Those interested in tinkering with the tools used to make Bethesda's just-released Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will soon have the opportunity, as the company says it will make these available to the public next month.
As noted on Bethesda's blog, the game's official "Creation Kit" will become available for PC users in January 2012, alongside a Bethesda-organized Wiki intended to help modders become familiar with the new toolset.
In addition, the Creation Kit will include support for Valve Software's Steam Workshop, making Skyrim the second game to support the service after Team Fortress 2.
The Steam Workshop will help users mange their in-game mods within Steam itself -- modders will be able to upload their creations to the service, after which other users can browse, rate, and flag mods for download using any web-enabled device.
When players boot up Skyrim on their PC, Steam Workshop will automatically install any flagged mods, without the need to go to external websites. Of course, Bethesda says users can continue to use the existing sites if they prefer.
In addition, Bethesda promised to release a small update to the game to fix issues introduced with this week's 1.2 patch, with further updates to Skyrim to come "after the holidays."
Yes. This is pretty much exactly what I've been suggesting in my "Living World" ideas: the shift from providing full-content single-player worlds toward delivering base games (engine + initial content) for which most of the gameplay content -- from both the core developers and third parties -- comes as a la carte add-ons bought and served digitally.
The Steam Workshop system is the necessary first step toward that business model, where the base game is cheap or even free and revenue comes primarily from people purchasing individual pieces of the specific kinds of content they like. And note that this potentially gives third parties opportunities to participate in selling content as well -- making a mod that gets highly rated could be the first step toward a career as a game developer, as was the case for (for example) the Team Fortress guys. (Valve's role in all of this is not coincidental.)
I'm *very* interested in seeing how the Steam Workshop store does.
I assumed all Bethesda ( Zenimax ) titles were going to use IDTECH 5... Got excited thinking I would get a chance to tinker with the mega texturing! Ahh well.. I am researching Creation Engine now ( I thought bethesda used Gamebryo for all it's games? )
Got to admit however that directX 9 is starting to look aged to me now. :(
I also seem to get a performance boost all around with DX11 ( not sure if thats imagined )
The Steam Workshop system is the necessary first step toward that business model, where the base game is cheap or even free and revenue comes primarily from people purchasing individual pieces of the specific kinds of content they like. And note that this potentially gives third parties opportunities to participate in selling content as well -- making a mod that gets highly rated could be the first step toward a career as a game developer, as was the case for (for example) the Team Fortress guys. (Valve's role in all of this is not coincidental.)
I'm *very* interested in seeing how the Steam Workshop store does.
Got to admit however that directX 9 is starting to look aged to me now. :(
I also seem to get a performance boost all around with DX11 ( not sure if thats imagined )