Saturday, January 24, 2015

Modding Horizon Blaster

Game modifications...

We know that nobody has time to waste anymore and that people are sitting on endless bucket lists of games they want to play at some moment. Then why do game developers even bother and facilitate modding of their title? The consensus is that this increases the metaphorical life span of a title. Take a look at how Starcraft's custom map feature lifted off, spawning the tower defense genre. Warcraft 3 repeated the same stunt creating MOBA style games. These successes are based on excellent customization tools.

My aim is not the same quality of tools because my priority is to get the game done and polished. Most modding capabilities of the game came automatically instead of being grafted onto. Usually loading data from files is usually the most versatile way to develop and avoid program compilation times and content creation turnaround. The benefit of this data driven programming technique shall also help the players to tweak the game or create their own content. Maybe an entire "mod" will appear, who knows?

Because I am planning for an online highscore list, there will be mechanisms that disallow scores achieved in a mod from going to the list of official version high scores.

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