Diskussion: Presentation of Mods in the BG Fandom Wiki [split from Adalon's Blood Mod and G3 connection]

[LichDiet]

Okay, I'm not 100% sure what Host the Tales of Anegh I played was from, but I did add it to my mega install at that time from Roxanne's BEW site using the EE/EET tool.  I think I even reported a map area problem to her, and she fixed it for me.  So maybe it was a Roxanne version?   That was over a year ago.  Looks like Roxanne has closed the forum down, due to the Ukraine conflict. I played before the BG2EE 2.6, so it was on the last EE 2.5 version.  

I'm kind of aware of some of the issues with Roxanne vs. G3 folks, so I'd rather not get into any of that.  If you think I should steer folks away from the EE/EET version and only install the one you are maintaining, I'll be happy to do that on the Wiki.  Whatever you think is best, I want new players to try mods and branch out from their unmodded comfort zone.  I remember my first Mod I tried and it was the NPC Mod, Kelsey..  I couldn't believe Kelsey had banter with Edwin, and it was very amusing. Once I saw the possibilities I was all in on trying out Mods.  

[CamDawg]

16 hours ago, LichDiet said:

I'm kind of aware of some of the issues with Roxanne vs. G3 folks, so I'd rather not get into any of that. 

To be fair, it's more of a "Roxanne vs. any modder who's not Roxanne". I'm going to repost something I wrote over on Reddit, mainly because I don't think it's worth rehashing this every time. (tl;dr: unofficial versions of mods are a nightmare for maintenance and eat up modder time that could be spent developing new features, writing new content, testing, or literally anything else that could improve their mods or make new ones.)

Quote

I generally don't comment on stuff like this, because players just want something that works, and tend to dismiss this stuff as 'drama'. But I'll try to answer as simply as I can.

Last I checked, there were 56 mods from G3 in the tool, of which nine were the latest stable version from the official repo. Of the remainder, about half were pulling work-in-progress builds or from a random source like a Dropbox, in which case we have little idea what's actually in it.

This has real consequences. Suddenly I'm getting bug reports for stuff I haven't released yet, or I'll spend hours tracking down a bug only to discover it's from an "alternative" version of my mod. The worst part about the latter is that I don't even have a way to fix it. This makes my work look worse than it already is and leaves a wake of frustrated players. (Bonus point if you can guess who actually can fix "compatibility issues" of this nature.)

One of the most egregious examples I can cite is Amber. Amber's a BG2 NPC mod by a married couple, Meira and Darios. M&D loved to played multiplayer together, which gave rise to a feature that no other mod has ever had--a Player2 romance. This let M&D play together in multiplayer and both enjoy romances while they played. Due to life, M&D never got around to writing a ToB portion of the mod despite having plans.

Now, Amber is in the EEMS tool, but not the official one. A version with (frankly terrible) ToB content, and lacking the unique Player2 romance. When asked, the EEMS maintainer said she had expanded Amber with permission from M&D--which M&D confirmed was a lie. When confronted, rather than putting the correct version of Amber in the tool it was removed outright. For a couple of weeks at least, when the EEMS version was quietly re-added, still with its terrible ToB content, still lacking its Player2 romance, sourced from a brand-new Github account.

There are other examples I could cite--Balduran's Seatower is another big one, numerous examples of writing content for NPCs without author permissions, floods of alts pumping up mods from the maintainer, etc. Sure, you can handwave this away as drama if you want to use the tool, but it's notable that every conflict of which I'm aware in the modding community are all of the "author X has a problem with the EEMS maintainer" variety.

edit: I guess a tl;dr summary would be that you might have an easier installation process, but at the cost of a worse gameplay experience.

[LichDiet]

CamDawg,

Thanks very much for the background.  I was unaware of the scope of the issue here, and I do see it as problematic for the Mod author's and designated maintainers and others who are helping.  Having the official Mod version in one form, and then another via the EE/EET install tool is not ideal at all.  And further confusing the issue, some of the Mods selected by the install tool are pointed to the correct "real" version, and others may be downloaded from the unofficial source, and they are all blended together in the player's batch of Mod's they are installing.  

I know I've personally played two campaigns using the EE/EET tool and had over sixty Mods installed in each batch.  All kinds of mods, from Ascencion, SCS, Spell Revisions, Shadow Magic, quest mods, NPCs Mods, tweaks, Tome and Blood, Might and Guile, Rogue's Rebalancing etc.  Must admit that mostly they work together, and only minor glitches were seen.  Stuff that I could fix myself usually, but not always.  I'm pretty sure from a player's standpoint, that is the draw for them to use the EE/EET Install Tool. 

But I've also had glitches that were possibly caused because the mix and match official and unofficial Mods did actually cause the glitch.  This is 20/20 hindsight from me here.  When something was too complex for me to trouble shoot myself, I would ask for help on the BEW Forum, and typically Roxanne would quickly help out and typically come up with a solve for the issue.  But now I wonder, was the actual issue solved so quickly because She kind of knew that one of the unofficial Mods might be the culprit?  I don't know for sure.

Anyhow, since I'm still trying to add content and subject matter over at the Fandom Baldur's Gate Wiki - when it comes to discussing available Mods, I think I'll have to rethink what we say about using the EE/EET tool to so.  Perhaps I'll add an extra "fair warning" message that not all mods fetched by the tool are the official Author approved Mod, and use it at your own risk.

Perhaps in time a genuinely easy to use Mod Manager tool will be available for noobs and beginner folks that will solve this kind of stuff.  

If you have any advice about this, please share.

[Graion Dilach]

Modded content shouldn't be intermingled with the base game data on the wiki, which IIRC already happened sometimes (sure, Ascension and BG1NPC are mostly accepted anchors at this point but they are still not fully official). The issue here is that a fair amount of mods go with different characterization/itemization and sometimes the clashes aren't problematic but they can also stick out like a sore thumb (Branwen's characterization is a great example if you compare Isra banters with BG1NPC, for example).

I've seen a few pages only listing mods in footnotes and I think that should be the standard, with the official site referenced. At this point I think installation tools shouldn't be covered in the wiki, especially considering that every wrapper is Windows-only afterall and one easily opens a can of worms there. The G3/Reddit sticky covers the basics better.

[LichDiet]

Thanks, Graion

At the moment, mentions of Mods is minimal on the Wiki.  The exception would be in the comment sections, which are open to discuss the subject at Hand such as Bohdi, or Strongholds, or the Twisted Rune for example.  In some articles there will be a Mod Content divider, usually towards the end of the article, that might point out something that SCS does differently (such as Breach Spells, or Melf's Minute Meteors, or that Kangaax the Demilich is a now a level 30 Necromancer.  Rarely are NPC mods mentioned.  What we are trying to do is not be a Mod evaluation site, but we are cognizant that players do use Mods, especially the well-established and popular ones like SCS or Ascension.

Most Mod information is voluntarily added, as it is a Wiki, and not really controlled by one person.  Sure, there is a rotating site Admin, but a user is encouraged to add to the Wiki if they want to.  On occasion it might be cleaned up.  Or if completely off topic or wrong, then removed.  This is similar to how any of the Wikis' on Fandom operate.

I'm going to see if I can do something about the EE/EET install tool mention and the brief blurb on it under the Mod pages.  I have to think about it a little first, as the tool exists, and does work, but the mods offered for selection are both unadulterated and edited/changed without permission.  Let me see if CamDawg or some of the other Modders want to weigh in.

[jastey]

I would say it's a good idea not to promote a tool that installs changed mod versions and that is maintained by one person who decided to turn their back on the whole community and of which 99.9% of all other modders think it's BS.

I understand if players use the tool because they do not know the background and what a trojan black box it is, but I lack understanding if people coninue to use it after hearing that it loads randomly changed mod versions the authors did not agree to.

I'd also appreciate if people get encouraged to report bugs to the original mod authors, not seek help in some forum just because the maintainer seems to be helpful. Assuming the original mod version were used, that is.

IE modding is a complicated thing to do and there is no easy "drag&drop" solution and there won't be any, either - we tried it, it lead to people maintaining the tool burning out. But there is an alive community ready to help with finding the right install order if one comes to the appropriate forums.

@LichDiet that was Roxanne's version of Tales of Anegh if you used her tool. Thanks for the link. So there is actually real people in Roxanne's forum, I always thought she's just posting to and fro with her alt acccounts. I don't know whether the bug exists in the original version because it was never reported to me, but I know what caused it because it's related to how the EE handles the area graphic files and how to fix it.

[CamDawg]

35 minutes ago, LichDiet said:

Let me see if CamDawg or some of the other Modders want to weigh in.

Heh, you've already gotten me to say more than I usually do.

4 hours ago, LichDiet said:

Perhaps in time a genuinely easy to use Mod Manager tool will be available for noobs and beginner folks that will solve this kind of stuff.  

Well, right now the alternative is Project Infinity from @AL|EN. It's doing a pretty good job of straddling the line between user-friendliness and the unsustainable maintenance model of BWS, while leaning on the modders a bit more. It's worth checking out.

If it helps, you're more than welcome to include and/or link my tutorial for installing mods on the wiki. It's the best resource for new players who want to mod their games--but that's my completely unbiased opinion as the author, of course.

4 hours ago, LichDiet said:

If you have any advice about this, please share.

The problem is that there's nothing really that can be done. The modding community is just a bunch of folks making stuff--the most authority we've ever had is to politely ask someone for something. To the community's credit, the model's worked pretty well over the previous two decades.

For the wiki specifically: I think Graion's covered a lot of what I would say, namely, try to keep the wiki focused on the unmodded experience. As much as we love mods, the overwhelming majority of players don't use them.

Otherwise, probably the best thing is to set an editorial policy as to when, why, and how mods should be mentioned on the pages (excluding the discussion/comments) and then start standardizing. If we show Bodhi's stats on her page, should we also include what she is under SCS? (Even something like 'under SCS' can be problematic, as she'll vary depending on which of the 100+ SCS components you use.) How about with Tactics? Or Improved Anvil?  With Max HP creatures from Tweaks? With expanded abilities from mods x, y, and z? If we allow some of these but not others, do we have a clearly articulated reason as to why or is it "seems like a lot of players use this"? Establishing this will be a lot of upfront effort, but will pay for itself many times over in the long-term.

 

[LichDiet]

Thanks Jastey,  I see now that many of the offered Mods were altered, unofficial, and in some cases permission was not obtained by the Creator/Maintainer. I understand the implications of that, and I agree that it undercuts a number of established protocols for Mod usage.  The reporting of Bugs to the maintainer seems broken too. 

I really never noticed this in my own usage of the tool, and frankly, didn't even think about it.  I was just a consumer of the Mods and the Tool assisted with the delivery and install.  Actually there were a number of regular forum users that were ordinary players that liked the stuff available and the BEW forum.  A number of frequent flyers would ask if a Mod could be included or if this (fill-in-the blank) mod from 2003 that they remembered was available and EE compatible etc. I'm not being an apologist for what I now know was bad ethics on the Mod's unauthorized use.  Pretty much anyone on the site was just a player trying to get a mod installed - and then if there was a problem, how could they fix it.

I actually think Roxanne did a competent job in going back in to the CtB mod, and getting the big thing broken out into modules, and then making some of them EE compatible.  Same thing with Shadows over Soubar.  Whatever version she altered from the original worked with EE.  Authorized?  Probably not.  But, would C. Bisson or King Diamond really even be involved anymore?  I don't know.

Regarding Roxanne, I recently noticed a string of edits occurring regarding Mods that were mentioned or links provided on the Fandom BG Wiki. They were from the same IP, which was a VPN account.  All of the edits were pointing to the new locations of the EE/EET install tool and the various versions of Mods offered by Roxanne via that tool.  Seems likely that Roxanne did these edits, and that was due to the fact that she has closed the BEW forum (although it is still up for reading/archiving etc), but the forum is closed to new posts.

So, I'm not going to promote or really do anything more with the EE/EET install tool info on the wiki.  It will still have a small page, but that is all.  I've already added a comment about the short comings of the Tool in terms of authorized or Bonafide mods.  I'll also have a discussion with a couple of my co-volunteers about this, and we'll see if they want to do something differently  I like the way CamDawg handled the EE/EET tool mention in his Mod installation tutorial.

[LichDiet]

CamDawg, 

I'm going to take you up on the Mod install tutorial.  I'll link it in the wiki, and maybe pull a few excerpts from it when I make a page for it (or add it to the Main Mod page) on the wiki.  It is very well done I must say.

I'll also add a link to the Project Infinity Mod manager on the tool page.  I was actually aware of this product but have not tried it.  So, I can't speak to its utility or ease of use from personal knowledge.  It sounds like a great idea and I hope it comes together.  Players like me, who  install too many mods at one time need such a thing.

The Wiki does not have any editorial policy regarding mods at this time.  Especially in the comments section, posters can opine away, and do.  I do too.  But I see the issue with what mods get mentioned in a page or stub, and how does one deem one mod worthy of mention over another.  So, the best way is probably not to even mention them, but the cat is out of the bag on that already.  I don't think it is an actual problem at the moment, but it is worth monitoring.  Some simple mention that the Alternatives Mod for instance, gives another option for you if you don't want to side with the Thieves or Vampires seems reasonable, and then a link.   Most mods will never be mentioned in a Wiki subject page.  No one is going to be posting a subheader about Full Plate and Packing Steel Mod (which I do actually use sometimes).   

We Do try to only report information that is in the basic game, and note changes in the EE version.  This is already happening that way.  We are always reminded of who the target audience is, and mostly it is beginners who are stuck, interested in a bit more, or just the casual player branching out a bit. "When's this Beloo fella supposed to be around?", "Can I have Hexxat and Keldorn in my Party?", "Where the hell is the Keep Messenger?", "I want that Karsomehere Sword that kills evil".

[CamDawg]

1 hour ago, LichDiet said:

The Wiki does not have any editorial policy regarding mods at this time.  Especially in the comments section, posters can opine away, and do.  I do too.  But I see the issue with what mods get mentioned in a page or stub, and how does one deem one mod worthy of mention over another.  So, the best way is probably not to even mention them, but the cat is out of the bag on that already.  I don't think it is an actual problem at the moment, but it is worth monitoring.  Some simple mention that the Alternatives Mod for instance, gives another option for you if you don't want to side with the Thieves or Vampires seems reasonable, and then a link.   Most mods will never be mentioned in a Wiki subject page.  No one is going to be posting a subheader about Full Plate and Packing Steel Mod (which I do actually use sometimes).   

Right, not mentioning them is not a viable policy (and I wouldn't suggest doing anything about comments or talk pages) but you certainly can lay out some simple ground rules like:

1. The mod should be directly relevant to the page. Something like Tweaks Anthology's Max HP creatures affects all creatures in the game, but you absolutely wouldn't want someone spamming a Tweaks mention on every monster and creature page (or one of the item tweaks on every item page, &c.).
2. The mod should be applicable to the content. This one would be more like not mentioning a ToB content mod on an SoA content page type of deal.
3. What link should be used. I'd rather G3 mods be linked to their project pages over anything else. For mods which don't have formal pages (or other resources), determine how you pick the official link--forum/thread > readme > download > Github? Or, depending on how ambitious the team is, have every mentioned mod get a page on the wiki (like BG2FP does) where all of these resources are linked.
4. Limiting mod mentions to a dedicated section on the page. A page on, say, the Temple Ruins would cover the normal umodded events and enemies, and then there could be a mod section towards the bottom that talks about how SCS may change the bosses, or how UB adds an NPC to tie into the illithium quest, &c.

I'd bet something like rules one and two are likely in effect informally. This is also just me spitballing--I'm sure there's something really basic I've missed, or some dumb flaw that would be exposed if these were put into practice. In the end it's up to the wiki admins, but I think it's something worth proposing and discussing.

[jastey]

7 hours ago, LichDiet said:

I actually think Roxanne did a competent job in going back in to the CtB mod, and getting the big thing broken out into modules, and then making some of them EE compatible.  Same thing with Shadows over Soubar.  Whatever version she altered from the original worked with EE.  Authorized?  Probably not.  But, would C. Bisson or King Diamond really even be involved anymore?  I don't know.

The mod is hosted at Spellhold Studios. It's SHS staff's responsibility - and rights - to maintain the mod if the author(s) are gone (EDIT: from the logic that this is the community the authors trusted their mod with). Making an own version, breaking it in pieces, removing parts and uploading it somewhere else without ever communicating with the SHS moderators/admins is so not cool. I don't know why Roxanne went this path. That's for all her work - seriously, had she done serious updates with open communication, the community would have taken her updates with greatfulness and praise and they would be on the official download pages. The way she decided to make and provide them makes me very suspicious about what we have to expect with regard to unauthorized changes in her mod packages.

The official CtB mod was updated and revised as well, just for info, because Roxanne on her forum tends to pretend all official versions of the mods she altered are outdated, buggy, or "unplayable".

7 hours ago, LichDiet said:

Regarding Roxanne, I recently noticed a string of edits occurring regarding Mods that were mentioned or links provided on the Fandom BG Wiki. They were from the same IP, which was a VPN account.  All of the edits were pointing to the new locations of the EE/EET install tool and the various versions of Mods offered by Roxanne via that tool.  Seems likely that Roxanne did these edits, and that was due to the fact that she has closed the BEW forum (although it is still up for reading/archiving etc), but the forum is closed to new posts.

I noticed promotion of her mods and site before, it's in for a longer time now, I noticed advertisement for her Seatower Mod which uses stolen area graphics (stolen from the original Seatower Mod hosted here at G3). I didn't do anything about it for one because I am a modder "full time", meaning I mod in my free time every minute I get (moderating in 4 forums as global moderator takes a lot of time on top), and two, because it feels like an endless battle where Roxanne has more time to reedit entries, anyway. I can only stress the importance of the wiki not advertizing her inofficial mods and tool, at least not without giving players a good idea not to say warning about the background - which, as a side note, includes that they will be on their own with it, because as willing as we are, we can't debug mod versions that are not our own.

Insofar: I am very happy to have you here, to communicate with a serious wiki maintainer. I thank you for your work on this! The wiki is one door for players to find the fantastic and intimidating world of IE mods, so I am grateful you are working on the wiki with regard to this. I hope we can provide you with sufficient information, if you have any questions please ask.

[Graion Dilach]

6 hours ago, LichDiet said:

I actually think Roxanne did a competent job in going back in to the CtB mod, and getting the big thing broken out into modules, and then making some of them EE compatible.

While the official CtB still has standardization issues (now that there is a recent movement to move IWD spells to use standard IDS entries in all mods with SCS/IWDification/ToTLM-BG2EE/SR(R) setting the standard and CtB should also follow it), the modularized version lacks a proper review (also, who knows what got axed as superfluous). The official and "marked-as-experimental" CtB is fully EE(T) compatible these days with no axed content and the EET compatibility is native, so it doesn't need the BP worldmap even. SoS also got multiple proofreading but notsure what the differences between the fork and official versions were.

This is one of our issues basically. You think it's competent because it lacks the transparency required but the tone is enough authoritative that you think this it is trustworthy. Then there are people like me who got booted from BEW after my second post - first I reported a bug in TDDz and secondly I pointed out Wheels is not incorporated entirely into Ascension, and is compatible with EET and adds to the game. I think she considers Wheels superfluous because it probably messes with the Sandrah content, but that does not entitle her to spread lies about it.

Sure, there are a few mods where the community maintenance is lacking and her versions are probably in the best shape but that is because even the community isn't sure how to approach these mods (TDDz, Secret of Bonehill) while she just bypassed this problem and called it a day and did a few fixes here'n'there (which are miniscule, like SoBH needs proper journal entries on EEs and those weren't added by her).

I'd also claim this that with closing off BEW, Roxanne also abandoned her own community and gatekeeped her own closed circle. I don't think she deserves the effort because you can't tell when will be her next moment of introducing another barrier in communication to cut her off from people. Hermits usually don't want exposure and if they end up harder to reach constantly then there's no point even implicitly advocating to reach them.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Graion Dilach

[jastey]

I think @CamDawg made some very good suggestions. General rules are also important to make sure the wiki is not (mis)used for promotion of mods, especially with regard to the other topic of this thread. I'd like to add as a plea that if you give links for mods, please communicate with the authors about it. For one, we might have an own opinion about how the mod should be described and where the link should go to (which can differ from what someone else would extract from the available info), but it also might be the way a player finds our mods, but if they do not know where to report bug reports, the player might have a frustrating playing experience without us having a chance to fix it. EDIT: It also helps with providing the correct info and links. If we do not know our mods are being mentioned, we can't help with wrong links. (One example is the link to "Mod page" for the Sheena NPC mod. Roxanne is not the mod maintainer, this link should not go to her GitHub repo. The mod is not actively maintained afaik and was never *that* popular - why does it have an own wiki page at all? [I mean I know why, because Roxanne wanted to promote her mod version. q.e.d.])

Another approach would be not to list some mods if you can't include them all (you can't include them all). Make a general page about IE modding, link to CamDawg's Installation Guide, link to the main IE modding forums, and give some advice as to download only from the official site's download and ask for advice with regard to the install order, because that's really important in IE modding.

- It's my experience that mods included in reviews, wikis, or articles sometimes aren't neither the most popular nor the "best", and one mod being mentioned always leaves the questions why others aren't.

Also, new mods are produced monthly, thus including explicit mod mentionings means you'd ideally be updating the listed mods as well, or we get the situation I mentioned above, that mods mentioned in articles as being *the* must-have mods are ones no longer being as popular as they were in the past, or are flat-out outdated (even with technical updates) because standards of expected content shifted with the possibilities of the modding tools and features of the Enhanced Edition engine.

[jastey]

@LichDiet just on a side note: what I call the "original mod versions" are not scrosankt with regard to changes. Older mods always get revised, updated, sometimes even changed. It's up to the community to accept the changes, and up to the modder doing them to do them with respect for the original mod, the authors' wishes, and the forum it is hosted in. I worked on a big overhaul of Northern Tales of the Sword Coast where I broke the mod in several components, not only for compatibility reasons. @AstroBryGuy popped up at some point and offered an EE compatible version of the BG1NPC Project - which was accepted as official update, and man were we happy about it. @Angel took on Unfinished Business. And so on.

There was a long time where modder activity was dwindling, a lot of modders had left the community, the active modders were knee-deep in their own work. EEs were released and not enough man power to update all mods for compatibility. It was a time where we appreciated Roxanne's mod updates because we still thought her goal was to update the mods, not create a world for her Sandrah Saga. The only reason her updates did not go onto the official mod sites back then was beause they were only compatible for the EE and no longer for the classic engine. And then it all spiralled down somehow to the point now were all we can do is warn not to use them, I still don't really know why it happened.

What I mean is, everyone can contribute (e.g., CtB could be broken into components if the community agrees on it, e.g. parts being overpowered etc.) All it takes is the serious effort to stay true to the original mod, respect the author's wishes, and communicate the changes transparently. And never, ever upload the mod somewhere else without notifying the maintainers and being ready to take it down if asked to.

[AL|EN]

@LichDiet

Apparently, there was some more edits by roxanne: Mod Managers It didn't stop there, the Mods page was also altered with paragraph. The EET wiki page got it's additions too. Lastly, look at those 'helpful' comments here. Ofc, there is a chance that some 'random person' had such misguided views on Project Infinity and omit inconvenient details about roxanne's tool but it's highly unlikely. You can clearly see the agenda behind those actions.

I could edit those pages myself but I fear that such actions would be seen as ''cockfight" between one mod manager and another. And I really don't want to be forced to constantly monitor this site for changes that will be done afterwards. I'm not aware about hierarchy of the site or it's policy but I may suggest you to restore pages to the versions before edits/additions and make them editable only by logged users/wiki moderators so there are no more malicious edits. If this can't be done, IMHO, it's better to not have a place where malicious actor can misguide newcomers at all.

Edited May 13, 2022 by AL|EN
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