Version 1.0 is content-complete

Started by Tynan, October 01, 2018, 10:29:21 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

YokoZar

Quote from: Tynan on October 03, 2018, 05:31:19 AM
If half the mods are updated in-place and half get new versions, now the old save is broken AND players need to hunt down and figure out new mods and deactivate the old broken ones - while the mods are changing day to day.
The mods automatically deactivate if they're not for the new version.

Roolo

#61
What makes this such a sensitive discussion is that modders are asked to give up the display of their accomplishments, just to save the games of people that were offered all the information they needed, but didn't do anything with it. Let me explain.

Speaking for myself, a large part that drives me to mod is the appreciation I get. Call it vanity or pride, but when I invested a lot of time into a mod, I'd hate to see it not being used, and I love to see the subscription numbers getting up after a release and accumulating over the years. By going for a new release each time it feels like i have to throw away this record of accomplishment to a place where nobody will ever look at it again.

But there's indeed the practical issue. If I'd update my mod in-place, a lot of players would have a problem. However, from my perspective, this is solved by sharing a legacy version. Now the problem is that many people won't take the effort to look for legacy versions, and instead just rage and place negative reviews. The dilemma I have now is that I have to give up "my sense of accomplishment" for people that might not deserve it, or because other modders didn't post a legacy version for their mod.

I'm seriously in doubt of what to do and haven't decided yet. I know my vanity or pride shouldn't be a reason to let saves of other people be ruined, but what makes it hard is that there's no good reason they have their saves ruined in the first place, and also that I know a lot of other modders won't make this "sacrifice".

I'm purely speaking for myself here by the way, and I have no intention to hurt other modders with the wording 'vanity or pride'. I think it's just very normal and human-like to have these feelings, and I think expressing them shouldn't be avoided in this discussion.

Tynan

I certainly remember the joy of watching the download numbers go up on my Unreal Tournament maps. So I know what you mean Roolo.

But I guess my question is: Why are old versions considered invalid? You don't have to take them down. All the feedback and numbers are still there; you can still link people to them.

It seems fairly straightforward to add up old and new subs, from workshop and forums and Nexus, and claim "X total players". Fragmenting the source doesn't change the number.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

5thHorseman

Quote from: Tynan on October 03, 2018, 05:31:19 AM
I'm checking everything marked for 1.0 to get rid of the old ones that aren't updated. There are just 100 such mods - not too hard.

My mod Toolboxifier was one of those mods. However, I see nowhere that it says it's for 1.0.

It WAS for 1.0 back when 1.0 was unstable, but when 0.19 came out I changed it. I have no idea why (or even where) it's saying it's 1.0 nor do I have any clue on how to change it.
Toolboxifier - Soil Clarifier
I never got how pawns in the game could have such insanely bad reactions to such mundane things.
Then I came to the forums.

Jaxxa

In the past I have always updated in place and just had older version available on GitHub. Although I can see both sides of the issue and have not decided what I will do for 1.0 yet.

At least with 1.0 being released now updates will be a lot less common / stopped so I am only looking a smallish increase in the number of workshop items I have available instead of increasing it for each new version, which could have gotten large very quickly since i just had a look and I have 21 separate workshop mods for various versions of Rimworld.

If there were going to be ongoing development then I would think it would be a good idea to enhance how Rimworld handles mods to better handle new versions of mods, (by allowing a mod to support multiple versions or stopping Rimworld from updating a mod that it does not support) but at 1.0 there is no point now.


Also Congratulations on getting the the final release and wishing you all the best in whatever you do next weather it is more Rimworld content another game or something entirely different. As far as I am concerned you really have done one of the best early access releases.

Roolo

Quote from: Tynan on October 03, 2018, 07:01:58 AM
I certainly remember the joy of watching the download numbers go up on my Unreal Tournament maps. So I know what you mean Roolo.

But I guess my question is: Why are old versions considered invalid? You don't have to take them down. All the feedback and numbers are still there; you can still link people to them.

It seems fairly straightforward to add up old and new subs, from workshop and forums and Nexus, and claim "X total players". Fragmenting the source doesn't change the number.

That's indeed a straightforward way, but the problem is that only you yourself will take the older versions into account, and anyone else will just see the version you released latest, which doesn't feel as rewarding as having it summed up for everyone to see. Also, it ruins the chance for you mod to get high into the "most popular over n months" overviews, or "most subscribed" overviews, and therefore you might miss out on a lot of new subscribers as people don't tend to look past those overviews. Look at Edb's Prepare Carefully with almost half a million subscribers which will forever enjoy the honour of being most subscribed to. That certainly wouldn't have happened if he didn't go for in-place updates.

I'm aware it might sound selfish to take all this into account, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person that feels this way and expressing it might help clarifying some of the negative sentiments towards the requested policy.

Well anyhow, this is all I had to contribute to the discussion. Congratulations with being so close to release and good luck with wrapping things up!

Tsunamy

Tynan, I would like to voice a major concern. There are lots of great mods, but the patching system is very slow. It feels like every time a mod patches, it has to recache the entire xml database. Load times are several minutes. I imagine this is what happening.

1) Patch operation is declared.
2) Database is loaded to memory.
3) Patch operation is committed.
4) Database is closed and purged from memory.
5) Another mod declares a patch operation...
6) Rinse repeat.

What would speed things up is if it kept the database in memory the entire time until every single mod has completed its patching operations.

Again if it already works this way and nothing can be done about it, I apologize, it's just my perception as to what is causing the very long load times.

RemingtonRyder

Hey Roolo,

If people really enjoy your mod then they'll resub to a new version of it. It usually takes quite a few weeks for people to transition over, though.

I encourage people to follow me on Workshop so that they know when I've released a new (version of a) mod.

I've got a site of my own to cater to people who like direct downloads instead of Workshop. And for people who aren't afraid of a few rough edges, I release Dropbox test versions.

Some of my mods actually did better in numbers in new versions than old. Whether that's because they became more known or because they were better versions, I don't know.

What I do know is that, whatever you decide, you can at least prepare your user base for savepocalypse by letting them know what to expect. Maybe you tell them to get Fluffy's Mod Manager just in case.

Ser Kitteh

@Roolo

I'm not a content creator of any sort but I understand where you're coming from. I also exclusively install from github or other like website, I don't use Steam other than upvoting the mods I like. It is tedious, but it's preferable over entire runs being totally broken. I can't speak more of that.

@Tynan

So I haven't gone into 1.0 yet, and I can't say anything about the new food policy, and while I'm completely fine with the features we've got, but when it comes to QoL stuff, I am somewhat worried if those are not address.

I'm sure you've got 50 pages of QoL stuff you've already planned for and 1000 pages of bug fixes you plan to do, but can you speak more about the QoL stuff people have wanted for since forever?

The only content I would LIKE to see a medieval style helmet of sorts, but other than that, I'm happy if 1.0 just have more QoL stuff.

lowdegger

Quote from: Fluffy (l2032) on October 02, 2018, 04:26:46 PM
Quote from: Third_Of_Five on October 02, 2018, 03:51:34 PM
I'm not going to try and speak for Tynan, but I fail to see how this could be interpreted as disrespectful to modders.

Someone much smarter than me said it like this;
Imagine if a guy owned a hotel and I came every day and cleaned for free. So people like his hotel and pay him more. I do this for years. Now the hotel owner comes and tells me I'm cleaning wrong and please clean more of the rooms? For free. Just bc he said so.

I'd like to add that the hotel owner also did so without thanking me for my labour, or asking me for my opinion. Does that seem right? I never asked nor expected to be paid, and I don't need any thanks - but this is just rubbing me the wrong way.

Oh, one more thing, for those out there that are worried about save games getting broken, there's a much better solution: create local copies of Workshop mods. You can do this manually, or use a mod for it to do it in-game; Mod Switch or my own Mod Manager.

I guess the question really is: why are you "working" for free in the first place? If that's how you view it then I think you messed up somewhere along the line. Modding is a hobby, not some kind of internship. I don't see why a game maker should be grateful to people for voluntarily messing around with his game, or why you feel entitled to a seat on the board. Go make your own game maybe? You might even get paid. And your analogy is bogus anyway because nobody wants to stay in a dirty hotel but very large numbers of people want to play vanilla Rimworld. If a hotel is dirty people will go stay in a different one, whereas if Rimworld had no mods it would still be better than similar games. The number of people who wouldn't be playing Rimworld if there were no mods is very small and vocal, as is usually the case with such thing.

skyarkhangel

Thank you Tynan for the great work!
I still havent figured out  all B19 changes for mods :D

Yoshida Keiji

Latest unstable build on.

Tell me what's wrong here.



Let's hope I'm not the only one finding the oddity.

Ser Kitteh

"No time for information! But here's the EXACT numbers of the raiders!"

I would prefer a rough number (ex: 14-16 mercenaries) instead.

bigheadzach

There's no time to tell you if she has skills that are useful or is prone to setting your colony on fire in her spare time.

The Refugee Stats mod addresses this but it conflicts with Hospitality so I can't use it :(

BlackSmokeDMax

Quote from: bigheadzach on October 03, 2018, 10:18:02 AM
There's no time to tell you if she has skills that are useful or is prone to setting your colony on fire in her spare time.

The Refugee Stats mod addresses this but it conflicts with Hospitality so I can't use it :(

I haven't used either mod since B18, but I thought as long as you loaded Refugee Stats after Hospitality it worked fine??