Darth Vader Retires From Total War Modding

[Soviet Heavy]

For those of you keeping track, Darth Vader (The Modder, not the Sith Lord) is probably the most visible and respected modder in the Total War community. Without fail, he has consistently put Creative Assembly's AI programmers to shame with his mods, working within the confines of their code to outdo the vanilla AI and create an actual battlefield threat in game.

His latest release, DarthMod Empire V.8.0, is also his final release. He is done with the Total War series after a perceived snubbing by Creative Assembly over their Modder's Summit event. Creative Assembly invited a number of well respected modders to the event. Darth Vader was not one of them.

On to the retirement.

Darth Vader, maker of this Empire Total War mod, and similar all-encompassing alteration-fests for other Total War games, said on his facebook page that "The DarthMod project will no longer continue for Total War games." His reasons are twofold, he was not invited to Creative Assembly's upcoming modders' summit and also his claims that "CA continued to devalue my efforts to improve their games."

Both emerged in an extensive thread on the Total War forums. Creative Assembly's Craig Laycock announced plans for a modders' summit where influential members of the community would be invited to their offices to talk about what the studio can be doing to help and also to make a couple of secret announcements. Darth Vader was not amongst those invited.

Darth has also taken a comment Craig makes later in the thread as a slight. He says, Craig's comment, "There are some mods out there that claim to do things that are impossible to do within the limitations that exist at the moment.", is directed at his work and is an attempt to "devalue" it.

However, from the very small list of attendees - only four - and a stated focus on Shogun 2 modders, it is not a complete surprise Darth is not on the roster. Although he has released a mod for Shogun 2, it is not as extensive as the work done on Empire. Also, the list includes people who have worked on creating the tools for modding, rather than those who have created the tweaks.

Will this perceived snubbing and retirement stick, the temptation to work on Rome 2 must be strong in this one.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/totalwar/total-war-mod-darthmod-empire-v80-platinum-released-developer-retires-total-war-modding

To me, this is a very sad day. This man is pretty much the reason that Empire: Total War is even playable at this point. The game had appalling AI problems, so bad that one developer went so far as to say he wouldn't let his friends play the game because he was so embarrassed of the mess. Then they abandoned the game to make Napoleon, ,and it was made pretty clear that Empire was barely even a testbed shoved out of Beta.

They left it to rot. Darth brought it back from the dead and fixed it.

So, hats off to you, Darth Vader, for all the work you put into making good strategy games into great ones.

 

[Saladfork]

I guess CA found his lack of faith in their AI developers... disturbing.

 

[piinyouri]

That's amazing.
The Morrowind mod scene is virtually nothing compared to this.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Just to point out: The modding summit takes place tomorrow, Wednesday 26th.

 

[The Madman]

For those of you keeping track, Darth Vader (The Modder, not the Sith Lord) is probably the most visible and respected modder in the Total War community. Without fail, he has consistently put Creative Assembly's AI programmers to shame with his mods, working within the confines of their code to outdo the vanilla AI and create an actual battlefield threat in game.

No he isn't. No he hasn't.

The reason he wasn't invited is because he never did any real modding. He combined other peoples mods together, did some tweaking, and then called it his own often not even giving credit to those who's original mods he used. That's why he wasn't invited: He doesn't actually do any of the real modding himself. That and because apparently he's a bit of an ass in person.

This is also the second time he's said he's 'quitting' the TW modding community so he's a drama queen too!

To quote one of the modders that was invited in a comment they made on reddit:


"People need to understand they should be elated at the fact that people with technical knowledge were chosen to go, and what that could potentially mean.

If we go there and they try to explain the ESF format, should TAW be there or DarthVader? If we go there and they talk to us about the format of the pack files, should DarthVader be there or the guy responsible for creating Shogun2's version of the PackFileManager? Obvious answers.

The truth is that anyone can open the PFM an change database tables while claiming to be rewriting AI. Craig has my utmost and profound respect for saying it how it is.

The sad thing is, is that while Darth likes to tell us how other modders hate him or that they are jealous, his very post doing so shows us that in fact he is the jealous one here, and that posts exactly like that are why other modders might dislike him. He is, after all, the only one in the entirety of this site who will likely complain about not being chosen.

I'm ecstatic that I was chosen, I wouldn't be complaining if I wasn't though instead what I'd be doing is hoping that those going would be the likes of Taw, Daniu, etc, because I honestly believe that it means much greater things than inviting the more known names just for positive publicity."

 

[Soopy]

Darth Vader sounds like a sooky little *****. "Oh noes, they doesn't likes me... I'ma cry and make all my fans pay for it..."

Boo fuckin hoo.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

For those of you keeping track, Darth Vader (The Modder, not the Sith Lord) is probably the most visible and respected modder in the Total War community. Without fail, he has consistently put Creative Assembly's AI programmers to shame with his mods, working within the confines of their code to outdo the vanilla AI and create an actual battlefield threat in game.

No he isn't. No he hasn't.

I won't argue on the other points by other modders, given that this is my own perspective. But to say that vanilla Empire Total War's AI is superior to DarthMod is ridiculous.

 

[The Madman]

I won't argue on the other points by other modders, given that this is my own perspective. But to say that vanilla Empire Total War's AI is superior to DarthMod is ridiculous.

I honestly wouldn't know. I tried using the 'Darthmod' because I'd heard about it improving the game but after installing it not only did the games performance decrease to such a degree it was nigh unplayable but it began to crash consistently anyway making it completely unplayable.

Whether it was my computer or something to do with the darthmod I don't know, but in the end I still played the hell out of Empire: Total War and enjoyed it thoroughly. Mostly vanilla but with a few non-Star Wars named mods to improve the experience. Meanwhile the AI in Shogun 2 is actually surprisingly good, perhaps Creative Assemblies best to date, and so I never felt the need to try modding it.

My only knowledge of Darth comes from his reputation on various TW mod related forums which is... mixed at best.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

My only knowledge of Darth comes from his reputation on various TW mod related forums which is... mixed at best.

I haven't played Shogun 2, and yes, Darth is a drama queen. That said however, he is the reason that Empire is even playable for me anymore. And I haven't seen him take credit for other people's work. I went to the Darthmod page on TWCenter and he has credited dozens of people and thanked them for allowing him to put out the compilation of their efforts.

But really, the more I go through the thread that Creative Assembly put together about the conference, the less confidence I have in it. It looks more to me like they want to just explain why modders cannot do things, rather than trying to help modders get around certain problem points.

 

[The Madman]

Possibly. I like to think though that Creative Assembly intend to begin opening their games up towards modding a bit more. They did after all release an editor for Shogun 2 not that long ago, simplistic although it might be. And with the success of stuff like DayZ perhaps they're considering a turn back towards games like Rome and Medieval 2 that have thriving modding community to this day.

We'll see. As for Darth, honestly I expect he'll be back. This isn't the first time he's 'quit' after all.

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

Guys like him should be devs. If he make a game I would play it. Sad he retire.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Guys like him should be devs. If he make a game I would play it. Sad he retire.

No, guys like Darth should not be devs. They should be modders first. Modding lets you do things that you might otherwise be unable to do if you were working for someone. Without a time limit or work restrictions, you can do a lot more.

He just happened to be the best man for the job of fixing Empire's biggest problems. Creative Assembly had abandoned the game, and his team fixed it.

 

[Evil Smurf]

did they know of him?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

did they know of him?

He was nearly hired by them. He had an interview and everything. He was refused however, due to not meeting their requirements. This spun him into a rage that put him out of making mods for a while after M2TW. He came back when Empire was released however.

The man thinks very highly of himself, and he is very critical of CA's dev team. I can see why they wouldn't want him. He has a major superiority complex, and he doesn't hold their AI programmers in high regard.

That makes him a dick yes, but it is hard to argue with him when Creative Assembly releases absolute garbage AI with the likes of Empire and Napoleon.

 

[distortedreality]

Dude sounds like a bit of a dick to me, no great loss.

 

[Pink Gregory]

The man thinks very highly of himself, and he is very critical of CA's dev team. I can see why they wouldn't want him. He has a major superiority complex, and he doesn't hold their AI programmers in high regard.

That makes him a dick yes, but it is hard to argue with him when Creative Assembly releases absolute garbage AI with the likes of Empire and Napoleon.

Let me guess, the kind of guy that would start a communique with 'Dear Asshats' or something like that.

Grr, this is where we have to separate the man from the work; it might be amazing (haven't tried it yet), but that doesn't excuse being a dick, you're not going to invite a guy to your summit who's likely to try and tell you how to do your job in the most obnoxious way possible.

In addition, in regards to possibly being employed by them, that's where his individual expertise would certainly come into question, if what The Madman quoted is true; modding is community-focused with no deadline, actual production is the opposite.

 

[Hathman60]

It's really sad to see him go. I honestly never played his mods because I just never heard of him until shogun 2 was released. Well after I installed darthmod for stw2 I proceeded to install his mods on all the other tw games, I even blew the dust off my old copy of Rome threw his mod on and played it again. I really hate to hear all this bashing going on about him, if I were him I would be pretty pissed off with CA too. He did make both empire and Napoleon somewhat palatable to the regular tw game enthusiast, worked on it for free, and gets kicked to the curb for doing it. All the guy wanted was a little bit of recognition, and if you ask me he deserves a lot more than that. Shame on CA for not giving credit where credit is definitely do. I really hope darth will have change of heart, I'll really miss his modding capabilities on Rome 2.