The Obligatory Ding0 Thread

[jester]

100th time of TOB? You must be kidding me. That means I still have 98 times to go. The biggest virtue of any venue should be that it should be as flexible as possible and stack with most of the wider used mods around. Me luves Weidu. More quests would be nice. I don't think that at higher levels most kits play out that differently, Hubelpot and the slime guy being notable exceptions as their backdrop is well done.

[NiGHTMARE]

A fair number of people are somewhat concerned that with the amount of material planned, not a lot's gonna get done any time soon.

So? It's not as if there's a shortage of other mods that'll be released in the meantime!

 

Let me just say that we are planning to make lots of seperate mods, but they'll only be available privately. "LoI Quests", "LoI Kits", "LoI Items", "LoI Battles", "LoI Tweaks", etc are all on the agenda. The reason we're keeping them private is mainly because they'll often be heavily reliant on each other, so we'd either have to released all the interdependent ones at the same time, or have many of the same files in two mods. Both of which seem pointless when they could all just be merged into one.

 

So if anyone desperately wants to use a particular aspect of the mod sooner rather than later, volunteer to be a betatester!

 

In the past, mods that attempted to do thousands of awesome things at once haven't been very good.

That's generally been because a lack of knowledge/skills/tools! I fail to see how lots of seperate mods would have a superior quality level to one big mod, considering both would have the exact same content. In fact, releasing lots of seperate mods would take a lot more time than one big one, since we'd have to deal with feedback from every single mod as and when we get it rather than get it once everything's been finished.

 

Modern modding has generally come to settle on the fact that for stuff to get done, it's often wise to focus mods around a set of similar ideas, rather than a mish-mash of quests, kits, items, rules changes, and so on.

Correction: certain people within the community have come to settle on this fact. I for one disagree - I find it incredibly tedious having to install a hundred (or whatever) mods when they could have been combined into one.

 

One suggestion has been that LoI might stand a better chance of being completed sooner if it... was no longer LoI, but rather a series of subsidiary mods.

See above. Lots of individual mods would IMHO take more time than one big one, not less.

 

You're planning to add loads of NPCs. That's all well and good, but NPCs make mods on their own, and aiming to add several just as a nice afterthought isn't going to help matters.

They're hardly an "afterthought" - several of them were planned since the beginning. It's not as if we have one person working on five or six NPCs either - the maximum number of NPCs any individual plans to work on is three.

 

I'm not saying abandon the LoI NPCs, but rather that it might prove more sensible to separate the NPCs into individual mods looked after by their respective developers.

One major problem with this: the NPCs will make extensive use of the new areas, non-joinable characters, kits, items, spells, interjections for the new quests, etc. Obviously we could include the characters, kits, items, and spells in the individual mods, but the areas are another problem.

 

Besides the issue of an extensive amount of hard disk space wasted by having the same new areas in more the one mod, it's likely that most of the NPCs will be finished long before all the areas and quests, so we couldn't release these NPCs until the majority of the mod had already been finished. Releasing the NPCs when everything is almost finished seems rather pointless to me.

 

Customisation of PCs is all well and good, as is revamping kits, but it doesn't really have much to do with the NPCs, quests, or other ideas in LoI. It too would quite easily warrant being a separate mod.

Other than the fact the NPCs also make use of the exact same customizations...

 

I hope it's vaguely understandable what I'm saying. WeiDU means that there's really no reason to mash lots of stuff into one big mod. Smaller chunks is a far nicer way to handle things.

Nicer how? It's less convenient (note I said "less convenient", not "more difficult") for the users to install; though individual components will be available sooner, the total will take a longer amount of time due to dealing with extensive feedback for aspects of the mod when we're trying to work on other parts; since certain components are heavily reliant on others, it would require an extensive amount of duplication between mods, meaning extra coding hassle, wasted hard disk space (particularly in the case of areas), etc.

[SimDing0]

Let me just say that we are planning to make lots of seperate mods, but they'll only be available privately.  "LoI Quests", "LoI Kits", "LoI Items", "LoI Battles", "LoI Tweaks", etc are all on the agenda.  The reason we're keeping them private is mainly because they'll often be heavily reliant on each other, so we'd either have to released all the interdependent ones at the same time, or have many of the same files in two mods.  Both of which seem pointless when they could all just be merged into one.

I'd personally be rather upset if I HAD to install the LoI battles or something to get the new quests. But if it's interdependent, are you still having optional components within the package?

 

That's generally been because a lack of knowledge/skills/tools!   I fail to see how lots of seperate mods would have a superior quality level to one big mod, considering both would have the exact same content.  In fact, releasing lots of seperate mods would take a lot more time than one big one, since we'd have to deal with feedback from every single mod as and when we get it rather than get it once everything's been finished.

Any large mod more modern than TDD has been developed using basically all the tools we have now. But... you're saying it's coincidence that smaller mods seem to be almost unfailingly of a higher quality than large ones?

 

Correction: certain people within the community have come to settle on this fact.

Then it's probably a case of having a choice between following the examples of Weimer and Compton, or following the example of... TDD.

 

I for one disagree - I find it incredibly tedious having to install a hundred (or whatever) mods when they could have been combined into one.

This relies on everyone wanting to install every part of LoI though. That's not gonna be the case. As separate mods, they can pick and choose.

 

See above.  Lots of individual mods would IMHO take more time than one big one, not less.

Bad choice of words on my part. Something's gonna be completed sooner, though.

 

They're hardly an "afterthought" - several of them were planned since the beginning.  It's not as if we have one person working on five or six NPCs either - the maximum number of NPCs any individual plans to work on is three.

Um... gah?

 

One person working on three NPCs, and you've got multiple people doing this? Kelsey took what... a year to develop? Like I say, there's a reason NPCs are mods in their own right.

 

One major problem with this: the NPCs will make extensive use of the new areas, non-joinable characters, kits, items, spells, interjections for the new quests, etc.  Obviously we could include the characters, kits, items, and spells in the individual mods, but the areas are another problem.

WeiDU can easily add NPC interjections or whatever to LoI's other content if it finds it installed.

 

Besides the issue of an extensive amount of hard disk space wasted by having the same new areas in more the one mod, it's likely that most of the NPCs will be finished long before all the areas and quests, so we couldn't release these NPCs until the majority of the mod had already been finished.  Releasing the NPCs when everything is almost finished seems rather pointless to me.

That's... weird. You're concentrating on NPCs, then?

 

If we compare Kelsey's development time of 1 year, which is pretty arbitrary but probably not too inaccurate, to Quest Pack's, which was effectively a few weeks, I'm think there's little reason for the NPCs to be finished first.

 

Nicer how? It's less convenient (note I said "less convenient", not "more difficult")  for the users to install; though individual components will be available sooner, the total will take a longer amount of time due to dealing with extensive feedback for aspects of the mod when we're trying to work on other parts; since certain components are heavily reliant on others, it would require an extensive amount of duplication between mods, meaning extra coding hassle, wasted hard disk space (particularly in the case of areas), etc.

I'd rather download the mods I want than face another 300MB download package... and that's WITH a good connection. And isn't extensive feedback usually a good thing?

[Andyr]

Hmm, long thread.

 

For NPCs with new kits and stuff, they can be made independent of other parts by using invisible, unique kits, so we could have Kivan with his kit working without the general kit revamp thing going on.

 

Whatever happens, stuff will be in optional components where possible.

 

Hmmm, will post more later...

[Domi]

What are people suggesting? That they'd like to see quests, kits and NPCs as largely separate mod releases?

It depends how tightly the components are intemingled. I'd say that if you aim for seemless integrity - go for trimming content and releasing it as one mod (core added NPCs and their quests in conjunction with kits). If you want to include every cool idea on the list go for what Sim had suggested. Alternatively, you can subdivide it into PC-enhancment component (PC-available kits, clerics revamp and mages stuff) and story-enhancing component. I suggest then that you prioritize the component that is mostly finished, put all others aside and work for its release.

[NiGHTMARE]

I'd personally be rather upset if I HAD to install the LoI battles or something to get the new quests. But if it's interdependent, are you still having optional components within the package?

There's a list of planned components in this thread.

 

Any large mod more modern than TDD has been developed using basically all the tools we have now. But... you're saying it's coincidence that smaller mods seem to be almost unfailingly of a higher quality than large ones?

Considering there are so few big mods at the moment it isn't really fair to compare statistics. Though having said that, there are plenty of small mods I hold in much worse regards than Tortured Souls or Check the Bodies...

 

Then it's probably a case of having a choice between following the examples of Weimer and Compton, or following the example of... TDD.

Actually, I was more referring to the fact that there tonnes of excellent large mods; there just aren't many for the Infinity Engine.

 

Yes I know when you said "in the past, mods that attempted to do thousands of awesome things at once haven't been very good" you were probably only referring to mods for the Infinty Engine games, but if there are top quality large mods for other games, why shouldn't it be possible to make one for the IE?

 

This relies on everyone wanting to install every part of LoI though. That's not gonna be the case. As separate mods, they can pick and choose.

But they can still pick and chose if they're components within one mod. They just won't have to deal with dozens of megabytes of duplicate files.

 

One person working on three NPCs, and you've got multiple people doing this? Kelsey took what... a year to develop? Like I say, there's a reason NPCs are mods in their own right.

First of all, you're forgetting that some of these NPCs (e.g. Kivan and Elai) have already been almost completely written. One of my other NPCs, Jaina, has a substantial amount of work already done as well.

 

Second, there's no reason whatsoever NPC mods should take so long. I wrote most of Kivan's dialogue within a month or so, and the reason he's taking so damned long is because of an inadequate knowledge of coding, lack of time and general laziness. The first two of these problems is no longer much of an issue, and getting around the third one just requires motivation .

 

I mean, BG2 has 16 NPCs and it didn't take 16 years to develop, now did it?

 

WeiDU can easily add NPC interjections or whatever to LoI's other content if it finds it installed.

But that would require the non-party members and areas to be finished before the NPCS, whereas they'll actually be done the other way around.

 

That's... weird. You're concentrating on NPCs, then?

Uh, no. I'm just concentrating on different aspects of a mod at a time, and even have a work plan detailing what order I'm going to work on things in. It just happens that I've decided to save the quest work until after I've written my NPCs. Off the top of my head, I'll be concentrating on kits, then (finally) finishing off Kivan, then improving certain existing creatures, then items, then Jaina, then areas, then Tahlemar, and finally quests.

 

If we compare Kelsey's development time of 1 year, which is pretty arbitrary but probably not too inaccurate, to Quest Pack's, which was effectively a few weeks, I'm think there's little reason for the NPCs to be finished first.

It's not a question of how long everything will take. As mentioned above, I've specified an order for which I want to work on things, and it just happens quests will be one of the last things to be done. I guess in your case I could say I'm "saving the best 'till last" .

 

As mentioned above, I think a top quality NPC could be developed in far less than a year. One day NPCs prove that a tonne of work can be done in a single day, so if someone were to do that amount of work on an individual NPC one day a week for a couple of months they'd have a fully fleshed out character.

 

I'd rather download the mods I want than face another 300MB download package... and that's WITH a good connection. And isn't extensive feedback usually a good thing?

But you want the new quests, the majority of which make extensive use of new areas. So even if we did release the quest pack seperately, it'd be the largest of the mods by far anyway!

[SimDing0]

Okay, so having optional components voids the argument that having one large mod allows you to better integrate content, since you have to cater for the possibility of one being installed without the other anyway. Therefore, the only benefit of a large mod is... avoiding duplicating content? There's unlikely to be that much that gets duplicated, really, and it certainly beats forcing everyone to download awkwardly large packages.

[NiGHTMARE]

Look through the thread I linked to and you'll see the three things which will take the longest to make, i.e. areas, NPCs and quests, are in the same component. Similarly the things that take up the most diskspace, i.e. areas, animations, sounds, etc will be in this component as well.

 

As for the other components:

 

- Battles+

 

Obviously Battles is already released, and I don't want to step on Moonfruit by releasing an improved version of his mod seperately. Also, several of the additions will be things that make new LoI creatures tougher, so you'd need the main LoI component for this to work anyway.

 

- Spells

 

If you want a mod which only adds new spells, wait for Lost Crossroads! Cleric Remix will be adding various new priest spells as well.

 

- Kits and customizations

 

Cleric Remix is going to be part of LoI's kit component, and of couse a beta of this is already available. We have discussed releasing some of the other new kits in seperate mods, so watch this space for more info on that .

[Mongoose87]

Cleric Remix is going to be part of LoI's kit component, and of couse a beta of this is already available.  We have discussed releasing some of the other new kits in seperate mods, so watch this space for more info on that .

By this do you mean a beta for cleric remix or for the kit component of LoI? If it's the latter, I need to do some dling urgently.

[NiGHTMARE]

I mean a beta for the Cleric Remix . There is an alpha of LoI's kits available which contains all the ranger kits, but it's only available to people who can access the workroom .

[Corradun]

I'm trying to get an alpha for some items and stores up but with separation from the military, possible move all across country, baby on the way, and selling my house it is cutting into my modding time a bit. Try and be patient with me.

[Andyr]

Wow, that sounds pretty busy. Congratulations on the baby!

[Guest Guest]

As a player, I have to say that I look forward mostly to the quests, maybe items.

 

The NPCs and kits are throwaways for me.

 

My own modding experience amounts to copying and pasting thus far, so I can't begin to understand all that you guys have to work over, but I would suggest that the quest portion be released first.

 

If interest is sufficient, continue with the other components.

[icelus]

Preach on, brother/sister!

[Joe]

T'was me! I forgot to login before I posted.