I write mods for my own personal challenge and interests. I share them so that likeminded people may see them and enjoy them. I do not mod for the lazy, the stupid, or the ungrateful.


So am I. If you're paying me, you'll get everything exactly as you want it, you'll get it as easy as you please, and I'll be as thorough as possible to make sure everything works and is documented. But no one pays modders. Modders do exactly as much work as interests them, and no more. And no one has any right to complain or ask for more, because anything a modder releases is purely a gift. Surely you'll agree that it's highly rude to respond to a gift with "well why didn't you give me that too?!"

Your understanding of copyright and licensing needs help, badly. The GPL and/or BSD license are not appropriate choices (nor are they legally compatible) with the license issued by Bethesda which specifically prohibits selling mods. The GPL does not allow this sort of restriction.

So we already have a license governing the trade.


I write them first for myself, then for others to enjoy. How you go from needing to learn the process of installing them to concluding that we're doing it out of some sick elitist bent is beyond me. One must learn how the install process works or one will not be able to enjoy the mods.

Personally, I package them in whatever way is easiest for me and if you don't agree with my choices your option is easy: Don't use the mod.

I don't know what open source project you've been a part of, but it's been my experience that most, if not all, suffer from having too many hands in the cookie jar. Generally resulting in inferior quality products that don't follow appropriate standards and change their core functionality on a whim. Which oddly results in many of them concluding they're not gaining market share because of some evil Microsoftian conspiracy.

The community here is nowhere close to the levels of dysfunction I've seen in ANY open source project.

Most open-source code is still paid for, one way or another. People are directly paid to code, paid for what they do with the code, or even just "paid" with college credit. There are very few true volunteers. Here, everyone is a volunteer by contractual obligation.

And believe it or not, once you get past textures and models and basic item edits, Oblivion modding is terribly difficult and time-consuming. The engine is labyrinthine, full of undocumented and counter-intuitive quirks which cause subtle but often disastrous consequences. It works against you more often than it works with you. It's not like a real programming environment, where it's good enough to ship as long as your interfaces work right and you don't leak memory or crash. (More like patching components onto a live circuit board for which you have no schematic, if I were to reach for a comparison.)

Honestly, I think the answer to the constant question, "Why do Oblivion modders have this attitude when other communities don't?" is simply that we're modding Oblivion while other communities aren't. You're comparing store-bought apples with blackberries which have to be hand-picked from deep within thorny brambles that also have poison oak growing through them. At the user's end, both make a delicious pie. Behind the scenes, one is orders of magnitude less pleasant and more costly to produce. Forgive us for becoming surly if, after we hand out free slices, you complain about having to wash your own fork.

Would I allow my mods to be used in a compilation? Yes, if the proprietor agreed to take full responsibility for technical support arising from compilation users, and (importantly) if I trusted said proprietor's actual ability to do so. Of all the people who have proposed compilations through the years, there has been exactly one who I thought could handle it in a completely generic sense -- making sure the combined mods have no inherent conflicts between each other. And in the specific case of my own mods? I can think of maybe two dozen people who know the engine well enough to have the slightest clue what's going on if a bug crops up. Notably, none of those people is making a compilation.


Elitist? Well, I feel no need to deny the fact that I'm one of a very small group of people crazy and stubborn enough to spend much of the past five years staring at the engine. (And I don't even pretend that I'm among the top 10 experts.) But holding that against me is like getting angry at your dentist for saying, sorry, that tooth has to come out. It's not like he wants to tell you that. There's nothing in it for him, not even money -- root canols cost more than extractions. But he's got years of experience with this subject, and he really is trying to help you.

Oblivion mods are not simply additive with one another; they conflict, both directly and through undesired interaction. Even if there were a compilation where everything was internally smoothed out and made perfect, adding one outside mod could destroy it. You have to learn Bash not because we say so, not because we want you to suffer like we did, but because resolving those conflicts is completely specific to your load order... and Bash is the easy, streamlined, automated fix tool. (And even it can't help with script interactions, but that's another topic.)

Good gosh, what splendid posts (from Arthmoor and tejon). I literally laughed out loud, as well as shaking my head - at the exceptional frequency of true, insightful observations, that is.

Just wanted to say thank you, for those. Um, that was all...

I have great respect for modders and time they invested . The thing is like most community projects adoption rates are actually quite abysmal (e..g if you compare # of players who played Oblvion on PC vs # of players who played modded oblvion, it will be in single % ) . in my opinion it is very sad

Issues with packaging and distribution are not new and been plaguing open source community since its inception. Its been huge barrier for linux adoption and so on. I am saying this after professionally managing BSD/Linux and dealing with all sorts of packaging and dependency systems in past 10 years . Its a mess. It will not reach end user adoption anytime soon, maybe never. Only people who are dealing with it are IT professionals + a few enthusiasts. And this is area much larger and much more mature than a modding for a single game and many many more people working on it and investing their time into.

Now if we return to a question of oblivion modding . From an end user perspective there is enough difficulty to run games on pc as it is. Absolute majority (and read it as 95% +) of users do not want to deal with anything more complicated than running installer, clicking shortcut. Any barriers to adoption just result in small self isolated community

Tesnexus has is a repository of tens of thousands of mods. Of probably millions of man hours invested. Most of it will never see the light of day so to speak. There are many great tools ,tutorials and documentation written. But it will never be used by most. Making things accessible would go a long way, but when community actively resists the idea it never happens. I dont know exactly why but it happens with most (all?) community projects. You know that year which was supposed to be year of desktop linux?- yeah same thing....

Wow...

Interesting banter from the Great Elders of our community.
I actually learned a few things which I wasn't aware of.

Thank You.

:read:

This

Even with guides like my BAIN guide, Alt3rn1ty's Guide, or TESCosi - the majority are not going to want to get involved.

On the other hand I get the whole 'of you can't even do task X, Y, or Z then probably you shouldn't be using mods.

And to turn that yet again - making instal instructions more complicated than necessary with incomplete instructions and references to outdated install guides - is, I think, a bit of cruelty and very deserving of the disparaging titles that some may use.

There's a flaw in your logic here.

We've already made things as accessible as they can be given the system we're working with. This applies to Morrowind, Fallout, and Skyrim as well, so don't think it's just Oblivion. The sticky posts at the top of this forum are filled with all manner of enlightenment on these things if people would just read them.

If I pack files into a simple archive with an esp, meshes, textures, possibly sound and other stuff, then I fail to see why a user's refusal to learn OBMM or Bash is somehow my fault. Yes, there are people who refuse to learn OBMM because it isn't simple enough. There's only so far we can go before we break. These are the kinds of people that think mods should be packaged in literal one-click installers. That's a pipe dream. We have no reason to accommodate that.

If you think users aren't the lazy ones, just cruise the threads for any of the larger mods and tell me that the people openly saying they won't learn to use Bash aren't being lazy - especially when they're demanding a mod that requires it be remade so it doesn't. Just so they don't have to spend 2 hours reading up on how to use Bash. Sometimes it takes them longer than that to argue their demands in a thread!

BAIN tried. It failed. OBMM tried. It failed. FOMM tried. It failed. NMM is trying. It will fail. Why? None of them can fix the root cause of the problem. Hint: It's not the modders.

Cite, please.



Again.



And again.


It is an "interesting" story that you are telling, I suppose, but unless you can back it up... it appears to be nothing more than that.

I agree 100% with your viewpoint.

I think most young people nowadays demand instant gratification.
Push a button here... Push a button there.
I don't care HOW it works, I just want the results.

Who's to blame ?
Our school system, the media, Apple ?

I see it in my Nephew -- Graduated from high school.
Yet he's as dumb as a turnip.
Wouldn't take 5 minutes to read through a manual.

Personally, I really appreciate the incredible effort the Great Modders of our community put forth.
If one of them decides to make a mod easier in any way -- Hey, then that's a bonus.
Otherwise, I'll sacrifice my time to learn.

I love how people complain about how "hard modders make mods" as if this was a conscious choice. Installing mods is easy. The only thing that is hard is installing multiple mods.

If you think it's hard dealing with incompatibilities for your particular mod set-up, I invite you to try to ponder every possible incompatibility ever for any given mod. With anything even remotely complex, it is far, far more difficult.

In other words, as I said: anything that is hard or time-consuming for a mod user, is a hundred times harder and more time-consuming for a modder. Modders do what they can, but ultimately if you expect us to bend over backwards to meet your every whim (ensure compatibility with exactly your mod loadout), on top of the thousands of hours of work we have already done and donated gratis to the community, just so you don't have to learn anything, understand anything, do anything? You are an ungrateful, self-centered, lazy, and/or stupid parasite, and I will lose absolutely no sleep if you cannot use my mods.

And the irony is, I'm always making these arguments, and yet every mod I've ever worked on has been very careful about eliminating all sources of incompatibility. Advantage of being a scripter, that, though; I have the luxury of doing that while most others do not.


Seriously, though, almost every modder does go out of his way to promote compatibility and help make things as easy as is reasonable. There are just limits to how easy it can be made, without the modder having to literally make patches for hundreds of other mods or whatever. I say "almost every" because there has been at least one notable case where a modder went out of his way to screw with compatibility and mess with mods by people he didn't like: he is not welcome as a part of this community any longer. You are greatly overestimating the "elitism" here; there's no such thing. The only thing that is going on here is that there are limits to how much work a modder will do to make sure every possible combination of mods ever will work, and that limit is a heavily personal choice; objecting to where a modder puts that limit is not merely incredibly demanding, it is also rude.

I definitely agree with the last few posters opinions and respect what they're saying.

However, modders do need to accept this sort of criticism, otherwise there will be no drive to improve user friendliness at all. Calling the end user lazy isn't exactly constructive either, even if it is true. I understand that some people who persist need to be told now and then though.

Mods will never will be for everyone, it's best that both 'sides' in this argument just accept that. Unless the modders are going to get paid it's basically a labour of love. There's no business incentive and thus no reason for a 'customer is always right' mentatlity.

I certainly don't expect anymore than we have now and appreciate the tools we already have.

It seems as though you are confusing two ideas here: Compatibility versus Ease of Install. You start of talking about installation and end up talking about compatibility.

I, for one (and from what I've seen here), have rarely ever complained much less commented on the idea that mod makers do not consider compatibility ... there are a few instances of making mods purposefully incompatible as we all know. The reason this is not an issue is because this is hardly ever a real issue - nor do I hardly ever see this as a point of serious contention. Not all mods are meant to work together.

Installation on the other hand is something I've seen made needlessly complex by providing outdated instructions, incomplete instructions (sometimes no instructions), and so on. This is not new to Oblivion Modding and delving into Morrowind mods before there were mod managers and gets downright tricky at times.

I've been around a few years now and overwhelmingly the number of "help my game don't work threads" or "help this doesn't make sense" have tended to be about mistakes or questions on installing FCOM. A much smaller percentage being about "is this compatible" and an even smaller amount about "make this compatible - darn it."

How much of the forum goers time and effort are spent helping others install such a small group of mods is actually enormous. Further, the core mod makers haven't addressed this much at all and perpetuate it. I can see how a newcomer would be quick to label some as insider, snarky, elitist. And that this conclusion is reached when they finally do install said group of mods and realize that the given instructions are either incomplete and/or wrong - and that they had to go to a third party set of instructions to finally get it right.

Man, get off that soap box and stop preaching.
This thread has NOTHING WHAT SO EVER to do with FCOM, but once again you are having another of your regular rants - and I know for a fact that you don't even use the damned mod!!

Once you've actually contributed something you can have some say as to how it's packaged and distributed to our users..
Until that time you have no say in the matter - none.

Your reference to 3rd party guides is quite obviously aimed once again at FCOM.
Try actually reading the opening post of the FCOM thread here on the forum and then point me in the direction of any 3rd party guide that comes anywhere close to it's accuracy and in depth installation information.
I very strongly object and disaprove of you advising our users utilize these unauthorised guides.
I tire correcting players that do come to our thread that have used these same articles you advise.
If they would follow to the letter our instructions 99% of these same users wouldn't have a problem.
It must be your time for throwing out yet again there is an FCOM Homepage that is outdated - which is a well known and documented fact beyond the control of Team FCOM.

Now be a good boy, run along, and stop trying to bait other members.

Please understand that I dont try to blame anyone let alone modders for modding. I think many modders do a great deal of effort presently to make their mods individually accessible. Its not about one single mod.




If it was simply a matter of 2 hours or even 1 weekend I wouldnt even open my mouth . Now look at this : http://tescosi.com/wiki/User:Tomlong75210/BAIN_Package_List. There is literally thousand packages listed there. How long do you think it would take to install this with current system? Well that maybe extreme example but I can find tons of posts like this http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1224586-relz-bananasplits-better-cities-thread-43/page__view__findpost__p__19038345 .

What I am saying is that throwing 1000 of little pieces out there , giving some tools and and saying to users - go ahead try to assemble them. Is not the approach which is working

If we talking about single mod - yes its easy. But its not about single mod ,its about whether one can say "i'd like enjoy some of the better mods together" and the answer is -"if you willing to spend hundreds of hours reading ,docs, arranging load order and testing , - maybe it will work!)




Maybe its time to change approach?



The irony is - this is the true. This is how people are. Not "those and those" but people in general. Outside of the are of their special interest people just want stuff work easy and effortlessly. They want their car to work without fiddling with it , their TV , their PC ,their cellphone .etc. If you ever worked on any commercial software package you know that to get more customers you need to make stuff as easy as possible for end users. If they want something? - make it happen. And yes it should be one button click. I see this is as fact of life. It doesnt need to be changed or raged about. It needs to be accepted

Last I checked here Spiffyman was trying to install FCOM and he wanted to use BAIN to do it. The FCOM thread does not have that info.

The only third party guides I ever recommend are mine, Alt3rn1ty, and Tomlong's guide (the best and only one that is BAIN for FCOM). And that is it. Last you posted about Tomlong you said you liked the guide - then why not link it in the opening post of FCOM?

But my points are less about the provided instructions and more about the packaging - which if made unified could simplify the instructions. But you suspect you will quote me out of context again and reply that there can't be a unified package - not what I mean - I mean unify the install method.

You call me aggressive, but I lay out my points logically while you call me a boy who must run along.

No I won't stop recommending Tomlong's site - especially if asked.

There's no objection from me if you wish to reference the BAIN guide on Tomlong's site to others.
I do though, very much, when you deem yourself fit to decide her instructions on installation, Bash Tags and all other references which have been plucked from the FCOM Homepage, UESP and TES4 wiki, the Official thread and directly from questions asked in our thread should overwrite our directives.
All of that information btw compiled and laid out in plain language and great detail by Team FCOM and either found or linked to in the Official thread.
And you complain about outdated and/or lack of up to date documentation.
As I've suggested more than once to you, read and digest the Official thread if you want installation instructions.
Once you've done that please highlight to me what we missed.
I should also point out to you again that on more than one instance directions given by said 3rd party site have been eroneous until such a time as it was advised by us to be corrected.

Now I'll ask you straight out.
Can you correctly anolyze, troubleshoot and solve any and all problems that may arise from these guides you recommend?
Would you care to try?
Or will the 3rd party scratch their heads when an issue they can't solve is posed, come to us for a solution then relay the details, or finally refer the user to us?

You've taken this thread away from it's topic and I'll not recognize any further posts on this subject from you.
Find yourself another target for your impromptu lectures.

If there are no compatibility issues, installation is easy, period. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this; it's just a simple fact. So yes, they are the same issue.


FCOM is not one mod. FCOM, really, is not a mod at all. FCOM is four mods, plus a series of patches and instructions for getting them to work together. It is a system, not a mod. And it damn well has to be complex, because the four mods in question are deeply incompatible. Every difficulty with FCOM is a compatibility issue.


I assure you, Psymon, that your time spent explaining FCOM to new users has been only a fraction of the time that was spent developing FCOM in the first place. Trust me on this one. You really are not even remotely familiar with the amount of time we are talking about here.

I have never installed FCOM; I don't like Oblivion and therefore don't play it, so I haven't bothered trying to install it. I know it's complex. But I assure you, I could recreate Tomlong's entire site using only the FCOM thread and dev_akm's outdated site much faster than I could recreate FCOM from its constituent mods, despite knowing an awful lot about how to use the CS.

In short, your entire post is invalid or based on faulty premises.


Frankly, Psymon, your crusade is obnoxious and offbase. If you can do better, do so — contact Martigen, Sotobrastos, Newcomer24, and whoever wrote Warcry, get permission to create a your own version of FCOM, develop it, and make all the nice neat BAIN installers you desire. Either do that — or shut up. You can either do the work, or you can gratefully accept what is given to you — at no point are you entitled to whine about the hard work of others being not enough.

Well, I had some crazy purple ground textures when I started the game (which I didn't have last time) so yet another issue. Well, I'm going to test out this NMM thing as see how it is. Might as well, since I have to use OBMM for a couple mods anyway. I'll just install those omods with nmm instead.

Quick question: Can I install all the graphics mods I want, then backup my entire oblivion install, and THEN install the gameplay mods like ooo and such? I'm trying to think of a way to cut down on the uninstall-reinstall process....

Edit: bonus question -- better cities mod has an open cities variant, so why would it have a compatibility patch with open cities reborn, which is essentially the same type of mod....

Purple textures means missing textures. Nothing in FCOM will result in that - have you got archive invalidation invalidated active (or BSA redirection with OBMM)?

For the next post about open cities those are two different projects by different modders - they are not the same thing and therefor they cannot just be slapped together. What one touches the other cannot unless a patch is involved. As far as I know the Better Cities additions for Open Cities reborn can be used to add new buildings to Open Cities Reborn (but not open cities classic). Open Cities (either Reborn or Classic) mostly affects the other towns and only offers an option to open the outer districts of the Imperial City. Likewise you can use only the Imperial City of Better Cities - provided you don't use the open versions of the outer districts. Confusing at first. Have you read the pinned thread compatibility and you?

Shikishima-
Third party guides would not even exist if the official were sufficient. Why would they? The fact that they do exist is sufficient proof that there is an issue. That there were many "help me FCOM is broke" threads is another indication. It cannot be that all the threads are folks who can't follow directions or are attention seekers eager to make a new thread (though both exist). As I'd pointed out before when Dev left that site up - people still go to it and may make their way here. They go from a website devoted to installing FCOM to an opening post. So from more info (that is wrong) to less info. By inviting me to once again post in the FCOM thread it is another veiled attempt at flame-baiting yourself. You already posted a reply from the last time saying that BAIN is not considered an option and to drop the subject in that thread.

DragoonWraith-
I disagree - one can have very complex install instructions on a mod that are not needed. People can get lost in installing just one mod. This can be reduced by more concise packaging. Take for instance a recent release of OBGE 3.0 (not 3.1 which I've not used yet) where there are two packages: core and retro. They appear to be two versions but are not - both are required. The result is confusion on the part of posters wondering why the mod is not working right. You have to dig into the documentation to find out ... and while yes that is always a good idea, necessary even - why weren't all the required components in one package? Don't even get me started on how body mods used to be packaged.

Then back to FCOM where at one point there were three different install methods being promoted and none of them were to use the installer that is part of Wrye Bash - which itself is required for FCOM. Most of the component parts of FCOM have been tended to and updated by this same team so they could have released more concise packaged versions with a unified theme. They have refused this and the idea that anyone could help them do it. So this too very much contributes to the number of threads asking for help - which in turn effects those who read the boards because of the clutter.

Now why would it be that the only way for me to have any feedback worth anything regarding packaging that I would have to be at the level of recreating the entire mod or set of mods? That doesn't make sense. Nor does the idea that my only role is to gratefully ... nay passively receive what is made by modders and have no feedback whatsoever? IS that a role you would accept for yourself?

To both you guys - I'm not really a fan of using anonymity on the web to engage in petty personal attacks. Others have posted in support of the idea of better packaging as well. Basically - Have I ever wrote anything to you as rude as you have been to me? If I counter a debate point you make and the response I get is SHUT UP ... ???

Oh yeah and this is not a crusade. Shikishima will try and sniff out any comment I make in any thread for this argument and confront with accusations and out of context framing of any points I make. I'm apparently not allowed to disagree. I only ever explain myself so as not to let the out of context accusations stand as my point (presented by Shikishima).

This thread is going places :celebration: :flamethrower:.

Back on topic, gentlemen? OWCND is a compilation mod. It seems only reason why it isn't "unwelcome here" is because the components are not maintained by Team Alpha or other community giants. It seems to me that you can manipulate the hell out of existing mods and smash them together with reckless abandon, until you come across anything FCOM related, Arthmoor's mods, TheNice1's mods, etc. Then it's taboo to even think about it. Granted, there is probably more to it than meets the eye, but nobody can deny there is an element of hypocrisy here.

Or maybe the term "compilation" is too broad a term to use.

I appartently closed down a BAIN conversation in the FCOM thread?
Here's the relevant thread. http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1245021-relz-fcom-convergence/
Please point out to me where this was done.
What was said was BAIN would be considered for future releases, but not for the current versions.

It's funny how all the "Help me" threads cropped up, eh?
You quite obviously have never seen the same for Wrye Bash or any other mod that is complex and has an extensive readme file. Or is that a blinkered oversight?
Point to one instance where the user, if they had take the time to read and understand the supplied documentation, found that any issue(s) wasn't a result of the information being totally or in part ignored.
In other words the fault of install directions.
You say there's a need for third party guides. I don't see it myself as any information they contain originates from one source.
I'm not knocking Tomlong's site. It's a mine of information and I'm quite aware that a great deal of time, thought and effort went into it's compilation.
But it is a 3rd party site, completley independant and not authorised by ourselves. As far as FCOM is concerned it holds no information that we haven't supplied through our own documentation.

Psymon does make a valid point.

I myself have come across mods / patches (not just FCOM) which are very ambiguous and / or redundant in nature.

Those situations create a lot of unnecessary reading.

Old instructions / sites etc. which are no longer relevant, should be taken down or updated, because it adds to the confusion.

What I've noticed over the years is that, some people are fantastic programmers, but not so fantastic at documentation.

Thank [insert religious artifact] for people like TheNiceOne and his http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=24647

It helps to simplify the installation.

There are other people doing the same with other complex mods, as well.

For that, I am grateful.

I just hope that with the Skyrim Construction Set due to be released soon, that the community won't end up getting stuck with unfinished Oblivion projects.

Or half-baked-mod-pies, as I like to refer to them.

Sure it is this post http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1245021-relz-fcom-convergence/page__view__findpost__p__19111840:

Of course other threads pop up with questions on installing - like OBGE ... and yes like Wrye Bash. But I still maintain that the majority of help me with load order questions are FCOM centric. Not as bad as it used to be - many threads seem to be about other things then if you look closer there is FCOM again.

I'm not going to police every thread and every post for this info and if I did I'm certain I would be countered with accusations that I'm obsessed and unbalanced (I think I would be too). That is another of your damned if you do damned if you don't challenges.

If you like Tomlongs site - which I maintain has less outdated material than Dev's old site - then why not even link to it in the FCOM opening post? What is the harm in pointing to a guide you approve of as an alternative? That part mystifies me.

Mike12982-
No OWC ND is not a compilation it is an overhaul.