132 replies to this topic

[CamDawg]

BWP not telling modders that there are potential issues in their mods?

 

[The Imp]

BWP not telling modders that there are potential issues in their mods?

Well, considering that coding a fix is easier to do in Chinese than complaining about it English to a German, for the same Finnish person... because you essentially aren't doing it in chinese... but with a tool made for it. Winmerge anyone.

I back up ALIEN on this, in so far as to say that it's not the easiest thing to do, to complain about stuff the mod maker wouldn't ever see without the existence of the BWP/S. But to me the github wouldn't be the answer either. So we are looking forward for your answer.

[CamDawg]

Tell the author.

[Almateria]

I wanted to move a mod to github but was super confused by how it works. Some nerd stuff, man.

 

But yeah, ignoring Imp as usual, i feel like telling the author is a pretty obvious workaround to the issue of "why didn't the author fix something only appearing on github". I don't spell all my time googling my own name.

[CamDawg]

Tell the author.

If such simple solution wasn't worked in the past, what makes you think that it will work today? Author or maintainer? Which "communication channel" should be chosen? Does 11 messages about "hey, can you fix bug 1/11" will really encourage mod author to fix bugs? Unless it's automatic notification, it's tedious and very time consuming task which comes after tedious and very time consuming task of producing patch in the first place.

I don't know what to say here, mainly because I never thought "tell authors about issues in their mods" would ever receive pushback.

 

BWP could be a great asset to the modding community because, as Jarno points out, it does find bugs that may otherwise go unnoticed... and oftentimes drops the ball by not telling anyone outside of the BWP sphere about it. This is a frustrating and long-standing issue. If you tell an author and they ignore it, or you can't find working contact information, so be it--but it's still the bare minimum of courtesy to try and inform them, and should be step one in the process.

[The Imp]

Sorry Almateria, this will go off topic a big time...

I don't know what to say here, mainly because I never thought "tell authors about issues in their mods" would ever receive pushback.
 
BWP could be a great asset to the modding community because, as Jarno points out, it does find bugs that may otherwise go unnoticed... and oftentimes drops the ball by not telling anyone outside of the BWP sphere about it. This is a frustrating and long-standing issue. If you tell an author and they ignore it, or you can't find working contact information, so be it--but it's still the bare minimum of courtesy to try and inform them, and should be step one in the process.

Well, let's see, as this issue is a little bit more than controversial... as there are issues with revising the tweaks. As most mod authors would rather not.
Say take this case. Mod authors reply... nothing. Nor the current maintainers, nor anything/one else either. Well, it's still open for discussion, but well whatever...

There's also a theme where nearly everyone* is up in arms with the baldur.bcs scripts that check if the party has an item...., as the containers size starts to lag the game, just by not even containing a thing. *subject to personal perspective.

 

Now... if you want to, you are welcome to be the intermediate factor between BWS and the rest of the community. You can start by just opening this folder and going through the whole thing, one at a time. Ouh, and checking that all the rest of the fixes actually match each others. What was I, the third author of the fix of the kit.ids... and Wisp had to interrupt, before it got any better. Just the 5th coder, depending on how you read the thing...

Yes, that's a quite a task.

 

BWP... yeah, that's purely Leonardo's work, and have you heard of the guy ? I have seen his authorship of the BWP, in regards to others, and ... of various other things, among them the origins of the BiG World, in which the community was split between; "add more" and "make sure that the ground is safe so things could be added"... and neither side really won. Then there's the selection of mods and so forth that have criticism --- all of which kinda makes him a recluse but a good guy, all the same.

This is also why there's two BiG World Fixpacks, the BWP one, and the BWS one(the above folder -link).

Edited by The Imp, 05 November 2017 - 11:07 PM.

[jastey]

Tell the author.

If such simple solution wasn't worked in the past, what makes you think that it will work today? Author or maintainer? Which "communication channel" should be chosen? Does 11 messages about "hey, can you fix bug 1/11" will really encourage mod author to fix bugs? Unless it's automatic notification, it's tedious and very time consuming task which comes after tedious and very time consuming task of producing patch in the first place.

As much as I understand the frustration about reported bugs not getting fixed I can only stress that it's basic courtesy to report a bug before providing a fix. As you noticed (general "you" in this case) not all modders are aware that BWPFixpack does this and should be checked when updating a mod. Which I only do because out of (bad) experience. Finding fixes for your own mod you weren't aware of of which one changes something so that it causes another bug because the interaction of events wasn't fully understood is not a nice experience.

As much as I value the work on this it's this approach that's lacking.

 

Please: There are more than enough mods that do not have active maintainers. It's really not necessary to not communicate with the active ones.

[The Imp]

It's really not necessary to not communicate with the active ones.

Erhm, what are you trying to say ? As that actually means nothing !
For you, if you define it by default; "not necessary", the only default necessary thing for living being is DEATH.
"necessary to not communicate" :silence:

What comes to HAVE TO and NECESSARY, it's not. It's BENEFICIAL and PRODUCTIVE, opportune etc. but definitely not ht&n.

Edited by The Imp, 06 November 2017 - 12:41 AM.

[jastey]

In English, not + not means "yes". Not necessary to not communicate = it is necessary to communicate.

[The Imp]

In English German, not + not means "yes".

Yes. Ever heard of the double negative ? It doesn't actually make a no, a yes. "No, no !" actually means: "No, means no !" Or what ever you wish it to be... as you can't see the 90% of the nonverbal communication, as it just happens to not be present in forum text. But it's there in the context, just like emoticons. This emoticon means: Got you, made a point, in this circumstance.
Talk about a German trying to enforce their culture to English of their own language(and Finnish).
PS, there's no actual judgement in that, just an explanation of what's there. That you can get, by reading the wikipedia page.
 
Now, I am not perhaps the best to speak about these kinds of differences, but I have a large collection of understanding off them, even though I can only express myself in 3 languages, and barely at that. But then, trying to be everything for everyone is a diplomacy of mission of showing ones asshole to everyone(as you bend toward someone, you bend away from the others).

 

What we are trying to say, is: We aren't really equipped to handle this on our own, and would like help.

There were people that did this before, but they blow themselwes away by perhaps taking too much responsibility and burden. And really, it's no ones fault.

Edited by The Imp, 06 November 2017 - 02:50 AM.

[Almateria]

Which "communication channel" should be chosen?

I mean. My email is right there. In the AUTHOR tag. It pops up when an error happens, telling you to contact me theeereee. Because bugfixes are also useful for ppl that don't use BWS or BWP, however increasingly rare those are.

Hell, man, I dunno what else to say. Like... I couldn't possible believe that "writing an email" is something that's time-consuming and problematic in the tech world, considering I'm here and didn't disappear. Is that why Google constantly introduces new networking solutions?

 

...as for the github questions, the one on the github site that told me everything about requests, pulls, branches, and zero data about uploading stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

Erhm, what are you trying to say ? As that actually means nothing !

wild, that's exactly what i say when i see your posts

[CamDawg]

Sorry Almateria, this will go off topic a big time...

I don't know what to say here, mainly because I never thought "tell authors about issues in their mods" would ever receive pushback.
 
BWP could be a great asset to the modding community because, as Jarno points out, it does find bugs that may otherwise go unnoticed... and oftentimes drops the ball by not telling anyone outside of the BWP sphere about it. This is a frustrating and long-standing issue. If you tell an author and they ignore it, or you can't find working contact information, so be it--but it's still the bare minimum of courtesy to try and inform them, and should be step one in the process.

Well, let's see, as this issue is a little bit more than controversial... as there are issues with revising the tweaks. As most mod authors would rather not.
Say take this case. Mod authors reply... nothing. Nor the current maintainers, nor anything/one else either. Well, it's still open for discussion, but well whatever...

There's also a theme where nearly everyone* is up in arms with the baldur.bcs scripts that check if the party has an item...., as the containers size starts to lag the game, just by not even containing a thing. *subject to personal perspective.

 

Now... if you want to, you are welcome to be the intermediate factor between BWS and the rest of the community. You can start by just opening this folder and going through the whole thing, one at a time. Ouh, and checking that all the rest of the fixes actually match each others. What was I, the third author of the fix of the kit.ids... and Wisp had to interrupt, before it got any better. Just the 5th coder, depending on how you read the thing...

Yes, that's a quite a task.

 

BWP... yeah, that's purely Leonardo's work, and have you heard of the guy ? I have seen his authorship of the BWP, in regards to others, and ... of various other things, among them the origins of the BiG World, in which the community was split between; "add more" and "make sure that the ground is safe so things could be added"... and neither side really won. Then there's the selection of mods and so forth that have criticism --- all of which kinda makes him a recluse but a good guy, all the same.

This is also why there's two BiG World Fixpacks, the BWP one, and the BWS one(the above folder -link).

 

None of this addresses my request, so I'll reiterate: if BWP (or anyone) finds a problem, tell the author. If they won't or can't do anything about it, or you can't find working contact information, so be it.

 

It's really the least bit of common courtesy I expect.

 

edit: typo

Edited by CamDawg, 06 November 2017 - 06:46 AM.

[The Imp]

...as for the github questions, the one on the github site that told me everything about requests, pulls, branches, and zero data about uploading stuff.

Yeah, it's probably Hebrew for you if you haven't say searched youtube the term: "Tutorial Upload a Project to GitHub on Windows". But after, it shouldn't be.

 

@CamDawg: k, let's see how you take it then.

The last time I was at this,  you missed the memo where your name was not CamDawn, but wasn't. -the point being that I too can speak savage.

Edited by The Imp, 06 November 2017 - 07:40 AM.

[CamDawg]

 @CamDawg: k, let's see how you take it then.

Yes, this is the bare minimum I expect. Thank you.

In this case, it's worthless, and perhaps even detrimental. This is basically my latest Github changes past the last official release of v10, repackaged as "v11 alpha 1". Which is ironic, given that the official current version is v11 beta 2. Hopefully BWP is not applying these outdated changes to players using the actual v11 betas.

The last time I was at this,  you missed the memo where your name was not CamDawn, but wasn't. -the point being that I too can speak savage.

I am not the maintainer or author of SCS, nor have I been previously.

[The Imp]

I am not the maintainer or author of SCS, nor have I been previously.

That's a different subject, the topic wasn't very well received, at least from my point of view. And I stopped updating it after a while...
And if my memory is still intact, the mod maker came back, briefly... but probably never read the thread, anyways he(DavidW) didn't have the time to make a new version. Which lead to the SpellRev version of the SCS...
There was also try that I made with Vlad, that eventually lead to his resurfacing, here*. And that went welll up to helll. *I won't claim to have been the only reason, just a small part, like an Imp.

What comes to BWS applying the patches, if the original code is there no longer, assuming it's replaced by the patched code, then it's not applied as it has no place to start to "replace from". As the patch structure in most cases is:

Existing mod code (black)
- code that is to be replaced (red)
+ code that replaces that (green)
Existing mod code (black)

... it's not always that, but in most cases it is. The color in the brackets is what the Mozilla Firefox shows to me in the standard view on github. And the lines need to be exact.

Imp, don't bother. According to ... such approach, no matter how good a guide might be, you will still find something which you will not like and give up.

Well, I guess you haven't started something new recently ... cause that's way too pessimistic point of view. So I'll keep on trying.

Edited by The Imp, 06 November 2017 - 10:28 AM.

[CamDawg]

In this case, it's worthless, and perhaps even detrimental. This is basically my latest Github changes past the last official release of v10, repackaged as "v11 alpha 1". Which is ironic, given that the official current version is v11 beta 2. Hopefully BWP is not applying these outdated changes to players using the actual v11 betas.

BWS use v10 for BG2. BWFixpack from GitHub will display warring that patch was made for v10 and current version is v11 and let user decide what he should do. Leonardo fixpack will try to apply fixes anyway and reject non-matched parts.

Cheers, and good to know.
 

The reason why BWFixpack exist in the first place was the fact that modders rejected patches which was reported by Leonardo. Or told him that "compatibility with 5 mega-mods" ( it was 'avoid overwriting whole area" ) are not their concerns. Same goes about mod translations: it took months or years to include translations inside mod archive and people who translate mods stooped sending them. If you were unaware those issues then I'm sorry for bringing bad news. Please don't kill messenger.

 

I am not the maintainer or author of SCS, nor have I been previously.

That's a different subject, the topic wasn't very well received, at least from my point of view. And I stopped updating it after a while...
And if my memory is still intact, the mod maker came back, briefly... but probably never read the thread, anyways he(DavidW) didn't have the time to make a new version. Which lead to the SpellRev version of the SCS...
There was also try that I made with Vlad, that eventually lead to his resurfacing, here*. And that went welll up to helll. *I won't claim to have been the only reason, just a small part, like an Imp.

Once again, if the author can't or won't act: so be it. At that point BWP has fulfilled its duty to the author.

Every one of the objections here has been a variant of 'we tried that, and the author was a jerk and/or ignored it'. Look, I get it. I've reported issues and had that experience, and it sucks. I suspect most (if not all) of us here have had that happen as well.

But if you're going to patch someone else's work, at minimum you have a duty--and personally, I'd call it an obligation--to inform them of the issues. That's not a lot to ask.

[Almateria]

Imp, don't bother. According to wiki “As of April 2016, GitHub reports having more than 14 million users and more than 35 million repositories” It's easy to blame everything and find excuses. Whit such approach, no matter how good a guide might be, you will still find something which you will not like and give up.

 

My perfect world is the one in which ppl upload this stuff for me and I can just approve changes lmao. Or "commits".

 

But then again eh. Don't particularly like github even as an end user, it feels like an unreadable mess out of the good ol table-overload Y2K era. Not exactly user friendly to people who use the word "commit" for relationships, and not computer janitoring. My ideal model of distribution is itch.io, of all things, even if that's more for full game projects.

And trust me, figuring out programming is way easier than user interfaces! Code doesn't have malicious intent behind it.

[jastey]

Maybe guest posting should be prohibited in this forum.

[Creepin]

I have split this discussion from here as it is was way offtopic there while being valuable, if not exactly polite, discussion on its own. Oh, and swearing didn't helped so I cut some posts. Please, let us hide that club of acid damage behind our back and pretend for a while we're civilised people

I have salvaged and quoted below what was a valid point in one of erased topics though, especially since I happen to agree :

"It's really the least bit of common courtesy I expect."

Look up 'courtesy'.

When someone goes to the trouble of installing and reinstalling mods in numerous permutations for over 10+ years just to get it all running smoothly, and meticulously documents (and provides fixes) for various bugs and conflicts at every stage, you don't critique them for not going even further and reporting to the author. Especially when nothing comes out of it. It's a waste of time for the BWP team.

On topic, I believe that whomever is doing something, anything, good for mods, like finding and fixing bugs, already benefits community. Demanding of such person any additional actions, as mild and beneficial as they might be, is akin to saying "you did good, but unless you go out of your way to do more good you suck", and this is not a message we should convey to anyone as long as we hope for the mods to be fixed and stuff done. Anyone who cared a shit to did anything beneficial - and adding to BWFixpack is not a small effort, I've tried once and failed! - should be thanked for that with no strings or "common courtesy" reprimands attached.

Edited by Creepin, 07 November 2017 - 01:42 PM.

[jastey]

The work and dedication that goes into BWP aside - it really is courtesy in IE modding that noone just changes someone elses mod(s). Adding fixes is exactly that, so no, you don't just do that and leave it to the modder to find out via strange bug reports that his/her mod was altered code wise or with a new language version. I am surprised we have to discuss about this.

I do understand that it might get forgotten if you are handling a lot of mods that aren't supported any more and I also understand that the frustration after trying to contact modders for years with no effort to not do it the next time, I also understand that it all takes time that can be so easily skipped by just integrating the fix into the fixpack - but don't be surprised if it hits an active modder then who complains about not being contacted, and rightfully so - my2c.

 

Just to be clear:  I am talking about actively maintained mods.

Edited by jastey, 07 November 2017 - 02:00 PM.