Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Is it modder-friendly?

I'm a modder, a fan who makes add-ons for games. I've been one since the days of Ultima Underworld, and later, Doom. Nowadays, I stick to BethSoft games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout3), because they are so very mod-friendly, with freely available dev kits, interviews on the company website with good modders, good documentation, and everything. Mostly, because they have the world's best modding community.

I just read that Divinity II is also using the GameBryo engine. Is this true? If so, yay! This bodes well for us BethSoft modders, since that's what we know.

So, to my questions:
- Will there be a dev kit released?
- Is the modding community welcomed?
- Is there a simple mechanism for adding mods to the game?

A quick search of the forums shows nothing at all about modding, which is very worrying.

D2:ED does use the GameBryo engine. Modding tools may be released at some point after the international release of the game. If so, then the answers to your other two questions are 'yes, absolutely' and 'most likely'.

From the topic News from the front;

Thanks for the fast reply! Weird that thread doesn't show up on a forum search for "mods", even with "all forums" selected. I see you too have argued for a good toolkit

Multiplayer mod kit? Iiiinteresting. That sounds like he's got some kind of live, ingame editing thing going on there. That would be both new and awesome, and would draw modders like flies. The only place I've previously seen the ability to make changes and have other people see them immediately has been in Furcadia, and that's isometric rather than 3D. Oh, and Sauerbraten, I guess.

Designing and importing meshes and stuff, though, I suspect that's always going to be an offline activity: you can't open up 3DS Max inside the game!

I really hope a toolkit is released. It's not so much a matter of "if there's interest": if a toolkit is released, a community of modders will inevitably form, even if there was zero interest expressed beforehand.

Lar was referring to a hypothetical multiplayer game mode, rather than a collaborative mod tool (both mod tools and multiplayer support were being discussed when he gave the comment I quoted above). Presumably if there is some kind of add-on for the game that includes multiplayer support, then Larian figures mod tools would be more worth the effort than for 'just' a single player game (or at least did at the time the comment was made).

D2:ED initially supported multiplayer, but it was dropped when it became too restrictive on the plot and quest design.

The default forum search date range is one week, though even changing that I've noticed it not turning up results a couple times searching for things I know I posted (possibly a word length limit, where short words don't get added to the index?).

That would be sweet if D2 does get a SDK Released with it, at a later said date!

I really hope there will be one. If there isn't, then we'll have to make our own, or hack some existing tool, like Bethesda's Geck, to do the job. Either way, it'll just never be as good, and will be extremely frustrating to work with.

It's interesting to compare single-player sandbox games in their treatment of modders.

Rockstar largely ignores them: its GTA4 forums ("social club") doesn't mention or feature the modding community. The only mods available are cheats and cosmetics: new skins, sounds, and vehicle/weapon meshes. Installing these mods is complicated and dangerous for new users. No new content.

Bethesda embraces them, highlighting the best ones on its blog, giving them sections of its forums, providing editing tools, and as a result has what is without a doubt the best modding community on the planet, which gives them many advantages; a sizeably sticky fanbase of modders; a larger pool of fans who play the game *for the mods*; hence a market of people who are willing to download their "DLC" mods, providing another income stream from the game; a ready and willing pool of ready-trained designers with sizeable public portfolios, who are experienced in Bethesda's own in-house tools; and much more. Mods add new characters, plot, areas, animations, scripts and so forth, as well as huge amounts of the kinds of cosmetic changes that GTA gets. Tons of new content adding many hours more play. Installing these mods is a 1-click operation.

It's a shame for GTA4, since there is so much scope in that engine for more stuff to be done. But it's a time tradeoff: do people spend a week reverse engineering the texture format, and how they are indexed and referenced, and writing a program to reinsert them, all to change one texture of one NPC... Yes, people do that, heck I helped write DEU back in the days of Doom, and before that, hacked Underworld's item lists, map formats, and savegames.

But in the same time it takes to reverse engineer a change to one texture, we could spend the same time in Fallout creating a whole new NPC, with a house, backstory, custom AI and daily habits, inventory, wardrobe, conversation tree, quests, his...

So the engine with the ready-built editing tool wins out. When I look at GTA, I just see a collection of animation data that might be nice to extract at some point, but nothing else really appealing. With Fallout3, I see somewhere in which I can create worlds.

I'm really hoping Divinity II will be on the friendly side of the fence. I'm itching to play with it, even more than to play it!

I think in your adoration tirade in favor of Bethesda, you're forgetting some other, sometimes even grander, modding communities. NWN, for instance, is much better in terms of modding than any bethesda game ever was. The Gothic community is also a great example of how much a modding community can do for a game. In terms of Bethesda's games, the most important faults of games such as Morrowind or Oblivion are difficult, or almost impossible, to mod in. I don't believe Morrowind ever had a decent combat system, nor leveling system, no matter how many mods were created. I don't know if that was the case for Oblivion, because I couldn't be bothered to look for mods.

Thence I prefer Gothic III's mods, because those mods fix an incredible amount of problems you have in the game. Gothic III was a very buggy game with an intriguing premise. Oblivion wasn't buggy at all, just boring. It's hard to fix boring.

However, one does have to understand that a modding community, how great it may be, does not generate an income. Companies have to weigh the added value of a modding community against the added cost of spending time enabling it. That balance is rarely positive. Thus, in order to make a modding community possible, Larian will have to see how much work it'll take to make the game modder-friendly.

Besides NWN series, Elder Scrolls games, Gothic series (especially Gothic 3) -- there's been some other games that have really benefited from its mod community, too.

Also, I must say -- Vampire: Bloodlines and Arcanum were other games (all from Troika) that really benefited from having the mod community basically take it over.

I really hope Torchlight's mod community is going to be something, given how powerful that toolset looks in the previews for those who want to mod/make some action-RPG type of stuff.

And yes -- I'd really liked to see Larian support a SDK. That'd rock -- and if they do plan to release a SDK, the community decides to embrace it.

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 have excellent mods too (EasyTutu, etc).

I never bothered with NWN & NWN2 mods... these games are terribly boring imo (at least the official campaigns). When it came to Bethesda games I merely used mods that improve the user interface and a few face/body mods. Usually it's too much of a hassle to get them to work.

I thought NWN: Hordes of the Underdark and NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer are some of the best PC RPG expansions around -- better than the campaigns found in their original game.

Though, BG2: Throne Of Bhaal has to be the best RPG expansion I've ever played.

I didn't like Throne of Bhaal, and I always felt Shadows of Undrentide was extremely underrated (and more enjoyable than HotU for me). But I thought the NWN oc wasn't bad - and the core game is still my favorite. I utterly disliked NWN2 - but I bought the Mask of the Betrayer expansion. It was definitely good at first, (even though the hideous core game still bugged me) but they should allow you to turn off the whole soul eater thing. It gets real annoying really quickly... It's like a slightly less annoying version of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.. They start with the soul eating thing, and I quit. I don't wanna rush through a game, unless it's free. That's some arcade stuff.

The soul-sucking was really a problem when I tried to roleplay as an evil character... as a good character it was almost trivial. A very bad design decision by Obsidian, imo.

Personally I enjoyed Storm of Zehir the most... it reminded me of Icewind Dale & Baldur's Gate with its free-roaming.

I must be one of the few that found the mechanic interesting...


I think what I liked about Mask and Zehir is in many ways, they're so different. Mask has that PST feel going on (somewhat linear world w/ a deep, strong dark-story and lots of decisions to make to alter the story), while Zehir has the BG and IWD feel going on w/ the open-world.

Yeah, I loved the free-roam of Zehir and its new gameplay elements...

...But really, I think the story suffered in depth and the NPC's suffered with a lack of character depth. I bet this is something say a modder could really go crazy with and really improve that aspect of things.

Still, a very good expansion, if you ask me. Spent a good deal of time w/ it.

I agree that SOU was underrated.
Though, I preferred HOTU over SOU -- by far.

I'll take both HOTU and SOU over OC.
I was not too fond of the OC, in some regards -- namely, the rushed feel of the ancient civilization storyline.


I think it would be a good idea for gamers to be able to turn it off, since so many complained about it.

I liked the mechanic, myself.

I don't know, I'm odd like that -- I even found the mechanic in Beyond Divinity was cool. You know, since the Player and Dark Knight were bound together, you can't let either player die, or they both die -- I just found that as a near little gameplay mechanic.

I sincery hope larian will make D2 modder friendly.


Turning a game easy to mod is a gigantic boost in the value-for-money ratio of a game since we can expect to spend €50, but later on have free, easy to get new content that will extend the life of our purchage.

Just look for example on Oblivion. Its a game with a "couple years", but the modding community has kept it very much alive, and still selling copies. For example, i bought the game after seeing on youtube a video of the "qarl texture pack", and it looked awesome, or for example Deadly reflexes mod that change the combat system.

Another example is Gothic3. I would never touch it without the mods due to bugs and lousy reviews on the internet, but after reading comments that some unnoficial comunity patches changed all that, i spent my money on a copy of it also.

DragonAge will be a gigantic seller. They were smart enough to say this game is just the beggining and a lot of new content (oficial and comunity) will come up, virtualy turning your € 50,00 into much much more.

Divinity 2, with a good modding comunity, has GIGANTIC potential to be an terrific value for money and i hope they will embrace the modding comunity for i am sure to be alert on that!

Agreed w/ all this.

Plus, games that were left broken -- like Arcanum and Vamp: Bloodlines -- got even more fixed-up, thanks to modders.


I'm hopping Torchlight will take-off b/c of its robust SDK that'll come w/ the game.


I agree w/ you.

I know BethSoft likes to use the GameByro Engine b/c they find it quick and easy to make new content w/in the GB Engines -- so, I hope the Larian finds the same true, as well.

Too dig up this old topic... *ducks to dodge an egg* The last two RPG's I've played (am) playing were Fallout 3 and TES:Oblivion, yes and quite so because the mods. Fallout's FOOK mods and MMM are real gems, and all they do is add weapons, armour and monsters to the game. In Oblivion's case better textures, better UI, better animations realy do make this game interesting again, not that its depth alone gives no major replay-value.

The way I see it mods are a good way to add content Larian's budget couldn't support, or upgrades like texture packs when D2 is few years old.

The thing to realize is how resourcefull modders can be, if you say just release how the game's assets work (can't be far from Bethesda's BSA files etc), modders itself will come up with handy tools to make modding the game easy.

www.divinitynexus.com soon? that would be ace!

I hope modding tools are made available ASAP too. This game is one of those that could benefit greatly from them. The game is very similar to Oblivion in many ways - this isn't a criticism, Oblivion is awesome, and the setting, lore, and mechanics of D2ED are distinctive enough to make it appealing to Oblivion fans whilst it still retains its own feel and identity as a strong and unique ARPG.

In the same way that Oblivion managed to continue to sell beyond the normal window for game sales, D2ED could well do the same, and to encourage that a good modding community is very useful. Modders enhance games in all sorts of ways, but a primary strong point they bring is in prolonging the shelf-life of a game. Many of the games mentioned in this thread have awesome modding resources and communities, and the games have as a result been played for far longer than they would without them and continued to attract new customers long after release.

In many ways, I think providing modding tools for games of this genre is a good move for the company wishing to maximise its market share and please its customers.


Who's up for making a manual blocking mod?

PS Whilst not made via a modkit, there are some texture mods already out there (textures and such being one of the easier things to change without dedicated modtools).

Yes, D2:ED has quite fast energetic gameplay, And I'm quite a bit more gamers would pick it up if there mods with a more realistic approach to combat.



Briliant, then models might show up soon aswel.