With the new mod stuff, this should be brought up again IMO

[flarn2006]

It's great that the game recently had an overhaul to make mods easier and more flexible. But there's still one issue that, as far as I know, would be very easy to fix, and would not only help with developing mods, but would also make the game more enjoyable for certain types of players. This issue has been brought up before by the developers, but it was decided that it shouldn't be made a priority.

I am referring, of course, to the conspicuous absence of the developer menus, which are clearly visible in the various trailer videos released by Introversion. The thing is, I don't see how this would be hard enough to release that it would take time away from anything else. Yeah, there was a poll, and it was decided that new features were more important to people than having the dev tools public, but I see no reason this needs to be mutually exclusive. The developer tools have literally already been made. It's only a matter of publishing them. The only additional coding I could see it requiring is to program a means of turning them on and off, like through a command line parameter or something, but I can't see that taking very long. Even if it would be difficult to implement, that can easily be solved by simply releasing a separate version of the game with the tools enabled. You know, like how you can download the (legit) non-Steam version.

So yeah. The developers know there's interest in this, and as I've explained it wouldn't be that hard to do, so it puzzles me why it hasn't been done already. And with the new modding functions, there's even more of a reason to do it now than there was before!

[blipadouzi]

My suggestion is, as mentioned by flarn2006, the tools already exist and are functional, as they appear in the videos every month.

But I don't think a command line would be the solution. Personally, I refer to either have 2 different version entirely installed on my PC, or be able to switch between the via Steam Beta Opt. So you'd have a choice of No Beta, Bug-Bash, Dev Tools.

[aparthree]

It would be nice to download a developer version of the game. Either through the Steam Store by entering a key and unlocking it or by going to the downloads section on the Introversion site and downloading a separate developer build. This way you could run your testing, mods, and anything you wanted to mess around with in the developer game without impacting the public version.

[mazetar]

Then they would have to support these tools officially in some sense at least, which may not be ideal.

[flarn2006]

They wouldn't have to support them. They could even explicitly say there's no warranty, like open-source programs do, if they want to cover their asses. Unsupported tools are better than none at all.

[mazetar]

They would still have to support it regardless of whats being stated in the terms.
Technically they don't have to do anything but in practice they would

I would like to have access to such tools, but I can't say it's something they should prioritize at this stage.

[Inge Jones]

I am in support of developer menus, but only to appear if we manually edit some configuration file. That will prevent anyone accidentally triggering them and then starting to ask for help about what they are seeing.

[JASPer.Gamer.9.0]

Please, bring in the Dev tools!!!!!