Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I Try

It may not seem it, but I try really, really hard not to rant and rave and bitch around here. Really, you guys see less than ten percent of it.

But these people on the Nexus... it's like they're making it a point to be as dense as humanly possible.

Posted to the NCCS file comments this evening was this: "Do any of you know how to work the New Vegas Facegen Exchanger? It would really help with my project."

This person has never communicated with me before that I am aware of. I have no idea what "his project" is. Never heard of it.

Now, I can extrapolate from the name what the New Vegas Facegen Exchanger does... but I'd never before heard of this utility. It was not being widely discussed in the comments - nor discussed at all, ever, as far as I know.

So what... in the holy hell... would make it seem like NCCS was the place to ask about this utility?

Why not ask at, oh I don't know... the utility's file entry? If it isn't on the Nexus, why not ask the author direct through their site?

I mean, you have to get the fucking thing somewhere, right? And odds are good, wherever it was made available for download, or linked to in a forum post or whatever... it would seem like someone made it known that it was available because they found it useful.

So... why ask us?

I know I didn't have anything to do with creating the file; and I doubt Herculine did, either - seems like the sort of thing she'd mention if she had authored such a file.

This is a perfect example of why I'm coming to loathe the Nexus more and more. You help somebody once; or write a tutorial or answer a question, and all of a sudden the people come to you with every question, every issue; in lieu of reading the documentation or going to the author of the file in question.

As I've said in the past: helping people on the Nexus is like feeding a stray dog. Do it a couple times, and from then on, any time the dog gets hungry, it expects you to feed it.

It's like the other post, a few down from that one. The individual there thinks I should rewrite the companion tutorial to include a complete primer on every possible method of and technique for ini editing available.

I don't mind helping, guys; really. If you have a problem with one of my mods, or even someone's companions who are dependent on one of my mods - mention it and odds are very good I'll do what I can to get it sorted for you.

But Goddammit, I am not an on-call tech support database. Neither is Herculine. We do like to do things other than answer technical questions and validate inane modding concepts for your new super-plugin that's going to use NCCS but change everything about it.

We are modders. We are not Bethesda Tech Support. We do this for fun; to share our little ideas with the community on the whole - we do not do it to be your personal Rolodex of technical procedures and minutiae.

If you have a question about the inner workings of the companion AI, then fine, ask. That pertains to companion mods. That's fine. Weapon usage, classes, AI packages, even leveled lists. These are all things that are part of the "companion experience", and are perfectly fine to ask for information about, or general help with.

If it doesn't pertain to one of our mods, please: fucking Google it. Search the forum. Then, if you can't find any workable solution, you can ask if you must - though understand that no one owes you an answer or any help whatsoever.

Unless of course I have made a blog post about some mod; then you can ask for help with it, and I'll probably help. Or at least point you to the forum thread where I found answers.

24 comments:

  1. He must have thought "companions have faces so The Companion Guy(TM) must know all about it".
    I suppose if you had massive head trauma it would even make sense...

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  2. Nos, you are exactly correct that if I had released some genius face-swapping technology I would not be keeping it a secret from you.

    Like you, I've never heard of the thing and never seen it on the Nexus, thus I totally sidestepped the question.

    Also like Nos, I have no problem answering questions that I have reliable answers to, within reason. The .ini issues with heads not matching bodies is something I've experienced first-hand and Nos helped me work it out, so I'm willing to share that info with others. Plus it is in fact within our companion-creating realm and doesn't deal with some random thing I've never ever mentioned ever having heard of.

    But yeah, sometimes helping the noobs can in fact come back to bite one in one's ass, or in the very least be very frustrating. I'd link you guys to a thread on the Nexus Forums in which I was trying to help somebody get the appropriate GECK for the latest NV patch, but the exchange quickly began to seem like one of those annoying jokes where you try to answer someone's question and they just keep repeating: "But why?" so I'm not even going to subject you all to that mess...

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  3. You non-modders cannot imagine.

    I've got an email in my box right now, from a player - I vaguely recall the name, so I think he's emailed me once before, but didn't make enough of an impression to really remember - who sent me this big email about how he can't add a recall item to his companion because it says it's an invalid reference.

    So I explain how to set a RefID so that the NPC can be called from a script.

    Get an email back, "I can't find the cell where I put my companions. How do I add a refid?"

    ...

    Ten minutes later: "Nevermind, I found it. Can you recommend me some other RPGs that are easy to add companions to?"

    I swear, some days it's like a modern Abbot and Costello bit. A giant, constantly repeating game of "Who's on first?" except sprinkled with ADHD and leetspeak. LOLWTFBBQROFLCOPTER

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  4. Not to imply that Herculine doesn't understand. I've noticed she's getting well-known enough to start getting the PMs, too.

    Schadenfreude, ahoy!

    I know, I'm a horrible person; but sometimes it is nice to see it isn't just me.

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  5. Misery loves company, 'tis true.

    Still, it will likely take me a while to reach your league.

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  6. See, that I don't get.

    You're an attractive girl-who-likes-girls, that is also into classic gaming and heavy metal music.

    You should be like a hundred times as popular as me, according to the rules of the internet.

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  7. True, but replacing the photo of myself with an image from a game squashed a LOT of that.

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  8. Cheater.

    Obfuscation is not a nice life policy to engage in, you know...

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  9. Obfuscation is a life policy if you play Vampire: The Masquerade O,..,O But you would have to it play to get the joke...

    I am familiar with the Facegen Exchanger program that was being refered to. I have a copy of it off the FO3 Nexus. Its used to swap out the face of your Player Character between FO3, FNV, Oblivion and/or a face created with Facegen Modeller. It became a bit more popular recently with Riven1978 releaing his Famous People packs. The "inquirer" probably wanted to use it to change the face on a companion, which it can't do.

    And Herculine is an attractive, gaming headbanger?! *blink blink* I thought they were like dragons, unicorns and honest politians: a myth!

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  10. Oh, we exist... but our secret society remains well-hidden from curious outsiders...

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  11. Lol! Maybe I should inform Ultrajet of that fact then. Silly lass is walking around in plane sight *shakes head*

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  12. I try not to let V:tM dictate how I act here in the real world.

    Trust me; you don't want me to let loose my inner-Malkavian.

    At least under normal circumstances, I care enough not to respond to the voices out loud...

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  13. Oh, you heard the voice too?

    I mean, I thought the joke was a bit racist... but to each their own, I guess...

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  14. Only one voice? Wow, that must get lonely at times.

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  15. Only one is the joker.

    The others stick to preaching death and destruction of varying types.

    Oh, and occasionally demanding red meat.

    Except for the one voice that likes the Simpsons and ice cream.

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  16. For some reason I was suddenly thinking about the ini file thing mentioned above and I wonder if it's due to different versions of Oblivion.
    SI vs Non-SI
    Steam vs non Steam.
    GOTY vs seperate items.
    Steam in particular, I've seen to do tiny Oblivion updates for no apparent reason. It might be clobbering the changes (Steam GOTY Deluxe edition here)

    It's weird the things you think of when you've been awake for more than a day :)

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  17. No idea. I don't know that any sort of wide-reaching study has been done.

    Knowing what I do about the engine though, I doubt it's so simplistic. A+B rarely equals C where Gamebryo debugging is concerned.

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  18. True, but it would explain why it only seems to affect some people but not others.

    Oh, stuff like UAC and whether it was installed in "Program Files" too.

    Now I remember why I hate technical support so much :P

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  19. Really? Personally, I hate tech support because people ask for my help; don't listen when I try to help; and then bitch in my general direction that it still doesn't work.

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  20. You forgot that they change things and break stuff, then deny it even after you prove it.

    But yeah, I was thinking of how hard it is to get people to tell you stuff like the information above.

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  21. Thanks, I had nearly forgotten that part.

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