questions about devnull mod

[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Pax:
And when you start paying $10US to the authors of the mod (each and every one; DevNull has changedhands more than once), maybe they will oblige you. Maybe. But I wouldn't hold my breath, were I you.

...

Look, no offense, but ... it's free; don't you think you're being just a BIT ungrateful, here? A mod is a LOT of work in and of itself (as I have discovered the hard way with the STILL-unfinished "Exodus" mod), if you do more than tweak a few minor things here and there. Try it sometime, you'll see what I mean.

I think you're really misunderstanding me. This has got absolutely nothing to do with being grateful or ungrateful, free or not free. I didn't know what the mod did (until I found binford's write-up) so an explanation seems natural. Presumably, the people who made the mod had to consider what changes they were making, why they were making them, what the balances would be, what the new equipment would be, and so on, and in the course of that would have written something down. Whatever that was that they wrote down would have been fine if included in the mod (again, Binford did it and that's great)--you know, "we added x, y, z and they do a, b, c," that's all. If you're going to go to the trouble of modding, why not ensure everyone knows what the mod is/does?

An analogy would be if one technologically advanced society built a nuclear reactor (or a toaster) for a less advanced society but gave the latter no clue as to what it was or how to operate it properly ("What does this red button do?" "Oh, just fiddle around with it until you figure it out."). Then the advanced society says to the other, "You should just be grateful we gave you this incredibly powerful way to make lots of energy. Never mind training your engineers."

And the authors of mods have lives, too. It already takes a lot of work to craft a new mod out of whole cloth (easily into the hundreds of man-hours for th really big ones).

Hmm, so you spend "hundreds of man-hours" creating these mods but leave out the instructions at the end? (Ironically, the part that would take the least amount of time to do.)

[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
There is a world of difference between a manual and a readme. The terms are certainly not interchangeable. A manual is an in-depth analysis of everything in the mod. A readme often includes a superficial overview of the mod.

Right--a readme would do. Just like binford provided. The term escaped me at first so I stuck in the word manual. But obviously, there's no need for a manual with a game that already shipped with a manual.

Such as who?

Such as taera.

[Rollo]

I think Binfords site http://jeffleggett.com/devnull.html gives a very good summary of the differences betweeen stock SE4 and Devnull Mod and can be considered a manual.
Good job, Binford.

Rollo

[ July 28, 2003, 00:57: Message edited by: Rollo ]

[Fyron]

Taera said that there are a lot of minor changes that do not require much extra learning (if any). He did not say that having more changes means there is less need of an explanation.

Mods do require readmes, yes.

[Silent Sorrow]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Taera said that there are a lot of minor changes that do not require much extra learning (if any). He did not say that having more changes means there is less need of an explanation.

He did not say that. He said, and I quote, verbatim from his post, "the deal is, there is a little too many changes there in DevNull to list them all ..."

Clearly, he's suggesting that there are so many changes that it's maybe too time-consuming (or something) to list them. And I'm saying that the very fact there are "so many" changes is the reason there should be an explanation included. If there were "few" changes, I'd be less likely to need a readme.