Nice modlist, but...

[The GoldFish]

I don't really want to read a book where all the words dissapear if I look at it from the wrong angle.

Listen to what you're saying...

You don't want to spend 30 seconds adding lights to a level to stop it being annoying to play for people who, yknow, move the camera. Because you think it looks ok the way it is and if they suddenly can't see what they're doing, then that's too bad for them.

Lights are not the only thing on the list, but ask yourself this; Does Stricken have lights? Does Insurrection have lights? Does Enemy Within have lights? Do those versions of my mod that I got someone else to help me make, have lights? Does the original campaign have lights? Is there a sticky thread in the mod forums about how to use lights? Why do all those mods have lights, when as far as I can tell, there's absolutely no point in me even thinking about lights, at all, ever. Those guys must all be workaholic crazy people, I'm sure everything's fine and no one will care just like I don't care, especially when they think of the 30 seconds work I would have done to add them as well - geeze, what a tall order. I'll just carry on writing my story in this book I made which papercuts the reader every time they change page.

Having a story where some stuff happens has nothing to do with if you have taken the time to make your mod not horrible. Do you even *remotely* understand the specific thing that I'm trying to target here? How fun a mod is has nothing to do with it. How good the story is has nothing to do with it. How nice the levels look has nothing to do with it. How hard or easy the levels are has nothing to do with it.

How legibily it's written has stuff to do with it. How stable it is has stuff to do with it. How carefully scripts have been done to not explode has stuff to do with it. Land tiles not going off the edge of the map and screwing up the engine's display has stuff to do with it. Taking extra care to usher the first time player through the hoops of playing a mod with Darwinia has stuff to do with it. Having a readme so if people need to know more about the mod and how to install it has stuff to do with it. Making sure the player knows when he should redownload the mod because you fixed a bug in it has stuff to do with it.

You aren't just offering a story - people don't just download the mod and read the strings file - you're offering an *experience*, and people should make up their own minds of if it looked nice or if they enjoyed the plot, if they found it too hard or too easy could possibly be gauged in advance but that's a whole other story. The purpose of the badging system I've proposed is so people know in advance that the experience people can otherwise only assume that you (the artist) were trying to give them is the experience they might actually receive while playing. When I went back and poked at Colour and Hacked, I avoided changing the story or maps on any grand scale, I just fixed it up into what (I can only assume) the modder was trying to put across (and most importantly logged everything I changed in a readme) - Did this make the mods have better plots? Did this make the actual content in them more fun?

Did they become more functionally playable giving them possibly a wider audience and a better reception?

Seriously, how can you be so obtuse sometimes?

[martin]

Well I personally quite liked those levels, and I seem to recall that both my beta testers did too! They are quite trial and error - but the skill is setting a line of Goto orders for the darwinians to get the lay of the land and then following on with squads along the green brick road

anyway - you'll be happy to know no weird lighting in FTP

[The GoldFish]

both WHAT levels, what are you even talking about?

[martin]

both WHAT levels, what are you even talking about?

I think xander knows, I meant the two levels in TheDesers (valley and accessprt1) with deliberately difficult lighting (one so bright virii are almost invisible and one with NO light)

[The GoldFish]

You realise that has nothing to do with anything I've been saying, right?

[KingAl]

I believe martin took your attacks on poor lighting as attacks primarily against his levels which were designed to be played with poor lighting. Thus, he not only perceived it as a personal attack, he also interprets this as holding practical issues above gameplay issues, hence why he's being so defensive about it. Now, I won't judge as to whether his approach is good design - I haven't actually played the mod - but If you removed this particular point, then I've little doubt he'd agree that the polish you advocate to ensure playability (and an experience not plagued by problems) is important to a good mod.

[shadow_archmagi]

I believe we have two different standpoints by Fishy here.

The first is the percieved standpoint. People seem to think he's saying aethetically pleasing levels are better than well done levels with plot etc. As in "If you level is ugly, it doesnt matter how cool your cinimatics and units and silly things like OBJECTIVES are."

The second is his real standpoint. He's saying levels which have lights and don't explode are more important than levels with a good plot. Because if your book is liable to burst into flame or slam shut and never open again, and if its handwritten in nearly illegible print, it doesn't matter if its good, people really won't want to read it.

Did I clear things up? He wants maps that RUN smoothly. Lights help a map run smoothly, because they make terrain more visible, and being able to see WTF your doing is always helpful.

[martin]

but that's the thing, I agree with TGFs second stand except lights - lights are one of the last things I build into a mod and I consider them nice but not vital - exploding is most important (or even not exploding), then storyline and then things like eye candy and lighting.

[hitm4n]

I agree with tgf and martin. One mans tripesoup is another mans chocolate and banana suprise.

TGF clearly has a list of criteria to meet to determine wether a mod is "good" or not and martins yardstick is how much fun it is. Both rating methods are prefectly fine and both can come to a personal conclusion using them. This doesn't help the modlist though. Ratings is something i've wanted on there forever and nows the time to get cracking i think.

Can we get a "personal" rating system going between us ?

We (or i) shout out a gamename and then we discuss its flaws/merits and give it our own score out of 100. I'll average up the votes and that'll go on the list. I would hope everyone is sane enough to vote fairly, no giving a game 1/100 to drag its score down and voting their own mod 100/100 to bump it up. it'll end up as a nice rough guide to the quality/likability of each mod.

Maybe mod authors cannot vote on their own mods and each mod needs 10 votes to be "ranked"

I dunno, just throwing ideas in.

[hitm4n]

By the way Martin, for me the ratings are based on personal enjoyment and partly on aesthetics, level design and storyline etc. War is perfectly decent, just not for me. If i ranked them all and droughtwinia was at the bottom, i would still recommend its played cos every mod has its worth.

[The GoldFish]

This is my point;










The main problem is with the last pair of images. That's why your levels ought to have lights unless you're particularly going for this effect or bypassing it with tinkering.

Also don't use quotes to quote something that isn't a quote! I'm not saying that a mod that fills those criteria is good per sae, I'm just saying if it's a release quality mod which doesn't play like it's still being worked on (even if it is), then that sets it apart from most of the other mods BY MILES. Creating some sort of universal review system is a waste of time IMO - you can give a score out of ten or one hundred for the quality of the story and gameplay if you like, but wrt quality of life it's either there or it isn't. I would say combining the two into a single score is a mistake. I'd say that really you ought to do both. That way you can be the one to work out what a perfect mod would be in order for us to compare with in order to have a functional pointing scheme, and I can just keep with a checklist and leave it up to the player to pick which to play.

I think that having a good plot and story line and fun levels goes *hand in hand* with not exploding. However a mod either explodes or it doesn't explode - that's easy to point out. If a mod is fun or not? I can't tell you that. Most of the problems you see people having with mods is not 'I don't enjoy this mod so I stopped playing it', it's 'this mod broke so I can't play it even though I want to' - which one is more agrivating to a player? Which should we be warning players about? I have a list of criteria so a) a modder knows if he/she's forgotton something or to see if he/she has a problem that they didn't notice before and b) a Player can know that when they play a mod, they're playing the mod that the modder wants them to play and so can make their own opinion over the story quality and gameplay and choose if they wish to remark on it or continue playing or whatever - the player should be the one who decides - if you want to draw a consensus over what people thought of a mod, that would be very interesting to see

[martin]

Well, to get reviews on the modlist how about we use this system:

1) you shout out a mod name.

2) we have a week to play it.

3) We all give it four scores:
OVERALL: out of 100
PRODUCTION QUALITY: out of 100, technical stuff - scripts etc.
EYE CANDY: how pretty are levels, or are they blobs of type 0 (*cough* maintenance sys *cough*)
STORY: How good is the story? is it any good? is there a story? (this could be N/A for mods that don't need a story, for example WAR)

4) Mod authors are not allowed to vote.

5) Any amount of votes goes onto the site, since we're probably only gonna get a few people doing this.

[Shwart!!]

I haven't been putting any input in, but I would like to help ranking these.

Shwart!!

[martin]

I haven't been putting any input in, but I would like to help ranking these.

Shwart!!

this, of course, depends on if people agree (particularly hitm4n) on this way of ranking them.

[hitm4n]

I still think you can all score a game any way you like so long as you come up with a score which fits in line with your other mod scores. Use any criteria you like, its your score, your view on wether you think its good or likable. No-one is right or wrong when itcomes to personal opinion.

Discussion for WHY you scored it a certain amount is great so long as it doesn't get overheated.

4 scores out of 100 on various game elements can still give an overall score if averaged.

I think those that want to partake should rate out of 100. 1 week per game and i'll average what comes in.

Lets start with Colour - the original version. A nice short mod to get going. Note i do not mean the tgf edit version.