Thinking about dropping ARK modding and why!

Development Modding ARK: Survival Evolved
, ,
1

After some consideration. I am think its about time to drop ark modding entierly.
I come to this after some thoughts due to several reason, i see no point in continue to mod when all it does is cause frustration.
I have 4 unfinished mods meant for MP use. I Do not play any singleplayer so i only try to create mods that are mp compatible.

But this is a bloody nightmare.

If the ADK ever gets updates so it isnt a lying pize of ****. i’ll rethink starting to mod again.
ADK… Nice to create simple objects for singleplayer. or mp when all you do i dup a exising bp and edit it.
ADK SUCKS *** when you want to try make a more functional mod from scratch that involves replication and so on…
It will lie though its teeths to you, esp when testing with dedi, hosted mode VS a Real dedi, hosted server.

  • How are we suppose to create MP mods for dedi servers when the Development Platform is telling you its ok when in facts its not.
  • How are we suppose to debug our code to find issues when the Development Platform is telling you its all ok. when in fact its not.

And more… WildCard Devs dont give a **** about the Forum here. they never or rarely popin here answering question modders have.
There is no to little docs. scarce examples provided.

Im gonna stop this madness while i have hair left on my head.
Im not trying to whine here. but you got to understand that… after 14 days of working on the same thing it kind of gets frustrated and motivation to continue modding isnt that hight.
I have gotten help from like 10 different people, some that has been using UE for years. they have been helpfull. (thank you guys)

I wish i could say that modding for ARK was a blast. but it been all but a blast.
But i never have had some many issues trying to mod for a game as i have had with Ark.

And yeah i know ADK is in general new.
I am also new to modding for ARK/UE. in fact just started with modding for it about 2/3 months ago.
I mostly been modding in large scale engine before. example. Arma, DCS. even though they have old/shity tools. they work atleat.
But im new to this “linear/corridor” engines. also after messing around with the ADK. it make me miss UNITY real bad.
Atleast i can code in C# there.

Blueprint Graphs are real nice when you want to just do small simple stuff, but its a custer**** when your code starts to become more advanced and complex.
Its basically just a tool for a artist to do simple code with.
Most people i talked with who are not an artist,(Programmer) hate the graph.
And hate it more that there no scipting language as an alternative.

Just think about how awefull a complex, advanced data mod with tonz of arrays, sets, gets, spawns etc would look like…
I’ll tell you… it looks blody awefulle.

Just saing. the ADK is not letting programmers advance in what they do.
You have absolutly no use for blueprints outside ADK/UE.
(if your good at connecting dots and lines in the graph and think youre a programmer. sorry but you done even have the kills of a script kidde yet).

If Ark had some support for a scripting language such as “python,lua” or even C# people would actually bring outside knowlege to the game.
People would also learn and advance which then agian they could take a use of outside Ark/UE.

I know UE allows you to write stuff in c++.
But i dont see that happening for ARK. except some sort of extension support. kind of like what arma has if you know that game.
But doubtfull

To sum up my main reasons.**
Technical limitation.**
*** **Limited to blueprints only (Graphs/ visual scripting)
***** No Scripting language support.
***** No support for plugins/extensions.
***** Based on a old engine, which is known to have alof of bugs.

If you too are considering dropping Ark Modding Whats your reason for it?

2

Hey mate, sorry to see you go. I feel your unhappiness about the support and keeping the ADK up to date and I totally agree here. Only difference is that I never expected it to be different. Haven’t seen many modable games that get muc attention by the devs.

I just want to bring a counter argument to “how bad blueprints are” and say that they are not as bad. Even visually you can control the “clust****” of complexity and keep it clean an readable. So far I have not seen any downsides to a text based scripting language. Having that said I am talking about Unreal Blueprints and not the ADK in particuallar.
One thing that will not happen no matter what is access to C++. And there are plenty of good reasons which I will not explain in detail here. Just try to think of a modable game that is still in development/support and grants access to its source code. Can’t think of one.

So why did I post in the first place? It didn’t feel right to see the second part of your text especially since I made different experiences and have worked with many programmers who actually enjoy blueprints for more “simpler” tasks. Yes, writting a new TC like SOTF is one of the more simpler tasks.
Anyway, if think that bad about Blueprints you might be more interested in Unity or CryEngine powered games.

To answer your question: I would drop Modding for Ark if it wasnt for the money. I do not agree with Wildcards modding policy but I do understand why it is like it is. I hope and believe that it will get better when the game hits gold state but until then the money is what me got here and it is what me keeps here. And yeah, I haven’t had that many bad experience with the ADK yet. Yes, I am doing MP related content and yes I did test it on a Dedi Server.

3

Modding with ADK is really frustrating. I am completely new to UE and modding in general, so the complexity of what I tried doing so far is basically zero - and still it’s far more difficult than it should have been.

My main source of frustration is all the random errors that just should not happen. My favorite example? If you add an item to an inventory’s default list, but the item itself requires a different inventory component for crafting, then you had better remember to change it in the same launch - otherwise the UE will crash with 100% chance.
Just an example, but the ADK is actually full of these errors. Sometimes they cause it to crash until you remove the source of the error (which you can’t do well since it won’t even start), sometimes you lose work, sometimes it just stops functioning as intended in some areas… it’s not great.
And of course, the complete lack of official tutorials is horrible.

That said, I am not quitting just yet. My mod is meant for myself and my friends to play anyway, so I’m the only one who stands to lose from stopping.

4

On the other side of the fence: I have no experience with programming and started using UE4 when the Dev kit came out but I enjoy it, it could use more documentation and a FAQ that the devs update. As my entry to UE4 I personally cant get enough of the graph, I could play around with it all day.

5

I admit - learning the kit was a curve. One I took on whole-heartedly. I have found now that there’s really nothing I can’t do in the game anymore - except place animated objects - but that’s alright.

I’ve never once had to use the graph - even though I could.

I honestly love crafting and making video games - I guess since I can’t do that professionally anymore (military injuries - no one wants a disabled vet in their game development crew anymore), I love the challenges that modding provides. Making a game is always been about pushing the limitations of imagination and the hardware for me.

But I digress, we here in the mod community will miss you!

6

“I come to this after some thoughts due to several reason, i see no point in continue to mod when all it does is cause frustration.” ----

This line right here. Modding is **** similar to game develeopment. Frustration is part of it. It is not supposed to be easy. Yes the ADK has its bugs/glitches. But thus far after hours and hours of modding, i have worked past most of them.

7

I am pretty sure atleast 1/3 if not more of the ARK modders will drop ADK and ARK once this contest is over, that is literally the only thing keeping them at the moment.

ADK started out great, the devs showed alot of effort and care on the forums to help us out and get the ADK working properly, but this lasted a few weeks and we havent seen them since, I asked them about caves about a month ago and still havent heard anything and anyone i ask have no clue how they do them, The documentation is still very lacking, what they did provide documentation for was already known by the community and already on several community made how to’s.

I also hope that once things calm down abit they will realise that releasing content twice a week isnt the smartest and scale down to once every 2 weeks so they have time to do things properly and can hopefully pop back into this forum from time to time and answer questions.

I personally have had a blast learning the ADK and UE4 although there is so much i have left to learn it has been a blast and i hope it will continue being fun

8

hey CFrankie, sorry to hear about your military injuries but I am curious why you say no one would want a disabled vet in their crew? If you got the skill, such as programming skill or artistic skills then I would think anybody would take you, just curious what experience you have had that makes you say that. Sorry if this is off topic from the main thread.

9

Maybe we should all say something on the steam forums. They pay more attention to those.

10

Being a new modder that has never modded anything other than making a few Quake 2 and Quake3 maps many many years ago and then recently a little notepad++ copy/paste modding for DayZ Epoch, I find the biggest challenge and source of frustration from the devkit is the lack of documentation.
And of course the lack of updates.

Somebody already did: Devkit needs to be updated more often. :: ARK: Survival Evolved General Discussions
Maybe everyone could give it a +1 or something

11

For a 5 month old EA game… modding is better than average compared to other games I’ve done.

Yes, a devkit update once per week would be better. Yes, having a dev spend an hour a week answering unresolved questions would be better.

What would make me quit would be losing interest in the game, and/or not being able to mod it to make it interesting.

12

Kudos to that. Sometimes you have to work with what you can get… I know I dont plan on dropping modding after the mod contest considering I started before it was a concept. Sad to see you go! Maybe circle back in a few months and see if things have changed any!

13

FYI, Drake responded to that thread over on the steam forums:

"Originally posted by Drake:
v219 ARK Dev Kit will be updated this weekend. Please bear in mind that we prefer to stabilize the major versions before we release the Dev Kit, to be sure we have no bugs with the core game as it is very time consuming to generate and upload the Dev Kit versions (the source content files are quite large). For now, there will be an approximate 5 day lag between Major Version updates and the Dev Kit. This may get reduced as we expand the support team, but for now, it’s the nature of the current tiny team.

Thank you for your patience, and yes I know it’s not ideal, not yet at least :wink:

Best regards,
Drake"

At least it’s something!

14

Half the weekend’s over.
Also, if you ask me, pushing out the DevKit update before a game update would make more sense. Give modders time to prepare.

15

What a load of ****.

Yes it takes time to upload… BUT… They should be on a Gigabit connection so their upload time would be somewhere in the area of a couple minutes… Big fkn deal.

And don’t even try and pass that BS about STABLE.
Its whats been RELEASED to the 2M odd clients and private servers already.
If it is stable enough for the main player base, it is MORE than stable enough for the modders.

16

That went off-topic quite fast…

17

Yes it did. Try to keep the on topic please and Share your Bad experiance with ADK.
Also This thread is not about the game itself. I Still think the game is great. just to ensure we dont get more oftopic :stuck_out_tongue:

If your experiance is so bad with the update schedules the ADK has and thats the reason to why youre considering dropping modding for ARK.
Thats fine, but try to share your experiance with it rather than compain with… "They said update comming, Why Me no Update yet?.

I been trying to hold out a few more days.
But seen that there are several bug with repNotify in the engine. which i have experianced. seend others experianced. seend bug reports about it for old UE versions.

This are all mostly pre 4.8.2X’ish bugs.
What i mean by this is that its bugs which where disovered somewhere between 4.5 -> 4.8 and fixed in later 4.8 released. around 4.8.2 things get sorted out.

This is a problem since the ARK engine is based around 4.5 and that leads a huge gap with lots of network bug not fixed.
Altho, Since wildcard has the source code, they could probably patch up some bugfixes. but then again it depends on the changes and how many, it might not be suted or doeble at all.
It might even be better/faster/easyer to migrate the project to some higher engine versions.
But i belive they stated somewher that they will not do this.

Whats my point here.
Well. if youre like me. one who likes to try out new things, create something new and like to play/interact with it with other players.
I’ll tell you strait away… you be annoyed/frustrated/irretated most of the time.
replication is a HUGE deal when making multiplayer mods. and the fact that replication is bugged. is a game breaker in multiplayer.
replication is not relieble at all. not matter which one you try, repnotify or replicated.
repNotify has the annoying issue of, updating itself on the server fine… but the clients has a habit of stoping to trigger the function.
Anyone with mp coding experiance can see that its a problem.

Also there is really no guides on how to workaround them… like SamsonF’s example…
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/319083/random-int-rep-notify-will-ignore-0.html
If i didnt talk to him on IRC, i never knew about that thing.

And that the Development kit is suffering from compulsive lying disorder, doesnt make life easyer when trying to create stuff.

In a way i have a feeling that can be put like this…


WildCard the new game studio: CEO Jesse, lets make a game. lets use unreal engine 4 and make it about Dinosaurus it will be epic.
Gamers: This is awesome.
WildCard: Lets toss in some mod support to the game to boots its popularity.
Gamers: This is awesome, make me mods pls...
Modders: This is awesome i make you mod,.
WildCard: Sais, Cool Guys.
Modders: Complain.. bugs, out of sync no update.
WildCard: You know what this was more than what we bargained for, lets just ditch this mod idea and toss out a few updates now and then.
18

Just to be clear about that issue. This is not a bug. This specific case is working as intended.

20

Problems I have with ADK is the updating issue, Lack of control and lot of native arrays and stucts not exposed in blueprint, and last but not least… the way changes in the gamedata blueprint are over ridden.

Still waiting on the devkit update for 219 and content with it.

Still waiting on the rest of the status component to be opened up to blueprint so I can provide more controls through the ini for server admins who use my mod.

Still waiting on some improvement on how mods override each other. Currently, they just seem to overwrite instead. Would be nice if a mod lower on the list used the overridden data from a mod higher on the list rather then replacing it all together.

All in all though, the game and devkit all are still being worked on. Maybe better support will come when they fully release the game.

21

I started to fiddle with the ADK a while back. I quickly realized it wasn’t worth it. And if I could get it off my **** Epic launcher I would LOVE to, I don’t care if there are updates and don’t want to see it anymore.