Game News Might & Magic X Update: Second official patch released, modding kit now available

[Infinitron]

Tags: Limbic Entertainment; Might & Magic X: Legacy; Ubisoft

The Early Access version of Might & Magic X Legacy has gotten its second official patch. As promised earlier, the highlight of this patch is the game's Modding Kit, which is available for anyone to use freely...as long as they have a copy of Unity Pro, which costs $1500. Uh, well, here's the official announcement from the game's open development blog:

Today we are happy to present you the second official patch of Might & Magic X – Legacy Early Access. As well as delivering many game improvements, we are very excited to announce that this second patch for MMX Early Access comes bundled with the MMX Modding Kit, allowing you to create your very own adventures!

Before we talk about all the exciting things we have in store, we wanted to thank you all for the numerous messages posted on the Open dev blog and forums. MMX would certainly not look so gorgeous today without you.

Let's talk about the Modding Kit release first! We really wanted to get this powerful kit into your hands as soon as possible, so that you can dive straight into creating and playing mods before the game is actually fully released. In addition to this, we are currently developing a new feature for the website, the Maps & Mods tab, which will enable you to share your mods with other fans and track down the best mods out there. This feature is not ready yet, but our web developer (Open Dev Blog’s father Supacoco) is working hard to release it before the end of the year, and when finished it will be accessible to everyone from the Open Dev blog.

The Modding Kit is an extremely flexible, feature-rich tool, and we wanted to show you some examples of the amazing mods that it can produce. That is why a few weeks ago we contacted two modders from the MMX community--one from RPG Codex and the other a MMX Ultimate Adventurer from the Open Dev Blog! They are currently creating their own mods that will be available when the Maps & Mods feature goes live. If you too are interested in modding, then you should totally check out the following guide: MODDING KIT GUIDE.

With the Modding Kit installed you can immediately start creating your own adventures or just have fun discovering all its features. However you use the kit, what you learn will be very valuable in the near future when a special modding contest is announced… Watch this space!

Now let’s check out what this second patch brings to MMX!

Here are the new features of the Second Official Patch:

• New interactive objects have been added: Liquid Barrels and Buff Statues.
• New game options. Barks can now be deactivated, and the same goes for game messages and floating damage numbers. You can now also change the opacity for tooltips and the quest/action log.
• Korean language version is now available.
• And last but not least, you can make your own notes on the Minimap. (cf. article Feature Preview: Map Notes)

In addition, some important bug fixes have been implemented:

• Several issues where players got stuck in combat have been fixed.
• We also fixed several bugs where people got stuck outside of combat.
• Several UI overlaps have been removed.
• Items should no longer disappear from your inventory when moved.
• Various buttons and interaction icons that didn’t work have been fixed.

Notes on the complete patch can be found here. All in all, since the last patch, about 150 bugs have been fixed. However, we didn’t strip Mamushi of his right to move diagonally and attack within the same turn. It’s a feature!​

See the full update for the complete patch notes. And before you ask, we actually have no idea what RPG Codex modder they're talking about. Either that's a mistake or somebody has been doing stuff behind our backs (tsk tsk).

 

[Infinitron]

Here's the Modding Kit tutorial video:

 

[Zeriel]

Pretty trolly that they expect people to buy game developer licenses to mod their game. Like I understand this is out of their hands, but realistically this lowers the pool of modders drastically.

 

[Infinitron]

Pretty trolly that they expect people to buy game developer licenses to mod their game. Like I understand this is out of their hands, but realistically this lowers the pool of modders drastically.

Yes, it reeks of publisher mandate. Ubi wanted there to be a modkit, so we're making a modkit! Nevermind that few people will use it (inb4 piracy, though).

 

[Arkeus]

Pretty trolly that they expect people to buy game developer licenses to mod their game. Like I understand this is out of their hands, but realistically this lowers the pool of modders drastically.

Yes, it reeks of publisher mandate. Ubi wanted there to be a modkit, so we're making a modkit! Nevermind that few people will use it (inb4 piracy, though).

Pretty much this. This is like tempting modders to play shenanigans with the whole 30-day trial thing.

 

[Zeriel]

I think you'd be surprised how much piracy doesn't figure into a third party app like this. It's a little different with packaged apps like NWN's mod editor. They are considered part of the game and often have no copy protection, so are widely available and don't even need to be cracked. But even with NWN there were certain third-party tools that were never feasible to use. For example, the model pipeline for NWN2 (which you needed to use if you wanted add completely new models/animations to the game in a comprehensive way), used an obscure exporter tool for 3DSMax. This obscure exporter tool was basically a custom script Obsidian cooked up, but it only worked with one very old and hard to find version of 3DSMax. As a result, basically no one ever added completely new animations/rigs to the game.

Unity Pro probably won't be that bad, but considering the latest version isn't widely available on torrents, I'm imagining a similarly dead modding community.

 

[tuluse]

Do you need Unity pro if you just want to use existing assets to make levels?

 

[Zeriel]

You need Unity Pro to do anything.

 

[Midair]

Is this Unity not being flexible for modding, or just MMX not being flexible enough to work with the free version? I mean, can any game that uses the pro version of Unity not be modded w/o it?

 

[Zeriel]

Unity Pro is a game development kit. The app isn't problematic, the fact it costs $1500 after the 30 day trial is. There is no "free version".

 

[Raapys]

Huh? There's no time limit that I can see...

It's very restricted though. No area light, for instance, without the pro license.

 

[Midair]

I believe there is the $1500 pro version, and there is a free version that has fewer features and puts a Unity logo at start up. I am surprised the free version cannot be used for modding. I wonder if it can if the game developer somehow keeps the pro features separate from their modding tool or something?

 

[Midair]

Ok, from https://static14.cdn.ubi.com/udev/prod/pdf/MMX_ModdingKit_Guide.pdf

Unity professional contains many tools for lightmap and occlusion calculation. Some of these tools
are required in order to create 3D worlds with high quality and good performance. These features
don’t come with the Modding Kit. But to get the best game experience it is recommended that
modders use the full feature set of the engine.

The Modding Kit itself will not fully run with the Unity free version. The main reason is that the
core feature which is used for the export of the 3D environment is a Unity premium-only feature.
We are sorry for this, but at the moment we have no workaround available which would replace the
need for this premium feature. Because of this Unity free is not officially supported by this
Modding Kit. Although we are aware that it won’t be enough for passionate modders who really
want to go in deep with the Modding Kit, it should be noted that the professional version of Unity is
available as a free 30-day trial.

Aside from the 3D environment export issue, the Modding Kit should work fine with Unity free.
This means that you can create, edit, and save levels in the normal scene structure of Unity. These
can then be exchanged with friends. So if you have a contact who has access to Unity professional,
he can make the exports for you if you share your source files. The exported files are required to
load your Mod in the game.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

I wonder if it would be possible for a group to pool some money together to purchase one (or more) Pro versions for someone(s), and then have everyone run their mods through them. I don't know how long it takes to export these files, so it could be very time consuming. Of course, there's also the problem where once someone has the license, they then disappear. I've considered buying a license myself, but $1500 isn't chump change.

I just checked the site, and apparently, there's an option where you can subscribe to the features of Unity Pro for $75/month, with a minimum of 12 months. So, that could potentially be a bit cheaper ($900 for a year), depending on how long the interest in modding lasts.

 

[Zeriel]

Thing is, if you're going to pay for Unity Pro, you might as well just make your own damn game at that point. The whole point of modding is that it's a free, accessible way to make your own content for a game you enjoy. Putting huge financial roadblocks in the way means no modding community.