GBX's Recent Moves Are Killing the Modding Community - Complaints from 9CCN

@506933395 wrote:

I (we) post this thread here today simply to "complain". I know that complaints usually don't solve any problem, but there's something we have to say.

What I would like to suggest is that, we (the entire 9CCN Mod team along with some other Chinese modders) think that GBX's recent moves are killing the modding community.

This isn't that exaggerative: think about it, what do modders want the most? New scripting systems? Powerful graphics engine? More versatile file formats? Although these stuffs do good to development, according to us, none of those are our major concern. We think that modders want a stable platform most.

I don't know how much time do active members on the forum actually put into making mods (looks like plenty); as for most of us, we usually have only an hour or two each week for modding. It's not that easy to make a living, so we all have to spend a lot of time for school or job. I always have a doubt, that GBX might have the illusion that ALL modders have Unbounded energy, just because active forum members here are all those with lots of spare times. In fact, many other modders don't even have the time to check the forum, not to mention that we Chinese modders tend not to speak if we don't have to, for it takes a lot more effort to browse and speak in another language.

Considering the current situation, we are expecting a stable modding platform to work with, which means that we'll have enough time to do actual work with our mods, rather than spending more time keeping up with updates of the game engine which changes how we work. We expect to have enough time to translate and make modding tutorials without the worry that new changes corrupt what we wrote even before the tutorials are finished. We expect each and every update to be as backward-compatible as possible. Fixing bugs wins far more kudos from us than adding new slick features.

But how did it turn out?

I'll just take two examples:

First, as early as last year (can't recall when precisely), GBX had made the RODOH tool to convert models into the new DAE format. However, RODOH always suffers from serious bugs, and many models (e.g. ALL 9CCN models) cannot be converted correctly, even though GBX had got in touch with us before the tool is released (we handed them some of our HOD files as well as Maya sources for testing).

"Well, just let it be that way, as long as the old HODs still works, and GBX said that they are going to fix the bugs someday." We did wait patiently with ideas like this, until one day we suddenly noticed that the upcoming update would discard all old HODs and RODOH would not be updated BEFORE that.

BitVenomDave E. - GBX Programmer
Mar 4
Well, the next patch changes EVERYTHING. So proceed with caution - and USE THE TOOLS. HODOR is your onlyoption after this patch...

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BitVenomDave E. - GBX Programmer
Mar 4
I've been saying that exact thing since the game came out a year ago. Over and over. How is this news?
RODOH bugs are very serious to me, and post-patch I'll be working on it quite a bit more. HODOR will also get some new features/tricks.

I know there's a promise like "post-patch I'll be working on it quite a bit more", but considering that this upcoming update has been "coming soon" for months, we can't trust such promise.

So what does it mean? It means all the HOD files that we made in over a decade of time will no longer work, and it isn't something that can be fixed by manual porting, since some of our most complex ships took us three months back then to assign and bound all the animation and events. We can't do anything in front of a situation like this. We can do nothing but to wait until the sudden death is upon us. We can't start any actual work, for nobody knows when our efforts will become vain. We've been waiting like this for months.

People can be passionate about a thing for only so long. As far as I know, some former modders have already chose to leave this community in pursuit of something equally interesting with less pain and waiting.

Secondly, we posted this thread (http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/bug-report-vanished-effects/317931) as early as April 2015 to point out a bug that severely impacts effects in MODs, and stated that this bug is closely related to the part of the engine which deals with Hyperspace jumps. A GBX staff back then replied in another thread saying they've noticed such a thing. But what's the truth?

7 MONTHS LATER

dengun
Dec '15
Also we are faced with this problem.
We pray to be corrected quickly.
Reply
Reply as linked Topic

BitVenomDave E. - GBX Programmer
Dec '15
Hrm... weird. I'll see what I can find...

BitVenomDave E. - GBX Programmer
Dec '15
No, not forgotten - I think the first version is in our Bug DB. BUT, I don't think, for whatever reason, that it was clear at that time how strongly connected to Hyperspacing the bug was... I recall the previous version was 'sometimes all the FX for a ship disappear'. I may recall wrong. Now, knowing it is connected to Hyperspacing - I have a smaller area in the code to go hunting for a reason. We have TONS of bugs - but as we're busy rebuilding the world, those have to wait... besides, in some cases all of our edits end up fixing bugs without intending to

Well... we've made it crystal clear back to last year's April, that this bug is closely related to Hyperspace. How can you not realize it until December?

As I've said before, "we tend not to speak if we don't have to, for it takes a lot more effort to browse and speak in another language." It means that to post such lengthy and systematic bug report on the forum requires many of our core members to repeatedly examine, discuss, research, and then draft a report, translate it, proofread a million times, and finally post it here. It seems that all of the efforts we put eventually turned out in vain.

We're not trying to act unfriendly, but some of GBX's practices are really heartbreaking.

Let's look back a little bit about what GBX have been doing. For example, what does the update which splits race.lua into multiple independent files, actually bring to the table?

According to me, it has the following impacts:

1. Theoretically, we can load races from multiple MODs at the same time and have them battle against each other. But it won't work at all in practice, for nearly all major MODs build their own gamerules which support only their own races.

2. We can adjust available races according to current game mode, which is actually pretty nice. However, I think you guys can improve the system in other ways to get the same result without splitting race.lua.

3. Lots of existing modding tutorials in Chinese are rendered obsolete.

4. Race-specific audio in data:soundscripts/speechlogic/commands.lua becomes a mess due to different available races in different modes. There're no fundamental ways to solve it.

5. Our beloved GBX changed the crate logics in data:leveldata/multiplayer/lib/crates.lua to adapt for the new system, but accidentally added one comma at the end of crate_ships.lua for each race, which makes the entire crate system FAIL.

(P.S.: How can GBX release a product with a lua script that won't even compile?)

Well, just look at these. They are all that I can remember.

No matter how much we say, it's all just complaints. We know that this update from GBX is imminent and inevitable, but at least it feels better to speak up.

9CCN MOD Team:
lone_wolf, Unlimited_X, dreadnought9ccn, HW_Lover
Fairy Empire MOD Team:
Fairy Queen
Translated by Kilo19 and Bun

Posts: 26

Participants: 12

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