Thursday, June 30, 2011

HAY GUIZE!

WHY WONT DIS NCCS THNG WERK

I DONT NED 2 HAF TEH NEWST PATCH R GCK R NETHNG DO I LOLWTFBBQLMNOP

SUM1HELPMEH!!113FORTYSEVENSIXTEENTWELVEEXTRAECLAMATIONPOINTSSOYOUKNOWIMSUPERSERIOUS!


How many does this make, just this week, now? Four? And it's Thursday?

I'm apparently going to have to add a rather large notice to the file entry. Even auto-update in Steam obviously cannot defeat the anti-patchers...

In other news: the NosCo CEO has announced this morning that his company will shortly be attempting to corner the market on Russian vodka. This is not an attempt to expand business, but for the founder to drink himself into oblivion. And now, here's Dave with your five day forecast...

17 comments:

  1. My sympathies for having to put up with that sort of thing. I'm glad I'm not a modder, my tolerance of such things is very, very low.

    I do have to wonder if people think their computer has a "read my mind" function though.

    Also, most people should only be allowed two exclamation points in their entire lives.

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  2. Yep. I answered the initial question assuming that it was just something the player had overlooked somehow; then I saw his admission of his refusal to update his game because of some NVSE thing, and I was done.

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  3. If you want Oblivion, just fire up the game. If you're seeking a comatose or vegatative state, go with the vodka.

    Any mods I decide to release will not be available for public download, with the exception of maybe the Cameron companion, but it is a moot point until I actually start modding.

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  4. @Kirtai: Unfortunately, my tolerance is pretty thin, as well. I can't tell you guys how hard it's been not to start spewing profanity in file comments over the last couple years.

    @Herculine: I wouldn't mind so much, but shit... the people never consider that different game versions might cause problems. I guess I'm supposed to keep a different install of the game for every version; and maintain a version of the mod to match. I can't help but imagine them sitting around the computer with femurs, reenacting that scene from 2001 with the obelisk.

    @Druuler: Not for public download severely cuts your user base. I'm still trying to decide whether or not it would have been worth it. Since I don't self-aggrandize on forums, probably not for me.

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  5. @Nos:

    Now I'll have "Zarathustra" stuck in my head the rest of the day. Thanks...

    ...but then again, at least it's better than some stupid commercial jingle...

    @Druuler & Nos:

    Whether or not sharing one's mods with the public is worth it is all a matter of perspective, I suppose. On the one hand, you can tell yourself that you really just made it for yourself and are satisfied in that, but uploaded it as a lark; on the other hand, you can make that claim and then get all pissy when the most popular website in the world for that genre refuses to put your work in their "latest files" section, thus pretty much ensuring that only a handful of people will ever know it even existed. I guess it depends upon one's mood.

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  6. @Herculine: I'm gathering that that particular incident is still a sore spot with you, and I don't blame you in the least. I would be more that a wee bit perturbed myself if I were in your position.

    So far, the only mod I have done is a companion version of my character, Cameron, and that was done for just one of my Nexus friends initially. It was a trade of characters for use in our respective screenshots and comics. Another friend I received a character from asked if she could also have a copy, and I sent Cameron off again. As it stands, I am quite happy with just those two official copies being the only ones. If the comic is well received enough, I was thinking on doing a public release on both the Nexus and F3Underground. Mind you, I would first need Nos's approval to do so, as Cameron depends heavily on Nos' Cosmetic Mod. The current version requires the user to have RR Vault, Nos' Cosmetic Mod and Ling's Finer Things: there are no self-contained resources. I would change that with a public release.

    Sorry, started rambling there. Mind you, if, for some reason, either of you folks wanted a copy of Cameron, I'm willing to share :)

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  7. I like Cameron, but I don't want any special treatment. Besides, who knows when I'll get back to the game anyway? My brother and his XBox... *shakes head wearily*... he's been playing Morrowind GOTY and of course picking my brain for gameplay tips, spoilers and the like, and all those memories coming back got me back into the mood to revisit the homeland of the Dunmer myself. But you know me... I can't be satisfied to run the vanilla version of a PC game; I have to mod it until it's FUBAR. Thus gameplay at the moment has degraded into trying to figure out which mega-mods all work together and just keeping it from crashing...

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  8. Special treatment? After all the things for Classic Doom that arrived in my e-mail inbox, I would consider it a trade :) Plus, I happen to have 150 of your companions as well :P Not to mention that fact that I just remembered that both you and Nos could recreate Cameron at the drop of a hat right now (duh), as I expect you both have all the required mods to do so...

    That would be a different story once I start a SCC version. I could possibly do an EZ Companions build and maybe a stand alone. Not sure about that though. Need much more modding skill first, but I have to start somewhere.

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  9. At one point I had considered making SCC, EZ and CSR alternate versions of all my companions for the various games because I thought it would be the "friendly philanthropic community modder" thing to do. Then I realized that would be a lot of comments threads to keep tabs on and that to properly answer user questions I'd need to learn all these other companion systems as well. In the end I decided it would just be too much work and that I should just stick with the systems I use because, when all is said and done, they're the best.

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  10. "Not to mention that fact that I just remembered that both you and Nos could recreate Cameron at the drop of a hat right now (duh), as I expect you both have all the required mods to do so..."

    Actually, recreating NPCs can be hard as hell.

    My trio of companions in the banner, for example. Two of the three exist in... seven games now? One has been with me since the original Unreal Tournament in 2001, I guess it was. I can't even begin to guess at the number of hours spent in facegens recreating them -- but even within one engine, or one game; trying to exactly reproduce a face is a heck of a task, even with great editors.

    One thing most people don't get about companions is the scripting is the easy part. Write one framework, and it works for them all... but those faces, those are the stone bitch...

    Or maybe I feel that way because I can throw together a companion system on a whim in three hours. If I didn't know how to script, I'd probably find that part way more daunting.

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  11. I agree that character faces are not as easy as some folks might make it look or others might think it looks. While I'm better at that than I am at scripting, there are always issues to contend with such as a face in the CS almost never looks the same as it does in the game, and can also look different in someone else's game than in mine. It's crazy, but true.

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  12. I understand that recreating a character's face is a rather difficult task. I have had to try and do so in my own game, changing a PC into an NPC. I got it rather close, and managed to get said character to look better in the process. I have also noticed the fact that that a few of my guest stars don't look exactly like the originals. I think only two are dead-on matches. I believe one of them uses a racial preset made by either Blackblossom (Nexus)or Satanslilhelper (Nexus).

    Cameron's appearance shouldn't be to hard to replicate, as I used a racial and a hair preset found in Nos' Cosmetic Mod. Other than changing the colour of the hair, I used the presets as is.

    I can understand the headache of trying to follow multiple comment threads and knowing different companion systems on a public release. I am currently more interested in learning how to create companions in different systems to understand them better. Even without Herculine's Scouts, the majority of my companions are RR Vault based, but I also have a couple of "must use" that are based on SCC. SCC has come in handy for other companions when they start to get a little glitchy in their behaviour. For example, not obeying a "wait" command or not properly obeying the hiring functions. The Bittercup companion is bad for the last one. Using the SCC functions will override the original scripts and get the companion working smoothly.

    Before you ask, no, I haven't had to use SCC to override any script issues with the RR system. Someone seems to have hammered out just about all the bugs in that one ;)

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  13. "I believe one of them uses a racial preset made by either Blackblossom (Nexus)or Satanslilhelper (Nexus)."

    Yep, facegen presets are a godsend. The character generator is so horrible in-game, but it's a lot easier to make up an NPC in the GECK, and just flag them as a preset.


    "Cameron's appearance shouldn't be to hard to replicate, as I used a racial and a hair preset found in Nos' Cosmetic Mod. Other than changing the colour of the hair, I used the presets as is."

    ...You did? Well, that shows how much attention I pay, anymore.


    "SCC has come in handy for other companions when they start to get a little glitchy in their behaviour. For example, not obeying a "wait" command or not properly obeying the hiring functions. "

    You know, I actually do something similar in Oblivion. Since I started using MCS, I've found that it's way more stable and reliable than CM; so I generally use it to override their default follow behavior. MCS even fixes the issue where they randomly decide to stop following on going through a cell-change door. Plus you get that cool auto-switching between armored and not when you draw and sheathe weapons.


    "Before you ask, no, I haven't had to use SCC to override any script issues with the RR system. Someone seems to have hammered out just about all the bugs in that one ;) "

    Wish I could take sole credit for that, but I'm just the code monkey. I had a couple people helping me at that stage in the mod. They'd play with the express purpose of breaking the companion system in every possible way, and then report how they did it. Every time they found flaws, I'd patch them up. After a couple months of that, you end up with a pretty damned solid system. Unfixable bugs in the engine itself notwithstanding, of course.

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  14. The two friends I sent Cameron out to both use the RR Companion Vault. My fellow comic creator, Vancleef, also had the Cosmetic Mod and Ling's Finer things. The other friend, Ultrajet, was missing only the Cosmetic Mod, which was an easy fix :) Since they both had the same mods I had, Cameron was a rather easy build. With no self-contained resources, the mod file was less than 50 kb in size. Any public releases would be a wee bit different. Any Nexus releases would delete the Ling's references, but could stay for a release on the Underground. Going with a different companion system, or even a non-system dependent version would require more self-contained resources. Cameron's racial and hair presets being at the top of the list. This of course would require me to obtain permission from Nos to do so. Using any of the Ling's outfits would require me to ask Earache42 about it, and that version might be restricted to the Underground only. That's just a guess, as I haven't spoken enough with Earache42 to get the feel of how that might go.

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  15. The issue with reusing Ling's resources wouldn't be with EARACHE42, I don't think. The problem would be as I recall, he doesn't own the copyright to the vast majority of that stuff. The outfits in particular were collected primarily from existing mods; he just condensed it all into one mod, and one vendor. I remember him saying he had edited a few here and there for efficiency or to fix a bug or clipping issue, but the stuff by and large remained the property of its creators, he just had permission to pack it all into one megamod.

    There is (or was, I haven't looked in quite awhile) a credits list in one of the Ling's readmes that was fairly extensive, and covered the origins of most of the outfits. You might read it over, find the outfit you were interested in using, and approach the original author directly for permission.

    Or do what I usually do, add the outfit as a new, unique item for your plugin, that just requires the original mod to be installed. Then you can just say "You have to have X clothing mod installed for this to work right" and give a link. Since no resources are included, it doesn't technically count as a reuse of resources, and so you can't be banned for uploading your plugin. It's using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit, I know; but the fact is a lot of mod authors have dropped off the face of the Earth in the last couple years. Sometimes you can't get through to them, and have to be somewhat underhanded if you don't want to edit your mod back to default items. Though even if you are going that route, at least attempting to PM the author is considered good form and a show of decent intentions.

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  16. Guess I really should RTFRM more often, then I would be more aware of these things :P

    I am unfortunately aware of vanishing mod authors. I messaged Loxy38 about using his companions in my story sometime back in April, I think, and still haven't heard back. There are also a couple of mods I have grown fond of that the authors have left for dead. I have made some logical adjustments to them in my game, and have been considering asking for permission to upload the altered esp/esm files. Not sure I would be getting a reply one way or the other, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

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  17. That's why I keep threatening to learn to 3d model. No worries about reuse or tracking down someone who's hiding.

    Kind of surprised Lox went AWOL though. He(?) was pretty good about supporting Jessi and Kelsey for a long time. Any bets on whether it was the constant stream of stupid that finally got to him, too?

    I'm seeing patterns emerge in the reasons all the good mod authors are vanishing...

    Shame I can't figure out how to turn this into a sociology paper; could get my ass a PHD and some stupid liberal arts research grant.

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