An open letter regarding release of a ToEE Editor

Dear members of the Temple of Elemental Evil community,

I would like to address this letter to all of you, since the importance of the problem under discussion can hardly be underestimated for all of us, both modders and players. I think most of you know that the thing that we all miss in ToEE since the moment of its release is definitely the game world modification tools (editors, possibly graphics converters, and so on). Troika didn't release such tools with ToEE initially, telling us that the editors they used to create ToEE are too difficult to use. I don't know what made Troika say it in the first place, but I can tell you that this statement is absolutely untrue, at least today.

Take a look at what our small community (compared to such "giants of the modding industry" as NWN and IE) has done within the time span since the game was released: a whole bunch of high quality game modifications were released or are within the beta phase, including the famous Circle of Eight mod, the Arena of Heroes, Livonya's wonderful mod, and a lot more smaller
mods. A lot of initial game bugs and severe limitations that were NOT addressed in Troika's three official patches were squashed by the community, by delving deeper into the game functionality, rewriting portions of the game code by means of assembler, creating third party editing tools that would allow the modification of certain game parts, basically pushing the game engine to its limits and making it do what it wasn't even supposed to do in the first place!

Being a programmer myself, I can say that all the tasks I've listed above are really hard, daunting ones. I don't believe that what we have done was any easier to achieve than the use of Troika's Worlded utility. So, I don't think that the toolset being difficult to use is an argument anymore.

So, now we turn to the very point of our discussion. As I already said, we have both capable people and a good modding resource base to start working at a much higher level, to create full-featured modules for ToEE. Unfortunately, we don't have the required toolset to do that. Of course, with time it may be possible to create editors for most parts of the game engine, but considering the amount of people we have here who are actually capable of writing editors and considering the amount of time we can actually put into this work, it may just take very long for most people to lose interest in the game. I don't know why exactly Troika didn't release the toolset, what is Atari's position on this, and what problems might turn out to be there with the D&D license. The problem is that we are not being told about that. Come on, people, let's think about some ideas of making at least someone explain the reason for not releasing the toolset. If it's the D&D license, then we'll have to live with it. If it's some other engine licensing problem, all right as well. But look at the explanation we have today - "the toolset is too hard for you to use"! Come on, I think we deserve a better explanation than that! If there is NO licensing problem with releasing at least SOMETHING (not necessarily all the toolset, but maybe just the Worlded or even a part of it!), then maybe someone WILL release it in the end. If there IS a licensing problem and there is just no way to release the tools, at least the community deserves to finally know about that!

After all I've said I'm kind of thinking about how exactly we can solve the above-mentioned problem. I tried browsing Atari community forums for a while and all that I've found was a small thread where people asked to release the toolset, without being even able to explain themselves properly (sometimes it's just "Bumping the thread" type of thing, you know). Come on, you can do better than that! Look at the Thief: Deadly Shadows community (http://www.ttlg.com/forums) - they strived for an editor for their game for a very long time (I think more than 6 months), making online petitions and even sending letters to the game developers. And they got what they wanted - the editor was released!

What I want to say is that it's at least worth TRYING. But you know, if most of us just sit out there and think that someone else will do everything, we'll never achieve our goal. Everyone, I repeat: EVERYONE must join in on this effort, doing at least something, be it posting here, on the Atari forums, or doing something else. I want to hear your ideas, guys. Unfortunately, I don't have a personal access to Atari forums (I think it won't accept my free e-mail address at yahoo.com so I can't register) so I can't post there, but those of you who do, PLEASE support us by posting there and explaining the exact REASON we want to have an editor, for really - WE HAVE A REASON!

Let's take a look at our community from another point of view. Our community is a very friendly one, everyone works in cooperation with other people around here in order to help to achieve a common goal. I can say that I, being a member of some other gaming communities as well, can call our community the friendliest one. We DON'T strive to protect our mod content so no one can see how it's done (as opposed to Warcraft 3 community), we DON'T oppose and turn our back on people who want to ask questions, especially newbies (I will not name the community that does that). We welcome everyone to join us, play with us, mod with us. Currently we have less that 4,000 registered people on the board, a certain part of them long-gone, but I constantly see a lot of guests roaming the board. I invite everyone who likes ToEE and our mods and who enjoys playing and/or modding the game to register and join us in our struggle for the modification toolset!

Thanks in advance for understanding and support.

P.S. The reason I post it here and not in the "General Modification" section is just because I want everyone to read and understand this, and General Modification is not viewed by everyone on this board and is far from being the most popular region of the forums, and because I also think that this concerns everyone, not just modders but also regular players. I would ask a moderator of this thread to make this post sticky, if possible, at least for a certain amount of time.

Regards,
Agetian (developer/modder)

 

Hey Martinius,

I agree that it's a possible thing they may hold for us, but why not let US know about this?
Moreover, releasing editing tools has always been a good thing for a game (go figure: Warcraft 3, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, etc. etc. etc. were all made more popular by the editing tools).

ToEE was on the verge of death, being a game with a very good idea, yet very small, non-detailed and buggy. Our community saved it from this death. I was amazed when, after a 8-month break (being unable to visit the forum often or post due to life problems), I returned only to see the past ideas and mods being expanded. So, ToEE lives because this community lives. I think if the editing toolset was released it won't do much worse for the game authors, yet it may bump the game popularity and even make someone buy the game today even if they didn't do it before! There are many good examples of that in the gaming history, it's not just me saying empty words.

- Agetian

 

All my attempts at posting my letter at the Atari community forums failed due to the system not willing to accept my free e-mail address. Anyway, if someone could repost my letter on their forums OR at least make a reference to this thread on their forums I would be very grateful.

- Agetian

 

100% agreed! However, I don't know of a way to contact 'em directly myself. Any help with this would be appreciated. If we knew their address we could try snail mailing 'em (like the Thief: Deadly Shadows community did)...

- Agetian

 

Hey, Zebedee,

Thanks! That's really appreciated!
Btw, no the PS is not required (it won't work on that board

Keep your fingers crossed, guys!... Maybe we'll catch some attention this time?

- Agetian

 

If planned right, it might be a good idea to collect a bunch of snail mail messages regarding the release of an editor and send them all in an all-in-one bunch to one of those addresses, then see what happens. What do you think about it?

About the Co8 members being beta testers: from what I remember, it's right. The problem is - I haven't seen Zhuge around here for quite a while, and a lot of initial members of the community are long gone...

Anyway, if there is a person who has a personal contact with Atari or Troika, feel free to join up, your help may prove to be invaluable!

Thanks in advance.
- Agetian

 

@ Morpheus: That'd be really good if you could find something out (if you have any contacts, of course...). Maybe it's possible to contact Mr. Moret and find out if he's still in touch with the rest of the team, or something like that?

@ Everyone: A day has passed since I posted my message on this board, and around half a day passed since the same stuff was posted at the Atari community board. There are many views of the page (73 @ Atari community board when I last went there) but only 6 posts, and most of those are of the completely desperate attitude, mainly saying that "this has been discussed many times", "they (Troika/Atari) won't react", "they want to make money from the engine", etc. Come on, guys! Post something constructive there! No one will ever respond if we don't show our attitude towards the fact of ignoring us for so long!

There was a person at Atari's Community Forums who claimed that the game devs/publishers probably want to make more money from selling the engine, and from this we all should infer that it's exactly why we don't have an editor. First of all, I don't know a single person on this forum who REALLY knows what Troika and Atari are up to. So whoever claims that Atari wants to make more money out of the project somehow makes an assumption, not more. Everything we say here is our assumption, but none of our assumptions can be 100% accepted as the only true one. It's only a possibility. More than that, I already said it before - we are left to our guesses, we are completely ignored by the game developers and publishers, forgotten (sort of), and even somewhat fooled (that's my personal feeling when I go back to the "editor being hard to use" thing). I would love to have ANY explanation that would be an official one. OK, let it even be the fact that they don't want to release an editor because they want to sell the engine to someone else! I think everyone in this community deserves at least to know the exact reason for not releasing the tools, and of course everyone in this community deserves to have an editor itself (should the devs/publishers choose to release them).

If all we do is say "nothing would help, we will be left with nothing - no tools and even no explanations" we will NEVER get anything. As for the Atari Community Forums, so far I've only seen really worthy posts by Zebedee (thanks!) and Ellester. The rest ended up with the regular "they won't care, whatever!" type of attitude. Of course, I understand that a lot of people both here and there are in a despair, sort of, thinking that they have already tried everything they could. But from what I have seen since I first came to the ToEE Community back in August 2004, no one really pressed Atari and Troika to expain the thing. There was no coordinated request, no demand on the side of the people who bought the game and who are to be supported. The only requests were, like someone said it, in the form of asking. A person asked a question, and someone else might have even supported him, but that looked to me more like single, scattered questions than full-featured requests. I think that Atari/Troika didn't to answer in the first place because they didn't really see a reason to do so, even though that's yet another assumption which is to be taken as a possibility.

By the way, I'm seriously thinking about creating some sort of petition, but I'm wondering how many people will actually sign it. And what form will it be in? We could try an online one, but in this case we might be ignored just as well (come on, of course Atari knows what we're doing here! Of course it's well aware of the posts coming about the Worlded! They just plain ignore us, not bothering to give even a simple explanation!). A real snail mail petition would take some time (first of all we need a person who lives at least somewhat close to one of the office addresses, then we'll need to send that person a bunch of mail to redirect, and that person will make an all-in-one package and send it to the office). This MIGHT prove to be more effective than an online petition, because real letters with real signatures somehow have more significant impact on people.

Please, let me give you one simple, yet real example. Once again I have to refer to the Thief: Deadly Shadows community that struggled for the editor and actually WON it through petitions. The problem is - they had thousands of signatures and hundreds (or thousands?) of snail mail letters sent to the office. They WERE ignored, just like we are today! No one explained them the reason not to release an editor for seven or eight months straight, even though the campaign went on and on! They grew to hate Eidos (the company that released the game), yet they continued on and on. They found out the office snail mail addresses, they found a contact in the company, and in the end they got what they wanted - first an answer regarding the editor status, and then the tool itself.

What I want to say by giving this example is the fact that nothing is really impossible. Those guys at Atari and Troika may choose to ignore us, but it can't last forever. EVERY company in this or that way IS concerned about their fans. If they lose their die-hard fans, a lot less people may buy their next game from the series. This is said in support of the thought that even if Atari/Troika want to release some sort of a sequel or another game based on ToEE engine sold to someone else, it would still be better for them to please the community (the "cult" as someone called it at Atari's) and not to go against them. I can seriously say that I'm NOT going to buy Atari/Troika's next game unless I'm confident in support (because I love games that live long, and a game without an editor will die a lot faster than a game with one, and in addition I'll know that I'll be ignored - how good is that?).

Sorry, I was just telling you my thoughts again.
If you don't agree with what I say, that's OK, but we all have a right to explain our point of view. And my point of view on all this is that a community of fans who supported the game developers (by beta-testing and, in fact, by CONTUING WORK on their game) has a right to get an answer to the question that plagued everyone here since the game's release.

- Agetian