The First Official Beth Plugins Are Out

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:24 pm

... and they will only cost you $2 each to download.

https://obliviondownloads.com/StoreCata ... tegoryId=1

Orix · Post by **Orix** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:40 pm

Aye, we were ranting about this on IRC.

Morden pointed out that stuff like this should already be in game, for instance the Orrery which Mass and Stalker were having a look at night night, currently an empty cell where is should have been. So these arn't really post-release plug-ins, these are "ok, lets take this, this and this out of the game and sell em back to the people who bought the game, once it's sold enough copies".

These plug-ins may also be the reason why a model exporter hasn't be released yet. But we shall see.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 8:30 pm

Meh its probably just to appease the XBox players who would have to pay anyway. Sure they are on the wrong system for mods, but I bet you would get peeved if you bought a silver car rather than a red one, and then were told that red cars get free car washes for life, and you have to pay. Its not like they are essential mods, and its not like people wont pirate them!

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:47 pm

Beyond lame. This is the only time so far that Bethesda has disappointed me.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:07 pm

It's definately an xbox thing. It was on these very forums that I learned that x-boxers actualy pay money for avatars!!!

Although, it will be kind of cool if bethesda keeps working and actualy releases new material (instead of things that they already made).

knightmare · Post by **knightmare** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 1:31 am

its funny because its an xbox thing when it shouldnt be. these are probably already coded and are being released to soak as much money out of people as possible.

and even though you say its an xbox thing, there are things you can download off the xbox that are free, so why didnt they just make these free for both pc and xbox?

also if you got an xbox expecting to play oblivion mods then your are an idiot

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:25 am

I was also discussing this in the IRC channel. I've turned into a cynical bastard, it seems.

"Bethesda is proud to release Fallout 3! Check back in two weeks, where we will be selling the first official plugin that will allow you to load saved games, only $2!"

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:58 am

I'm sure many of the content plugins were developed as part of the game, then stripped for seperate sale, as part of their new age business plan...However, i'm getting over that fact rather quickly.

Ultimately, bethesda can do whatever they want with their property... but I just feel they could've exercised a bit of tact, by releasing game fixes before pay-to-play content. Even if they had all the new content bundled and ready to go, they could've waited till their scheduled patch. Somebody buys a game rife with bugs and crashes, and before they're fixed, they get offered peices of the game which were intentionally removed...for a price. Something with that doesn't sit right in my opinion.

As for the model exporter.. I am almost convinced that it was a sound business decision by Bethesda, to not release it before they had posted their pay content... and it is good business. With the proper tools, nobody would need to download horse armor, or a new sword. There are talented people in the TES community capable of producing on bethesda's level. When buying a development license from a third party, in this case for Havoc, no company would overlook distribution rights.

Negativity aside... I have faith in the programmers at NifTools to come up with a proper plugin, or a solution of some sort eventually. And here's hoping that i'm horribly wrong about bethesda and their intentions for the mod community. Right now I can only think that they want us to buy new art content instead of developing it ourselves.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:09 am

It's OK to sell stuff like horse armor (only 2 types of armor in the plugin :\) but when they start selling lore (like in orrery's case)... Well, Oblivion turned out to be a complete lore dissapointment where Hist and Elder Scrolls serve as juicy names for quest items.

Gez · Post by **Gez** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:50 am

Eyeball88 wrote:I was also discussing this in the IRC channel. I've turned into a cynical bastard, it seems.

"Bethesda is proud to release Fallout 3! Check back in two weeks, where we will be selling the first official plugin that will allow you to load saved games, only $2!"

Let's keep our feet firmly on the ground, here, rather than trying to tread on clouds.

You don't need horse armor or access to the orrery to play Oblivion. You can finish all existing quests without them.

In fact, you don't even need to have a horse or to set foot in the Arcane University to finish the main quest.

It's not like horse armors and the orrery weren't completely useless.

You do not have to have them. You do not have to buy them. You think they're rubbish? Just ignore them.

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:30 pm

You're missing the part where they were removed from the game to be sold as mods.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:34 pm

Well horse armor was taken out and now is being sold, thats pretty nasty of them. The orrery...well thats pretty option as far as I can see. Its not lke it was a real feature, just looks like a quest. The final one is some tower...well there will be loads of mods like that, but I guess this has nicer models etc. Still thats not something that would be missed.

I think the only one which really rubs is the horse armor.

I personally would pay for expansions on quests, like an extra set of quests for grandmasters.

PoHa! · Post by **PoHa!** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:43 pm

You forget the part where the "Orrery" has an actual interior in the Arcane University, Jale. But its empty besides one person. One person who says something along the lines of

"This is the Orrery. Its my baby"

or something like that, for one of her greetings. Look her up in the CS... her name is Bothiel.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:48 pm

WEll i dont have it yet...computer is buggered at the moment.

ENIGMA* · Post by ENIGMA* » Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:56 pm

as anyone read this yet?

left pannel wrote:NOTE: If you have a special promotion code you will be prompted to enter it before completing your order so that you will not be charged for that item.

Orix · Post by **Orix** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:30 pm

Yeah, I'm betting that was some kind of pre-order/retail offer for a shop/website in order to get more buyers from there, perhaps something as part of a magazine.

Whatever it is, it was probabaly sold in some way shape or form

Eyeball88 · Post by **Eyeball88** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:48 pm

Gez wrote:You don't need horse armor or access to the orrery to play Oblivion. You can finish all existing quests without them.

Yeah, as Morden mentioned, these are features that were removed from the game some time shortly before the release so that they could be considered "extra content." Instead, the Orrery is a room in a location that a lot of people have seen, but is just locked. That's where all of my cynicism is coming from.

Sure, the Morrowind plugins weren't all the best; Bitter Coast sounds was a neat little tweak but it certainly added life. Siege at Fort Firemoth was much a much larger content addition than any of the three listed there, though.

Their third plugin, the huge wizard's dwelling or whatever, seems to be the only "new" content, I don't recall seeing anything in-game that looks quite like that.

sxotty · Post by **sxotty** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 4:25 pm

Personally I think this is crap, the fact that they took out finished stuff and then resold it.

I hate nickel and diming.

People suggest that this is necessary to allow them to continue to work on the game, well that is BS.

If they want to work on it make a decent expansion and sell it, like bloodmoon etc...

Don't release an armor then say sorry we cannot let the modders import models that will interact with physics b/c of havok...

If they release a huge content addition and charge for it that is great, if they are bored then take a vacation and come back and make a new game, but don't release dribs and drabs and charge ridiculous prices...

Heard of enemy territory? Eh free game that is a much nicer thing to do with a product that you don't think will sell well enough...

Eraser · Post by **Eraser** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:17 pm

The orrey was obviously removed from being in game already, but as far as the others go, they don't bother me. I don't mind paying for stuff as long as its really really well made.

Theory: autodesk and gamebryo are being bitches and don't want the nif exporter tools released freely and are charging beth a very large sum of money because they want to make money off the tools instead of just giving them away. So, instead of not letting the tools ever be made available, or making modders pay the companies owning the technology large sums, bethesda is charging small fees for downloadable plugins to help collect the cost. I just can't think bethesda is really so malicious as to shaft us like people are expecting, sure they want to make money, but they said they make the TES games more out of passion, and bethsoft makes most of their money from other games.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:06 am

With the new normal/bump mapping technology now being employed, asset development for companies can take up to FIVE times longer than previous work.
Even an experienced highpoly modeller must spend an average of three times longer to complete one model. This means a significant increase in production cost. The average entry level content artist makes in the 40-50k USD range per year.
I think Bethesda's biggest mistake here is yanking things that were previously comitted to the original retail package and then releasing them as a chargeable plugin. They would have served themselves much better by waiting and creating say, a twenty dollar expansion pack rather than nickel and diming small 'enhancements.'
Even with ZBrush and creative PS work using the DDS authoring tools, normal and bump mapping put a real strain on project budgets.

sxotty · Post by **sxotty** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 3:48 am

King Mango wrote:With the new normal/bump mapping technology now being employed, asset development for companies can take up to FIVE times longer than previous work.
Even an experienced highpoly modeller must spend an average of three times longer to complete one model. This means a significant increase in production cost. The average entry level content artist makes in the 40-50k USD range per year.
I think Bethesda's biggest mistake here is yanking things that were previously comitted to the original retail package and then releasing them as a chargeable plugin. They would have served themselves much better by waiting and creating say, a twenty dollar expansion pack rather than nickel and diming small 'enhancements.'

That is what everyone is upset about, they took finished stuff out then resold.

I don't want games to become like ringtones, that kind of siphoning money slowly is not what games and especially single player games should be about. I don't mind HL2 episode sales for example, that is a complete package, if bethesda does that and sells for $20.00 I would support it, but please don't try to turn it into the pay for play in single player...

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 3:53 am

knightmare · Post by **knightmare** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:45 am

about the whole normal mapping thing, actually it is really easy to make normal maps using zbrush, its just the whole making the file in oneprogram and importing it into another thats difficult

however doing the more detailed modeling can be a pain, but the thing is, its not too difficult to incorperate a script that simply saves the necessary data in the format it needs to be in, so autodesk are just being whiney bitches who want money because $3,500 for evey time they sell the product that uses this plugin isnt enough for them.

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:45 am

Ok but let's say you model a low poly character. Maybe 1,000 polys on the render mesh. How long does it take to paint a normal map in Zbrush? That's time that has to be paid for by developers. And even though it IS easy, it's money being spent that has to be recovered somehow if they are to stay in business long enough to put out the next title. So it doesn't seem like much on one asset, but take a game that has fifty thousand assets and then all of a sudden that's a good chunk of change you weren't spending two years ago.
A good modeller can take a good character concept sketch and get a rough in a very short time. If I was a character modeller I could probably do it in less than a day. But fine tuning a normal map in Zbrush takes how long? I don't know I've never really done it, I just know a lot of guys in the biz who do. But the normal map takes longer than the low poly render mesh that's for certain. Because now when you PS a skin, you are doing things with it knowing that a good normal map can exploit details that you may have left out otherwise.
That in no way is meant to justify the approach that Beth took with the recent offerings, but I'm just saying there are real business concerns to gaming and hopefully they come to see that they've made a mistake and try to find other ways to generate revenue.

Lutemoth · Post by **Lutemoth** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:45 am

Feh, If anyone can imagine that Bethesda is making shortcomings to the mod community, it certainly isn't spreading to the console village.. In fact, they're pleased as [url=http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11318]punch[/url]. Note the light-hearted hi-five, Bethsoft! comments below..

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:42 am

Kinda makes me feel like slapping together a set of armour now for free... lolz
The one thing that really struck me is the force with which they disassociated themselves with the mod community.

As for myself, coming from the Unreal franchise, that was really surprising. Epic Games wholeheartedly endorses the mod community because they KNOW that the modders creating new content is one of the strongest factors in Unreal's high replay value. In fact Epic deserve every single penny and more spent on their games because of how available they make themselves. I've spoken on issues with some of the top TOP brass there and they are a great bunch of guys. They don't need to answer mod list questions, but any given day you will find an Epic employee actually HELPING the amateur modders by answering tech questions about scripting or other various things related to producing content for their engine. They have even included user maps in bonus packs. (wewt! I actually have a set of textures on a retail ship now because of this!)

I feel bad in a way that Bethesda produces a game I so thoroughly enjoy but takes such a stance towards their community.

PoHa! · Post by **PoHa!** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 1:48 pm

Lutemoth wrote:Feh, If anyone can imagine that Bethesda is making shortcomings to the mod community, it certainly isn't spreading to the console village.. In fact, they're pleased as [url=http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11318]punch[/url]. Note the light-hearted hi-five, Bethsoft! comments below..

*PoHa! wonders if Lutemoth got the wrong URL... he sees people mostly saying how disappointed they are*

Sload · Post by **Sload** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:25 pm

So, it has two armors, the ones seen in the pictures. That's a dollar per armor set.

Orix · Post by **Orix** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:51 pm

Yep... talk about a rip-off. I'd at least expect a set of armour for every main set of armour in game , so the horse can match your get-up. That would be Iron, Steel, Chain, Mithril, Fur, Leather, Dwemer, Elven, Ebony, Orc, Glass, Daedric, and perhaps an Imperial style too.

Although of course, some of those wouldn't make too much sense in my eyes. Specifically the Dwemer one, they probabaly didnt have horses since they were in Resdayn. As for the Daedric... I dunno, would they make armour for horses? I suppose you could label it as permanently "bound" horse amour rather than something crafted by the daedra.

Otherwise they didnt have much excuse not to flesh out the plugin a little, it would make its worth a little more prominant.

I am curious about the Orrery, its something I did want to see in game badly, I can see it having some sort of impressive visual or minigame of some sort where you can look at the various planes/planets.

sxotty · Post by **sxotty** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 6:03 pm

King Mango wrote: As for myself, coming from the Unreal franchise, that was really surprising. Epic Games wholeheartedly endorses the mod community because they KNOW that the modders creating new content is one of the strongest factors in Unreal's high replay value. In fact Epic deserve every single penny and more spent on their games because of how available they make themselves. I've spoken on issues with some of the top TOP brass there and they are a great bunch of guys. They don't need to answer mod list questions, but any given day you will find an Epic employee actually HELPING the amateur modders by answering tech questions about scripting or other various things related to producing content for their engine. They have even included user maps in bonus packs. (wewt! I actually have a set of textures on a retail ship now because of this!)

Putting aside the conventional rivalry that existed between id and epic, they both do a super job at this sort of thing. I will say Epic got ahead recently, but id is trying to get more help to modders as well. They both are superlative examples of getting things open to the mod community and helping hobbyists develop into professionals and make good mods. It is sad when a company does not embrace the community. I know that they (epic, id) have made patches for games specifically targeting problems that modders faced, not to mention open sourcing the things afterwards (in id's case). If they had made morrowind you could be assured the stupid map bug (where it cannot show the continent b/c it is too far away) would have been resolved.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 6:18 pm

And correct me if I'm wrong: Isnt horse armor just usless eye candy. After all, with no mounted combat, horses dont get attacked very much, do they?

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 6:29 pm

Macar wrote:And correct me if I'm wrong: Isnt horse armor just usless eye candy. After all, with no mounted combat, horses dont get attacked very much, do they?

Actually horses are attacked a lot. RAI is too stupid to realise that he should attack the guy with a sword who currently smacks him from behind, not poor horsey.

Lutemoth · Post by **Lutemoth** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 7:22 pm

PoHa! wrote: *PoHa! wonders if Lutemoth got the wrong URL... he sees people mostly saying how disappointed they are*

"Stand up guys to address it for sure."
"It is really great of them not to run and hide behing form letters"
"A company who talks about things? I'm beginning to really like Bethesda..."
"If you're whining over $2.50, you seriously need help."

No, no, I'm sure I've got the right URL.

It's sad to see that Microsoft (the $ is silent) is puppeteering this penny-pinching through Bethesda, a game built for the PC.