Whoever is doing release engineering: PLEASE make sure that patches are kept in separate bins: bug fixes should not be distributed in the same .zip file with "fan created quests," which should not be distributed with "reenabled content" (like the brothel). Why? So that we can feed the bug fixes back to Troika.
This isn't possible right now. We are doing the merges prior to release of the mod. What you are talking about is some sort of app that merges client side, i.e part of the install process. It would be nice yes, but we shouldn't wait to develop something like that. Troika knows the game architecture better then we do, they will be able to see our change list, and know which files those changes are contained in. They will also be able to extract our fixes out, leaving the other stuff.
I dunno. If I were troika, and I got a context diff with legit D&D fixes and then a bunch of fan-created material, I'd just throw it all away as useless without looking at it. But that's me.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Show me a program that can merge text files from a batch file and I'm convinced. Otherwise we can't do it. It would mean that we don't have ANY custom content. I.E we turn off the brothel, we undo any dialog flavoring changes, we undo the store inventory changes, as well as the additional crafted items, etc. I'm not disagreeing with you. It would be very nice to hand troika everything wrapped and bow-tied. But they wrote the game. They build the engine. They can tell which is which. They have REAL software development tools. It's a lot easier to look at a list of changes, merge in our mod(using a merge tool) and then ignore any changes I didn't want. (the custom stuff) Sure they have to do some work to get our changes out, but it's less work than re-coding them.
This was why I was saying "use a version control system like CVS" -check in the 'clean' code from Troika, the data directory they shipped on the CD. -break out three branches. -Apply each type of patch in each branch. Then you distribute 3 different .zip files to the users, and OPTIONALLY distribute a 'mega-release' with all three sets of diffs applied. It's some work, yeah, but not that much work.
hehe. Yeah. I wish we could convince the developers to make every change three times.. Or the time to setup that robust of system... (I have enough trouble getting people to thoroughly unit test.. ) Though I'm the lucky one, I've gotten VaeVictus to agree to take over the Release manager role.. He should be the one to talk to ... You have to remember.. Troika or other companies get paid for this... We are just a bunch of people that got together and were unhappy with the state of the game, and felt inclined to change it.. Yeah, the things you are talking about are the right thing to do. Unfortunately if you only have a <10 or <15 hours a week you don't have enough time to do fixes and startup/maintain a system like that.
If Troika actually uses code from our fan modding projects in their official patches they are: 1) Extremely stupid. 2) Begging for a law suit. This is a moot point because Troika will be doing ALL of their fixes themselves using their dev tools that can do the job much more easily. They will NOT use code we create as doing so would open them up to enormous liability. Imagine if some piece of code "we" wrote was used by Troika and then "oops, our code is buggy and someone feels like it trashed their system." Hello law suit. It would be very easy for someone to argue that they were reckless (or at least grossly negligent) in using code created by the mod community in their official patch. NOTE: You often see people add IANAL (I am Not A Lawyer) to posts where they talk about a legal matter. Well, I actually am a (retired) lawyer. That being said, I think it is pretty clear that so far we have avoided CHANGING the game in our mod patches. We have simply fixed bugs and added a few more options for people (like some extra magic items they can CHOOSE to craft or not). I do agree that any game balance changes, however, should have a different development path. Those types of changes represent our opinions on how the game should be and we wouldn't want to foist those on everyone. If the ToEE mod community grows in a healthy manner what you will see is people starting their own pet mod projects by using the work of others as a starting point and then making their own unique changes. That is how it has always worked in other mod communities.
He's right. Troika isn't going to include any community fixes in their patch (although they may occasionally fix the exact same bugs in the exact same manner). We're going to have to go back and diff all of the files we changed after the patch and release a seperate post-patch fanfix.
Nice as CVS would be for that kind of stuff, no can do on the legal end. All the dat files are technically property of Atari (I think, the exe and actual source code is Troika's) so we can't just distribute the game data to the general public without express written permission from Atari. Which just ain't gonna happen. I am gonna be working on a diff/merge tool which should help revision management on my end, and we'll see what happens from there - Ideally I'd like to have one version that is just _fixes_ with bugs and items and quests and such, and then a second version that has entirely new content like the retooled dialogue and new quests etc. It's not going to happen for public 1.0 though.
