76 replies to this topic

[Joe]

Perhaps to releasing the tools they were working with would cost, as its fairly obvious they are superior so would take longer and more effort to make. Meaning costing them more $$, they are a company aswell, not just some people who make games in their spare time, remember so they have to try and make money

[ambershee]

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there.

They would have had to develop the tools, to develop the game. That's something that's always factored into budget and people are hired to develop them.

As they pre-exist, it doesn't cost them anything to release them to the public.

The trick is, they don't want them in the public domain for a lot of reasons. Firstly someone wants to limit what we can edit, secondly they could potentially be used to reverse-engineer components of the game, and lastly rival companies might take a gander at them or use them themselves.

[Feudal_Knight]

Great! Now I can finally export W3D in my 3dsmax and Use BfmeII anims. happy!

[Joe]

Ambershee, i think i may have worded that a bit badly, i mean they would have to pay for there tools which they use, else they would have included 3dsmax with the package, and such, i probably should have been clearer

[ambershee]

I still don't get what you're on about

[Pixel]

I think he means ea had to pay for the tools they used.

[ambershee]

Now I'm following (I think). I don't think you understand - they're using their own in-house proprietary engine and toolset, they're not using tools developed by anyone else, save likely the industry standard 3dsmax / Maya and Photoshop combinations (plus a few plugins here and there) and Visual Studio. Obviously they're not going to 'release those to the public', as they're packages that are widely available to anyone who'll pay for them (plus they legally can't).

They would however, have developed a lot of other toys themselves to do all of the other things required to get stuff into the game; they have to create that blasted asset.dat in the first place, and generate that ini content, and the rest; map scripts, skirmish scripts, level designs, the list goes on. As they're all EALA formats, and not available to anyone else, they have to use their own in-studio tools to deal with them from the start. Hence my earlier statements.

[Bart]

i've put the new plugins in my 3ds max 8 folder but now it seems to crash a lot. anyone else with this problem?

[Argolis]

Thats because it only works on 3ds max 7.


And as I thought, this whole SDK thing, is absolutely nothing special.
-The W3D viewer is buggy, and will only display half the anims on a skeleton (try previewing a model with say...faramirs skeleton. Im pretty sure he has more than 8 animations.)
-The 3ds plugin came with no importer (leaving us yet again to rely on a 3rd party one)
-And the question EA wouldnt answer, when I asked it at MEV has been answered. NO we cant properly view buildings from BFME2. we can import tham like we could before, but we cant apply textures to them.
-The "extensive documentation" doesnt seem to tell us a thing we didnt know already.

Edited by Argolis, 23 July 2006 - 09:45 AM.

[ambershee]

It also, curiously works in 3dsmax 6, which it shouldn't

[Master Windu]

Oh the woes of EA....

Argolis, there are other w3d importers out there. I have a Maxscript w3d importer that imports buildings and trees and stuff fine. It doesnt screw up the UVW mapping. But it only works in Max. However, with the Maxscript one, it is a pain when you import something with a skeleton, because there's a whole complicated process you have to go through.

[Argolis]

Thats my whole point though. Something as simple as a W3D importer that works AND doesnt mess up mapping AND isnt a nightmare to use would be an obvious requirement of anything with "sdk" in the title.


BTW: Where did you find your working W3d importer? I dont mind hassle getting things imported (well i do, but thats not the point) if they actually work. Ive just gotten to the point where ivve gotta start opening BFME2 building models (especially fortresses), and the one ive found is no good at that.

Edited by Argolis, 23 July 2006 - 04:11 PM.

[Bart]

is there no way to get this to run in 3ds max 8? like a compatibility mode or something? i don't want my max to crash all the time (even if i'm not using any of the sdk stuff)

[Master Windu]

Friend gave it to me, leader of IA II. If you guys want it, i could attach it here.

[Cobra]

Yeth Pleath

[Argolis]

Yeah please, its bbe a great help.

[Cobra]

i think it would be very useful YES!!!

(Bumping Mod SDK back again just following the bosses orders)

[Pixel]

I just noticed thanks to hypershadow that this is Version 1.0 of the mod sdk.... so is there a chace that more will come?

[Kelso]

They pretty much have to at this point. If they don't, at the very least, release an updated version with CnC3, a huge chunk of this community is going to fall apart and move on to something else.

[ambershee]

Unfortunately, that's probably quite likely.