ToEE_Fan_Fixes_V4-0-RC1

Well, as I said at the begining the sole purpose of all this was to stir things up, I really believe we need a collective patch, too many good things appear as attachments in some thread and/or are published with a readme, this is discouraging esp. for beginners.

As for modifying Liv's mod, the proposed modification was not to make things easier, actually I am whole heartedly for harded, but those specific changes instead of making things harder made them happen later, in which I as a person who never as yet finished ToEE (too many IE games) I could not find any logic. But let's forget that and erase from history

BTW - all the troubles with deceiding what to include could be averted should someone with programming skill do a patching mod-installer in a manner of Weidu.

 

TOEEFE is the key to all of this. Let the people decide what new content they employ in their own games; once the modders have settled on the new content they'd like to offer up (with/without DH, for example...). Then, once it's in the front-end, let it stay there. All such contributed content should remain unmodified by the collective of co8, but individuals can (and always could) modify their own games as they see fit. If they want to make a personal mod, they can do so...and get help from the community. This mod could be a raging success or a dismal mutilation, and could be included in future additions to the front-end, or just as easily ex-cluded.

 

But Front End would include only a number of options, "certified" mods, and it might allow you to choose between mod 1 & 2 but not 5/10 from mod 1 plus 2/10 from mod 2 as would Weidu "clone" allow.

PS. Nice to see a DSotM quote.

 

Weidu...?

If that would work, then, sure, it could be of benefit to this process. I just don't know what it is/means.

 

This is a very tricky problem. Splitting mod "features" apart is a nice idea, but how do you do so for ToEE? If, for example, you have 2 mods that both add or remove items in protos.tab and descriptions.mes and you choose to install only one of them what happens? Your installer would either need to be smart enough to parse out the items from the unwanted mod (so basically it would have to build a custom protos.tab and descriptions.mes on the fly) or it would need to select a specific "version" of protos.tab and descriptions.mes from a list of supported possibilities. This second option would require all of the individual modders to work together and create a set of installation packs. In this case, each modder would need to create a set of files with only their own mods, then a combined set of files with all of the mods, then individual sets of the files for every possible install option. Simple enough for a case with only 2 options, but I think you can see how complex this process could be if, for example, you were choosing between three or four mods that changed quests, dialogues, added spells, updated protos.tab entities, etc. I'm not saying it can't be done, but the difficulty level of this kind of functionality is far beyond the reasonable expectations of loosely affiliated individual contributors who aren't developing against a common specification and more or less have no kind of formal source control or versioning systems in place (collaborative systems that is, I wouldn't be surprised to find at least one of the contributors here has some kind of individual source control system in place).
It would be another story if this highly dedicated group of Co8 developers were working on this project full-time, being compensated for their contributions, and being supported financially to resolve the myriad logistical issues they need to tackle. Oh yeah, and if they had access to the ToEE source code, of course. I'm awed just thinking of the possibilities...

~daetar

 

Well, Theodore, in that case, I may have to finally take the plunge!

:gotmyatte

Seriously, I know that "all y'all" have been working very hard to do these things, and I for one appreciate it. Soon, I'll be slingin' 6-guns with my Paladin and his pals in an effort to rid the Temple of its denizens.

Hmmm....now, to think up some side-kicks...

 

I guess your mail has arrived...!


"Have Smyth & Westrealm, Will Travel"

No worries, Ted...it'll take me that long to get the party rolled up.

:wyatt:

 

What we would need is a Weidu-like-in-use utility not Weidu as such. One of the main problems with modding IE was that they keep all the dialogue/descriptions in one file. IN ToEE with multiple/simple structured dlg files this is not the case. But still it would help. E.g. the tool would build a new protos.tab etc. to use a simple example let's say a modder adds a quest, he would then include just a lines for it using some syntax (like [NQ1]) and the utility would give it first free entry (patching all entries in the files to have that entry). Hope I'm making myself clear.... so btw a mod that would normally be 3MB would be only 50KB.