As a keen modder for Homeworld, back in the day, I have to agree with the tool advocate(s). It's what keeps the longevity. Once everyone has finished the core storyline and a few alternative endings, they hanker for more. If mods are available, they'll play them and then get inspired to make their own mod. If mod support is
not available, they'll switch to another game, and uninstall Underrail six months later with fond memories. Sad but true.
The problem with releasing any kind of game creation tools that are not intended for community is that they are very unpolished.
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Even more, since whole internal development team is Serbian, I would not be surprised if creation tools are in Serbian and not in English.
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If any kind of licensing format is used, usually that means that such conversion/packing tools are also licensed and can not be given for free.
The thing is that
security through obscurity does not work. If it's worthwhile persisting and reverse engineering, it will be done. We
already know that the compression tools are free. As for the other objections, if Stygian put the development tools up on Sourceforge or Github,
the modders themselves would discover, understand and fix bugs, polish the interface, provide necessary translations - anything to make our lives easier when we're tinkering and crafting our own dungeons and denizens.
In fact, modders and community support will even
reduce dev effort by doing their work for them, for free when possible, just out of sheer appreciation of the game:
A lot of the dialogue and text in the game have some pretty serious grammatical and spelling errors. Things like "your" instead of "you're," or just some run-on or unclear sentences. (...) this type of thing does go a long way to break illusion and immersion.
(...) What I would suggest then, is that you open the dialog up at some point to a few members of the community that can help clean up some of the dialog after you've written it. And I'm sure you could find a few willing to help.
Indeed, many people have expressed concern over this and offered to help, but so far all we've got is a sticky in the bug forum to report typos & grammar errors. It works but is an annoyingly cumbersome method, considering that there are literally thousands of typos spread all over the place. Having access to plaintext dialog files would be so much better, even if they contain scripts and whatnot. But I guess that's not gonna happen.
If the dialogue files were also up in github, the community could simply submit commits that fix those and when a new build is about to go out, Styg could pull and review the changes to make sure they are all alright.
And sometimes, effort for releasing tools is not worth it. For example small minority advocates for modding tools, they get released after some investment by game team (and not working on something else) and then nobody does anything decent with those tools. These things are known to happen.
Just a little additionnal insight :
Giving tools to the public can be seen as giving away your tech, too.
Styg made this engine from scratch, i'd understand if he doesn't want it to be stolen and used by others,
As far as these arguments go, just consider what would have happened if Warcraft III modding had been deemed "not worth it" - there would be no DOTA mod developed. Look what that has done for the game engine and the community. Still thriving
a decade after every other game of its generation bit the dust.
What would have happened if Halflife modding had been deemed "not worth it" - there would be no Counterstrike mod developed. Look what that has done for the game engine and the community. Still thriving
fifteen years after every other game of its generation bit the dust.
Would it really be so bad if, for example, Styg's engine becomes famous as being the ideal fast and easy map-creation tool for tabletop roleplay and wargaming? If it got such a reputation for its free tools, then that is vast exposure to its target market:- how many of them do you think would be delighted to while away their late night hours crawling through the Underrail passageways that made all this possible, and checking out the vast library of community generated content?
Rather than asking if Stygian can afford the risk of exposing their dev and modding tools to the public, I think the question is more, whether they are able to afford
not to.
