size of the community and the sense of modding

[Alan Phipps]

Hi Observe, the 'problem' is the one facing today's new user whom we hope will become interested in the mod and bolster the user-base. The XTC mod thread on this forum is now long and chaotic in content mixing applause, complaints and despondency alongside game and technical queries and requests but also has well-hidden gems of advice (including some which don't appear in TXU, and vice versa). Even the TXU forums are getting confusingly long, overlapping and entangled and often fail to differentiate between the release versions under discussion. In short, the new user is unsure where to look for the best advice, what of the plethora of discussion needs to be read or even exactly what applies to his modded game.

The structure (if there ever was one) to the thread here and to a lesser extent in the TXU forums has rather broken down because the modders don't really have the time to develop the mod, manage the forums, moderate and/or reply to posts, and cope with real life. If we had a few basic structural rules periodically and visibly enforced both here and there it might be better or, of course, it might just become worse instead. This is not a complaint nor a demand for even more commitment from the modders, it is merely an observation.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Users would instictively go to each mod/scripts page to check out if there's a solution to a problem they're having.

No, they wouldn't. There are users that don't do this with the current forum/thread system, as already pointed out by some posters in this thread here. So, the same users won't do it in the system you suggest.

It needs to be something automated.

Not sure what you want to automate. Filling in tags, descriptions, screenshots and version compatibility etc. are still things that must be done manually.

[Observe]

@Alan Phipps: The "problem" you describe is common among most forums. Coming up with a strategy how to best deal with information explosion is challenging.

I suppose you could create 2 threads - one "locked" with content determined by the author, and one "open" for endless comments, questions, etc. The author could then pick and choose which Q&A posts they feel would be best copied to the "locked" thread.

Of course we can't do that here atm because only moderators can lock/unlock threads, and besides, this could become a maintenance nightmare unless someone is dedicated to the task.

Otherwise, I guess if your thread becomes so long that it is difficult to manage, then it's a sign of great success!

[Alan Phipps]

Agreed with that, but even maintaining sticky or 'reserved early post' version-specific "known issues/intended features" with adequate explanations on both sites would go a long way to reduce spam and reply loading without causing too much extra work, I think.

[xalien]

Would it be against forum rules to make several threads, like [X-Tended]General discussion, [X-Tended]Bugs and tech support, [X-Tended]Spoiler zone, or some such so that people could post where it belongs ... most of the time ... hopefully.

[Katorone]

Users would instictively go to each mod/scripts page to check out if there's a solution to a problem they're having.

No, they wouldn't. There are users that don't do this with the current forum/thread system, as already pointed out by some posters in this thread here. So, the same users won't do it in the system you suggest.

You can't call this forum easy to look through to find the thread for a mod you downloaded a year ago. Take a look at the system they're using at planet elder scrolls. Users don't have a place -other than the mod's page- to complain/thank/rant.

It needs to be something automated.

Not sure what you want to automate. Filling in tags, descriptions, screenshots and version compatibility etc. are still things that must be done manually.

No, with automated I mean that users can sign up for a page and they get it automatically. No need to ask moderators to provide everybody with a sub forum/mod page, that's just silly (and manual) work.

[Katorone]

Agreed with that, but even maintaining sticky or 'reserved early post' version-specific "known issues/intended features" with adequate explanations on both sites would go a long way to reduce spam and reply loading without causing too much extra work, I think.

But why not just provide modders/scripters with a framework to work with? Now there's the forum which is the cause of the information explosion. There's no framework to make the information about mods and scripts structured and easy accessible/searchable.

A moderator has to manually update an index page so people can find some mod. He has to put it under a category, note which commands it uses etc... That's silly manual work that shouldn't be needed. Without that index page, users would be unable to quickly find a script which performs a function they're looking for. I'm betting that page alone has had a big influence on the modding community here. Without it, scripts would do nothing but conflict, users wouldn't find what they're looking for and eventually nobody would share mods anymore.

If modding/scripting is part of egosoft's bussinessplan, THEY should provide a better environment for it.

[Litcube]

It's up to the author to maintain the OP and downloadable documentation in an easy to acces and easy to read format. A new user isn't going to sift through 20, 30 or 200 posts to find what he's looking for anyway. Even if we did restructure the forum, we'd have the same problem.

[Gazz]

@LV's quote:
I'm completely assuming responsibility for my mods.
You don't like it, you get your money back. No questions asked.

"how much fps duz this help?" It was followed by another equally lazy question. Killerog was much more acquiescent in his response than would have been most folks.

HEHEHE.
I've gotten quite good at ignoring such ahh... requests... when the user obviously didn't even glance sideways at the instructions.
Users like those are what turns modders into cynics. =P


For all my stuff I never had a download counter. Maybe I could look it up in the server stats page if I was really curious. Maybe not.

If I didn't like scripting / modding to begin with, I wouldn't do it. Doesn't pay well enough to do otherwise.
To "release" something is actually a lot of extra work beyond the fun part of modding. That's nothing I do for myself but because I'm such a nice guy. (for values of nice)

[Katorone]

It's up to the author to maintain the OP and downloadable documentation in an easy to acces and easy to read format. A new user isn't going to sift through 20, 30 or 200 posts to find what he's looking for anyway. Even if we did restructure the forum, we'd have the same problem.

I agree with the first, that the author needs to maintain his topic. I disagree with the restructure thing... Users not only have to sift through 200 pages in a topic, they also have to find the topic first. Right now the forum contains 118 page of 50 topics each... I got no clue what the average size of a topic is... but that's a LOT of text.
These topics can probably be divided into categories:
- questions about modding -> these should go to a forum that does nothing else but topics about scripting and modding
- releases of mods/scripts -> these should go to a platform designed for releasing mods and scripts. An indexed, searchable library of some sorts.
- questions about specific mods/scripts -> should be asked on the release page of each mod/script.

Sure, users will still use the question forum to ask something about a specific mod, but then it's up to the moderators to do their thing.

I'm not talking about petitioning egosoft to change this forum right here and now... No, but perhaps it's something to think about when TNBT gets a scripting language.

[MegaBurn]

The lack of meaningful discussions around here has always amazed me, that a moderator would even consider burring it in an off-topic dumping forum is alarming. Sticky this or start a new thread with a properly moderated (guided, objective oriented) open community discussion on how to improve the modding community, identify major issues, assess what the community needs/wants from Egosoft, and what Egosoft needs/wants from the community, etc...

Coming from a FOSS project background this community looks dysfunctional, stagnated, and fragmented. The bottomline is this is Egosoft's community, they benefit from the value added to their products and are ultimately the only ones in a position to support both this community and the useful content it produces. To maximize their crowd sourcing benefit they need to provide basic leadership, community coordination, foster cooperative development among projects, technical documentation, better quality development tools, a more functional development oriented site infrastructure, create a goal/objective oriented interface with the staff development team, etc... I could rant on about how this feels like an Orwellian electronic feudalism and that anyone hoping for their contributions to make a genuine meaningful difference should join open source projects instead, but that might piss off the powers that be...

Bethsoft's TES4 Oblivion modding community was referenced as an example a few times. If that is what you all want this community to look like then do a proper comparison and contrast case study, then come up with a detailed plan and pressure Egosoft to implement it. TES4, and FO3/FONV too, have a vastly superior construction set, an exhaustive documentation wiki, and the largest of their modding projects work together cooperatively rather than wasting effort on reinvesting the wheel - my gripe with XTC. Although the Bethsoft modding forums are a similarly dysfunctional jumbled mess in dire need of a major overhaul.

From my own experience with open source projects, robust development site infrastructure is extremely important. Joomla.org, Durpal, phpBB, MediaWiki, or other site package projects are good cases to study. For example:

-1- Add a Joomla (or other CMS portal) sub-site for a global modding news portal which highlights new projects, file releases, reporting of progress on known technical issues, other new community content, and Egosoft's efforts within the community. Point being content, content, content to attract more people. Keep in mind modern FOSS CMS's are extremely powerful site packages, there are thousands of plug-ins available to add a seemingly endless number of features. Using forums alone is makes this site seem obsolete and incapable of realizing its full potential.

-2- Create a robust documentation wiki used as a common resource by modders and internally by the development team - technical transparency on anything involving content or game logic (or down to the guts of the game engine would be ideal). Big bulky manuals are a pain to maintain and make contributions difficult.

-3- Setup a script/mod wiki, or similar, giving each project its own page (e.g. Softpedia) -or- something like Joomla Moset Tree plus some mechanism for online docs for each project (another namespace on the doc wiki maybe). The Joomla.org/extensions site is a good example, The Nexus sites for TES4, FO3, FONV, etc mods is a bit more robust (custom built).

-4- For large projects use a forge system, like the older SourceForge site, FusionForge (GPL fork of SF 2.x), G-Forge AS (commercial rewrite of SF), or similar (I'm bias to the LAMP site platform). This would be ideal for any project large enough to have a development team - 2+ people, regardless of other stats. For smaller lonewolf projects use a separate development forum, maybe under L3 to isolate it from players, small project tracker (e.g. Fly Spray), wiki/mostree, possibly hosting facilities, etc. In both cases this script/mod forum would be for releases, tech support, etc, and focus more on players than development.

-5- Finally, actual proactive support of community contributors is critical. Recruit more moderators, even if unprivileged, and ensure each project has someone looking after it to help authors minimize the headaches of contributing to the community. Goes to the point this is not a market place and these are not products, support should be provided by the community in exchange for useful contributions. Fostering volunteerism among players to do what they can do help the projects they benefit from would also help. Maybe some references on technical writing, near idiot proof testing tools, and promoting the concept of "time banking" would help.

If that sounds good then talk about it. If not then come up with something else. Either way get some dialog going.
---------

What Egosoft wants to get out of this community is an unknown but I see wasted opportunities here. The most blatantly obvious is leveraging scripts/mods to promote X3TC, it seems like most players don't know what's available and there is an ongoing stigma with playing a "modified" game - take steps to end that. There is also huge untapped potential in organizing and focusing the community on specific goal oriented projects. Be it straight crowd sourcing of value-added content for patches/bonus-packs, promotional show pieces, more competitions to keep people involved, "officially motivated" merged mods to get a smaller number of more active projects, or even just to boost community moral. If handled properly migrating a thriving development community over to TNBT should add residual inertia from X3TC, not introduce legacy drag, and salvaging this is easier than attempting to rebuild nearly from scratch with the added chaos of a new release. This system of user levels (L3, L5, ?) was a good idea some time ago and probably had its benefits, but now I think its time to replace it with something better.

With XTC, I see an enormous amount of wasted effort recreating things rather than merging together existing scripts/mods so that the project starts with the best the community has to offer, and then goes on to create something proportionately more amazing. Lack of promotion, development secrecy, lack of cooperation with other popular scripts/mods, and RTFM being an informal motto, are all problems. Complaining on here about problems with XTC also demonstrates a counterproductive rift between these forums and TXU, splitting the community rather than the sites being mutually beneficial. If the XTC team is really that overworked maybe its time to eliminate all secrecy, put absolutely everything in a SVN repository, post all design docs/plans to a real wiki, setup a tracker, and invite the entire community to help.

I wanted to work on something like that for a while now, although my motives are a bit different than most modders... I looked at XTC nearly a year ago but found it alienating, too much secrecy to be considered a "community" project. Then I approached DDTC with a ~30+ page proposal detailing how we could merge DDTC with over a dozen other mods and well over a hundred scripts to create a "mega mod" of the absolute best the community has to offer. Unfortunately that went no where, and with the release of XTC a few months off I left to run through a backlog of other games (Mount & Blade and the Gothic Universe box set). Now taking a fresh look at all of this, and factoring in XTC, I think this would be better handled as an open community project, a mutually-beneficial cooperative-development initiative to reinvigorate the community. Compared to XTC it would be transparent, planned with open community discussion, lead democratically by contributors, and would have to allow for enough modularity to accommodate a wide variety of different design/balancing approaches. If anyone is interested I can post my notes (WIP).

On reasons for modding, its fine to say its a hobby and simply not care what others think, how it relates to the community, or anything else beyond the authors own personal enjoyment. The X-Tended mod series clearly comes from a different school of thought, these mods were created to make a difference, to push the game and the community as a whole forward, which requires personal sacrifice for the betterment of the community. To continue on with such a mod without some correlation to community goals undermines the potential of the project. The exact same is true of open source game projects, except that the goal is to empower the community for its own sake, not a commercial developer (snide but true). I think most other popular scripts/mods are similar, while ego might be a factor in some cases, many are genuinely beneficial to the community and helping others is often warm n fuzzy.

On poor quality feedback, a firewall between players and developers is necessary, but it should be a functional interface which benefits both sides, not a veil of secrecy. This is usually accomplished with site infrastructure. Beyond that educating players would be helpful, a few forums use bbcode link injectors with an index of commonly referenced wiki articles - think of it as RTFM systematized.

On the burdens of publicly released projects, again, this is most often a systemic failure of community infrastructure. Be it site infrastructure, site policy, standard practices, or sometimes its a cultural bad habit (in the microcosm of the community context). As a community, not a market place, support mechanisms must be put into place to mitigate the negative aspects of contributing to the community. This is seen haphazardly in most project threads with knowledgeable players trying to help less experienced players. Some formalizing of a volunteer support role, possibly a branch of moderatorship, would certainly help, and again, trackers, doc wiki, etc.

Trickmov, thank you for starting this discussion. I agree with what you said, on my path from modding to open source game development the need to create something meaningful or useful for a larger community was definitely a factor. Although not for personal recognition, I just want a better game. Contrasting the vanilla game with the fully modded game, and the creativity of the community with its untapped creative potential is enough of a motivation for me to get involved here. In looking for answers via this thread I don't get the feeling your problem is burnout. Perhaps its wanting more than this community can offer in its current state, whether or not that becomes motivation to improve the system is up to you. Then again, whether or not the system can be improved is up to Egosoft, which at times seems like an immovable object.

Sorry for the rant, its been building for a while now, this is spliced together from a few unposted mini rants.

[Killjaeden]

I disagree with the restructure thing... Users not only have to sift through 200 pages in a topic, they also have to find the topic first.

XTC is on page 1 since release afaik ... and there are still seperate threads opened by users to ask questions. Makes you think ...
Some even "can't find" the community library or other stickies.

No, i don't think the system is to blame.

However, i wouldn't mind if threads get purged of all content (except OP) on request (unless mods have to delete each post 1 by 1). No ones reads through 100 pages of spam anyway.

edit: what the heck?

[Litcube]

However, i wouldn't mind if threads get purged of all content (except OP) on request (unless mods have to delete each post 1 by 1). No ones reads through 100 pages of spam anyway.

Most of what I learned comes from the archives. One's spam is another's tutorial!

[apricotslice]

The ability to moderate your own thread would be very useful. While I agree with Litcube about spam vs tutorial, my own threads are full of stuff I'd love to delete. All the questions asked that proved to have nothing to do with my mods or scripts, for example. And some of the irrelevant chatter, and the requests that had no hope of being done.

However, this particular forum system is uniquely modified from the original antique phpBB. Even the dinosaurs were complaining about its lack of features.

To get any of what anyone wants in forum functionality requires Egosoft throw away this current forum system and replace it with something new, that will probably be full of bugs anyway, and which will either result in the loss of the archives or will confuse the h*ll out of everyone once its converted over.

Better to leave things as they are here. We work with what he have. imo.

With a totally new game however, egosoft should be thinking about a new forum for it, and consulting with those who know about such things to ensure it has the functionality that we require.

To just add a new game to this forum system would be a mistake imo. Better to leave this site to the X games, and add a new one using a modified but state of the art forum/wiki system for the new game.

By the way, theres an awful lot of abbreviation going on in some of your posts, and frankly, I dont follow nearly half of it as a result. References between games are pointless when you cant even identify the game from the abbreviation, let alone have ever visited the site being compared. Just saying.

[Killjaeden]

Compared to XTC it would be transparent, planned with open community discussion, lead democratically by contributors

I want to decide myself how i am going to do my stuff and not what others are thinking or discussing about every little thing.

The bigger the team the more difficult it is to find a common denominator.
Even in the current team we had some long discussions about stuff and in the end someone had to decide how its going to be otherwise there would never have been a decision. It doesnt always work "democratical". Just look at the numerous endless balancing discussion threads in X-Universe section of this forum. 2 fronts, no one will ever convince the other side.

And i dont want to merge stuff of others. I want to do my own stuff. I know what i did and i know why i did it. The same can't be said for someone elses work i'm looking at. It would result in a gigantic mess that no one can handle.

Dont you think that requesting someone to make his work, he spent 1 or 2 years on, "opensource" is bold? It's his work and it's his decision what he does with it.

[Katorone]

MegaBurn, I have to agree with pretty much everything you said. I'm not a very active poster, but I'm a very active lurker. The only thing I don't agree with is this:

Then again, whether or not the system can be improved is up to Egosoft, which at times seems like an immovable object.

It seems to me that you can expect more resistance from the community.
When it's about new "technology" there's always a lot of resistance here. I remember comments about the mouse mode in X3:TC. It was so bad! How could Egosoft implement that! The (archaic) keyboard controls were much better.


Don't forget:
Change doesn't have to be drastic. A wiki can be setup while the forum is still in use. People can migrate to a new platform when they release new scripts/updates. This forum could still be kept in a locked archive mode, and referenced in the future.
Personally, I'd rather not start a wiki untill we know if and how TNBT is going to allow modding. If Egosoft decides to use java or python as a scripting language, all the work on a X3 wiki would be a wasted effort.

@ apricotslice:
Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.
Running a comparison between different solutions, setting it up on a testserver, etc... It takes time. Don't assume that something new is automatically full of bugs. I'm sure a phpBB version from 2005 has it's flaws too.

Instead of waiting till Egosoft asks for input, why not pro-actively help them? If modders want something more than this forum, why not unite and ask Egosoft for some TLC in the form of a shell account on a webserver and some webspace so different systems can be tested? Who knows, there might be solution that actually falls in good graces.

[apricotslice]

The bigger the team the more difficult it is to find a common denominator.
Even in the current team we had some long discussions about stuff and in the end someone had to decide how its going to be otherwise there would never have been a decision. It doesnt always work "democratical". Just look at the numerous endless balancing discussion threads in X-Universe section of this forum. 2 fronts, no one will ever convince the other side.

And i dont want to merge stuff of others. I want to do my own stuff. I know what i did and i know why i did it. The same can't be said for someone elses work i'm looking at. It would result in a gigantic mess that no one can handle.

Even the smaller teams have that problem.

My one and only team venture resulted in me leaving it, simply because the focus changed as more people joined in, and suddenly I was the odd person out as far as to where things should go was concerned, and the original idea was lost imo in favour of a merged idea that followed on once things started. I left them to it.

Once you get past 2 people, the chances of agreement on any issue diminish. Once you become a geniune team, there has to be someone who makes the ultimate decisions based on the original vision that started things off. imo.

Without it, mods evolve into something, they dont get made the way they were first laid out.

Since then, I too only mod for myself, using what I can do or what someone is generous enough to help me with.

I am quite happy to merge stuff, but the gigantic mess is a real worry. As I found for the superbox, once I had copyrighted material in the Merge Mod, getting it out for the superbox proved to be impossible. There are plenty of things on the drawing board for that mod, but each thing added adds to the work of adding the next and eventually some small thing added, will be the straw that breaks the mod. Got to be aware of that.

[Katorone]

I want to decide myself how i am going to do my stuff and not what others are thinking or discussing about every little thing.

Perhaps that means you shouldn't be modding in a team effort?

Just look at the numerous endless balancing discussion threads in X-Universe section of this forum. 2 fronts, no one will ever convince the other side.

A good thing the game can be modded... Now everyone is right, and can play the way they want.

And i dont want to merge stuff of others. I want to do my own stuff. I know what i did and i know why i did it. The same can't be said for someone elses work i'm looking at. It would result in a gigantic mess that no one can handle.

You're missing the point... You're not implementing stuff someone else made. You're asking someone else to implement their stuff (and support it). That's what team effort is.

Dont you think that requesting someone to make his work, he spent 1 or 2 years on, "opensource" is bold? It's his work and it's his decision what he does with it.

Requesting/suggesting. If the XTC team is in over their head... Why not enlist the help of others? The best way to do that is to be open about everything. Of course, it's possible that the work gets forked because there are different vieuws... But isn't that wonderful in it's own way?

[Katorone]

Once you get past 2 people, the chances of agreement on any issue diminish. Once you become a geniune team, there has to be someone who makes the ultimate decisions based on the original vision that started things off. imo.

Without it, mods evolve into something, they dont get made the way they were first laid out.

That's why it's very important to have a detailed draft of what you're actually trying to do. What you want to make and why. That's why people make a 30+ pages WIP before starting anything, and enlisting help based on that document.

[stemardue]

I just want to say something, answering in part to the last 10 or so posts here, and above all, supporting fully what KillJaeden said.

First of all: everybody is a master when it comes to criticize, but how many are able to effectively do what they say? I wouldn't want to use the unfamous citation "a critic is a failed artist" - but that comes to mind by itself...

Every team is different, things that worked well with a group of people can prove to be catastrophic with another group. Please abstain from criticizing a team way of working when you haven't been in that team.

Team work - even in an established 'hierarchical' environment, like a company, where the boss is the boss and he can fire you if you are not doing what you are requested to - is tough. There are always different opinions, different standards, and different minds. If a free working team manages to complete a project, that is already a great goal in itself.

On secrecy and community sharing: during the last two years we have several time asked for people support: we posted about people we were looking for: scripters, MD coders, modellers, general modders, testers... in 50% of the replies we had, we met simple leechers: people who downloaded our WIP files and then disappeared. Of the remaining 50% most were not able to do what we needed: they were looking for people to teach em how to mod. We are a team focussed on making a mod, not on teaching others how to do it. Sure, every one needs to improve, but man! At least a basic knowledge is paramount! - In any case, as a bottom line, we had very little concrete support from the community.

On ideas and suggestions: those are easy to have and write about! But please: think also on how they can be implemented in THIS GAME. It's useless to say 'hey Oblivion has a cool mod where you can...' - THIS is not Oblivion.

As a final thing: we have done XTC this way, and are still working on it. There is still a lot to do and we have a long to-do list already fixed, to which other things can be added - and several will need to be changed.
We don't need a PR/marketing/merchandising dept. We are not doing this with commercial purposes (i myself for my work only, if i had to do it for money, would not ask less than 80.000 bucks, understand? - so it's not a question of money).

The only thing that makes this (and other mods) keep on going, is reciprocal respect in the team, a common goal, and fun in doing what you do. If you think anything different, modding in a team is not what you can do.