Mods on consoles Thread

As an indie game and mod development site, one area we are interested in exploring is standalone games & mods for consoles. Already hacking games on PSP has become quite popular (though the legalities of this is questionable at this stage).

I guess where I am going with this is the potential for us to see mods on consoles such as the XBOX 360 - who encourage the practice. I base this question on a few old & new bits of news including:

XBOX announcing their open XNA Game Studio, Source engine now on the XBOX and HL2 just released on the XBOX. Since Source is highly moddable and hugely popular can we soon expect to see popular mods ported over and created for XBOX Live?

To be quite frank I have no idea whether this is a simple, complex or impossible task. Is converting a Source mod to Steam Xbox just a matter of changing some API calls and re-compiling, or is it something much more difficult?

Edited by (in order): INtense!, INtense!, INtense!

For the original Xbox, I think compiling isn't such a chore. It runs on a modified Intel Pentium III at 733 MHz.

However, the XBox 360 uses 3 x 3.2 Ghz modified PowerPCs as its core processing, and you can't use a standard Windows compiler for that since the PowerPC uses different instruction set than the Pentum 4. It is probably possible to build a compiler that will generate PowerPC executables while the compiler runs in Windows (and in fact, I'm fairly sure that's sort of what game developers are using now) - whether those tools will become commonly available is an open question, however.

ok but is porting an existing HL2 mod to XBOX Live just a matter of re-compiling or is it something much more complicated?

Like how could it use the original game engine base etc like mods currently do?

I doubt you could simply recompile the source code in order to have it work on the console, you'd have to make any number of myriad code changes at a low or high level that otherwise weren't implemented in the existing code, or perhaps as a mod developer you don't have access to and will have to make a lengthy workaround. It's very unlikely you'd even be able to do it successfully.

Engines like Torque on the other hand, already have built in XNA support, and it could be possible to develop for both platforms - but it's unlikely that you'd elect to do this unless you do it from the start. Implementing multiplatform capability isn't something you want to do after you've started.

I dunno, in the latest SDK for HL2 there are #ifdef _XBOX checks so I'm guessing the same DLLs and stuff are used for it. Maybe I might have to send an email to someone from Valve to investigate this further, could be interesting potential to have mods distributed for XBOX.

Edited by: Wraiyth

If that's true, it may be easier to implement, but I still reckon there'll be any number of issues with trying to get it to work with the available XNA kit.

Quake and funny enough, Quake III Arena already succeeds in this area on the Dreamcast

When I was browsing the HL2 source code, I came up with quite a few refrences to XBOX. So I'm guessing that it's already designed basically to be ported (actually therfe were those crappy xbox ports).

Edited by: Sallycin

This is certainly a very interesting subject, one I would be interested in... I see however, no mention of the PS3 however... Despite the fact that it has an HDD standard with each console (means every user will be able to dl your mod) and it has HL2 coming to it, though as it has many many more processors than the 360, it might be ever more difficult to mod for it...

Sony consoles are extremely hard to develop for, while the Xbox adn 360 are far more similar to game development on a computer.

I discovered only today that UT2004 mods are relatively easy to port to the Xbox due to the nature of the packages.

Why, yes, I do believe I would browse Xbox Marketplace if I could find good mods on there.

Serious Sam 2's Serious Tools does also have options of making XB360 asset exports as well.

Interesting - with consoles gaining HD's etc it has looked like this sort of thing will happen at some point in the future. I just wonder how complex it is though. Does anyone have any idea?

That would be a good question for MSGS. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to explain it. After all, more people using XNA = more money YAY

Just so you know. Source is the engine HL2 uses. Steam is a program to distribute games.

Lol good pickup - I corrected my error!

The thing is really all about which company decides to capitalize on the mod community first. Sony could in theory release a patch that makes it easier to mod for the PS3, along with some free (more basic) tools... And seeing as the HDD is removable and upgradeable, the potential for a large amount of mods being stored on the PS3 along with the Sony store which from what I have heard tops the Xbox live market place (though I have not been able to obtain a PS3 to see this for myself) would at this stage seem to be larger than that of the 360, if Sony plays it's cards right. Sony does not seem to play it's cars right as of late though so... We'll see. Who knows? It may be that mods decide the fate of the console generation...

I am a bit doubtful about this entire modding stuff. Every mod made for a console is one less copy of a game sold. Consoles are mostly about money so opening them up for modding would hurt the sales. So far only the PS3 has some possible legal way to get homebrew running but for all the others I do not see a chance to get a mod/game running without buying the expensive SDKs.

How is that one less sale? A person could go "The gameplay sucks ass, but Joe Duff made a mod that improves it. So I'll buy this, install the mod, and have a ball!"

Mods add to sales. People buy games because of mods

Yeah, but on consoles that's where it's different. The only mod audience you'll get is those who would risk their console's warranties and features to install a modchip to ease piracy attempts.

Remember the Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball nude patch fiasco that caused the company to cease & desist for any modifying/reverse engineering involved? (It doesn't have to be a nude patch to violate, it could just be anything modified. I'm not talking about hot coffee or anything)

Console companies are much more protective for a reason.

Edited by: leilei

INtense! wrote: Mods add to sales. People buy games because of mods

Proven fact, that's why people making PC games are always trying to make their games modder friendly these days. Not to mention, if the PS3 is regarded as the "mod console" think of all the mod players that would have overlooked the PS3 (or 360) in favour of a new video card (or the like, PC upgrades are expensive) but then he hears you can get mods for the PS3, suddenly that's looking like a much more viable option.

As for cheapie's point, if it's made legal (and made to work more easily via a software update) then there's no need to risk the warranty, I mean the way Sony made the PS3 (designed for downloads and internet browsing...) it'll be really hard for them to control the content being viewed and used on their consoles (look at the trouble they're having keeping homebrews off of the PSP), they might as well embrace it and control it that way.

Edited by: Wilhelm_III

I think the chances of PS3 modding are quite unlikely. I have heard so many times how hard it is to develop anything for PS3.

That, acutally if you look into it, is due to more than a few things, most of which can be fixed.
#1 on that list is Sony did a piss poor job on their SDK... If they fix it, that would make things easier with just that. Another, is that it's pretty damn hard to spread code over multiple processors, and with the PS3 having those in spades, that adds to the difficulty. However, if Sony put the effort into it, I'm sure they could make a program that would make it easier to code on multiple processors. This is one of the main reasons why developers like the 360, only three processors.

However unlikely, it's still possible. Nobody expected Sony to take their addon CD drive for the Nintendo 64 and make a dominating console out of it. This could be the thing that makes people forget all the blunders Sony made with the PS3.

Edited by: Wilhelm_III