First off, I'm stoked that Larian is showing that they care about modders by dedicating not one, but basically two whole stretch goals to them (since, IMO, the DM mode is basically a form of modding). Thanks Lar!
Agree with the points and the order of importance. Compatibility is a serious issue, though it's probably quite difficult to ensure that older versions of things don't break in the updated engine. Just look at the Shadowrun Dragonfall scene. There's lots of UGCs, but it probably would've been even bigger if patches didn't constantly break the campaigns, especially ones quite different from the main campaign. But now that there's Shadowrun HK, the community might sort of get split up between people who want to stick with Dragonfall, which probably won't be updated anymore (but who knows?), or people who want to move on to the HK editor, which has a number of improvements. However, I think DF campaigns are still fairly compatible with the HK editor, so that's good.
And, co-creator of the standalone mod template here, I am inclined to agree that an official version of that would be helpful. :P Cool things to include in it would be: tutorials and lots of explanatory text for the code, extra levels or areas that went unused, any systems that coders designed but ended up not using in the main game.
Also, can we get a peek at the new dialog editor please
Heard it's new and shiny (I can't imagine making all those huge dialog trees with the old one).
I put this last because it's so obvious, but I actually don't think it's the highest priority anyway. I know a lot of people have expressed their desire for the toolset to be more friendly, but that is probably going to require the greatest amount of effort on your part and if the aforementioned items are not done in conjunction with that effort, I don't think it will have much of a return on investment anyway.
You know, the return on investment is bigger than you think.
I mean, more user friendly tools for the community would also benefit us working on the game.
For me, it's a win-win.
The Divinity Engine is pretty much the same as what we use to create the game. Which, I can concede, can be pretty hard to handle at first when you are not a professional.
Having a dedicated team for this would probably be pretty cool for everyone outside and inside Larian.
Thanks for the response norD. Following through with Windemere's 4th point already
Always thought the easier you make things for modders, the easier things will be for Larian too.
