The instructions of EET are very misleading

[Alonso]

The instructions of EET are very misleading. They recommend the player to use either Project Infinity or the EE/EET Mod Install Tool. There are very serious problems with both tools that are not mentioned anywhere in the instructions:

• Project Infinity: In most cases it simply doesn't work. Project Infinity is too difficult to use for the vast majority of gamers. Only super advanced power gamers with some programming knowledge (like myself) can make PI work, and even for them it's very difficult. Other gamers who try to use PI just manage to waste their time and get frustrated.
• EET Mod Install Tool: Apparently this tool does an awful lot of nasty things to the game without even telling the player. I might be wrong here because I haven't dared to try this myself, but lots has been said about this by reputed community members, so I'm quite confident that that information is accurate.

I think it's unfair to recommend gamers to use these tools and let them believe that they will allow them to get a proper EET installation when that's really not the case.

[Jarno Mikkola]

40 minutes ago, Alonso said:

or the EE/EET Mod Install Tool.

Are you sure it was not BWS, but the quoted entry ?

Asking cause the BWS was murdered by the Roxanne and the PI people together, by their disagreement, on handling day to day problems, with tiny group size, and two different approaches.

Now, the EET relied on it's past for the one thing to remain as it was, which at it failed at... but there hasn't been the time to make a better, all the required research and implementation. Simply because the group of 2 was slip in half and ...

Sure, I would live to see you come up with better EVERYTHING. It's not that hard, just poor yourself a 1000 hours of throubleshooting in dynamic systems and autogenerated code and a job on the side and all that, easy as a pie.

[Alonso]

3 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Are you sure it was not BWS, but the quoted entry ?

Yes, I'm sure the EET instructions recommend that the player uses the EE/EET Mod Install Tool.

About the rest of your post, I'm afraid I don't understand how it relates to the topic of this thread.

[Jarno Mikkola]

36 minutes ago, Alonso said:

About the rest of your post, I'm afraid I don't understand how it relates to the topic of this thread.

Just trying to explain the current circumstances.

The PI is refered as a successor of the BWS, and there's this lofty quote I got you:

On 1/15/2016 at 8:41 PM, K4thos said:

So yeah, installing many mods with beta EET is a nightmare. But when EET will be released officially it will be fully supported by Big World Setup.

So it's a little more of the hopeful future, than the current apocalypse we find ourselves in. As in "the end of the world" as we knew it, with a more or less worse as instead.

[Alonso]

4 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

So it's a little more of the hopeful future

It doesn't make sense to publish instructions about how things will work in the future (which might or might not happen anyway). The instructions should explain how things work (or don't work) in the present.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Really ?

You are free to do that ... and see if the forum maintainers pick up the hint and pin the thread. No one said you can't. This is a modern democratic forum, after all.

PS, I am the one that said this in a similar topic on SHSforum:

Quote

It had been forever since anyone had put this kind of topic in these forums... I took up the charge.

So I know...

Edited October 31, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[jastey]

@Alonso Look, I get that you are unhappy with PI. But there is no need to go around and tell these negative things if there are clearly other players who manage to install their mods fine by using it.

As for the actual criticism: Of course it would be great if all instructions everywhere were up-to-date and would reflect all aspects of everything. But IE modding is a hobby, done by people in their spare time. Not everyone feels equally about this topic and often RL just steps in the way, too.

What else do you expect the EET instructions to say? There is no other automated installer and "Don't use either PI nor the EE Setup Tool because both are crap" is probably not a very constructive way to approach this. That is why I have the feeling you just started this thread so you could vent your anger about PI.

[Cahir]

4 hours ago, Alonso said:

The instructions of EET are very misleading. They recommend the player to use either Project Infinity or the EE/EET Mod Install Tool. There are very serious problems with both tools that are not mentioned anywhere in the instructions:

• Project Infinity: In most cases it simply doesn't work. Project Infinity is too difficult to use for the vast majority of gamers. Only super advanced power gamers with some programming knowledge (like myself) can make PI work, and even for them it's very difficult. Other gamers who try to use PI just manage to waste their time and get frustrated.
• EET Mod Install Tool: Apparently this tool does an awful lot of nasty things to the game without even telling the player. I might be wrong here because I haven't dared to try this myself, but lots has been said about this by reputed community members, so I'm quite confident that that information is accurate.

I think it's unfair to recommend gamers to use these tools and let them believe that they will allow them to get a proper EET installation when that's really not the case.

Look, you can install mods manually if you have trouble using mod installer, that's perfectly fine. Both mod installers appeal to different audience. PI is more for users that know exactly which mods they want to install and in which load order should they use to work them together nicely. For those players PI can save an immense amount of time, especially when they want to play around with install order a bit, and need to re-install often. I find using PI a blast even if setting it up took me a bit. One just need to learn how to use it. Once you do it, it's like a breeze.

EET Mod Install tool on the other hand is for users that don't want to spend a time to think about install order and don't have a clear mod list prepared in their minds. They just want to sit, pick up some mods they think are cool and make the tool do all the dirty work for them. And that's a fine approach too. There is just one (in my opinion HUGE problem with EET tool). It uses unauthorized mod versions, modified gameplay and content-wise to work better with The Sandrah Saga, which is the signature mod of EET tool maintainer, Roxanne. Also, some "mod conflicts" claimed by Roxanne are often debatable or even blatantly false, which lead to a significant bug reports passed to original mod authors that are a result of unauthorized changes made by Roxanne rather than originated from original code.

K4thos was not around lately here at G3 and PI was in its early alpha stage back when he wrote his recommendations. It's in much more refined state right now and it's still developed not only to accommodate players needs, but also to make mod integration much easier for mod authors. It won't allow you to download mods directly and won't order mods in the proper way for you, but it will save you a huge amount of time while installing and reinstalling mods using a modlist prepared beforehand.

Saying everywhere that PI is impossibly difficult to use is disrespectful to its author and simply not true. I'd appreciate if you could stop selling this notion. There are people here and at Beamdog's that were successfully using this tool and definitely can help you to set it up.

[Alonso]

9 minutes ago, jastey said:

there is no need to go around and tell these negative things if there are clearly other players who manage to install their mods fine by using it

Maybe you should make up your mind about this. In the thread I linked to in the first post you said very negative things about the EET Mod Install Tool (when I talked about reputed members of the community I was thinking specifically about you). Just like with PI, there are clearly other players who managed to install their mods fine by using the EET Mod Install Tool. Still, I'm sure you agree with me that there was a need for you to give that warning. Hadn't you done so I would have happily installed all my mods with that tool, which would have certainly led to nasty consequences for me. By taking a few minutes to warn everybody, you probably saved myself and others countless wasted hours and headaches, and I really appreciate that. In the same way, I'm sure that many players will appreciate that I warn them about PI and hopefully save them countless wasted hours and headaches.

29 minutes ago, jastey said:

it would be great if all instructions everywhere were up-to-date and would reflect all aspects of everything

I'm sure you are aware that this is not a problem of outdated instructions.

35 minutes ago, jastey said:

What else do you expect the EET instructions to say?

The truth, if it is not too much to ask. For a suggestion of how to say the truth about PI and the the EET Mod Install Tool, check the first post of this thread.

37 minutes ago, jastey said:

I have the feeling you just started this thread so you could vent your anger about PI

I have two purposes with this thread, a humble one and an ambitious one. The humble one is to help others as explained above. The ambitious one is to highlight the problem and encourage the community to develop a tool that actually works for most people. I'm not very optimistic about the ambitious one, but if this thread helps just one player the usual headaches associated with these two tools, I'll be happy with that.

[Alonso]

47 minutes ago, Cahir said:

Saying everywhere that PI is impossibly difficult to use is disrespectful to its author and simply not true. I'd appreciate if you could stop selling this notion

Show me a casual player, just one, who has managed to make PI work and I will retract everything I've said. Otherwise you might want to consider retracting what you have said.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Alonso

[Ulb]

1 hour ago, Alonso said:

Show me a casual player, just one, who has managed to make PI work and I will retract everything I've said. Otherwise you might want to consider retracting what you have said.

Is it a casual player now or someone without coding experience as you've claimed before?

Your current argument is that you could do it but since you have coding experience it must be too hard for people without such experience. Which is obviously not a valid argument.

PI sure is a bit harder to set up than BWS/EET-Setup-Tool are but I think your critique is a bit over the top. (Truth be told, it does sound as if you've got a bit frustrated with PI and use this 'feedback' to vent out said frustration.) 

What might be helpful though is to point out where its current documentation is lacking and could be improved. It's been a while since I've set up a PI installation so I can't point to details in that regard but I can attest that PI is usable by someone without any talent or interest in coding, so there is that..

[Cahir]

1 hour ago, Alonso said:

Show me a casual player, just one, who has managed to make PI work and I will retract everything I've said. Otherwise you might want to consider retracting what you have said.

Me, @4udr4nand Ulb (who just ninja'd me). That's three people. Surely there are more who don't post neither here nor at Beamdog's. 

[Jarno Mikkola]

26 minutes ago, Ulb said:

... but I can attest that PI is usable by someone without any talent or interest in coding, so there is that..

Erhm, stares at Ulb's signature ... erhm, this must be a wrong place to comment things to this effect. Let alone with the post amount.*

 

21 minutes ago, Cahir said:

Me, @4udr4nand Ulb (who just ninja'd me). That's three people. Surely there are more who don't post neither here nor at Beamdog's. 

I would seem to remember something ... say like  ~does a random search~ asking things like in this post. Is that typical non-coder question asking ?

And again, the post amount.*

*No, the amount is not bad, but by large, it's not typical mod user one either, which would be around 5, at most. You are thinking you are special, you are, but by a lot of the wrong kind.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[Cahir]

30 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Erhm, stares at Ulb's signature ... erhm, this must be a wrong place to comment things to this effect. Let alone with the post amount.*

 

I would seem to remember something ... say like  ~does a random search~ asking things like in this post. Is that typical non-coder question asking ?

And again, the post amount.*

*No, the amount is not bad, but by large, it's not typical mod user one either, which would be around 5, at most. You are thinking you are special, you are, but by a lot of the wrong kind.

You know Jarno, that wasn't do hard to edit. I just change couple of values, I actually did not write any code, because I don't know how to do it. 

[Alonso]

1 hour ago, Ulb said:

Is it a casual player now or someone without coding experience as you've claimed before?

You're mixing up different things. You might want to consider reading the thread again.

1 hour ago, Ulb said:

Your current argument is that you could do it but since you have coding experience it must be too hard for people without such experience. Which is obviously not a valid argument.

Nope, that's not my argument.

1 hour ago, Ulb said:

What might be helpful though is to point out where its current documentation is lacking and could be improved.

Yeah, I did that and offered to do all the work of the documentation myself, but for some reason my offer was ignored.

1 hour ago, Ulb said:

I can attest that PI is usable by someone without any talent or interest in coding, so there is that.

Wow, what about we ignore that you said that and pretend it never happened?

Edited October 31, 2020 by Alonso