PSA TO ALL MODDERS - PLEASE READ!

[mabor0shi]

TL;DR

So a question for you modders out there, would you want someone to check over your mods before submission?

Yes. This assumes anyone is willing/able. 1000101 isn't. He's working (as if being paid) on CCL, so obviously doesn't have time & energy to devote to helping amateurs get started. Some people do, though, as hard as that may be to imagine for you salty veterans of modding.

As far as finding problematic mods goes, if there was something like a stickied checklist of things a mod needs to do to be as reliable and compatible as possible then anyone could take a look at someone's mod and say in their thread if it complies or why not.

A stickied list of common issues that modders are told to check before their 1st release keeps the modders themselves responsible and I think it would help. As for error reporting, users of mods already do a pretty good job of this. And there are a lot of people on these forums who love telling others when they have made a mistake.

Mod-police would be a huge deterrent to newbie modders joining the community.

Probably, but there's no risk of this becoming a reality. Too big a change, considering how many people would be against it.
Also, 1000101: jk I read your whole post.

[skullywag]

Ok this is bordering on personal attack, keep it civil.

I do NOTHING but help any modder i find with an issue im able to help with, the discord is full of modders needing help and i help them as much as possible when im online and other "veterans" do the same. This allows the clever modders (like 1000101) to keep on trucking with the important mods.

The question was actually me putting myself forward, I wouldnt ask the question and then suggest someone else do it, I dont have the right to do that.

Anyways getting passed all the nonsense. It seems a checklist is a good starting point, ill put something together with the minds of the modders discord.

[1000101]

@Nommy, @mabor0shi:  I don't mean to sound salty but at the same time, sometimes it's hard to convey a point without sounding like one extreme or another.

As skullywag and myself have said, we'll help and answer questions and we do.  I am active in the Help subforum and in the modders Discord (formerly Slack) answering questions as I can (just don't ask me when I'm tired or you'll get answers like '3600' (inside joke)).  But we just can't go over every mod that is released looking for possible errors.  For one time isn't on our side, for another; we'd like to have a life too. 

Anyway, modders are always free to ask questions and to check the forums for stickied posts or search the forums for posts relating to their issue.  They'll have a better idea of the information they'll need than anyone else will. 

Back onto the meat of the issue, I like the idea of a simple checklist for things that could be problems modders should watch out for.  The problem, as stated by Tammabanana, is that the game is in alpha so these things can change without notice.

[mabor0shi]

Ok this is bordering on personal attack, keep it civil.

I was not being sarcastic. I seriously meant that 1000101 is busy working on what is arguably the biggest project in RW modding. He is unable to spend time helping ppl try to get started, because, like many other long-time RW modders, he is busy contributing to the community in another way. And, by 'you salty veterans' I didn't mean 'you' specifically, skully. I've read tons of your posts and u seem 'sweet' rather than 'salty' It was maybe a more offensive choice of word than I anticipated. I should have said 'grizzled' or 'battle-hardened'.

As skullywag and myself have said, we'll help and answer questions and we do.  I am active in the Help subforum and in the modders Discord (formerly Slack) answering questions as I can.

You've actually helped me on the RW Discord! I don't think you meant to sound so condescending with that 1st reply to nommy. My guess is emotions flavored it...salty. I love that word now.

Back onto the meat of the issue, I like the idea of a simple checklist for things that could be problems modders should watch out for. The problem, as stated by Tammabanana, is that the game is in alpha so these things can change without notice.

I bet if anything on the checklist changes, it will be rectified before the list can cause more harm than good. Or at least a warning could be applied when a new alpha comes out: "Some of this info may be out of date due to recent changes" or whatever. Plus, I hear nobody reads stickied posts anyway

[Nommy]

It seems a checklist is a good starting point, ill put something together with the minds of the modders discord.

Thanks skullywag. And 1000101 and all the other people who spend their free time helping create content for us to play with.


I was wondering if there would be much benefit in creating a tool to do a sort of sanity check on a mod which would report things like undefined abstract classes and anything else that can be checked, and also to generate a summary of all the things in the base game the mod alters or interferes with which modders could paste in the forum and include in the mod somewhere to help keep track of what mods will work together and remove some of the human error associated.

Perhaps it could also report on conflicts between mods you have installed which the game does not report itself if there was anything like that that could be found programmatically and I suppose there is the potential for that code to be ported to the game so it could better do that itself.


How practical and helpful do you guys reckon some kind of sanity & compatibility check tool like that would be?

Is it a bad idea? What do you reckon?


I'd certainly appreciate something like that for checking mods which I'm playing with and also to check any mods I made as well.

Edit: Kinda off topic huh? Sorry skullywag

[Knedl]

I was wondering if there would be much benefit in creating a tool to do a sort of sanity check on a mod which would report things like undefined abstract classes and anything else that can be checked, and also to generate a summary of all the things in the base game the mod alters or interferes with which modders could paste in the forum and include in the mod somewhere to help keep track of what mods will work together and remove some of the human error associated.

Perhaps it could also report on conflicts between mods you have installed which the game does not report itself if there was anything like that that could be found programmatically and I suppose there is the potential for that code to be ported to the game so it could better do that itself.


How practical and helpful do you guys reckon some kind of sanity & compatibility check tool like that would be?

Is it a bad idea? What do you reckon?


I'd certainly appreciate something like that for checking mods which I'm playing with and also to check any mods I made as well.

Edit: Kinda off topic huh? Sorry skullywag
[/quote]

If only people would check the mods/tools section - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=25305.0 This should help with mod conflicts.

[Nommy]

Thanks! Yeah, I only keep an eye on the Releases forum to see what's new but next time I play I'll definitely try that. I see on the ToDo they've got check for this inheritance issue. So maybe one of the things on the checklist could be running that, though IDK how useful it would be for a mod sanity check before it's updated.

[mew_the_pinkmin]

Let me just uh.. bump this back to the top.

[skullywag]

Gonna pump the to the top, with the new alpha kind of out it seems like a good idea.

[joaonunes]

Gonna pump the to the top, with the new alpha kind of out it seems like a good idea.

**bump**

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Why not sticky it? Then delete this post of mine and the last couple bumps. Seems like a good post to stay near the top.

[joaonunes]

Why not sticky it? Then delete this post of mine and the last couple bumps. Seems like a good post to stay near the top.

That has already been discussed here on this very topic. It seems people don't always notice stickies and as such it would be futile to do it as people would not read it...

[skullywag]

Most people see this in their "new unread posts" list as people talk on it, which is good and is exactly why i did it to spread the word, now when you lot stumble into a post where a def isnt behaving right, you can say "you using abstracts correctly?"...

[darkrage000]

I have to agree with Skullywag and 1000101 on this...
it is the modder's own responsibility to make sure their own work to make sure it 'plays nice' with the game and other mods.
That being said, the idea of a 'mod-police' system places a new modder in a 'lesser' position than other modders by having to have their 'approval' and would put a lot of new modders off and possibly prevent new mods from ever seeing the light of day.

That being put aside, its really frustrating as an user who suddenly gets a 100,000,000 spam error that only says 'thing_def" error that slows your system/game down leaving you to have to disable one mod after another trying to find the conflicting one.

So that pushes me in both directions. As an user, sure it would be great for me if I knew that a mod had no issues. But as a content creator, i find it hard to find the time sometimes to do editing and make videos, but i know that its no one elses responsibility to do it.

I know that modders usually have a limited amount of time to work on mods and even after updates it can take time to update a mod. Many modders don't have the time to update between incremental game updates. To put the fate of new modders work in their hands could be disastrous.
And again, having to create a mod-checking tool that has to be updated after every incremental update takes time and effort, and it would have to be the project of at least one, if not several modders who have their own mods they need to find the time to work on.
It would also create a 'responsibility' for someone after each game update to HAVE to update the mod-tool since every modder big and small would be relying on it to be ready the instant a game update is released.

[Fafn1r]

A question. What if I'm redefining a def from another mod and that mod also defines abstract base_def for it? Do I have to redefine the abstract as well?