Mod distribution ettiquette... ?

That's wierd what the heck?

The way I read that, is it just recommends you put mods into a Mod directory, and utilize the res_dir="<path>" in your DS2 shortcut...though perhaps the res_dir isn't needed if you put the mods into the default Mods dir.

yes

You cannot test your maps with the standard ds2 executable, you have to use DS2mod. But, as Balderstrom said, and I was thinking the same thing, a new shortcut that utilizes the res_dir should be able to launch just that map. :s

It's all way more difficult than it needs to be.

Check out this thread where I took the question to GPG...
http://garage.gaspowered.com/?q=node/2248

Apparently there is something planned for non-modders (according to X... no word straight from GPG... yet?).

Mods are not to go in the resources directory? You will require a special start icon for each mod? What about someone that wants to use more than one mod or map? Can I take the existing mods I am using and put them in this new directory and have them work? What kind of dance is this anyway. Oh lets give the poor modders a tool kit, but not allow them to share their work with people that do not have the DS2TK?

It seems with these restrictions and the additional work required to make armor modifications it would almost be better to go plow a field with a stick instead of a tractor.

So from the garage, basically they'll release ELys' AllSaves for non-modders? *chuckle*

Expecting players to patch a game before using mods is reasonable. IMO, expecting players to download and install a special separate program add-on in order to use mods is most definately overkill.

"Hey Timmy, if you want to have a larger inventory / new pet type / bigger gold capacity... then you have to download a patch, then go and install a separate program, put the mod files in a special new directory, copy your character files to another new special directory, and then use the new program instead of the game you bought. And Timmy, by the way, after you play with the mod you can then never use those copied game files with the regular game again..."
:?

[/speculative rant]

Ok so ignore gpg they are drunk and use old method for ease...

It is interesting though, in DS1 the savefiles were huge averaging over 2 megs in size (over 4 megs for DSmod) and contained nearly everything - including all SPELL Data. Thus one of its disadvantages - changes to structured data like Spells could only apply to newly created games.

We jump ahead in time what 3 years (give or take), the save files average maybe 50kb, and we have more problems with "Exception Detected" than ever. Honestly that's just F'd up.

After DS2, you will find plowing field quite relaxing and easy. I do.
All you need is make sure you have a firm grip on the stick.

Basically the issue comes down to this:

Modders will be able to share mods with modders and use them in single-play.
Mods for multi-play are not possible, and never will.

Putting the mod files in a separate folder and give them a different extension is a software engineer caprice. They like to tell people how to do things the right way, which so happens to be their way. It was already clear where GPG was going when the patch 2.2 came out.

Saying that they will allow people to use mods without the DS2TK is only a play of word. It is disingenous. The person asking wants to know if the mods will be playable with the retail DS2 excecutable that comes with the CD, patched or not. The answer is "NO". If I say "yes, there will be a separate installer", I am only dodging the issue willfully, and deceptively. DSMod is a modding tool. It is not supposed to used for playing, although you can. But they want you to use it to play, because THEY DO NOT WANT THE RETAIL GAME TO BE MODDABLE.

And I can pretty much guess why also:
1) They do not want PVP. No mods means no PVP.
2) They do not want to spend on a dedicated server, because they think the game will be a flop and nobody will play it online anyway. I agree with them on that.
3) No dedicated server means potential problems with mods, which they do not want, because the game is a hit and run game. Hype it, sell it, and forget about it. Game producers do not make money with games like DS. They make money with blockbusters. If they can recoup their investment with a game like DS, they are happy. I am talking about Microsoft here, not GPG. But Microsoft are the ones calling the shots when it comes to online play, since they have the dough. When Microsoft is serious about a game, they do not use GameSpy.

Sorry to have to be the bringer of such news, but it is time for people to wake up and rethink their expectations. But GPG is too hypocrite to explain things as they are, so I will help them.

Not totally true, it was possible to make some changes during a single-play game, but you had to know what you were doing. I redid the whole spell system in DS1, and redid spells as I tested it in single-play, so it was possible.

It was a trade-off.
The advantage was that you could do more complex mods (siegelets), and that you could reload the game where you saved, thus a better save system. Big and complex Siegelets will be impossible to do with the new save system, because most objects are not saved, so it might not be possible to let's say, know if an object had been picked up previously. There could be some workarounds though, by using the quest system, but it is quite limited. I know the Ultima 6 project could not be done in DS2, for example, without huge modifications and workarounds. In any case, it will be a big limitation on Siegelets.

Not sure what you mean by an "Exception Detected" problem, because I stopped loading the program after patch 2.2. I never had that problem, but it might be due to the CRC check maybe. Or just an error with a mod. DS2 is a lot more unstable with mods, because it was never intended to be modded in the first place. That is another reason they put the CRC check, since it hide the fact that the save files were badly implemented. It is a software engineer way to hide code under the rug.

From my experience in DS1, once you had loaded your Changed spells, attempts to further change spells, be it the amount of damage the spell would cause, or the mana required etc - would not take effect on a current game. Maybe there was some setting in DSmod that I'm unaware of that would reload those database relational files. But I wasn't able to do so - as all that data was hard-stored within the savegame itself, and changing the mod after the fact would get overridden by the initial data already stored in the savegame.

And before I invest too much time into continuing the mods I was working on prior to Siege-mods going down, (which like you seriously dampened my interest), I'm going to wait for a few more responses from the InTheKnow at GPG regarding some of these newer issues we've raised and questioned.

And for some reason on Siege-Mods, I had the impression "Episthene" was female

LOL, no I am a guy, sorry about that. 8O

If I remember correctly what I was doing was throwing up the old spell and giving myself the new one. You can give yourself a new spell easily in DSMod.

Of course heh. I never thought about it - or viewed - spells in that manner. The same way you had to update a changed EQ item...as the spell itself was an inventory item...doh.

Wow...all those games I restarted after doing significant changes to spells... :P

About no mods being usable with the shipped game: I have another theory (mostly second hand information, plus some speculation).

As you may know, in DS1 there was quite a bit of negative feedback over griefer play on ZM. During development, GPG / M$ apparently decided to tackle this issue by changing their approach towards mod interface... By keeping a tight lock on the regular un-modded game (using the now infamous CRC checking) GPG is probably trying to protect the online experience of their customers... This is the balancing act: protection from griefers vs. moddability.

What GPG failed to do was to close the back-door (?) which allows user created ds2res files from being read into the retail game, not to mention the memory editor hacks I've heard about... so griefers might still be able to do their nasty things to unmodded clients. A dedicated protected game server environment would have been the best option here.

GPG also failed (so far) to provide a practical model for mod distribution that doesn't require users to run a marathon over hurdles just to use a mod...

On another side note (because of the save game incompatability between mod configurations):
The buggy save game system is simply inexcusable IMHO. Pure evidence of poor design when something fundamental like this gets screwed up. User satisfaction can be so drastically affected by save game problems that I can't understand why they wouldn't have spent a ton of effort on making save files bullet proof (error checking, redundant data for corruption recovery, simple and stable compression algorithms, quest flags that actually work the way they are supposed to...). Un-modded save games are being corrupted, so I can only imagine what mod save game problems will be like... Only one backup file out of the box? = Colossally bad idea. What were they thinking??? The ability to increase the number of backups with an ini setting is better, but why kill the multiple save / load system? I see this type of thing as being potentially disasterous when it comes to siegelets. If GPG can't get save games & quests to work completely consistently, what chance do modders have?

OK... I've rambled enough for now. Hopefully I didn't get too far off topic.

I think you are confusing some issues, but it is normal since you do not have a technical background.

I agree with you that the griefer issue is quite likely one of the reason to do what they are doing. I stated that already.

The problem is how they handled the problem.

There was 2 ways that I could think to solve the problem. One was to have a dedicated server, the other was to have encrypted save files. Both would have worked, and would have allowed direct IP with mod, and obviously a central server without mod.
But both methods are more expensive than closing all doors to modding, so they chose the cheap way. There were other methods, like checking that every player have the same mod, putting a button saying which mods are running, etc. They had lots of alternatives that they could have used instead.

Really, most of the problems people have with the game comes from that. The game was designed to be hard to mod, etc.
The first clue was the save files that were in binary (thus very hard to edit compared to DS1) and that all the new features were hard-coded and unusable for modding.
The second clue was the famous patch 2.2 which made character files unreadable if any of the game content changed.
The third clue is how they implemented the Siege Editor, so that mod files are in a different location and have a different extension than the original game files.
The fourth clue is the contempt in which they treat modders generally, and have been doing so for awhile.

Some inexplicable things:
Why only one save? That does not make any sense whatsoever. Just a caprice I guess.
No Direct IP? This is probably some sort of economic decision, I don't know. Microsoft wants the Internet to be their private playground, and most of their games do not allow Direct IP anymore.

The thing is that you can't just treat modders and those that use mods as some sort of bandits or something, and just make their character disappear. That is just plain rude. It is not really hard to give a warning or something. That is what they did with the CRC check and it is awful and sloppy design.

What happened it seems is that they never thought people would start modding their game right away. Again, this is a mistake which comes from their superior attitude. They took out the Tank Viewer which had been created by the community, and they thought that without any tools, there would not be any modding until the Siege Editor release. Some genius thought by changing 2 bytes in the header of the tanks would completely baffle modders and modders would be helpless. It did baffle modders for a couple days, maybe less.
So now they had a game which was not designed to be modded, full of mods, which caused them problems. So they did their patch to use the CRC check feature of the Tanks to deny modding, in some desperate attempt to solve the problem. They thought they wwere quite smart and that people would stop modding until the Siege Editor release. Modders were again astonished at their cleverness and the next day, Elys released what you call the back-door or memory hack, so that people could continue playing the game with mods. And yes, griefers could potentailly use that to go around the problem, assuming they care about redoing the same linear quest fifty times. So Chris Taylor got caught his pants down counting his money once again.

With the Siege Editor release, they did give a practical model to create mods, and it is not a marathon. The files are in a different folder, that's all. But it does not work with the retail version, so no online-play. You do need to install DSMod, and for some mod users, it might seem a bit complicated, and then they had the great idea to put it in the My Documents folder, again. Anyway. Like usual, they expect the modding community to do their technical support, explain things, promote their game and fix their buggy game. All of that while fighting their system and reverse engineering their game in order to be able to mod without documentation.

They did try their best to make sure mods did not break the game (by making the game unmoddable with the patch 2.2). I never had any indication that unmodded games were getting corrupted(can't say I would be surprised). There are bugs in quests, because they thought people would think their cutscenes so awesome that they would never have the idea to press the Escape button to get rid of the thing in single-play. I am surprised they did not take out the feature in patch 2.2. Maybe they did, I don't know.

I know I have been ranting a lot lately, and I apologize because I know this is a fan site. But I will continue to do so whenever I can, because there are some things in which I have zero tolerance. Mainly hypocrisy, lies, and contempt. GPG does all of those and more, and that is why I denounce them and do not intend to stop. I was cautious and waited, until my doubts became a certainty. I did not say anything publicly until then. I seriously take their behavior as a personal insult. And when I fight, I go for the throat, no quarter. Balderstrom is right: someone will get hurt, but it won't be me.

PS: And your quote about lies, Sharkull is quite "a propos". Don't believe those rumours, because you know quite well where they originate from. Just look at what they are doing.

*Chuckle*... Mortal Kombat: "Finish Him!" "Flawless Victory"

I like the truth keep telling far as I'm concerned ep. I also have a lot of respect for you. Biddle thinks we are a bunch of rogues. Oh well, I rather piss off the company than give up. There will be some anti-gpg and m$ content in my mod. I am not happy either. I have my reasons for staying and you know them. I like the community too and try to promote it. I don't care if I'm modding a game that seems to lack a lot of moddability. In my view ds1 was fun for modding and so will it's sequel even though they screwed up. I still think there is some great things we can do with this game. Oh, ep get on aim sometime I got an idea you might like.

Well I do believe the "rogue mod" statement has been taken out of context and been overly emphasized. Honestly what I got from biddle's phrasing with that - was not a global referral to all mods as "rogue" but s limiting factor, the single 'bad' mod causing havoc w/ a particular save.
Really I can see where Episthene is coming from and some of it may even be true, but it is a very narrow view, emphasized to prove and convince a point. The truth is usually a bit more grey than black and white.

But maybe its just going over my head

its becoming more and more like a BLIZZARD game. the community and whats left of the "good" programmers in gpg have to both go underground to mod the game like wut happened to the diablo series and some other blizzard games....

oh and savante, just a safety tip: dont go too far with your anti-gpg and m$ comments. knowing m$ they might just throw a cease and desist letter at you.... but if i were you, i'd say "bring it on!!!" lol....

The "back-door" I mentioned was what biddle referred to in the quote as a "loophole", and not Elys' All Saves program. The memory hack reference was to something that came up in the Beta where someone indicated they could edit in-game values by using a memory editing tool (I assume this is how the "trainers" I've heard about work...).

Otherwise, I mostly agree with almost everything else in your post there... (except I think the lack of a direct IP-IP gaming option is to cut down on piracy).

Yes, I meant programming background. Sorry about any confusion.

If I remember correctly, the "loophole" was the lack of CRC check, so I explained that. A memory hack is exactly what Elys' program is, and it is used to get around the CRC check, so this is what I explained. Maybe you were referring to something else; still, it is good to know that it can have it's use, and is not necessarily bad. There is nothing a company can do about that.

Sure, things are always grey, not black and white. And I do have a tendancy to exagerate, for many reasons. Taken out of context? sure. You can get the context on the Garage, I am sure you know where. I assumed you knew what quote I was talking about, so I did not need to give the context.

When someone starts talking in terms like "loopholes" and "rogue files", I know from experience the attitude that underlies it. I have heard those things too many times, so for me, it is a serious flag. I did not "overemphasize it", I only referred to it once, in the previous post. And I explained at lenght why I thought this was not just an incident or some slip, so yes, it is taken out of context (technically), but the interpretation, in my opinion, is right. You can disagree with the interpretation, and that is fine. There are things that I know that you do not, but I will not go over that. If my explanation is not sufficient, cool. My goal was simply to reply to some issues that Sharkull posted, I had absolutely no intention of convincing you, nor did I expect you would read it.

I just felt that there was some confusion over some issues which happened since the release of DS2, so I tried to explain that. Of course, it is ladden with my own exagerated interpretation, but just take that out, and the pure facts are there. I even went so far as to say that what I was some of my post was because I took it personnally, so that you know that I am not trying to fool you or convince you. Like I said, as long as I have the opportunity, I will fight for dignity, and the last post was such an opportunity. And I agree, it is a narrow view, because I am convinced of what I said. Everytime someone is convinced, it looks narrow. Just don't forget that I had a fairly large and accepting view in the last few months. I did defend GPG when I thought they were injustly accused, many times. I even did earlier in this post.

But really, for me if someone is a lier, I don't really care about their reasons or grey areas. Actually, one of the worst lier I ever met always kept talking about grey areas. Man, did she like her grey areas! LOL

I was wrong Biddle didn't lie and I took his stuff out of context. Boy I feel bad now ;( . The poor guy is trying to help us. He comes into our irc channel and helps out. He is so busy I think some of things he wants to get out he can't on time. Ignore my negative statements in this thread. I'm starting to wonder if we are only viewing this crc from a modder's perspective. By rogue he probably meant we cannot rely on that file(just a wild guess). They do need to protect the user too. I think Sharkull's orginal post pointed that out. The reason for doing this may be for the mod user. If they get us an installer and the mod user a proper loader than I think I would like this new approach.

A good sign to me is when a company goes out of it's way after release to help out the community. They already added dll support back in. Now there may be a better way for us to distribute mods? Too early for me to tell yet. Biddle has been trying to help out mod users for this new way to distribute mods and heard about maybe an installer for mod makers. The intent was not as it seemed. It sounds like to me that gpg is going to keep helping modders.

Ep, I still respect your opinion but disagree now. There has been plenty of modding improvements it's just a matter of finding them. Due to the lack of documentation that will come in time there is no reason to jump to conclusions without proper knowledge imo. We are still noobs. I know this is a radical change of opinion you see in me, but I'm tired of being negative and pushing onto getting a mod project working. I hope you change your mind once things become more clear my friend.

edit/ps : I have been using the editer for awhile now and modding. I have been seeing that gpg does care about modders. There are many improvements to be discovered/documented. No game is perfect and some flaws have been made and great improvements. It seems to me that they have focused quite a bit on modding with the se 2 . Stuff I do not understand yet. I see stuff for u coders to enjoy as well. Skrit loader is not documented and hasn't been figured out yet. I hope you can be open-minded and test your theory on how crappy ds 2 is for modding. I do not see it like this anymore it's highly moddable.

edit: I think your time would be more wisely spent modding. The game for a modding game is new. You're a noob just like the rest of us. It's rather rough for gpg atm with their LDs being so busy. I wish we could obtain knowledge from them. You're limiting yourself ep . I too am willing to fight but for the community I love. All of these negative views ppl are having will slow the progress of modding. The community will pick up again without a doubt. The modding is great imo.

All the word 'rogue' applies to in this thread is very simple and non-derogatory. I will explain this. Yes extensive work has been done to try to lower the griefer factor. Yes the retail executable is less mod-friendly and yes I agree that ip-ip missing is diappointing but one must admit that ip-ip is certainly convenient for pirates as m$ well knows. So to try and meet the demands of all, which you must agree is not a simple matter, there are 2 exectuables on the table. Its really difficult to make a complex piece of software do everything both teens and adults, modders, stock game players, and all mixes in between want it to do. So it isnt unreasonable to expect m$ to draw the line and say this is the retail executable we approve of and will publish. As the publisher it really is up to them. As a game player it really is up to you to fire them if you dont like their products. However I think this piece of software in its stock 2.2 release form is plenty better than most ppl who enter this forum daily would be able to produce. Yes I agree it could be better or worse, that m$ policy may not be agreeable to everybody if anybdoy really but still we all know who they are and well, thats m$. So here is gpg doing what they can to please both m$ and the entire community. You really cant blame them for anything that welll, they are giving us for free after we've already bought the game and played it. There are plenty of games with more or less content for the same price. Its a matter of personal preference. So what is a rogue mod? We'll im still not qute there. gpg went to a lot of trouble to produce the mod executable for us. They didnt have to and will surely make tons of dough on subcom without the ds modder community, none-the-less we have been provided a tool kit with unsurpassed power imo. The complexity of this world in ds1/2 is for a lot of ppl more than can be intellectually fathomed and it is no surprise that it is difficult to work on. However, to say that gpg never intended ds2 to be modded, that they intentionally tried to keep it from being modded is further from the truth than the sun is from earth. To say that the current model for mod distribution is difficult is way way off base. If mod players are downloading mods whats the big deal downloading a little add on like dstk? The complaining is just amazingly gone so far i suppose because ppl have nothing better to do. If any one had paid any attn i sat here and made ds2 node sets using ds1 tools and released maps using ds1 tools to show that it could be done. Anyone who couldnt mod the game b4 se2 was released simply hadnt really tried that hard. Yeah i missed some features. But ive kept continuously busy making ds2 content since ds2 released. I will not hide the fact that i was invited to the ds2tk beta and was using the ds2tools during the beta test. During the beta test i released 0 material to ensure that no one could then say mcarp you hoser you had ds2tk. I'm saying this just so you know i'm not hiding out. However it was entirely possible to create maps objects nodes and all that good stuff with ds1 tools. Just that nobody tried it. Nobody you knew maybe. The fact is you CAN play mods with the retail executable. But its EASIER to use the mod version. Its also easy for mod players to download and intall the mod version even before a dungeonsiege2mod.exe installer comes out. Its j ust not that big a deal and there are these neet little checkboxes that let you install only what you want from the toolkit. Biddle went to a great deal of trouble to provide these things to us. He's gone out of his way to give it to us our way as much as possible.

So what is this rogue mod refered to? It simply means the occasional mod that could pop up and be used with the straight retail executable maybe even unintentionally that could cause instability. Its not about calling modders or even pvpers or even cheaters for that matter 'rogues'. It simply refers to the process of something being stray or misplaced.

Ep. You say you know something that we somebody else doesnt so of course your statements carry some extra weight in your opinion. Chill man. Making mods is about having fun. Its not us against them. For all of you, remember that.

There are no officil liars here and there are no plots against the community. It just takes a lot of hard work and a long time to make this kinda stuff. I'm having a lot of fun building stuff and I want you all to come together and enjoy the fun too.

Happy modding
mcarp

http://mcarp.earthstorm.com

Ps: thank you gpg for a great game and a great toolkit.

Very well put mcarp...

They sure as heck should be able to have it in release form better than eveyone that enters the forum. They are "professional" game developers are they not? If I am not getting paid nor any of the others that may complain or praise the work, why would we be expected to produce something superior with out any of the source code they would have? Or have the time and team to do so. They should be better. You cant exactly fire a game developer as the consumer especially after you have already paid for the product, though I do have no intention of buying Supra Comando or whatever the game is they are now spending all their efforts towards.

FYI.
biddle has made a post regarding the ds2 distribution model over at the GPGarage...
http://garage.gaspowered.com/?q=node/2248#comment-16265

Edit:
Posted my "novel" here... http://garage.gaspowered.com/?q=node/2248#comment-16323

I am totally new to the community and modding here, Biddle. But the installer that you're speaking of...wouldn''t it have to come to some sort of consensus with the majority of modders out there regarding format? Pass/fail a QA? The uninstaller option is a nice one as well too.

I can totally see MS coming up with one without an issue, but getting the public to agree, even in a cloise knit group on a forum isn't usually all that easy.

Anyhow, I'm a newb to Mods, but I've done QA for the biggest and baddest, if you want to standardize/streamline a process, you may be able to please a significant prtion of those interested, but not everyone will be happy.

Personally I think its an awesome idea as long as the installer isnt expected to be secure.

'at's my .02

ciao

Godfodder

PS - Before anyone asks, I played DS and liked it so much I bought DS2, when I won the Mercenary stage, I was totally PO'ed at having to go back through the game twice more that I started looking for a way to speed the process up...been researching the mods ever since. SiegeTools wasn't much help for me because I am totally not a designer, but I am pretty handy at reverse engineering and was savvy enough to change what I wanted in DS2Mod to have fun with the game again. i dont care for these types of games online, just solo play...as yet my changes arent spectacular to noteworthy, but I got my game at home to do exactly what i want so far. I just need a list of commands for console..lol...never tried to use it.

You may notice that biddle never actually posted anything here (yet?), and that the quote I posted was copied from the Gas Powered Garage (link provided in the quote post). I certainly hope GPG is reading our forums... but I wanted you to know that you were responding to a post biddle made on another forum.