[Ducimus]

This is just an idea, and i hesitate to post it cause im not sure how it will be accepted. But, with patch 1.4, i see an opportunity for all of us here. After the patch is released, what we'll really have here are three things.

1.) Mod which are no longer needed.
2.) Mods which are still needed but need to be made compatible.
3.) mods which are still compatiable.

But overall, large modpacks like TMaru or RFB, for a time period cease to exist, and all we have are the above three listed items.


Now, its my opinion, that modders in general, all have their area of expertise, and are probably happiest when they can focus on that one thing that bugs them the most. Some modders are great with sound files. Others are great with graphics, campaign scripting, AI tweaking, physics tweaking, what have you.

Currently, we all have our own ideas of what we want our game to be, and freely share or borrow from one another. BUt for the most part, im willing to bet there is a baseline that we're all sharing or have in common.

So here's the idea. After patch 1.4 is released, we put all "name brand" mods on hold. At this point they really dont exist as an entity anyway. Their just a collection of mods that needs to be broken apart and re examined. Since we're all going to be doing that anyway, I say, lets combine our efforts. Lets make a single "superMod" to establish a baseline, and mod to individual taste from there.

This single "supermod" i think should encompass all the things that we commonly mod in our individual packages anyway. Naturally they'll be differences of opinion, and i think the way around that is simple.

This "supermod"s only guideline i think, should be to address things that are still broken, historically inaccurate, or technically inaccurate. This supermod, we could call it "unoffical patch 1.5". And be the type of thing that we'd be unfraid to say, "just copy this into your sh4/data directory and forgetbboutit". So what kind of things should this include? The list is quite large when you think about it. For example.

- submarine fixes
- aircraft loadouts
- campaign files.
- realistic radar

the list could go on if you really wanted to hash it out. The focus being, "lets make it historically accurate, and do our own thing after its done". In short, we create vanilla ice cream. Of course, some folks like their vanilla with some sprinkes, or some like it with fudge.. thats fine. Its called "Flavored to taste" But you can't flavor anything if you don't have the ice cream to begin with. Once we have the ice cream made, we can run off into our own little visions of the game again, and ill betcha our indiviual "supermods" after that will be ALOT smaller, just 'fixing' the things we didnt agree with as individuals when creating the historically accurate supermod.


Now all of this effort will require a publisher. Someone will have to compile all the invidual works, and i think that this publisher (whoever it is, and i prefer it to NOT be myself), is that this is all this person does. Combine the mods into the total package. They don't mod anything, they just combine.

I don't think we need a project manager. I think we can handle this in a round table approach.

Overall, i think we can all bennfitt from this. Both from a workload point of view, and from a tech support point of view. Im sure alot of us are tired of "installation order" posts. We put it all together, and then just flavor it to our own individual needs after its done. In the end, the community has a historic baseline to choose from, and individual "taste" mods to choose from.


Just an idea.
( And yes i admit, im also being lazy and dont want to update Tmaru for patch 1.4 )