size of the community and the sense of modding

[MegaBurn]

Or done by an egghead well versed in the arcane arts of hex editing executables and/or assembly, more common in the DOS days of PC gaming. That's far less common these days, seems like fewer people know how to do it, and there is less need with most games being so much more mod friendly. Its still done though, Freelancer has a bunch of game logic patches available, no-CD/DVD patches are common.


Is it just me or did the past couple months have an uptick in the number of large mod projects? Keeping track of new stuff around here is difficult.

I'm also picking through the Joomla extensions, both for OGF and a possible X mod dev site demo, over a thousand were added since my last in depth review back in August. A hell of a lot of functionality can be packed into a Joomla site...


EDIT: And what about internal social networking, aka community building? Joomla has a few decent looking options, although many are commercial and not cheap... BuddyPress for WordPress seems popular and fairly feature rich (also see WP article). Elgg might work (also see WP article). Being a bit of a mad hermit I avoid systems like that, but I can see how they would be beneficial to both the development community as a whole and extrovert socialites in particular.

[Jens Ka]

Philosophy subject?

I think so.

So with no result.

as long I have fun modifying I will go on, period.

MfG
Jens Ka

[Trickmov]

You should be thankful you're getting the attention. Why not recruit some people who don't code, but like to talk, and let them answer the questions of players in those topics? If you agree with those people what they can say and what not, then there isn't really a problem? And your precious time doesn't get wasted by talking to the community that adores your work.

That's a nice idea, but doesn't work, because many of those questions cannot be answered by a person, who hasn't enough knowledge.

This is a lame reasoning... Just because I'm a trustworthy person doesn't give the police the right to search my home whenever they want... I'm trustworthy, so I don't have anything to hide, have I? Oh? So you don't want the police to search your home? What have you got to hide?

A few years ago some Americans started thinking that way... See what it has gotten them. And yes, it starts with giving up one little piece of personal freedom.

Now you're over the top - NDAs say only, that you don't give internal informations to the public That's not about anyone wanting to know anything about you.
BTW - this is mainly for the development time. When the code is available by release, there is nobody hindering you to talk about that.

[EDIT: ]
Regarding GPL - I doubt Egosoft would ever do that. But perhaps there is another approach, which could give almost the same boost:
I have seen this with Call to Power II, which means mainly, that the game code is available, but that anyone who wants to play it, has still to purchase the original game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_to_Power_II
http://apolyton.net/content.php/264-sourcecode

[s9ilent]

(Firstly, wow this thread has exploded??? considering its only 5 days old)

@Trickmov
I'm starting to feel that to. Whilst originally most of my scripts I made because I wanted to use them my self (e.g. I was like dam, I want voice control - made voice control). After a while, you quickly realize you spend more time modding then playing (which is ok).
But then, you reach this stage that I'm at now, when you don't play at all, but you have to keep maintaining your work (well.. sort of...)

-side note, if any one wants to take over any of my projects, pm me



@The post in general
Several facts (opinionated)
-Unfortunately, the sci fi space sim has been a dying genre for some time.
-ES hasn't expressed any opinions on a new engine (and everyone is very keenly aware of the limitations of the current engine) (AFAIK at least..)




@LV
w.r.t Not chasing down bug's in scripts that aren't 100% script related
I totally agree. It's happened several times to me now.. where someone goes my traders have stopped for no reason (which requires debugging aprox 3000+ lines of code... ) and they only tell me afterwoods... on yeah.. running a razor1911 version... and none of my traders work (xthnx for telling me that now...)




"Take a break and re-charge"
Did that, did a few small projects, was fun. Did a large project.. not fun...








Solution?
I can only think of a few things.

1) Increase player base. (For the users, and for more modders)
e.g. Online~ness?
(I have many ideas on this, and some sporadic code for it, but in all honesty.. in the last 6 months? I've spent maybe 20 hours coding/R&D and 0.5 hours playing so I'm mostly out)
-Social/casual gaming markets? (e.g. facebooking the game?
-Achievementing?


2) More collaborative projects? (Most script packages these days are from one man bands, pherhaps if there are more people, it will make maintaining the project easier, and if one person leaves, then its not as show stopping compared to when the ONLY person leaves)
Specifically with scripts!



3) More (different) tutorial resources?
Don't get me wrong, the forum is great and has a lot of stuff on there - But perhaps some other method of content delivery
Youtube videos?
(e.g. Someone make a god dam wikia already~!! Xai is a bit too laggy for me - this requires absolutely no modding abilities)
(lol @ LV's let me google that for you moderating, -necessary, but what if the cause was avoidable?)



My other misc input
-One of the few reasons I visit the forum now is to impart the knowledge I've gained so far. I tried doing this through the MSCI forum - but I found that to be a truly horrible experience and quickly stopped after a few posts.

[Nova Scotia]

WoW !! take the weekend off and a whole books gets written
Lots of good reading and ideas to ponder.

I have admiration and respect for all the mod creators and also for the guy who comes up with the idea for an improvement.

Just spent the weekend in the Freelancer world and I was surprised to see someone had come up with the though that just before gettin blown up,a script

kicks in and removes wares,money and rep from your player before the save.Even a save and reload can be costly ,a mini DiD patch

A salute to all the workers but sometimes you got to salute the idea guy

Gates and Jobs come to mind

[MegaBurn]

On Call to Power II, good example. That leads to a WP category with more examples, kind of spectrum from old titles still in bargain bins to post-commercial turned GPL. I think they could just do it, literally just say "here is the source code, get to work", with a lengthy license detailing all contributions become the property of Egosoft, development can only occur on this site, no unauthorized commercial use, etc, etc, and agree to return all of that work to the community under GPL when its commercial value is exhausted. Its usually done under four licenses, the existing EULA, a contributors license agreement, site terms of service with added notices on code repository, and copyright statements in file header/meta comments with full credits plus ownership grant statements.


s9ilent, some brainstorming on your solutions:
-1- This needs a new thread in S&M lead by whoever handles marketing at Egosoft - brainstorming, assess free resources (e.g. indie game marketing), and how the development community can help. I think a new player portal site with community building or internal social networking features, similar to what I proposed for S&M dev, would help make the player community a little more cohesive.

For casual games, could start community projects to develop a series of web browser based games which cover the different aspects of X gameplay. I think Unity3D would work, with available resources a basic space sim can be setup in days (not counting the learning curve), and its free if the community does it, free for non-commercial use. This could also serve as a ship viewer for mods and XSP repositories. As a marketing tool such a project would need direct oversight, good candidate for staff-community cooperative development.

-2- Definitely. Again, internal social networking aka community building site features would help, including a listing of what people are working on and what they need help with, beyond traditional "help wanted" or "help available". S&M dev portal news articles on what teams are working on and to celebrate accomplishments. Could start short term relatively easy projects focused on creating new community resources that double as team building exercises. Change the site policy to have abandoned projects going into a sort of community receivership, merge abandoned projects together, and form a new team to continue development. Promoting the use of teams/groups could be built into allocation of project hosting resources, just forum threads for lonewolf projects, 2+ or 3+ member teams get full forge projects.

-3- Definitely, but wouldn't it be better as a part of this site? Bethsoft's wikis are a great example, see GECK wiki and TES CS wiki, this serves as a resource for both their modding community and development team. This would need a community initiative/project with a sort of production pipeline to migrate content from static forum threads to wiki articles, tools for formatting conversion are available (bbcode, html, PDF, ODT, etc). Using YouTube is a good idea (not for me though, still on dialup).


Nova Scotia, nothing will change here if we don't discuss it, community solutions to community problems. Threads like this can break complacency.

Hows the Freelancer community doing? They had similar problems to what we're seeing here, I spent over a year trying to get the old Lancers Reactor (TLR) staff to rally the community together for an free open source sequel, then split OpenGameForge and Openlancer project off from TLR, TLR folded/changed hands, community fragmented, and it seemed like things deteriorated from there. The politics there was horrible. A couple of the sites did build decent site infrastructure though, I think one had a mod forge (Redmine iirc, thats Ruby on rails, I favor PHP).


EDIT: Sorry, that's horribly wordy even for me... Did a rough site chart, no write up yet, needs more discussion and I need more info first. Any more ideas for a new site? Social networking? Blogs? Auto-translation or language specific sections? User/mod screenshot gallery? Hosting resources? Global user accounts (e.g. LDAP)? Why is it still just a forum when most site packages are already easier than playing much less modding X3?

[MegaBurn]

So is that it? Bunch of problems identified with some solutions proposed, then the discussion just ends? For something to happen here requires details, more brainstorming, planning down to small manageable chunks, some organizing, etc...

More ideas:
-1- Moderator survey to determine who is willing to take the initiative here and on what, including guide discussion, coordinate with staff/admins, start threads to be taken seriously, and generally show leadership.

-2- Community survey in S&M forum to determine the size of the active modding community, perception of modding community, willingness to participate in community initiatives, and comments.

-3- Community survey in X-Universe forum to determine perception of modding community, willingness to use mods, current mod usage, and comments (e.g. market research).

-4- Adjust script signing policy to be a little more accepting while also encouraging more authors to contribute. Point being some players only play or even know about the bonus pack, yet there are enough mature scripts around to quadruple its size, or more.

-5- Start think tanks, moderated goal-oriented forum threads for experienced modders to collectively wrap their minds around specific problems, be it technical or more abstract similar to how this thread started. Then do something with the results, be it an article/report, new project, site policy change, community initiative, etc. Add a sticky thread to formalize it, with intro/info, how to start a thread, listing of threads, and results of past threads.

[apricotslice]

Re 4, that is something I'd like to see Egosoft embrace.

Their current policy of only allowing properly 'balanced' scripts to be included in the bonus pack, basically ensures that the vast majority of scripts designed to fill a hole in the game, overcome aspects that people consider to have been a stupid decision, or things that dont work properly in the game despite years of tweaking, cannot be included.

Call it a different pack name, that implies its not balanced, but I think they should be signing most of the stable, much used scripts in the community and getting them out there to the vanilla players.

Cbeam for example uses the transporter to overcome the inability of egosoft to actually get a ship to pick up containers while IS. Why force a ship to move so much to line up on a container to pick it up (given the autopillok that moves the ship), when you have a perfectly good transporter on board ?

Beamdock overcomes the "stupid" decision to make freighters too big for hanger doors, or alternatively, the decision not to increase the size of the hanger doors when they upped the size of freighters.

Salvage Claim replaces that rediculous decision to make the player spacewalk to claim a ship and the equally rediculous assumption that claiming a ship is piracy. Some players now play salvage company games, where their main income is salvage based.

NPC bail puts balance back into the game by putting a player only concept into the NPC side as well. But its "unbalanced" because it means it is easier for the player to make money in the ongoing game.

Ok, most of those are my own scripts, which will never be signed, because they are "unbalanced" in some way. But the people who use them dont care because they make the game less frustrating and more automated.

And the bottom line is, a happy player.

I think Egosoft should be signing any stable script that people want in the vanilla game, and the only criteria for rejection is being unstable, still in development or constantly tweaked.

[Triaxx2]

Isn't C-Beam the one that has to be disabled to cause a plot to run properly? I can assume that's why that one's not signed.

Beamdock is something that they designed freight drones to overcome.

Salvage Claim is because if you can bail a Big ship, you can get huge amounts of free money. (I know I do.)

Bailing Add-On is so adjustable, that it's almost a cheat to use if you're not careful with the settings.

And signing too many dilutes the Modified/Vanilla Distinction. Look at how many achievements can be made easier with scripts.

[apricotslice]

I've never heard of c-beam needing to be disabled (which it cant be once the hotkey is installed).

The problem is that the plots demand vanilla way of doing things. You cant beam pilots aboard, you have to run over them. (And there are 2 missions where last time I checked, beaming is actually disabled by the plot and causes a ctw if you use a beaming script of any sort). You cant claim a ship any way than in your suit. Either of these will cause the plots to break if you use a script instead of vanilla method. That to me is a problem with the plots, not the scripts. The plots should recognise that the ship has been claimed, or the pilot is no longer in space, regardless of how it was actually done.

Freight drones ? Never heard of them and wouldnt use them if I did. I use beamdock to park ships, not freight. Freight drones cant park a ship on your carrier.

The devs dont want anyone earning money too fast. Hence the whole concept of making claiming easier seems to offend them. You cannot have a bailed big ship in vanilla, so that argument doesnt work.

Sure, NPC bail could be considered a cheat. But who cares ? Using it is dependent on the player. If the player considers it a cheat, they dont turn it on. Easy. That shouldnt stop it being signed.

The whole Modified/Vanilla distinction is another issue. Personally, I consider the vanilla game unplayable, so since X2, I've never played a vanilla game. I dont care a jot about uploading stats for ego-w*nking purposes.

Its actually time the whole concept of "vanilla" game being put to bed once and for all. In the interests of promoting the modding community which is the whole future of the game. Vanilla games die. Active modding communities keep a game alive as long as the modding community stays active. As such, I'd say the vanilla game is now past its use-by date, and its emphasis should now be progressively down played to the point that within 6 months to a year, vanilla will only be applicable in tech support.

Releasing a signed pack of the most used and wanted scripts is a logical development of the game, imo.

[Nova Scotia]

I've never heard of c-beam needing to be disabled (which it cant be once the hotkey is installed).

The problem is that the plots demand vanilla way of doing things. You cant beam pilots aboard, you have to run over them. (And there are 2 missions where last time I checked, beaming is actually disabled by the plot and causes a ctw if you use a beaming script of any sort). You cant claim a ship any way than in your suit. Either of these will cause the plots to break if you use a script instead of vanilla method. That to me is a problem with the plots, not the scripts. The plots should recognise that the ship has been claimed, or the pilot is no longer in space, regardless of how it was actually done.

Freight drones ? Never heard of them and wouldnt use them if I did. I use beamdock to park ships, not freight. Freight drones cant park a ship on your carrier.

The devs dont want anyone earning money too fast. Hence the whole concept of making claiming easier seems to offend them. You cannot have a bailed big ship in vanilla, so that argument doesnt work.

Sure, NPC bail could be considered a cheat. But who cares ? Using it is dependent on the player. If the player considers it a cheat, they dont turn it on. Easy. That shouldnt stop it being signed.

The whole Modified/Vanilla distinction is another issue. Personally, I consider the vanilla game unplayable, so since X2, I've never played a vanilla game. I dont care a jot about uploading stats for ego-w*nking purposes.

Its actually time the whole concept of "vanilla" game being put to bed once and for all. In the interests of promoting the modding community which is the whole future of the game. Vanilla games die. Active modding communities keep a game alive as long as the modding community stays active. As such, I'd say the vanilla game is now past its use-by date, and its emphasis should now be progressively down played to the point that within 6 months to a year, vanilla will only be applicable in tech support.

Releasing a signed pack of the most used and wanted scripts is a logical development of the game, imo.

Surprised to hear you never completed the Tc plot Vanilla,although Mods add to the enjoyment of the game and sometimes fixes perceived flaws,there is no denying IMO that the Vanilla game is a much harder game to complete.
Even a Mod can be be made easier.I am playing XTC and although I understand why the repair Laser was removed from the game and have Modded the Mod, even it makes it an easier game and now some are modding increase hull strengths which again makes it an easier game .

If you look at the big Freelancer Mods you will find that those mods make it harder to complete the plot not easier.

[apricotslice]

Surprised to hear you never completed the Tc plot Vanilla,although Mods add to the enjoyment of the game and sometimes fixes perceived flaws,there is no denying IMO that the Vanilla game is a much harder game to complete.
Even a Mod can be be made easier.I am playing XTC and although I understand why the repair Laser was removed from the game and have Modded the Mod, even it makes it an easier game and now some are modding increase hull strengths which again makes it an easier game .

If you look at the big Freelancer Mods you will find that those mods make it harder to complete the plot not easier.

I completed all the TC plots except for the treasure hunt and new home, and I modded Hub plot to be less rediculous. But I did all of them I did, on a modded game in my own ships.

My reason for modding is to make a game easier in the main. For people who dont have a lot of time to play, the game is too hard, and takes to long to get anywhere. So I speed it up and make it easier.

I didnt even finish the Freelancer plot. Got stuck on the stupid race mission and since I'm a joystick flyer, the mouse control was a nightmare I couldnt get past. So Freelancer got binned very rapidly. I've never seen anything to suggest someone added joystick compatibility to it, so never bothered going back to it.

[Nova Scotia]

There is a mod to past the race part but sadly no stick mod its only been 8 years maybe someone is working on it

Must of misread that part you wrote

"I consider the vanilla game unplayable, so since X2, I've never played a vanilla game. I dont care a jot about uploading stats for ego-w*nking purposes. "

[apricotslice]

That was stupidity of the highest order imo. Who designs a space game and doesnt give it joystick support.

At least Egosoft were not that stupid.

[paulwheeler]

I too consider the vanilla game unplayable. I think that most mods are not there to make the game any easier. I have tried very hard with the SRM and CMOD to ensure that the AI is not adversely affected by any changes and in fact a lot has been done to give the AI advantages.

I think the majority of mods extend functionality and features rather than make the game easier. I don't consider NPC bailing a cheat. Its just a leveling of the playing field - at least it does as long as you have AI salvagers claiming those ships too - If a pilot will bail when the player is firing it stands to reason that they should bail when the AI is firing too.

Increasing hulls does not make the game easier as the AI also gets their hulls increased. It just makes battles last longer. Scripts like Improved Races, Pirate Guild, Kha'ak invasions etc. certainly don't make things easier. Even military scripts like MBRR and RRF, as long as they are carefully set up, won't make the game easier. Turret scripts like MARS and MDMk2 (as long as you set MARS to be used by the AI) can actually make things harder for the player as missiles aren't so effective.

A modded game can be far, far harder than the vanilla game and IMO can be a lot more rewarding. A simple change like not allowing fighters to use the jumpdrive totally changes the feel of the game. It gives the gate system a point again, makes the TM class useful, levels the playing field between the player and the AI and gives the game some of that X2 feel back - it makes the universe feel big again. Not to mention that many mods have a lot of bug fixes in too, which Ego will probably never fix.

Releasing the source code would enable so much more to be done. A simple thing like adding more ship classes would then be possible. Egosoft have probably made nearly all the money from sales that they are going to make so releasing the source code would not compromise them at all - especially if their next game has been built from the ground up as it so desperately needs to be.

[MegaBurn]

Yeah, it seems like a systemic fault or lack of imagination that the system cannot accommodate both "vanilla" and "modified" players. Personally I'm ignorant of it, never submitted stats, don't now how to off hand, not sure I'd want to play that much vanilla anyway... Gutting the system doesn't seem like a solution though, gameplay stats are important to some people and having a baseline reference is necessary. Can it be fixed? Could a second system which doesn't consider balance be added instead? If not, which is more harmful, the "modified stigma" or depriving some people of a statistical pissing contest to satisfy their egos?

Even still, there must be more to it than balance or technical issues, there are a lot of mature stable scripts without a meaningful impact on balance. What is the root of the problem? Authors not submitting scripts due to a disregard for or lack of awareness about having their scripts signed? Egosoft policy? Some mix thereof? What can be done about it?

Good topic for a think tank or at least a new thread with moderator assistance.

On Freelancer, that was the best mouse control of any space sim before or since, and did a lot to make the genre more accessible to a wider audience. That said, yeah, a lot of people found the race mission difficult, without the right fighter it was impossible, but mods are available to make it easier, or bypass it entirely.

Lagging behind new posts... I second what Paul said.

[apricotslice]

or depriving some people of a statistical pissing contest to satisfy their egos?

Even still, there must be more to it than balance or technical issues, there are a lot of mature stable scripts without a meaningful impact on balance. What is the root of the problem? Authors not submitting scripts due to a disregard for or lack of awareness about having their scripts signed? Egosoft policy? Some mix thereof? What can be done about it?

Lagging behind new posts... I second what Paul said.

Paul echoed a lot of what I said, which was good to see

Signing is all down to Egosoft policy. If it in any way unbalances the game or is perceived as giving the player an advantage, then it will be refused. The guidelines are very specific. Nothing I have done even gets close to meeting the guidelines.

As I said before, egosoft needs to change its attitude to modding and scripting, and sign anything that is stable. imo.

Pissing contest, exactly.

[ScRaT_GER]

Nothing I have done even gets close to meeting the guidelines.

So why should they include it?

Maybe you cannot imagine it, but I guess there are a lot of people who like the vanilla gameplay and who like to compare their stats with others. Signing scripts which unbalance the game would certainly not be in their interest.

Actually I think you're the one who stigmatizes the "modified" game, because you somehow feel that your scripts should be signed to be fully accepted. Why is that so important to you?

Greetings,
ScRaT

[apricotslice]

Maybe you cannot imagine it, but I guess there are a lot of people who like the vanilla gameplay and who like to compare their stats with others. Signing scripts which unbalance the game would certainly not be in their interest.

Actually I think you're the one who stigmatizes the "modified" game, because you somehow feel that your scripts should be signed to be fully accepted. Why is that so important to you?

It isnt. I really dont care one way or another.

I'm using my scripts simply as an example of those people use, and those people have asked about getting signed, and especially why they are not.

I dont care one little bit about comparing stats, and frankly, as the game gets older, I'd see that as a dying occupation.

[Ketraar]

The signing process is hard not because of the standards what the script can do, but how its build. Means scripts have to be written to uphold some vanilla standards, means they need to be looked at thoroughly and tested, short a lot of work. Just a quick note, never ever saw any of you helping out in this process in the past Bonuspack, actually there were a lot of testers missing, as usual.

Signing stuff is also a PITA because you are limited again to vanilla design of the game, whereas modding for modified games give you more freedom, you can go nuts and have ships fly backwards you feel like it. THAT's the spirit of modding, no boundaries (except from darn hardcoded stuff ).

About the source code, I recall someone asking about it but iirc there is no answer yet, means there is still hope I guess, since there was not a 'No' either. One can poke ES again in near future.

As for any restructuring of the forums for any megalomaniac uberidea, I find it ridiculous tbh. The forums are well organized as they are and given that moderators already have enough to do, I suggest that if anyone wants to do something, better get it cracking with what we got, not likely anything changing regarding structure in near future.

I think like someone said in the past, if you think of an idea, its most likely up to you to do it, everyone else will be following their.

On a last note: modified players are a minority (there are polls if you feel like looking up the numbers).

MFG

Ketraar