SR Revised V1.3.900 (2022 August 8th)

[AL|EN]

@Bartimaeus I guess that we will never see the end of this nonsense with the same tp2 filename and 'extract and overwrite' installation?

[Bartimaeus]

13 hours ago, AL|EN said:

@Bartimaeus I guess that we will never see the end of this nonsense with the same tp2 filename and 'extract and overwrite' installation?

It's a bit troublesome to change it. I only have permission to do it this way, so that would be the first problem to resolve...if it can be. I deliberately asked for this less convenient way with the express purpose of avoiding any issue of "replacing" the original mod. There's also the added bonus that anyone using it is someone who has specifically navigated to these forums, is presumably able to figure out if it's what they actually want vs. the original mod, and read at least enough to be able to figure out how to install it in the unusual way it's given. Nobody is getting the two confused as it stands because of that, which is not at all a guarantee if it's made much more conveniently downloadable and installable. So while I realize it is inconvenient, due to its unusual nature of being a pretty thorough and more or less unsanctioned modification of somebody else's modification, it might be best that it stays this way.

What would you suggest?

[AL|EN]

@Bartimaeus One thing at the time...

I have the impression that your post is written as if you were walking on a swamp or a minefield - one wrong step and an irreversible tragedy will happen. You start with the doubt "can it be solved" and finally you state that "it's better to keep it that way". After reading something like that, it's difficult to continue this topic. But let's try.

You want to avoid any issue of "replacing" the original mod, I get it. Is this is the main reason of the terrible distribution model of SRR? Because you way of achieving this goal is odd: use the same site and forum as original mod, use the same tp2 filename and partially the same mod display name, finally make players ( who actually enjoy you vision) life miserable. For me it looks like opposite of the goal. If you really fear about this unproved assumption that 'someone can confuse this mod with the original if I make full package' then there is much better way to prevent this.

18 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

What would you suggest?

The situation with SRR and IRR is becoming yet another 'Fixpack nightmare' and I don't want it becomes a 'standard practice'. Whatever it takes. If the "rules" prevents this to happen then those rules are acting against players and progres/mod improvements so they need to be challenged. Whatever it takes. Somehow I do not see Demi returning after 3 years of absence, being angry and screaming at you only because while fixing his mod bugs, you created something on you own, which you would like to share with the players.

My suggestion for you is: release mod under separate mod/vision, using different display name and tp2 filename, keeping all necessary authorship information etc. Then there will be no place for confusion of which mod players use. It was you goal, right? Is there any better way to do it?

[Bartimaeus]

Is the psychoanalysis really necessary? The fact of the matter is it's not my mod (~90% of both IRR and SRR are not my work - even if I have made edits to 100% of the files doesn't make them my work, since such changes are incremental), and therefore it's not totally up to me. That's all. It's not in any way technically difficult to effect a change from:

~ITEM_REV/ITEM_REV.TP2~ #0 #0 // Item Revisions by Demivrgvs: V4 Beta 10 (Revised 1.2.5)

to

~IR_REVISED/IR_REVISED.TP2~ #0 #0 // IR Revised by Demivrgvs & Bartimaeus: 1.2.5

That would take, what, a couple of minutes tops to do? But you literally only have to look directly above your original post to find someone who's unhappy that this version of the mod even exists, nevermind any talk of stepping on the toes of the original even more. I have graciously received permission from @Mike1072 to host IRR and SRR here in their current form for the people that might want it as an alternative during the absence of Demi. Furthermore, Mike has been previously clear that any "creative" changes will not be integrated into the base mod - he's even been a little stingy about stuff as basic as text fixes, which I understand, because some of them are pretty subjective and I am sure he wants to preserve Demi's work as much as reasonably possible given that Demi is the author, and I am not.

Maybe I should just have each component require that the main component of the official versions of the mods be already installed before it can proceed. Except that wouldn't really work, either, since there's a bunch of patching stuff that would have to be either...some combination of disabled or removed and redone, and the base versions of IR and SR drop a boatload of item and spell icons that I would need to remove somehow because IRR and SRR have very different implementations of how to do it (both base IR and SR are very overwrite-of-the-original-icons happy, whereas SRR and IRR take a bit of a more nuanced approach depending on what's most appropriate)...ugh. I do it this way because it's the cleanest method with the least to go wrong, even if it's a bit of an inconvenience. So yeah, I'm not really sure how to solve this.

[AL|EN]

Sure, SR/IR are not your mods. You don't claim that they are. But all of the 'incremental' work is yours, even if it's incremental. If it's not 'you' work, then how it comes to exist in the first place? It's you who made it happen and available for players, not some fairy. Incremental work has the same value as making original work. This also doesn't mean that you claiming that you are the only author of the work, right? 

Mike1072 will to preserve Demi's work is totally understandable and I agree that original SR and IR mods should not contains other people "creative" changes. But this doesn't mean that you "creative" changes cannot be released as separate mod. Yes, Demi is the author, nobody claim otherwise. By releasing a separate mod you don't claim that you are the author of the whole mod, right?

Releasing a separate mod which would require SR/IR main components seems like a thing. Except that (based on you own words) it doesn't work, due to technical differences of the implementation (which IMHO you mod does it better). Not only it would be time consuming, ineffective but it could also lead to errors. My experience with Fixpack says the same thing: creating patches for mods is ineffective and it should no longer be done. And extracting process needs to be repeated every time! Clearly that's not a solution which you want to give for players.

It seems that the only one way (which makes sense from the time/mistakes perspective) to fixing mod bugs/having own creative work and at the same time, avoiding repetition of the Fixpack nightmare, is releasing full mod package. So that's the way how it should be done. And such way should be acceptable under the condition that all previous authorship information regarding original work is preserved.

As a player, I'm as angry as subtledoctor when it comes to fixing SR/IR bugs via separate mod/fixpack. I just want to have a separate mod, which I can relay to be bug-less, up to date, maintained, with easy and clear install order and also available for other mods to react to it. So please simply release separate mod with different tp2 name as full package and end this nightmare.

Edited August 6, 2019 by AL|EN
typos

[subtledoctor]

A very clean way to do this wpuld be something like:

- List all the changes vs. the base mods

- Code them up as patches in Weidu

- Toss a "REQUIRE_COMPONENT ~spell_rev~" in the beginning. 

- Make a proper Readme for players to peruse. 

That would be advantageous in a lot of ways; not least, the changes could be divvied up into different components, so players would have more fine-grained control over what they use from SR and what they use from SRR.

However, that would be a lot of time and work just to get to the same result, and @Bartimaeus has stated in no uncertain terms that he does not mean for this to be a published mod in its own right. I understand you want things to be easy for players, and make as many mods compatible with PI as possible - and that's admirable. But we should respect modders' desires for how to distribute their work, and @Bartimaeus has well-thought-out reasons for his preferences. 

(Me, I just get grumpy when I see stuff like "SR has been unworked on for years" when there have been 5 releases since 2016.)

Edited August 6, 2019 by subtledoctor

[AL|EN]

@subtledoctor Sure, I respect what he currently do. But it seems that decision regarding distribution was not made entire by him. It more of an site admins decision. So I'm challenging this decision now.

@Mike1072 Please allow Bartimaeus to create full packages of the SRR and IRR mods which will contain his creative work. 

 

[DrAzTiK]

just an idea about balacing spells  : 

-physicall mrror (priest level 6) : I would raise the duration to 5 turns to make this spell a long duration one. Because   currently , priests are really naked in terms of prebuff. (the last version of SCS with IWD spells try to fix it )

- regenerate (level 7) looks weak Imo. I would increase the regerate rate to 2hp/round. (

haste level 3 : I find the two rounds fatigue duration a bit short considering this spell remain very powerfull. (  don't forget that increase the movement rate is a big advantage fo the player who can exploit it a lot). Also the duration is far more superior than the vanilla one so I think this spell should be nerfed more or get more drawback.

Or maybe decrease the movement rate bonus  to only +2 or +3  if you prefer to keep the two round fatigue duration.

==> I admit that I am really against everything that increase the movement rate too easily ( and I only use on set of boots of speed in my game witch is supposed to be a unique item).

Edited August 8, 2019 by DrAzTiK

[Mike1072]

On 8/4/2019 at 4:53 PM, Bartimaeus said:

It's a bit troublesome to change it. I only have permission to do it this way, so that would be the first problem to resolve...if it can be. I deliberately asked for this less convenient way with the express purpose of avoiding any issue of "replacing" the original mod. There's also the added bonus that anyone using it is someone who has specifically navigated to these forums, is presumably able to figure out if it's what they actually want vs. the original mod, and read at least enough to be able to figure out how to install it in the unusual way it's given. Nobody is getting the two confused as it stands because of that, which is not at all a guarantee if it's made much more conveniently downloadable and installable. So while I realize it is inconvenient, due to its unusual nature of being a pretty thorough and more or less unsanctioned modification of somebody else's modification, it might be best that it stays this way.

What would you suggest?

@AL|EN only cares that this distribution method makes it harder to include the mod in his install tool.

On 8/5/2019 at 12:02 PM, AL|EN said:

@Bartimaeus One thing at the time...

I have the impression that your post is written as if you were walking on a swamp or a minefield - one wrong step and an irreversible tragedy will happen. You start with the doubt "can it be solved" and finally you state that "it's better to keep it that way". After reading something like that, it's difficult to continue this topic. But let's try.

 You want to avoid any issue of "replacing" the original mod, I get it. Is this is the main reason of the terrible distribution model of SRR? Because you way of achieving this goal is odd: use the same site and forum as original mod, use the same tp2 filename and partially the same mod display name, finally make players ( who actually enjoy you vision) life miserable. For me it looks like opposite of the goal. If you really fear about this unproved assumption that 'someone can confuse this mod with the original if I make full package' then there is much better way to prevent this.

The situation with SRR and IRR is becoming yet another 'Fixpack nightmare' and I don't want it becomes a 'standard practice'. Whatever it takes. If the "rules" prevents this to happen then those rules are acting against players and progres/mod improvements so they need to be challenged. Whatever it takes. Somehow I do not see Demi returning after 3 years of absence, being angry and screaming at you only because while fixing his mod bugs, you created something on you own, which you would like to share with the players.

My suggestion for you is: release mod under separate mod/vision, using different display name and tp2 filename, keeping all necessary authorship information etc. Then there will be no place for confusion of which mod players use. It was you goal, right? Is there any better way to do it?

On 8/6/2019 at 3:41 AM, AL|EN said:

Sure, SR/IR are not your mods. You don't claim that they are. But all of the 'incremental' work is yours, even if it's incremental. If it's not 'you' work, then how it comes to exist in the first place? It's you who made it happen and available for players, not some fairy. Incremental work has the same value as making original work. This also doesn't mean that you claiming that you are the only author of the work, right? 

Mike1072 will to preserve Demi's work is totally understandable and I agree that original SR and IR mods should not contains other people "creative" changes. But this doesn't mean that you "creative" changes cannot be released as separate mod. Yes, Demi is the author, nobody claim otherwise. By releasing a separate mod you don't claim that you are the author of the whole mod, right?

Releasing a separate mod which would require SR/IR main components seems like a thing. Except that (based on you own words) it doesn't work, due to technical differences of the implementation (which IMHO you mod does it better). Not only it would be time consuming, ineffective but it could also lead to errors. My experience with Fixpack says the same thing: creating patches for mods is ineffective and it should no longer be done. And extracting process needs to be repeated every time! Clearly that's not a solution which you want to give for players.

It seems that the only one way (which makes sense from the time/mistakes perspective) to fixing mod bugs/having own creative work and at the same time, avoiding repetition of the Fixpack nightmare, is releasing full mod package. So that's the way how it should be done. And such way should be acceptable under the condition that all previous authorship information regarding original work is preserved.

 As a player, I'm as angry as subtledoctor when it comes to fixing SR/IR bugs via separate mod/fixpack. I just want to have a separate mod, which I can relay to be bug-less, up to date, maintained, with easy and clear install order and also available for other mods to react to it. So please simply release separate mod with different tp2 name as full package and end this nightmare.

1. Taking a mod and adding/editing content does not give someone the right to release that version without permission.
2. IRR is not a separate mod.  It is Bartimaeus' customised version of IR, available for others to use if they wish.  Branching it into a full mod would make maintainability much more of a headache than it already is.

On 8/5/2019 at 3:34 PM, Bartimaeus said:

I have graciously received permission from @Mike1072 to host IRR and SRR here in their current form for the people that might want it as an alternative during the absence of Demi. Furthermore, Mike has been previously clear that any "creative" changes will not be integrated into the base mod - he's even been a little stingy about stuff as basic as text fixes, which I understand, because some of them are pretty subjective and I am sure he wants to preserve Demi's work as much as reasonably possible given that Demi is the author, and I am not.

To be clear, I'm not against including creative changes for IR or SR.  However, my role in creating the mods was always focused on the technical side rather than the item and spell design.  I provided feedback for some of the design ideas, but inclusion was always a consensus-driven affair led by Demi.  If the community gets together and says, yes, we actually prefer implementation X over implementation Y, then I'm in favour of including it.  I'm just not the guy to figure that out.  Edit: I'm also not the guy to implement .itm/.spl changes.

Regarding text changes, I acted as an editor for both IR and SR descriptions, so I have some of my own subjective opinions about them. I did implement a good portion of your suggestions into IR, but you're right, not all of them.

On a technical level, it's been difficult to incorporate the things that we would automatically accept from your versions, like bug fixes, because they're not separated from any of the other changes.  And as I said above, I'm not the guy to know if those changes are good or not.  In an ideal world, your version would have a perfect git history breaking apart each individual alteration, from bug fix to content change, so we could go through them one-by-one, applying them to the base mod as desired, but that's not the case.

On 8/7/2019 at 2:31 AM, AL|EN said:

@subtledoctor Sure, I respect what he currently do. But it seems that decision regarding distribution was not made entire by him. It more of an site admins decision. So I'm challenging this decision now.

@Mike1072 Please allow Bartimaeus to create full packages of the SRR and IRR mods which will contain his creative work. 

I haven't said no, but Bartimaeus has never asked.  Please stay out of it.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Mike1072
I'm just not that guy

[AL|EN]

@Mike1072

13 minutes ago, Mike1072 said:

@AL|EN only cares that this distribution method makes it harder to include the mod in his install tool.

This is simply not true. The tedious, repetitive and unnecessary tasks for IRR/SRR installation are valid regardless of install tool! Anyone who did it more than once can see it. Please turn off the 'anything which AL|EN says == it's for his install tool' logic condition.

1 hour ago, Mike1072 said:

• Taking a mod and adding/editing content does not give someone the right to release that version without permission.
• IRR is not a separate mod.  It is Bartimaeus' customised version of IR, available for others to use if they wish.  Branching it into a full mod would make maintainability much more of a headache than it already is.

Nobody is talking about releasing 'without permission', thus my request to allow him to do it.

For who? Any 'fixes' from SRR/IRR could be transferred into SR/IR by maintainer. Complete mod packages for SRR/IRR would take of the maintenance burden from Bartimaeus and it would avoid tedious and unnecessary work for players, who like me, will always prefer Bartimaeus version.

23 minutes ago, Mike1072 said:

I haven't said no, but Bartimaeus has never asked.  Please stay out of it.

Hi didn't ask? Maybe he was afraid of even touching this sensitive topic, given the 'copyright atmosphere'? Giving up the reasons, now we at last know and I'm glad that I touched this topic.

I will gladly stary out of this when it will no longer the case. I just need to know if there is a will to solve all of this.

[Bartimaeus]

On 8/7/2019 at 11:58 PM, DrAzTiK said:

just an idea about balacing spells  : 

-physicall mrror (priest level 6) : I would raise the duration to 5 turns to make this spell a long duration one. Because   currently , priests are really naked in terms of prebuff. (the last version of SCS with IWD spells try to fix it )

- regenerate (level 7) looks weak Imo. I would increase the regerate rate to 2hp/round. (

haste level 3 : I find the two rounds fatigue duration a bit short considering this spell remain very powerfull. (  don't forget that increase the movement rate is a big advantage fo the player who can exploit it a lot). Also the duration is far more superior than the vanilla one so I think this spell should be nerfed more or get more drawback.

Or maybe decrease the movement rate bonus  to only +2 or +3  if you prefer to keep the two round fatigue duration.

==> I admit that I am really against everything that increase the movement rate too easily ( and I only use on set of boots of speed in my game witch is supposed to be a unique item).

Physical Mirror is actually supposed to be 1 turn + 1 round/level, but there are technical and compatibility problems between ToBEx, the EEs, and 1pp that prevent this same as Protection from Missiles from having a variable duration that I would have to solve first (although the fact that Physical Mirror is 2 turns is a pretty good argument for Protection from Missiles being upped to 2 turns in the interim at least).

I assume you meant 2 hp/sec with Regeneration, since the rate is currently 1 hp/sec, not 1 hp/round. Yeah, I've mucked with Regeneration before (especially when I was working on the Regenerate Wound series of spells), but didn't find anything I particularly liked. Vanilla gives 3 hp / second for 1 round/2 levels (up to 1 turn for 180 HP at 20th level)...hmm.

If players want to horribly abuse movement speed exploits, it is beyond anything I can do to fix it outside of literally removing everything that gives movement speed bonuses. It's an exploit that's existed as long as these games have, and it's an extremely powerful one in the majority of encounters, and veteran players should probably not be using it unless they're playing with crazy difficulty settings/mods where it's borderline required. So in terms of non-exploity use, it's still a very good spell (though not as good as vanilla's version), but I don't feel it's exceptionally powerful.

@Mike1072 Thanks for your input, and I perfectly understand your position, hence why I have never pushed on the subject (but have had to make a number of defenses now). As to the nature of Alien's request, this problem does not affect me at all (as I do not use any automated tools to install and it is not particularly difficult to extract one more zip file among dozens of others - I'm surprised that this would apparently pose any problem for an automated install tool, as it's literally just a matter of extracting IR/SR first, then IRR/SRR second: is it really that difficult?), so I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole thing.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Bartimaeus

[Mike1072]

46 minutes ago, Arthas said:

I agree wholeheartedly with Alien. Read it only now and I find it silly that alien is patronized because he made the tool. If I was him after reading your words I would have regretted making it

This isn't the first change @AL|EN has requested that primarily benefits automated mod installs.  I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, or that the changes wouldn't have some value for manual installs.  Just that it isn't what @AL|EN cares about.  I find it disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

He came in here asking if the situation could be changed, got denied with a reasonable explanation, then went on a rant bemoaning our "rules" and beseeching us to do something, anything, to solve it.  Basically, stirring up a shitstorm, and for what?  Is this such a terrible burden that it must be addressed, post-haste?  Not for a player who wants to install the mod manually, it isn't.  It might be a burden for an author of a mod installation tool that would need custom logic to handle this situation.

The place we're in with SR and SRR now isn't perfect, but in order to save himself some trouble, @AL|EN was willing to push work onto the mod authors... all in the best interests of players, of course.

[Jarno Mikkola]

4 hours ago, Mike1072 said:

Is this such a terrible burden that it must be addressed, post-haste?  Not for a player who wants to install the mod manually, it isn't.  It might be a burden for an author of a mod installation tool that would need custom logic to handle this situation.

Well, let's see. The difference that one needs to do in order for a computer program and an individual to do the same job... how large is it ? A custom loop for either...

I bet you have yourself installed multiple mods...see, you are not seeing this from the perspective of a first time installer.

Do you want to install a SR v4 Beta 17 or SRR v1.1.0 ? How the cheese, do I choose ? I would go with the more numerous one, so with:

SR v 4 beta 17 v1.1.0

.. ouh, cheese, what did I just install ? And where the cheese do I request help from ? F man.

[Bartimaeus]

The update to beta 18 is complete on github, with the new spell icons from b18 and the SCS-style handling of new spells all implemented. However, I'd like to quickly run through things and make sure there aren't any glaring issues as well as look at a last few bugs reported from others before officially releasing a new version.

[Salk]

Thanks for this new update, Bartimaeus.

Looking forward to playing with SRR in a not too distant future, hopefully.