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This is exactly the invalid "Oversight" mod's logic which I referred to earlier: "Every one who attacks must be evil."

No, I don't agree that it warrants being evil. (let alone lawful evil!)

@Andyr:
You said that you expected them to be detected by "Detect Evil" and to take damage from "Holy smite".

 

Ah, so does Sikret *need* to provide reasons? Ridiculous. No, it's you who made the tweak, and it's you who should explain why they're Lawful, for example.

You didn't understand me, unfortunately. I suggested one more component, to unit *all* changes that are subjective and/or fixes in the wider interpretation of the word, and anything that falls into this category. No more categories are required: Core fixes, the new category and finally Optional-but-Cool covers all.

What invitation are you talking about year-and-a-half ago? I don't remember anything concrete, but it's possible that there was one, I just don't remember. BG2 Fixpack isn't 1.5 years old yet, or is it? Yu must be speaking of something else, I guess.

But it's a very sad fact that you pretend many of your hosted projects to be "community projects", as if others' projects weren't such. Every project which has a public forum and an enthusiastic author (or developer team), *is* a community project, as I'm sure there is no mod developer who would say "No we don't need additional help, we've lots of time". Now after reading your post, it has become obvious that you've been using this "community project" thing as a disguise, which you unfortunately abuse a lot. The projects you call "community projects" are like any other project (with the exception that they have more developers, usually), they have project leaders/coordinators who make the decisions and not through polls where the "community" (all contributors etc.) vote. And this is okay in this way, but please stop this "community" and "project is open to everyone" hipocricy. Every longer project is open to feedback and help (unless it's a surprise mod or anniversary mod).

If by "community project" you mean "project where the modders of many sites are working", I can second that there are such, but again this can't be explicitly determined, as it's already pointless and unnecessary to strictly connect modders to sites. If I go to a mod site and post in a mod forum, I provided feedback so I helped the mod. And?

If you say that BWL is not supporting the community, not joining the "process", here are just two examples:

• WTP's Community Assets -- offers tons of downloadable support material for modders
• Dragon's Hoard -- a hosting place with web-based interface to every modder, for free

Plus our tools, tutorials etc. An isolated site would keep them in secret, I guess.
And to those who would think I have any problem with G3 mods by principle: no, I don't. In fact, I'm a contributor (tool-builder) of the BG1NPC project, hosted at G3. BG1NPC is one of the "community projects" (i.e. which has many developers from many sites, if CamDawg wants to define it in this way).

Sorry, but this is what we refuse. You basically say "come join the mainstream, it's the best for you". Just like BWL has done in the past and up to the present day, we gladly help when needed, and offer our technical resources as well as modding skills and experience. But by "partipating in the process", you mean it's compulsory to follow what you dictate. The complete 120% compatibility (which would have greatly decreased the quality of mods such as Improved Anvil) and e.g. the obligatory use of Fixpack. Sorry, modding is a hobby and for fun, and BWL supports creativity and innovation, but not necessarily the "mainstream". In the near past, SimDing0 asked me to put pressure on Vlad to make his mods support Fixpack instead. And he was not the only person who expected me to (ab)use my administrator position to force mainstream will on certain BWL modders. No guys, this kind of "violence" and idiocy has no place here.
When Improved Anvil was released, you expected Sikret to set everything in the way you like it because it would be compatible with mods of the "community" (i.e. your smaller projects which are installed together and thus strictly require full weidu-compatibility), another example how you abuse the name of the "community" to reach your own interests, to support the mainstream, the mod portfolio of your site. Several people (assisted by a troll group led by SimDing0) were making pressure on Sikret, often with violent posts. Many people criticized Sikret and myself for our strong and stubborn approach, and I say it was fully worth it: IA has become one of the most popular of the new mods, and reserved its quality. However, when you realised that you couldn't achieve the goal, some of you tried to mire IA. (And yes, you can see not one post at SHS which still says "IA builds in deliberate incompatibilities to your game" and similar). Somewhere, I even read something like "IA is a mod that is designed to break other mods". So when someone "doesn't participate in the process", he should expect reprisals, right?
This "participating in the process yields better results" sentence of you referred to fixpack particularly, but it generally characterizes your attitude, which I described above. Oh, so don't I participate in the process with my comments just because I suggest something you don't like (i.e. a new component to unit certain groups of changes)? I've never expected "Yes sir, we'll do as you ask", since it's your call to decide whether to follow others' advice or not, but you don't even consider it, you seem to refuse it by principle. All in all, I thought participating meant *any* constructive feedback, and not just what *you* prefer.

[ October 11, 2006, 02:14: Message edited by: Baronius ]

 

Yes, I would expect that a bunch of pirates (who are hostile to the party) on sight, engaged in smuggling in a hidden room run in an inn by the docks run by a man of questionable virtue would be detected by Detect Evil and take damage from Holy Smite. This is quite different from your assertion that, as I quote, "Andyr said that murderous pirates must be evil!".

I do believe that those pirates are probably Evil characters, but did not make the blanket statement you claim.

 

Err. You argue how everything's subjective, then think we can realisitically create a group of 'subjective' fixes upon which everyone would agree?

I've provided a logical case why pirsea0[1-3]'s original alignment is incorrect. If you believe TN is correct, I don't think asking for a logical argument for TN--or even a logical analysis of where my reasoning fails--is out of hand.

As for the BG2 Fixpack's age, the idea of reviving a community fix effort (specifically japheth's Baldurdash Remix) was really kicked off by Fred S. Richardson back in Feb 2004 in the (by then abandoned by Dorner) Baldurdash forum. Fred disappeared from modding for a stretch after that, but a number of the IRC regulars kept kicking the idea around until the BG2 Fixpack was started as a formal entity in Jan 2005, as the posts in the forum will indicate. Solicitations to participate were posted around April '05 for modder participation and playtesters, right around when we hit our fourth alpha build. Three more alphas followed, the project hit beta, and we went public.

 

Something which is not a strict fix (such as Alignment changes), would go there. Deciding whether something is a strict fix is not a harder (or not a more ambigious) task than finding some logic to arbitrarily change things. I'm pretty sure it would work if people could share their opinion about where they would like the given change. Three components is more than two, and there is little reason to request additional ones. Those who are not happy with a fix in the Core component, can vote for moving it to this new one. It obviously opens many more possibilities if there is three of something, instead of two. If it was a "community" project, more people could vote in the "strategic" matters (such as a new component), yet currently it's you and a few other people who determine these things.

I see, so you call that thread an invitation. It can be, why not. But it's a "bit" exaggerating to explicitly say that "BW declined" it:

The topic was there. BW is visited and used by many modders. I can't know who decided to contribute or who didn't after reading that thread.

This "declined the invitation" [composed in a public thread] approach confirms what I've said: you fancy the IE modding world as a set of sites where all sites have determined members, and if you compose a public thread to ask for testers for a mod and no one replies, you consider it as "BW declined" it. If your "community" definition was more than hipocrisy, you wouldn't be thinking and speaking in this way.

[ October 11, 2006, 02:48: Message edited by: Baronius ]

 

We managed to snag interested parties from everywhere save CoM and BW with that announcement. The 'declined' bit is really more that every time we've tried to invite participation from you, Vlad, or Sikret since then we get, at best, a long-winded rant about how we're mainstream and are leading some grand Fixpack conspiracy or, at worst, a personal attack:

edit: This chunk was edited in after my reply:

I think this is an excellent idea. The best way to facilitate something like this would be to open our process completely, document everything we change, encourage feedback as much as possible, and act upon it. Rather than just me deciding, we could form some type of 'team' that would also help decide what's a fix as well as public input.

 

I've said earlier that there is no conspiracy. It's just occasional shameless, egoistic behaviour. And sorry, but your acts and posts often reflect that you feel you & co. is *the* mainstream, and your attitude is often dictating. Anyone who has a different opinion is "against the community". This expresses your aspect well:

What kind of *results*? Your compliment perhaps? Or what? And as I've already asked, isn't it feedback when I suggest a new component, isn't it participation in the "process"? It's not, because you don't agree with it? Nice.

And again, this "parties from everywhere". Believe me, you didn't get parties from SHS, PPG, or anywhere. You got people or groups of people, individual modders who decided to participate. This "BW declined" covers absolutely nothing, as BWL is not a legal personality with a representative etc.

Give up and forget your site-based classification of the community! Calm down (or "chill, man" or how it's said?), it's about fun! Instead of arguing over whether a damned pirate is evil or not, do some actually productive modding work! The Delainy project was what indirectly founded Gibberlings3, I'm sure many players would welcome its release.

 

Yes.

(The above was in response to Klorox's original question.)

 

Sea Bounty pirate alignment analysis -

LG: Yeah...no.
NG: Questionable, mostly along CG "for the greater good" one-time thing.
CG: Smuggling to help others? Probably doubtful.
LN: Sincerely doubt it. Even the "strong convictions" type of LN is a bit lacking, though someone who put a lot of thought into it could surely find a way.
TN: Maybe there's too much good in the area. Maybe they just like nice things. Maybe they made friends with the wrong people. TN motivations are often hard to find.
CN: Could really be applied to all one-dimensional characters on the "one-time" argument. It's possible for a CN to do just about anything at any one time. The only way to exclude CN would be to have enough information to actually form an idea on their personalities, in which case you don't need to use exclusion anyway.
LE: Decent alignment for smugglers in an organized ring, which is a possibility based on what the captain says when you discover them.
NE: Best alignment for generic smugglers. They want stuff and don't care about the law.
CE: Possible argument for bloodthirstyness, but really, anyone would go after someone who had discovered a secret that could get them killed. Smuggling usually has rather harsh penalties.

In all, that puts 5 out of 9 rather possible (IMO), settled thusly:
- - -
- x x
x x x
Which makes gives the impression of a central point hovering between the four x's in a square, but adjusted a little lower to make LE closer than CG. That would make the two closest ones NE and CE.

Then there's the possibility of mixed alignment groups. Perhaps the mage is a bit different than the others. But that's probably getting a bit picky for such one-dimensional characters.

And finally, what were they changed from? If they were changed from an alignment that they could easily be, I'd regard that more as a tweak than a fix. Some things do deserve changing as a fix, like monsters that have listed alignments (ex. otyugh), or important NPCs (Irenicus, Bodhi, etc.), but changing the alignments of all the peons I tread over without thinking...only if they're really off (like if the "murderers" Irenicus sends after you in his Spellhold escape were Good).

 

They are true Neutral in the original game; however, the main question is not whether TN is the best alignment choice for them. The main question is whether LE is the *only* possible alignment choice for them or not. If LE is not the only rational choice, then it has been chosen arbitrarily and this much is enough to show that the change has been a tweak (rather than a fix).

Of course, I believe that LE is one of the worst choices and not even a rational one, but I leave this part for now.

 

I would tend to agree that most modders are active at several sites--I can easily be classified as, say, a G3 person, a PPG person, and I was even a global moderator at the precursor to SHS for a few years.

BWL modders, though, tend to be more insular and form collaborations on fewer sites. Sekrit posted at SP recently that he doesn't browse other modding community sites, and Vlad has repeatedly said he is not interested in making his mods compatible with those of others, so I think that BWL, contrary to your opinions, actually provides the best case of a cohesive singular community which does things by itself.

Sikret: which alignment do you think they should be, then? Is leaving them TN appropriate just because people cannot decide which of LE, NE or CE, say, is more appropriate? Is, for example, a LE or NE pirate who might have been intended to be CE really much worse than leaving them TN and thus unaffected by spells which you might reasonably expect to harm the pirate? Ingame, the Good-Evil divide is much more important than the Law-Chaos one.

 

Poor Klorox.

He asked a simple question... and suddenly got a war at hand

 

Andyr,

It's true that I don't browse other sites. It's because of my limited time. However, I have already contributed a few new things specially in respect to "scripting" to IESDP project hosted at G3 site; but unfortunately, every thing I sent were simply ignored under the pretext that I had sent them to the wrong forum (despite the fact that those people responsible for IESDP actualy saw and read my posts). Hence, even BWL modders did help, but they were ignored for unknown or unstated reasons (even though I may be able to guess things).

As for the alignments, I think the best thing to do is to shift the alignment changes to the "optional" installation category. And please note that these pirates' case was just an example. My main objection is to the Oversight mod's logic in respect to alignments. we may eventually come to an agreement about these three creatures, but it won't solve the main problem.

@Ironhawk Skylord:

No, it's not really a war. Despite our disagreements with Andyr and Cam, we have good relations with each other and we respect each other.

Fortunately, You haven't seen the real wars. For example, when the horde of trolls were attacking my mod (Improved Anvil), they wrote all sorts of insults and lies about the mod you could imagine. They even sent profane and sexual insults when they ran out of any possible rational answer to our arguments.

[ October 12, 2006, 01:44: Message edited by: Sikret ]

 

Oh, has anyone mentioned that awful Baldurdash rogue stone plot which is most definitely not any sort of fix?

Right, but again, the example you've provided is very weak. If you or Baronius would like to go round every Fixpack thread reminding people that "this mod makes pirates evil!!! wtf?" then that's cool with me, but your accusation that it's just riddled with tweaks continues to be based on the most tenuous of evidence.

That's right, Cam! Instead of trying to improve your mod, why don't you just go away and IMPROVE YOUR MOD?!

 

Heh. I'd love to but someone keeps following me around wherever I post chanting 'tweak, tweak, tweak'. An accusation that I'm wasting time is especially funny since I've updated/released eight projects over the past four weeks and helped on nine others.

 

Partially, you are right when you say BWL is unusual in this respect. It won't follow the dictations of the "mainstream" when its members don't agree, no matter how many trolls will be gathered by SimDing0 to beset BWL.
However, your main point is wrong. First of all, it's not contrary to my opinion what you said, i.e. that BWL is coherent and united. So no matter what the mainstream dictates compatibility-wise, I won't abuse my administrator position to put pressure on any BWL modder, sorry. On the other hand, you are obviously wrong when you try to imply that BWL doesn't try to benefit the community (Yes, the real *community*, and not Fixpack & "mainstream" modders' wishes). It's your call what you believe, but these things remain facts: IESDP and BG1NPC and contributed by at least one BWL member, Community Assets is a huge site dedicated to the whole modder community, BWL released public tools and tutorials for modders, the free DHDC costs a lot of money and so on. Sorry, but these are the facts. (Additionally, it doesn't only support modding community, it helps players as well. E.g. at SP, Sikret and myself gladly make mods, often not just a single item, when players request them. And we don't redirect them "come to bwl forum with your request".) BWL helps the community, without promoting our projects as "community projects" and if someone doesn't agree with us, we don't say "you're not caring about compatibility! Your mod breaks other mods!" or "The best would for you to join the process".

You guys kept saying how much you prefer discussion based on arguments, and now all that SimDing0 you can say is "Right, but again, the example you've provided is very weak". Is this a valid counter-argument? I doubt it. Yeah, this is indeed *weak*. You seem to disprove your own principle.

If someone has been reading this thread, he can notice that CamDawg and SimDing0 argued for their opinion by bringing up Baldurdash. The best defence is the attack, hmm? Too bad that it really has *nothing* to do with this topic and Fixpack directly, just a useless attempt to avoid the need to offer actual arguments. I've seen this only in case of shameless politicians so far. Please don't do it. Furthermore, it can be well seen that SimDing0, in his last post, took out a part of my post from the context, and reacts it as if it had been a standalone statement. Like politicians, again.

Guys, if you can't accept that the problems with Fixpack described here are existing & real and thus unbiased modders like Sikret or myself will *not* disguise anything from the player's eye, at least be so kind and don't accuse us of things we have never done.

Attacking Baldurdash (totally off-topic), telling how weak our arguments are, and demanding examples (pretending to have the mental level of a small child who can't abstract yet) to avoid the question of general principles -- please find something better, as no one will give any credit to your words. If you have no more valid arguments (which is understandable because in this matter the critics regarding Fixpack are justified IMO), please don't try to force and stretch the whole thing -- not beneficial to anyone. Accept that you can't be *always* 100% right. Thank you.


Edit:

For those who still don't have guesses: when BWL's public contributions are refused, it's often meant to be a reprisal -- because we still *dare* to support mods like Improved Anvil, Never Ending Journey or Tortured Souls. Instead of asking their authors to find another site for the projects. Tell me, dear readers, should we discontinue to support such works?

[ October 11, 2006, 20:21: Message edited by: Baronius ]

 

...what are you talking about? This is the worst conversation ever. There's practically a whole page of actual arguments from Cam and Andyr prior to my post. Sikret's been responding to them, but you seemed to somehow miss them in favour of talking about how BlackWyrm will never go mainstream and all that stuff.

If anyone here is convinced by these "valid arguments" Baronius has been putting forward--but which I've somehow missed--then I can't be anything but surprised. I'd like to move for some audience participation, since I'm genuinely curious as to whether those paragraphs of rhetoric about how I lead crack teams of trolls and have the mental age of a child are working.

 

Now you're doing two things, the usual word-twisting and implying that I didn't speak truth. First of all, I never said anything about your mental age. I told my opinion about your "tactic" to demand 'concrete examples!!' all the time:

But instead of offering any counter-arguments regarding the general question and principle, you guys always turn the conversation by various things such as "concrete examples!!" or "Baldurdash has that quest too and it's a tweak!!".

"how I lead crack teams of trolls" -- no? So you didn't? Come on, basically everyone in the IE modding world knows your temperament. Furthermore, several users witnessed when you publicly spammed & trolled BWL, when you publicly expressed you follow your own rules instead of BWL's, or when you provoked and insulted all members (not just admins). So it's pointless to imply that I'm talking nonsense when I say that you are trolling if you've no other tool left to achieve your goal. But enough of this, BWL events are not the subject of SP threads.

I ask one thing, again, guys. Please make a last try to realize that BWL modders will *not* follow your dictations and will not disguise the errors of mods just because your or "mainstream's" interests would require it. No matter what you do.

No matter what you do, we will not keep silent with our opinion when we feel that players have right to know it (without having to read hundreds of docs pages). This applies to any mod. You can't show an example where I said it to anyone that "Fixpack is bad" or anything similar, because there isn't any. I say "I recommend Fixpack if ...,", "I recommend BD if..." or "I recommend GreyClan if...". So please do realise that there is no malicious intent here. Please don't make a war on this wonderful forum. I think this discussion is now void.

[ October 11, 2006, 21:49: Message edited by: Baronius ]

 

Yes, Sim, you've done a decent job at coming off better than Baronius in this thread (though the many cuts and thrusts belie that). But I've seen posts by you here and I've seen posts by Baronius here. And while Baronius's have been well-balanced (with the notable exception of this thread), yours have not. Given what I've seen of your temper, I wouldn't be at all surprised if what Baronius was saying about leading attacks was true. In fact, I even know that what he's saying about your claims on IA has basis in fact as I've seen it myself even in my relatively short stay here.

And like it or not, you do think of yourselves as the mainstream. Though not without reason. Everyone hears about WeiDU first thing when they get into mods. And with complete compatibility with absolutely everything else in the entire world being something of a gold standard for WeiDU mods, that puts you right in the heart of it.

But a even a gold standard isn't a strict rule. Good mods can be made that are incompatible with individual others, that wouldn't be as good if they were made compatible. So trying to make all mods universally compatible, while a decent goal, is not the ultimate goal. Because the ultimate goal is: fun. They're games, after all. The argument can be made that incompatibility doesn't lend itself to fun, trying to figure out which mods you can use with each other, but on the balance, a good mod that causes only a one-mod-to-one-mod conflict is more fun than a crappy mod with no compatibility issues at all.

And this is what sets up the rebellion. Because one way is not the only way, and certainly not always the best way. But contrary to what you may think, it's not a malicious rebellion. (Though with the way things are going...) They're not trying to tear down your way of doing things. They're just trying to do things their own way, and voicing concerns when they have them.

It is this second part that makes them so angry. For while they voice valid concerns, they are dismissed only because they are part of the rebellion. Because they don't do things the way the mainstream tells them they should, that mainstream then only hears attacks in criticism, whether it's constructive or not. You shunt them aside as their own little group doing their own little things when what they are trying to do is contribute in a different way than that which you approve of.

And when they ask to be heard, your response is "join us". Not a simple desire to be together, but a desire to assimilate, to have them play by your rules. And that in turn is an attack on them, on their way of doing things. In the end, your side is the one misinterpreting both the 'attacks' against you and your offers of 'friendship'. Because you simply do not see the other side. You do not understand why they do what they do (don't even bother denying THAT one).

I see two possible outcomes, neither of them palatable:
1. The conflict escalates into outright war. The rebellion will become malicious and both sides will begin attacking each other. The rebellion will be crushed, but interest in modding as a whole will drop dramatically. The beginning of the end for IE modding.
2. Conflicts simmer indefinitely. With the mainstream voluntarily blind to the other side's reasons, they will simply continue to dismiss the other side as oddballs and eventually even leave them alone. The rebellion will gradually become semi-comfortable with this, and will offer their advice alongside the mainstream's (occasionally causing a breakout if a particularly volatile member of either group takes something the wrong way). At some point the two groups may even just ignore each other.

As for a third solution, I think the situation is too far along for it to be at all probable. Reconciliation at this point would likely require generational memory loss. Even given the lowered "life-span" of modders generated by this aggravation, I don't think the IE modding world will outlive the conflict.

 

honestly, who the **** care how the mod is made as long as it works?