not going to happen. It's not really even possible to make Generic in-game level editor that fits all games. Keep in mind that level editor needs to do more than just edit the ground and adding objects. You will also need to specify item spawn points and other stuff like that.

It seems that each developer organization is left with the job of providing a level editor (I'm no expert on this). Of course it's built on C# which is IBM proprietary closed technology. Diagnostic support on Linux on the other hand is fantastic; you can get core dumps; you can use environment variables to control diagnostic settings, you can get symbolic dumps (if the symbol tables are available) and of course, the file system is an open book. I don't know what it's like on Xbox.

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/consoles/dumping-kinect-will-give-us-better-xbox-one-games-but-is-it-too-little-too-late--1252300

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee416349%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/927069 Is this even relevant? What OS is XBox running under?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_software  it seems to be some type of a windows clone OS however the user interface to the OS seems to be problematic. Can you run any open source software tools like attaching a process to a debug monitor? Or get at a user accessible diagnostic log file?

I did a quick peek into the http://hinterlandforums.com/index.php?/forum/74-linuxsteam-os/ and I get the feeling that there are not a lot of Linux users out there and things don't seem to be working very great. Is anyone playing TLD on Linux? I can't get a sense for this.

Is XBox the reason for the delay of the official release? Is Linux even on the radar? I wonder if the market share for Linux is even significant. What about other game consoles? If you look at the marketshare Xbox One is not holding its own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles I don't think Playstation or Nintendo is on the roadmap or radar. If you look at consoles, the market share has declined for the newest ones. The developer/user support just isn't there for games where there are bugs that make it out into the field. And if you throw in support for modding, can you even do that on closed proprietary systems?

[FINDarkside]

27 minutes ago, SteveP said:

It seems that each developer organization is left with the job of providing a level editor (I'm no expert on this). Of course it's built on C# which is IBM proprietary closed technology. Diagnostic support on Linux on the other hand is fantastic; you can get core dumps; you can use environment variables to control diagnostic settings, you can get symbolic dumps (if the symbol tables are available) and of course, the file system is an open book. I don't know what it's like on Xbox.

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/consoles/dumping-kinect-will-give-us-better-xbox-one-games-but-is-it-too-little-too-late--1252300

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee416349%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/927069 Is this even relevant? What OS is XBox running under?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_software  it seems to be some type of a windows clone OS however the user interface to the OS seems to be problematic. Can you run any open source software tools like attaching a process to a debug monitor? Or get at a user accessible diagnostic log file?

I did a quick peek into the http://hinterlandforums.com/index.php?/forum/74-linuxsteam-os/ and I get the feeling that there are not a lot of Linux users out there and things don't seem to be working very great. Is anyone playing TLD on Linux? I can't get a sense for this.

Is XBox the reason for the delay of the official release? Is Linux even on the radar? I wonder if the market share for Linux is even significant. What about other game consoles? If you look at the marketshare Xbox One is not holding its own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles I don't think Playstation or Nintendo is on the roadmap or radar. If you look at consoles, the market share has declined for the newest ones. The developer/user support just isn't there for games where there are bugs that make it out into the field. And if you throw in support for modding, can you even do that on closed proprietary systems?

I'm not trying to be rude, but I honestly don't understand what your post has to do with mine after the first sentence. In case you did not quote the wrong message you could explain a bit more  Level editor can obviously be made with any language, and C# is definitely not  IBM proprietary closed technology. Why do you think that C# has anything to do with IBM? Mono compiler is licensed under GPLv3 & MIT/X11.

It's also worth noting that you can't really "own" a programming language. You can "own" compilers and libraries though.

[SteveP]

I guess I was talking about the XBox save bug which is somewhere else in this long rambling thread. Sorry for the confusion, I probably should have quoted that separately. The concern I had was debug support for bugs on XBox. See this thread:

50 minutes ago, FINDarkside said:

I'm not trying to be rude, but I honestly don't understand what your post has to do with mine after the first sentence.

It's also worth noting that you can't really "own" a programming language. You can "own" compilers and libraries though.

.NET is proprietary isn't it? C# is married to .NET AFAIK. Isn't C# IBM only? My background is in PCs and Unix and Linux so I confess that I am way out of my depth in Unity. I was trying to get at the support features for debug support. Maybe I'm all muddled up here. Sorry. It was very late last night and I was responding to other concerns and today I just carried that forward not realizing I might be on the wrong thread here. My bad. Sorry.

[FINDarkside]

29 minutes ago, SteveP said:

.NET is proprietary isn't it?

.NET Framework redistributable package is.

.NET core and source code is MIT licensed

.NET compiler platform is Apache 2,0 licensed

Wikipedia

Quote

C# is married to .NET AFAIK.

Yes

Quote

Isn't C# IBM only?

What do you mean with IBM only? C# spec is made by microsoft and .NET is by Microsoft.

Unity uses old version of mono (open source, cross platform .NET framework), because of some licensing issues.

Quote

I guess I was talking about the XBox save bug which is somewhere else in this long rambling thread. Sorry for the confusion, I probably should have quoted that separately

No worries

[SteveP]

1 hour ago, FINDarkside said:

What do you mean with IBM only? C# spec is made by microsoft and .NET is by Microsoft.

Unity uses old version of mono (open source, cross platform .NET framework), because of some licensing issues.

No worries

Ok, yes I was definitely confused; I should have said Microsoft not IBM. There is now a new standard for C# that is an evolutionary descendant of .net called Common Language Infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure

I have no idea if that's going anywhere. Let me retract this. Of course, Unity is the biggest gaming platform out there so yes definitely, it has to be going somewhere.

Here is the list of game engine platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

I was looking for market share information for game engine platforms and came across this: Why games developers are uniting behind Unity

 

 

[FINDarkside]

13 minutes ago, SteveP said:

Ok, yes I was definitely confused. There is now a new standard for C# that is an evolutionary descendant of .net called Common Language Infrastructure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Language_Infrastructure

I have no idea if that's going anywhere.

It's not a "new standard", it has always been that way. Are you sure that you are not confusing C# to C or c++?

C# (And other .NET languages) is compiled to CIL and then it's compiled just-in-time into the native assembly language by the CLR.

[Patrick Carlson]

Just a friendly reminder to not veer too far off-topic in this thread >>The Long Dark Roadmap: First Impressions. 

It sounds like there would be plenty to discuss on the topic of computer languages in its own dedicated thread.  Thanks!

 

[SteveP]

9 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Just a friendly reminder to not veer too far off-topic in this thread >>The Long Dark Roadmap: First Impressions. 

It sounds like there would be plenty to discuss on the topic of computer languages in its own dedicated thread.  Thanks!

 

Yes Patrick, I think so too. I apologize profusely. I'm getting all muddled up. I think we should separate talk about game platforms and mod support in separate threads.

[Pasquinel]

On April 6, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

As with anything else in the game, Revolvers would be a tool/resource, particularly useful in specific instances. I'll let you imagine what those instances might be.

I think it's worth noting that we are talking about a revolver specifically and not 15 round semi automatic or a Mac 10 machine pistol etc. I'm certain this was a deliberate choice by the developers. Rest assured that if a situation such as TLD occurred I would welcome having a revolver on my possession.

As far as the American gun culture is concerned... I live in a state (Vermont) which has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the USA and yet it has the one of the lowest if not lowest per capita instance of gun violence in the nation. Why is this? I'm not sure, but I believe that in Vermont, it is due to guns being viewed as just what Raph said, "tools" to be used in the right situation. We are familiar with guns, we have easy access to guns, but the culture of gun use in Vermont is decidedly different than that in say Baltimore where guns are harder to obtain. 

I don't want to drag this out into a gun debate just make the point that not all Americans who own firearms are gun wielding lunatics that hold their pistols upside down shooting round after round as they throw themselves through the air... oh and last time I checked, Arnold Swartzenegger was Austrian.

[Raphael van Lierop]

14 hours ago, Viktor Kvasnica said:

Hi folks,

in regards to the in-game level editor...

A quick googling gave me "Multiplatform Runtime Level Editor" from the official Unity asset store. So something like that could be used in the final game (as an optional "variant" of the game considering the price of the asset - thus someone, who plans to build an user level/-s will either buy a special, more expensive, version of the game with the level editor included or will buy the level editor as an add-on).

This is actually incorrect. 

If/when we're able to provide mod support for the game, we'll do our best to ensure it's robust and well documented. If we can't support it well, we probably won't support it. We most likely won't recommend a third-party editor like the one above; we don't use it and I have no reason to believe it would work with The Long Dark. 

[Raphael van Lierop]

9 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Just a friendly reminder to not veer too far off-topic in this thread >>The Long Dark Roadmap: First Impressions. 

It sounds like there would be plenty to discuss on the topic of computer languages in its own dedicated thread.  Thanks!

 

Yes, good call, @Patrick Carlson. There's a fair bit of misinformation in this discussion, and it has nothing to do with the roadmap per se. I recommend we postpone a deeper discussion on modding until our plans firm up. In the mean time, if people want to begin tinkering with Unity, there is a free version and many, many great tutorials online.

[Blinkin]

I love reading this topic and the discussion around it.
Also the fact that you devs are very close involved with the community really stands out in this topic. Thanks for being like this, I love it!

Looking forward to see how the roadmap will evolve.

Edit: small note I'd like to share. I've been reading this topic while listening to the Road to Story Mode Preview in the background. The music is very relaxing. :3

[illanthropist]

The "Parlay" system sounds intriguing although I have to admit I mistakenly took it for "Parley" and wondered how I'd be making peace talks and with who.

[aurora]

5 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

This is actually incorrect. 

If/when we're able to provide mod support for the game, we'll do our best to ensure it's robust and well documented. If we can't support it well, we probably won't support it. We most likely won't recommend a third-party editor like the one above; we don't use it and I have no reason to believe it would work with The Long Dark. 

I love this attitude, this is what makes Hinterland differ from other gaming companies. I really hope, that we will have many great years ahead with this company!

[Viktor Kvasnica]

21 hours ago, FINDarkside said:

But anyway, even if it were possible it's obviously not as good as a separate map editor (like the Unreal Tournament editor).

Truth. As I see it right now the map creation (or modding) may work this way in the future:

• The Hinterland will compile the game and its assets (maps, meshes, textures, scripts, etc.) in a way that they will be accessible with the standard Unity editor.
• The player/user/modder will download a compatible version of the Unity editor (a free "Personal Edition" for instance) and install it.
• The player/user/modder will use the Unity editor to edit the maps, create a new ones, edit the assets (mod the game) and so on.

We can see such an approach with the Epic Games' Unreal Engine (Unreal Editor or UDK - Unreal Development Kit) and game titles, which are using it (Unreal, Unreal Tournament or Mass Effect series).

10 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

If/when we're able to provide mod support for the game, we'll do our best to ensure it's robust and well documented. If we can't support it well, we probably won't support it. We most likely won't recommend a third-party editor like the one above; we don't use it and I have no reason to believe it would work with The Long Dark.

Nicely said - honest, supportive and very professional. I really appreciate such an approach of yours and everyone at Hinterland to us. Keep it up!

10 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I recommend we postpone a deeper discussion on modding until our plans firm up. In the mean time, if people want to begin tinkering with Unity, there is a free version and many, many great tutorials online.

I have just created a new topic/poll in regards to mod support. If/when the time comes, we can go thru the topic and ideas/thoughts in there. Better have them there than "gone in the air" and forgotten I think.

In regards to the Unity editor: downloading and installing now :)...

8 hours ago, illanthropist said:

The "Parlay" system sounds intriguing although I have to admit I mistakenly took it for "Parley" and wondered how I'd be making peace talks and with who.

Welcome in the "club"... I thought the same when I first read it (and had a picture of Jack Sparrow before my eyes :)).

 

[Raphael van Lierop]

9 hours ago, illanthropist said:

The "Parlay" system sounds intriguing although I have to admit I mistakenly took it for "Parley" and wondered how I'd be making peace talks and with who.

Good lord...I've mis-spelled Parley. Thanks for noticing this. Your initial misreading is actually the intended meaning.

[illanthropist]

1 hour ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

Good lord...I've mis-spelled Parley. Thanks for noticing this. Your initial misreading is actually the intended meaning.

Ahhh good to know, I gamble enough as it is every time I try to use a bow in a wolf encounter

[Raphael van Lierop]

47 minutes ago, illanthropist said:

Ahhh good to know, I gamble enough as it is every time I try to use a bow in a wolf encounter

If we created gameplay systems based on mis-spellings, this could lead to some interesting new mechanics...