GECK - how to sell your MOD for Fallout 3

This is an article by Sasha Kerensky, a punch , which he cannot publish for obvious reasons, and which I publish to him and to you for joy. You can read a less censored version of him in LJ , and here, in order not to traumatize the mind, everything is cultural.
If you liked the article - plus Sasha, not me;)

The idea that you can make your own Fallout, I turned on in earnest. Therefore, having talked enough on Habré where I, unfortunately, came to the end of the discussion (literally broke through - apparently all the same it’s not possible to have a normal opinion and read opinions different from “I didn’t like it! be read by Wikipedia, and then on to the official forum of the Bethedy.

Generally speaking, I like to talk, especially with foreigners - I can’t do anything about it from the start. And even though my knowledge of English is far from London, they are still far from perfect - but what we have is cool, thanks to Yandex-dictionaries .

My first thought: to create Fallout in Moscow, which came far not to me alone. Indeed, as later it turned out, there is not a word about the USSR in the Fallout universe, and it would be very cool to develop an alternative story “on the other side”. In addition, the official mythology of the game for some reason misses the possibility of a nuclear winter , explaining the absence is somehow absurd: they say, alternative mythology begins in the 50s (that is, it is based on ideas about the future of the mid-century), and the theory of " nuclear winter "was put forward by Karl Sagan in 1983, and, they say, differed accordingly from the notions of a mid-century nuclear war. In my opinion, this is stupid, considering also the fact that nuclear winter as an entourage to the expanses of our Motherland is literally made for each other. In addition, super mutants in soldiers' uniforms immediately presented themselves to me clearly and full of all kinds of chips in the retro-futurism style of the USSR. And of course the name - The Red Zone.
')


However, dreams are dreams, and how can this turn out from a financial point of view? After all, it is clear that for free to engage in the creation of an alternative history of our beloved Motherland is somehow expensive and a lot of time. That's why I went to the official forum of the Bettshedy to find out the possibilities of selling the mod.

The first question was on the forehead: can I sell my mod for PC, and more importantly, for consoles via XBox LIVE (since if you release a mod for writing, few people will buy it, everyone will shake from each other and this will be the end and if you release a mod for consoles, where there is no possibility to steal anything at all, sales will be much more noticeable: for example, in the first few days Fallout sales for PC were 71,000, and for consoles 310,000, which does not at all mean that fewer pisishnikov decided to play it - just any attempt to thieves a ban on consoles suppressed in general and the only network service online support, for which in some ways thanks). So, the answer was categorical: no, no, no. It’s officially not possible to sell a mod for Fallout. The topic is closed.



However, I did not calm down and created a second topic on this issue.
From where, after heated discussions, he made three possible ways to create a selling mod:

1. It turns out the right to sell their textures and their models still has not been canceled. The problem is that you need to create a converter from .OBJ (three-dimensional object created using any 3d tool like 3d maxa or z-brush'a) to .NIF, and the converter that the user needs to run in himself, because the .nif files, created with the help of GECK already fall under the copyright agreement prohibiting any commercial use. But the question is: who the hell do you need to buy your super-excellent models or textures without a super-excellent story? The answer: no one in the long run. Is it possible to sell history (dialogs, script scenes, map of the area, balance, settings, and so on), which cannot be created otherwise than with GECK stored in the .esp files? Answer: Of course not! How to be? And here you have to say a huge thank you to the user SinisterShadows (if you register on the forum, tell him, please, thank you and say hello from me) - he put forward a really brilliant idea: you can distribute the story with all the devices for free, but textures and models without which unthinkable this story - ha ha - you can sell! Clearly, having a converter. Moreover, the difficulty is that this converter should be made mainly for Xbox. This is the cheapest way to enter the commercial market with its brilliant mod.



2. It is possible to buy the engine from Bethedy and make your own stand alone game. A lot of drawbacks: the gaming community will take it as an attempt at cloning (even though the followers of the Fallout religion for ten years of waiting, in general, don't care who released what - just to be, but, in particular, Western observers most likely obkladut); the license to create a game in the mythology of Fallout itself costs so much money that even it is not worth mentioning it; Yes, and the engine will certainly cost a lump sum, considering also the fact that the engine at BETSEDA, to put it mildly, is not the best. There is one plus: legal gimmory in whatever the form is reduced to nothing.

3. You can also sign a contract with Betsheda / ZeniMax for the official support of your mod, and perhaps even knock out an investment for it. In principle, this method is the most acceptable, but you still need to agree, as well as have some baggage that I hope to ever get with the release of my game development Esc . And of course you will have to share here, but given the information support of the official mod, this should pay off.

The attentive reader will say: why didn’t you, Sasha, not contact the sales department directly? I answer: I will still have time, and the sales department would hardly have told me a story about how to sell the mod of their game without their participation.



So, having figured out the question of sales, I turned to the specifics, in fact, about the possibilities of the GECK itself. And that's what I managed to find out:

1. Is it possible to create any machines to move in the game? Answer: via op, but still possible.
2. Will it be possible to create guided turrets or tanks? Answer: via op, but you can.
3. Is it possible to create atmospheric effects , visual effects (like narcotic intoxication or something like that), camera effects for scripted scenes (and what I am personally interested in - changing the camera’s behavior at the sight of a third person), create new parameters for things , phenomena, player? - all these questions are answered: yes. Hooray.

I adore Fallout from the first to the last part, and therefore I am somewhat offended that the last game was made for sales in fact - all the good things that were there, were drawn from the previous parts, in fact the ideas of Gulkin’s nose, and all the shoals that are in the game abound, they were either copied from the previous parts, or invented by Betshedoy herself. And just plain disappointing. Despite the fact that I played the third part with great pleasure - because the graphics are still wonderful and made with love, because the style is preserved, because I have no choice. Betshad, in my opinion, does not understand what kind of gold fell into their hands: Fallout is a whole religion, millions of whose adepts will buy the game so that they will not let it out there, if only because they missed it very much.



I don’t know about you, but I want to drive around the wastelands on a motorcycle, I want acid rains from time to time, desert storms, I want normal animation, and not fitness attempts of the characters with a run in place, I want the shadows, I want so that the player does not have the opportunity to recharge, repair the weapon, take the steampack and go to the toilet while a bullet flies into it, I do not want a deadly tedious WATS - at least quickly so that it is, I want normal living cities, and not as much as possible 20 people who, for some reason, have not killed thousands of mutants and re Derov, I want the world not to know about any bunch of me at once (some kind of normal information dissemination system based at least on logic, and not the lack of the ability to kill someone on the sly, so that the whole world won't know about it in one second) I want the NPCs to address me not as a puppy, when there are thousands of corpses of various creatures behind my back, I want normal locations, not a bunch of units that need to kill everyone for a round of ammo, and I want to get money for all this if I will do it myself or in a team, or give money for it, if someone else punk will do all this.

Lastly, I expressed my indignation in this post , the reaction of the philanders is understandable and close to me as a fan of the game. But, guys, if you keep silent about all this (like, for example, what is happening on freelance), then how the hell can creators progress normally? And yes, I apologize to anyone I have ever offended with a harsh word or criticism.

PS It is also interesting that in Western forums, along with snobs, outraged by my English grammar, there are more people who can stand up in defense of people for whom English is not their first language (“Calm down, my Russian, for example, is much worse than his English ").