Mass Effect Legendary Edition Won’t Support Majority of Existing Mods, Says Lead Modding Tools Developer

[Tsing]

Image: BioWare



BioWare’s upcoming collection of Mass Effect remasters, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, is unlikely to support the majority of existing mods that were developed for the original trilogy. That’s according to ME3Explorer and ME3Tweaks Mod Manager author Mgamerz, who published a blog post yesterday elaborating on the technical reasons behind the incompatibility and why package file based mods will not work with the remastered versions of the games. ME3Explorer is a premiere modding utility that was used to develop some of the most popular mods, such as BackOff, CEM, Expanded Galaxy Mod, MEHEM, JAM, and ThaneMOD.



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[Dan_D]

I'll comment on this given that I was a very active part of the modding community, although, I only worked on textures. But I did use the tools in question extensively. I want to say that BioWare is full of ****. It has never cared about setting up the modding community for success and only made such a statement because they are well aware that the game has had a very passionate and active mod community that still actively works on the game to this day.

In fact, the game was structured in such a way as to prevent modding from ever taking place to begin with. The reason why the more complex mods took so long to make is due to the fact that the game's PCC files were encrypted. The game never had a "mod" folder or anything of the sort. A specific file also had to be altered to add support for DLC based mods. If BioWare doesn't actually reach out to the mod community, then the tools would have to be reworked in order to support the new version of the game. To be honest, this probably isn't going to happen. Many of the developers behind some of the more complex tools like ME3Tweaks and ME3Explorer have stated that these tools will no longer be updated. I doubt they want to reinvent the wheel just to get the newer textures and a slight lighting update in the new build.

I think many people, including myself will play ME1 and ME2 in the Legendary Edition and then stick to the classic version of ME3 for the content mods. I am primarily interested in ME1 and ME2 for two reasons. Primarily, ME1 and ME2 weren't modded as heavily due to the tools not supporting them. We were able to modify textures the same way we could for ME3, but few people did as much work on ME2. For one thing, it didn't need it. I think there are more ME1 textures than ME2 textures.

I personally plan to try and pull the textures from the new game and port them over into a compatible mod for ME3's classic edition. That being said, depending on how the engine changes, this could pose several challenges. First and foremost, people need to understand that the original game had abysmal texture sizes. ME2 had many textures that were 2048x2048 and in some cases larger. UE3 files are comprised of a normal map, a texture map and a light map. I forget the proper term at this point, but that's more or less how they break down. Each texture is three layers. The base textures of identical objects in ME3 were reduced to as low as 128x128 for several of these files. In one case, textures this bad were used for full suits of armor which need to be much larger to look good. Most weren't that bad as most were 512x512 with light maps and normal maps which could be even smaller. Ideally, you want all three files to be the same size. Although, you can get away with slightly smaller normal and light maps.

The reason I mention this, is while I can almost certainly bring the main texture file into the classic ME3, the normal and lightmap textures may not work that way. Despite being the "same engine" ME2 and ME3's versions of these files were very different. With the lighting and build changes to ME3LE, there is every chance that these have changed. This will make porting them to ME3 potentially difficult, if not impossible. Basically, I can use the new texture, but the other files would have to be retained or duplicated using the new data. This is harder than it sounds. It requires trial and error for each object you modify.

 

[MadMummy76]

I'm less and less interested in this by the day. Maybe under $20 I'd give it a try. Not for more. Or if it will be on ea play it's worth a 30 day subscription. I might be able to finish all three games in 30 days and then forget me for 3 years again.

 

[LazyGamer]

I'm less and less interested in this by the day. Maybe under $20 I'd give it a try. Not for more. Or if it will be on ea play it's worth a 30 day subscription. I might be able to finish all three games in 30 days and then forget me for 3 years again.

I've clocked between 70 to 80 hours finishing all content but skipping a lot of FMV / cutscenes. That's like... two weeks if you do nothing else, working full-time etc. in addition?

I used to do it every year or two, and was getting ready to run through again, just like an old movie you love to rewatch. Then news of this project actually happening hit, so of course I've put it off. But I could do it again so long as I remember how to make them run with unlocked framerates.