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Minor updates on the github repositories.

Glitter tech: Auto mortar and heavy conduit bugfixes
Furnace: Industrial vent added, updated furnace graphics

No, all values remain the same.

Updated.

It will be updated, expect it a few days after release.

The answers to your questions are evident in previous replies.

Hey Sam, long time subscriber and fan of this classic mod. I wanna thank you for your hard work which inspired me to make my own mods also, in fact I credited you for a recent faction mod I made since I was having trouble with some things and your coding for glitter tech really helped me get off a ditch I was stuck in.

I understand you are having difficulties making progress with your Glitter Tech due to life issues but I hope what you've helped little chickens like me do encourages you. Cheers fam

- Chicken cluck cluck cluck cock a doodler.

Thank you for the kind words, and the credit. It was not necessary really, copying code is fair game, credit is only an issue when you use assets or reupload my mod I some form.

I also wanted to clarify that the mod isn't delayed because of any real issue, I've mostly moved to other projects, this mod gets developed now and then, and updated for each alpha but completing the changes I have planned won't happen anytime soon.

Also as a general point for any readers, the new version will need a lot of art assets, if anyone is interested let me know.

With motivation like that you can expect to wait another six months.

The second half was supposed to quote you, because I intended it as a reply. But, I wouldn't take it very seriously, I was operating on little sleep. At this stage, since no updates beyond version iteration occur in this thread the only feedback I receive is negative or constantly critical of my mod. I don't really mind any feedback, but constantly being told the values I consciously decided upon, coded and tested are incorrect or over powered does get old fast. I haven't somehow made a mistake when writing the weapon stats, since I use my own mods in my own games I would immediately know a value is off the mark.

I realise the discussion of balance is less about my mod and more about my mod in addition to other mods. However, going to the term subjective, the intent of my mod, from your perspective, is to add over powered items. Since day one of Glitter tech my mod was basically Powered Armor*10 and Sniper Rifle*10. Every item is supposed to be an order of magnitude better then the vanilla items.

It's not meant to add to the pool of items for vanilla game-play, it is suppose to change the game-play entirely. Instead of the same old mega colony with a kill-box that you have built a dozen times you are suppose to have your base leveled every time you are raided by commandos whilst you hide in a distant cave. Try and come up with a defense against the commandos as they are now, using something creative, as a challenge. That is the point of my mod.

If this hasn't fully explained my mods intent, perhaps you could try flicking through the previous pages in this thread. Over a year or more ago on page 20 or 30 you will find people complaining about balance. You will find people complaining about balance as the new features were released, and you will find me replying to them with a similar response. So, have I failed to balance my mod for over a year, or is it just the design of my mod?

The last thing to mention is a fun topic know as user entitlement. Mods are kind of in a strange area, because they are not commercial products, yet some modders dedicate enough time and effort to them to regard the project as more then a fun thing they decided to do one day. Most mods fall somewhere in-between. So, when dealing with user feedback, I'll often find a lot of people tell me how "disgusting" or terrible one feature or another is, as if they have lost something because of my mod. When people tell me to balance the mod to their own vision of what the values should be, they make a serious effort to tell me how I should design the weapons and buildings and crafting.

Yet, those features are entirely my own design. If they dislike my creation, they could simply find a better one, made by somebody else, or make their own. I see no reason whatsoever to change my mod to suit a few people when so many others appear to have downloaded and used my mod as it is.

If you like the tech stuff in this mod but absolutely hate how unbalanced the equipment is, I've made a balancing patch that, of course IMO, makes the weapons and armor much more reasonable. I also fixed the many spelling and grammar errors in the files I modified, didn't had the patience to go through them all, sorry. Oh, I also added weight to those equipment as well.

Just get the attachment and past it on your mod folder, replacing the files when asked, of course. This is for the No Surgery version because why the heck would you even use the other one, just get EPOE.

Thanks for the, uh, kind feedback. Very encouraging as always. I should probably get that link removed since you didn't ask for permission, but if it means less discourse with other users that can't handle a spelling mistake then so be it.

Honestly, I often wonder why people spend so much time telling me the stats for items in my mod are undesirable to them. If you're willing to go into a hypothetical real world application of the technology I order to explain what you think is an accurate value for the in game item then perhaps you could simply make your own mod? That way to don't have to tell a mod developer what a terrible job he's done. Unless, of course, that's the point.

My pathetic Australian FTTN connection is fixed. And the download links here and on the Github repo are updated.

[Sam_ Recent Activity on STEAM 32.4 hours past 2 weeks ( 2017-06-07 )]

Sam  [author] 22 minutes ago <-- ON STEAM (02.June.17 20.00 CEST)
I don't have reliable internet at the moment, so a forum update will have to wait.

I have not heard such a hopeless excuse for so long.
So now the internet works selectively?

Sam_ Recent Activity on STEAM 32.4 hours past 2 weeks  ( 2017-06-07 )

I have the Steam app, which counts toward the time online, I would assume. Yes, I'm using my phone as a hotspot, because I have no wired connection at the moment, which will cost me $10 per gigabyte of data used, up and down, so I have decided to leave the forum upload until my wired connection is working.

You don't see much bad language from me here on the forum, but considering I make mods for free, rather then paying to make them, perhaps you could kindly go fuck yourself. I don't need to excuse anything, perhaps I'll simply decide to delay the forum upload a month behind the steam version to encourage people to use the workshop.

I can see a few people here use the forum download in order to avoid Steam's automatic workshop updates. If you would like a solution, rather then taking the time to just complain about it. You can subscribe to the mod on the workshop, allow the download to complete, navigate to "\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100" and copy the folder called "725576127". Then navigate to "\Steam\steamapps\common\RimWorld\Mods" and paste the folder. Rename it to Glittertech, and then you will have a hard copy just like the forum download. Then  unsubscribe from the mod on Steam, or leave it subscribed so you can do the same process above every time a new version is downloaded, whatever you want.

Hey I've been working again on your GlitterTech mod. I've added alot to it and I'm wondering if you'll consider my changes. I really think I've done alot of work you'll be happy with as I've reworked the tech tree, rebalanced alot of items, added crafting of weapons, armor, shields, and apparel, added a turret, and much more.

I think I've pretty much done the overhaul he's looking to do.

I think you may have misunderstood the scale of the overhaul I have planned. Of course there has been a considerable delay on the changes, a combination of real life influences and general lack of interest or motivation in Rimworld at this stage. However the changes will happen at some point, and they will be considerably larger then what you have achieved. The tech tree will be vastly different, even from the structure of the vanilla game, and the quantity of new resources, production benches, weapons and factions is over twice what this version currently has. The biggest point to highlight in the overhaul is the modular structure.

There will be a core mod with several large industrial mods, with most additional features added as separate mods to give people the ability to pick and choose, depending on their interest. For example a bionic mod designed to work with my industrial foundation can be removed and replaced with EPOE.

I know modders are often apprehensive about taking a big edit from someone else, but i'd be happy to give you a very detailed changelog to make your life easier.

The apprehensive attitude by us modders comes from being protective over our mods and creations. It is so easy for somebody to simply cut and paste my mod, change the features to be just different enough to be overlooked.

You have made changes to the mod that don't follow the design philosophy or overall vision for Glittertech, and you did it without permission or discussion with me. So, I'll have to say no. You can do whatever you want with your local version, so long as it remains local, it makes no difference to me, but the public version will stay as is.

Please keep in mind that I have no intention of discouraging an active modder for this community. Of course I'm not giving you permission to upload changes to my mod, but perhaps you could shift your efforts to creating a new mod from scratch, with your own ideas.

What would make the game easier to mod is the implementation of hard and soft dependencies.

A few people have mentioned dependencies in general in various places but from what I have seen they usually only refer to hard dependencies. I've just recently started modding on a new project with Rimworld, but I've run into issues with implementing a modular modpack. It's easy to implement hard dependencies outside of the game simply by saying 'You need Mod-Core loaded to run Mod-1 and Mod-2", but what about the issue where Mod-3 could be standalone, using vanilla recipes and resources, but if Mod-1 exists then use resources from that instead.

An example I have is with a building that uses the stuff categories. It is in a standalone mod using this:

Code Select Expand


<stuffCategories>
<li>Metallic</li>
<li>Woody</li>
<li>Stony</li>
</stuffCategories>


But, another mod I have which could be loaded before adds a lot of materials, specifically a Plastic stuffCategory. I could make the mod have a hard dependency and just define it as:

Code Select Expand


<stuffCategories>
<li>Metallic</li>
<li>Woody</li>
<li>Stony</li>
<li>Plastic</li>
</stuffCategories>


But, the point of this post is the case where <li>Plastic</li> needs to be optional. I'm just thinking of a system I would add, or looking to add with my own assemblies but considered also posting here, which can define hard and soft dependencies. One option I have only considered so far is having an .xml in the About file for dependencies, defining each as hard or soft, prompting the user when a hard dependency is not met, and then for soft dependencies using xml attributes to define the correct block to use. So, to use the above example to illustrate you could have;

Code Select Expand


<ThingDef Name="Bench" Abstract="True">
<allOtherElements/>
</ThingDef>

<ThingDef ParentName="Bench" Dependency="None">
<DefName>Bench</DefName>
<stuffCategories>
<li>Metallic</li>
<li>Woody</li>
<li>Stony</li>
</stuffCategories>
</ThingDef>

<ThingDef ParentName="Bench" Dependency="Mod-1">
<DefName>Bench</DefName>
<stuffCategories>
<li>Metallic</li>
<li>Woody</li>
<li>Stony</li>
<li>Plastic</li>
</stuffCategories>
</ThingDef>


Obviously the issue here results in how to handle the default option, or what to choose when Mod-1 isn't loaded. Instead of None maybe Default when no other dependency is valid. Also, what do you do with multiple soft dependencies.

I originally thought of this when I was making a mod for Factorio, in which modders use LUA instead of XML files to mod the game. The soft dependencies are enforced using standard conditional logic such as "if Mod-1=true then load this else load this". So, I'm looking into how I could add something similar to Rimworld, even if I have to hardcode my mod packs dependencies in an assembly somehow.
I'm not even sure if this is feasible to mod this in Rimworld in it's current state, or how much I would have to break to make it happen, but this is an idea I had that resolves a large number of issues with my current project that I thought I would share.

Excellent mod. The terrain and just general terrain diversity is something Rimworld needs. The tropical maps look amazing, but without more functionality added to water they would be difficult indeed.

The blocky rock formations are also interesting. Very distinguished from the standard mountains and hills you find in Rimworld. After so many fresh colonies I have to say vanilla Rimworld maps just look like layers of Perlin noise and not actual terrain.

As it stands there area lot of feature and balance requests; it's usually the only message I get. But, as the new version is in development this current version will not be changing. Once the new version is out these mods listed here will be "classic" for those that don't like change.

Regarding tilled soil; The mod can be overpowered, but it is a simple mod designed as a way for people to easily use rich soil and make under-mountain farms. It is perfectly okay to treat it as a cheat mod, otherwise it will not be changed. If you wish a better, more balanced experience then I recommend the Vegetable Garden mod. A lot of users like to inform me of how much better that mod is at tilling soil, so it must be good. I would like to make the next version more balanced, with a decay rate on the tilled soil requiring it to be replaced, but as of A16 there are no comps for terrain defs, and with CCL not being updated, I'm sticking with my policy of no third party libraries that could enable such a feature.

Regarding Orion Corp and Glittertech; The faction is intended to be a powerful corporation that "extorts" you for not attacking you when they are not outright hostile, which is why they have no meals when visiting and you have to lock your fridge. They have no trade caravans defined in the pawn group field, so they can't spawn caravans. I've already addressed the resource grind of Glittertech enough times already so I'll skip that.