And reading. Of fantasy, cartoons and other classic stuff. I mean, for modders. I'm reflecting on this as I work on Animate Dead and realize just how various my sources of inspiration are. The "Aladdin" animated movies and especially TV series, Rankin & Bass stuff, Dino de Laurentis full-motion pictures, Golden Age fantasy writers like Howard or Spague de Camp. The first Forgotten Realms novels - "Darkwalker on the Moonshaes" and the next two in that trilogy. Boy, that was good and often terrifying reading! Not at all like that Salvatore shite. Old issues of the Dragon magazine I found online, too. They were crazy and fun in the early years. Just to mention the more popular stuff. It might seem like there is no direct connection to opcodes and scripts, but it all informs creative decisions like what to do about traps or how to make zombies behave. Should they be the silent kind, just moving meat, or should they be "braaains," or should they be smart and menacing like Mozenrath's Mamluks? Most people probably just know the "braaains" kind, because that's what you see on so many shows these days. I've been toiling hard to learn the skills for the engine, with help from the community, but when you're beginning to know your way around the tools you start seeing different possibilities for using them.
Without knowing their material, people will just create stuff similar to what they have seen before. Most of Beamdog's additions follow that rut. We are practically fixated on familiar Infinity-Engine-style, kind of like when you have only got one porn clip to jerk off to, and you have already done it a hundred times. It starts to feel like destiny. Same pair of tits or same dick forever. You can watch it upside down. But, of course, when Bioware was creating these worlds, they made them new nearly whole-cloth. Just some nods to the pen-and-paper game and statistics for hardcore fans, but otherwise - they made it up. Why do ogres wear Roman-style armor? Why did Mark Morgan choose wind instruments and cymbals for most of BG's tunes and a totally different style for Torment? They were taking risks, but they also had a lot of visual and audial and other erudition to lean back on.
I really think there should be some kind of strongly-recommended watching, playing and reading list for modders who want to get into creating adventures. Not because we are such snobs, but for their own benefit.
Edited by temnix, 15 June 2017 - 04:05 PM.
