Public access to development versions

[AluminumHaste]

18 hours ago, Amadeus said:

Why? Do you have resentment toward these 10 missions in particular? Do you not care if you break any and all missions on your whim and then release a public build? Breaking existing missions and then making a public dev build available with broken FMs doesn't really seem like a great thing to do. I get that missions get broken from time to time because improvements need to be made to the core game, but this is essentially a public release (even though it is a "dev build" it is still a "public dev build" available to anyone and everyone, and with that comes certain expectations). You didn't even notify the affected FM authors beforehand. This is just not cool. 

Seriously, if devs are never allowed to make changes that break things, then the mod never moves forward.

It's a bandaid, rip it off, get it done. That's the point of dev builds.

And if people are downloading DEVELOPMENT BUILDS to play the mod and shits broken, guess what, they should have read the very first post of this thread.

 

For the people eager to play with the latest state of development

P.S. Needless to say, all of this comes with no support.
Although we would be glad if you catch and report bugs before the next beta phase starts

 

[Amadeus]

1 hour ago, AluminumHaste said:

Seriously, if devs are never allowed to make changes that break things, then the mod never moves forward.

 

Yeah, as I said elsewhere, it's not so much that the missions are broken that is frustrating to me and several other affected authors, it's that there was zero communication to the affected authors that this was going to be happening beforehand. There is no reason why a message couldn't have been sent to the affected authors saying "hey, this will be broken in the upcoming dev build for X reasons. I thought you'd like to know before surprising you." Or even an open discussion beforehand about why these authors decided to make these customizations to begin with. Plain and simple, that's just a lack of respect. If you have the time to break these, you have time to communicate and see if there might be a solution to avoid all this (and there is!). 

And perhaps from YOUR perspective, you might think this reaction seems silly, unnecessary, and that this is totally fine, but from my perspective and that of a few others, it's not.

 

EDIT: In addition, when creating or modifying existing assets, I and others take great care in making sure that these changes don't break existing maps. And if they do, we do whatever we can to own up to that and fix it. I do expect that same level of respect to be shown to existing maps so they aren't just broken with reckless abandon and no clear path forward.

[MirceaKitsune]

I understand some changes that break backwards compatibility, long as they're kept minimal and hopefully don't render old FM's unplayable unless patched. We should keep in mind some maps may never get updated, especially ones who's authors might no longer be around... at the same time some things can't be easily improved because keeping it backwards compatible is more challenging, I felt a few things were limited for that reason a couple of times.

Edited April 29 by MirceaKitsune

[stgatilov]

3 hours ago, Amadeus said:

Yeah, as I said elsewhere, it's not so much that the missions are broken that is frustrating to me and several other affected authors, it's that there was zero communication to the affected authors that this was going to be happening beforehand. There is no reason why a message couldn't have been sent to the affected authors saying "hey, this will be broken in the upcoming dev build for X reasons. I thought you'd like to know before surprising you." Or even an open discussion beforehand about why these authors decided to make these customizations to begin with. Plain and simple, that's just a lack of respect. If you have the time to break these, you have time to communicate and see if there might be a solution to avoid all this (and there is!).

I created discussion here and mentioned authors (maybe I missed someone though).
Unlike the previous thread about main menu GUI overrides, I think the new one does not look aggressive . The main question there is why this was done, and how to adapt to avoid this problem now and in the future.

Indeed, all the missions will be fixed by 2.13 even if some authors don't respond.
Dev builds regularly break something, although usually it is done unintentionally. I added "known issues" point on the dev build, which happens pretty rarely.

Quote

And perhaps from YOUR perspective, you might think this reaction seems silly, unnecessary, and that this is totally fine, but from my perspective and that of a few others, it's not.

I apologize for the negative emotions this change has caused.
Sometimes I am too rough in communications.

Moreover, I am not a creative kind of person, I'm more a technical type of person.
Thus I believe in interface boundaries, so in my mind the blame for breakage is always on the side that violates these boundaries. Anyway, I know I'll have to fix the breakage, probably myself if necessary.

[Amadeus]

Thank you for saying as such and clarifying the path forward with regard to these missions, I do really appreciate it 

[stgatilov]

dev17042-10732 is public.

We decided to restore the ability to create cvars, so the broken missions are "unbroken" as they are.
Although I'll still try to hunt down and remove overriding scripts in the future.

[nbohr1more]

4 hours ago, stgatilov said:

dev17042-10732 is public.

We decided to restore the ability to create cvars, so the broken missions are "unbroken" as they are.
Although I'll still try to hunt down and remove overriding scripts in the future.

Thanks!

I am guessing that other fixes need to be done to "Shadows of Northdale: Act 1" ( launches to a black screen ) ?

[MirceaKitsune]

Thanks for those fixes! They didn't affect me and any FM's I've been working on, but I'm happy to see a solution was found and you could help those affected so quickly.

I like the idea of being able to customize arrow behaviors from cvars! Most open-source FPS's (eg: Red Eclipse) offer the ability to set weapon behaviors with custom configs and create your own unique balance. While I agree it's good to not have a ton of settings, I think the weapon slots should be customizable this way... at least for now as we remain stuck with the old in-engine weapon system and can't turn the blackjack / sword / arrows into items like everything else.

Edited May 6 by MirceaKitsune

[stgatilov]

dev17044-10746 is available.

[stgatilov]

dev17056-10800 is available.

 

[Amadeus]

It seems that Shadows of Northdale 1 doesn't work on this new build (dev17056-10800; I haven't checked earlier builds though). I get an error that says:

"Error during initialization. Error: file script/tdm_report.script, line 22: unknown value "getPersistantfloat"

[stgatilov]

On 6/16/2024 at 11:09 PM, Amadeus said:

It seems that Shadows of Northdale 1 doesn't work on this new build (dev17056-10800; I haven't checked earlier builds though). I get an error that says:

Yes, that's because of persistent info improvements: https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6509#c16675

I'll add it to known issues, but it will only be fixed during 2.13 beta.

[datiswous]

Mission Shadows of Northdale 1 starts correctly when I do search-replace in file /script/tdm_report.script:

 

getpersistantFloat

into:

getPersistentFloat

4x starting line 22

 

 

and in file /maps/m1.script:

 

setpersistantArg

into:

setPersistentArg

4x starting line 14

Edited July 1 by datiswous

[stgatilov]

dev17095-10833 is available.

 

On 7/1/2024 at 1:06 PM, datiswous said:

Mission Shadows of Northdale 1 starts correctly when I do search-replace in file /script/tdm_report.script:

Yes, but it won't start on 2.12 then, so this will be applied in missions database only when 2.13 is close.

[datiswous]

Sure, but it could be useful if people want to play it already with a dev built.

[nbohr1more]

10 minutes ago, datiswous said:

Sure, but it could be useful if people want to play it already with a dev built.

I'll upload the fixed version to moddb tonight.

[nbohr1more]

The latest Dev Build has a few textures created using the technique here:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Creating_textures_from_Ornate_Photos

 

Both got a little enhancement via a tip from Arcturus to use an AI based tool:

https://huggingface.co/spaces/Stable-X/normal-estimation-arena

be forewarned that this AI instance goes down a lot so you may need to check back in a few hours or the next day if it throws a 500 error. ( Probably the perils of having a free AI tool open to the public... )

 

[nbohr1more]

2.13 compatible Northdale1 version:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/shadows-of-northdale-1-213-dev-edition