I guess people will complain about anything, heh.
People don't simply complain about anything, they very often complain about specific features of mods they've installed, which is so ridiculous it could be funny, if weren't so... uhokerrably stupid. :facepalm:
I've seen your comments in the Cobl thread, I simply didn't have time to reply to them as well earlier, I'll post there about the Cobl stuff shortly, but I'll reply to your II questions from that thread in this thread where they belong.
Finally, something I'm really curious about--is Item Interchange capable of, say, taking a sword that a mod adds to a single vendor or chest somewhere, and expanding it to [vanilla] leveled lists for dungeons, actors, etc.? I'm sorry but I'm not really clear on what it does exactly. Like is it capable of doing that, which seems like magic, or does it require custom updates for each mod that adds items? Am I misunderstanding what it does? I thought it would be amazing if it could just pluck an item out of any old lazy mod and spread it everywhere, heh.
What do you mean by "capable"? There is no magic in II, though a lot of people don't get how it works that well. More and more do these days, which is no bad thing; when I first released it, there were probably less than five people who "got it" straight away. It does exactly what you describe (and more) but it does it by exact design and choice largely based on the design choices the mod maker implemented. Or at least, my interpretation of their design choices, which I'd like to think is roughly the same thing. So the result is that the stuff you find lying around in your game is a mix of the various stuff you have installed, roughly appropriate to how the mod makers intended their material to be, but implemented across all the supported mods, not just implemented in the vanilla material which is all a mod maker can typically access.
If you take a moment and think about what that means, it becomes very obvious that touching anything with a significant effect on balance, specifically weapons and armour, is a very touch and go area. Most weapon and armour mods add seriously overpowered and overvalued items; very few are balanced for the *game*; they are intended to be used by the player to look cool and slaughter everything that comes near them. There is no really sensible means for me to add those items into leveled lists in any balanced fashion because the items themselves are not balanced. On the other hand, weapon mods that follow MOBS/OMOBS or the vanilla balance systems are quite reasonable candidates for addition, because they follow a clearly defined system.
Now the second thing here is that the support I have implemented for weapon and armour is only going to have an effect on a user's game if they have specifically installed a mod such as Armamentarium that adds a huge swathe of balanced weapons to their game: I work on the assumption that if someone's decided to add that mod, they probably do want that balance system. An assumption, and it took a while before I took the step to implement it .
So there's just no way that I'm going to add support for weapon and armour mods that have no clear balance system, that aren't already added to the equipment lists (II will never touch the vanilla equipment lists), that don't have a significant number of items to offer to a game (how many thousands of one-weapon mods are out there?)... There's probably more caveats that I'm not currently thinking about at the moment, but I think you get the picture.
On the other hand, I'm intending to add support for The Arsenal, and I've noticed Wepon (or whatever it's called) which might be a possible candidate for inclusion.
I figured populating lists from a random lazy mod was beyond Cobl's capabilities, and beyond the capabilities of any mod for that matter.
Not beyond II's capability, but quite beyond the capability of my patience. If the modder couldn't be bothered adding his items in a way that suited a
game (find it in a barrel in the market district, people!), then why should I spend my time doing it for him/her? ALEX was a specific demonstration that making something fun out of some resources could be done with just a few hours work by a novice modder. And is the piece that allows me to justify my dissapointment with mods that take this kind of game-less approach. It's simply not that hard to make it fun.
So does that mean Cobl would be a good way to implement this idea I have for a ridiculously useless clutter overhaul that adds 100000000000000 new pieces of clutter from all the resources people have made to leveled lists and spread around to customize interiors? Actually that's probably better off as a stand-alone thing I'm thinking. Not that I'll ever get around to something so useless and unwanted when I have a few other way better ideas for mods.
If I understand what you're describing then yes, that's better as a stand-alone mod, but I'm not really sure I do understand what you're wanting. And II can't touch interiors anyway due to the way it works.
Let's say the first thing you find outside the sewers is a Sword of instant death to everything - that would of course unbalance the game somewhat to say the least. Sorry for OT.
No worries for the OT, I've got no particular complaints about discussion of balance.
People tend to complain about many things, instead of simply making a patch by themselves. (and releasing it for others too
)
Or very often they demand that the mod-maker make a patch. For something that already has a patch. Or can be turned off in an ini file. :thumbsup: Good job!
Vac
» Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:06 pm 
