Friendly Tip: Don't do a Starbound (modding > beta > gold builds)

[Cat123]

I've now played through the Vanilla and Modded (TTManami mod mostly, some others) builds, and have a fairly good idea of how the game is playing atm*, but I can also see that (as ever with grassroots projects) the mods are currently outstripping the vanilla game by some margin. There's mods out there which are filling in the stuff I'd love to see in the gold release (and... some mods that need pruning, simply not mainstream sellers).

This is both a credit to Tynan, but might also be a major fucking pain in his arse.

So, friendly tip - don't pull a Starbound. (Although, yes, having $6 mil in the bank then doing fuck all for a year would probably make Tynan happy). If you need that parsing for you, they welcomed mods with open arms, did nothing themselves and then tried to slap legal disclaimers across the board, altered the code so no mods worked, and it's now in dev. hell - and none of the mods will likely make the full game (1.0 -> they're pulling a DoubleFine, and it's not going to be pretty. Get your popcorn, it'll be epic).

So, why the post: Obviously, Tynan would like to make some serious bank ($$) at some point, and there's obviously some seriously talented modders in here (no matter how waspy I sound, it has a good reason). Modders are going to have to relinquish legal rights at some point before Rimworld goes Gold, so I'd advise a happy-clappy solution - when Rimworld gets to Beta 0.9x [i.e. just before gold], modders should think about this:

Is it better to have your name in the credits, and waiver your (legal) rights in order to keep Rimworld moddable, and more importantly the best Gold release it can be?

I ask this because a lot of the XML I'm reading through from modders really should get into the Gold release; my advice is to address this head-on, and not act like children about it. i.e. Tynan says: I like your mod, it's going in the final build, you get a credit, and nothing more - we cool, and you sign your rights away. And in return, the game stays as flexible and moddable as it is now**.


Or you can act like monkeys and fuck it all up***




*Two full colony plays in vanilla, two full with mods. Yes, that equals a comprehensive evaluation, you're welcome

**SDKs come with legal ties to them, that's why AAA studios are happy to release them - hacking through XML / DLLs is kinda not covered. Keeping things cool means moddable future - Starbound is heading in the opposite direction.

*** Planet of the Apes / Starbound reference, don't be offended.

[Xarian]

I'd be cool with losing rights for the specific content that gets included in the game, but also want to reserve the right to continue developing my mods - then if they want to include the updates later, the same terms would apply.

Pretty simple to do with the forum mod section: just state that any mods posted may be included in the main game with appropriate modifications, dev will attempt to give credit but may forget sometimes so don't spaz out about it, and you can opt out of this agreement by putting a statement in the main post saying "I DO NOT ALLOW TYNAN TO USE MY STUFFS".

[Jaxxa]

Rimworld changlog:

Oct 9

    Integrated Haplo�s wind turbine.

One mod has already been implemented. I would assume an agreement was reached in private and I see no reason that it cant just continue as it, with a private agreement when / if Tynan wants to implement a mod into the game.

If a modder does not want to agree to that for some reason, there is nothing stopping Tynan from just creating a similar system from scratch.

I don't see see any requirement for a blanket waiver.

Although I have no problem for anyone using my mods, Tynan or otherwise aslong as they give credit.

Opt our may be a god idea, If you have not posted any terms or service / licensing it is assumed that people can take and modify it with credit.

[iomccoy]

Starbound, if we're talking about the same one, didn't make mods cease to work. Unless you mean they don't work on the unstable/nightly builds? Also, it's not in development hell. They post every couple of days talking about what they've been doing...

We're talking about different Starbounds, aren't we. >_<

[skullywag]

Ive been approached by Tynan about mods of mine that I hope go into the game in the future, hey i would be a privileged to have my idea in the game let alone my code, ive given full rights upfront to any code/art i write/create for Rimworld to Tynan, I dont do this for credit, money or any other reason other than I enjoy it. (which is the reason everyone else should as well, if youre doing it for any other reason, I say leave now.)

I do feel this post was unneeded as well. Tynans been incredibly gracious (and very polite to me in private conversations) to every modder and player of his game and has done A LOT to make the game modder friendly, if he decides to undo that work thats his choice, hes the dev.

Also im confused by "mods making the fullgame"....they dont...theyre mods...if you mean someone wrote a mod and now the codebase has changed so the mods wont work in the final release...well thats their fault, no one asked them to mod the game (especially in alpha) and if they dont want to put the effort in to keep them up to date thats their decision, if however they get angry that they have to rework their mod to fit the new codebase...screw em..their acting like idiots, code changes throughout a dev cycle, its a fact of life.

I mean no offence by this but you come across as a little "pushy" in your post. I would read it back and imagine how a community (who are quite a happy friendly bunch) would take it. (friendly tip

[iomccoy]

I mean no offence by this but you come across as a little "pushy" in your post. I would read it back and imagine how a community (who are quite a happy friendly bunch) would take it. (friendly tip

That wasn't to me, right? I'm sorry if I was being pushy, it kinda bugs me when people seem to be misrepresenting stuff. Unless it was a completely different Starbound. I'm talking about this one, for clarification- I'll remove the link, if that's a problem.

Warning: link. http://playstarbound.com

And if that wasn't to me at all, I'm a silly silly person and sorry for that as well. 

[Jaxxa]

I mean no offence by this but you come across as a little "pushy" in your post. I would read it back and imagine how a community (who are quite a happy friendly bunch) would take it. (friendly tip

That wasn't to me, right? I'm sorry if I was being pushy, it kinda bugs me when people seem to be misrepresenting stuff. Unless it was a completely different Starbound. I'm talking about this one, for clarification- I'll remove the link, if that's a problem.

Warning: link. http://playstarbound.com

And if that wasn't to me at all, I'm a silly silly person and sorry for that as well. 

I wouldn't have thought it was directed to you. I think it is referring to the original post.

[iomccoy]

I mean no offence by this but you come across as a little "pushy" in your post. I would read it back and imagine how a community (who are quite a happy friendly bunch) would take it. (friendly tip

...yea, now that I look at that again, it probably was. In that case, I am a silly silly person. 

That wasn't to me, right? I'm sorry if I was being pushy, it kinda bugs me when people seem to be misrepresenting stuff. Unless it was a completely different Starbound. I'm talking about this one, for clarification- I'll remove the link, if that's a problem.

Warning: link. http://playstarbound.com

And if that wasn't to me at all, I'm a silly silly person and sorry for that as well. 

I wouldn't have thought it was directed to you. I think it is referring to the original post.

[ItchyFlea]

I ask this because a lot of the XML I'm reading through from modders really should get into the Gold release; my advice is to address this head-on, and not act like children about it. i.e. Tynan says: I like your mod, it's going in the final build, you get a credit, and nothing more - we cool, and you sign your rights away. And in return, the game stays as flexible and moddable as it is now**.

Tynan, from my understanding of the law at least in my country, has the right to add content to the game that adds content similar to mods that exist for the game, as long as he either: Uses his own code, or asks for permission and gets given the code of the mod freely.
Tynan cannot just use somebody else's code for his own purposes. Mod or not.

[RawCode]

Under normal conditions adding mod into game violate no rules if author gave permission one way or another
Adding similar content into game without copy any art or code never violate rules, ever if author of similar mod not asked in advance.

It may be not very good move from developer's side to add something without asking author first, but this is moral bound, not legal one.

[Tynan]

Itchy is correct; modders absolutely own copyright to anything they create. I have no plans for any kind of mass inclusion of mods. If ever a mod is included, permission will first be asked, in private. There won't be any shift or change when the game goes gold in terms of mods; it will basically just be another release with (hopefully) less bugs.

So far, I've asked a small handful of people to donate their mods. Some of its has gone in; other times I just go another way. In fact, from what I can remember, the only mods that have actually been integrated are the 'crashed ship part' and 'agent revealed' incidents from Haplo, and the wind turbine, again from Haplo. I also took the idea of the Royal Bed from a mod (whose author I can't remember), but I just reimplemented it from scratch without using any original content from that mod.

Including mods isn't something that can be done en masse. Every piece of content in RimWorld needs to be integrated, balanced, and maintained into a cohesive whole. In both cases with Haplo's mod's for example, I did significant work to integrate these into the codebase smoothly and bring the content and code up to standard, and then to maintain them and balance them. It was enough work that in the end, it would have taken maybe 20% more time to just implement them from scratch.

[Cat123]

Pushy? Yes, of course I am. I might also be sticking my tongue out at the same time.

Starbound, if we're talking about the same one, didn't make mods cease to work. Unless you mean they don't work on the unstable/nightly builds? Also, it's not in development hell. They post every couple of days talking about what they've been doing...

We're talking about different Starbounds, aren't we. >_<

No, same game.

Starbound landed about ~$4-6 million in sales, and then lost two or three of the main coders during their 11 month hiatus. Nightlies simply don't count - the engine is simple enough that the amount of changes is really low for any indy project, let alone one that hit gold. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes funneling of cash into becoming a publisher, which is kinda icky (and thus the DoubleFine jab, if you know what's happening there).

The truly ironic thing is that of the three or four Terraria SF clones in the market, Starbound isn't the best one. Darkout (http://www.darkoutgame.com/) is vastly superior in terms of code, art and design, but never caught a break. Given the original studio died, it's on life support, but worth a look into a different dimension where that was chosen rather than Starbound (And then there's a couple more - some with direct Terraria assets).

Itchy is correct; modders absolutely own copyright to anything they create. I have no plans for any kind of mass inclusion of mods. If ever a mod is included, permission will first be asked, in private. There won't be any shift or change when the game goes gold in terms of mods; it will basically just be another release with (hopefully) less bugs...

Including mods isn't something that can be done en masse. Every piece of content in RimWorld needs to be integrated, balanced, and maintained into a cohesive whole. In both cases with Haplo's mod's for example, I did significant work to integrate these into the codebase smoothly and bring the content and code up to standard, and then to maintain them and balance them. It was enough work that in the end, it would have taken maybe 20% more time to just implement them from scratch.

https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/

You've already defined mods as fine as long as they don't charge, so there we go. Mod authors never have true copyright anyhow because they're adding to / altering existing legal properties - you need the base code to run before the mod works. (Oh, and XML =/= code, because you're using the engine's structure anyhow - .dll alteration, maybe).

If you don't mind a serious analysis of the current state of RimWorld: playing with the mods is currently vastly more enjoyable than vanilla. Most of the mods aren't balanced very well (if at all), but they really open out the game / engine. However, yes, of course, it's more an issue of which ideas the engine can handle & implementing content rather than copy/pasting the mods.

Anyhow - Rimworld has given me more enjoyment than many recent games, so thanks. But I do worry that mods > vanilla will continue.



p.s.

So far I've only come across a single bug in path finding / AI jobs, which is impressive. If you have a starving pawn who is carrying 10 food (any lower and it works fine) they get stuck in a loop and can never feed themselves; given the variables, this is impressive.

[Tynan]

mods > vanilla will continue

I think this will continue. In fact I think it's logically impossible for it to be otherwise :p

But, I'm really glad you've gotten so much value out of mods. That's awesome to hear, as I used to be a serious modder for many years, and made a lot of efforts to support it as well as possible in RimWorld.

[Ramsis]

mods > vanilla will continue

I think this will continue. In fact I think it's logically impossible for it to be otherwise :p

But, I'm really glad you've gotten so much value out of mods. That's awesome to hear, as I used to be a serious modder for many years, and made a lot of efforts to support it as well as possible in RimWorld.

Alright Tynan you stoked the flame... got any mods you wouldn't mind showing us that you made?

[Tynan]

The best stuff is on my old level design portfolio. Including Elemental Conflict, my sci-fi counterstrike for UT2003

http://tynansylvester.com/portfolio/