To MOD Or Not To MOD

[Hatch]

Thank you Mr. Mahuja, my initial question was to MOD or not to MOD, as you described it, Modders are using their work for a closed circle of friends and acquaintances and or fellow modders, it isn’t aimed at the general public, but rather as you pointed out, people in the Subsim community, which is maybe a few hundred players, hardly could be considered the general public.

As for my argument in shreds, I think its closer to reality than you think, I expressed a run of the mill way of thinking or popular thought if you will, and I for one would be one of its most loudest detractors of using an untested, unendorsed and unreliable, hacked edition of my favorite game, I am certain that these thoughts are shared by the greater majority of players and gaming groups on the internet today.

In conclusion, MODS are for MODDERS, like birds are strictly for the birds, and being you such a small amount of players, I kick myself for even thinking you could make a difference with the public at large producing something worthy of even the slightest benefit of the doubt which would warrant a second look.

To end my participation in this discussion, I will end it on an upbeat note, you guys have put work into your MODS, if you really believe that you have done something worth contributing to the public at large and the improvement of an already great game, then find a mechanism to somehow get endorsements or at the very least, a public nod of approval from the developers to justify your work, and above all, gain the credibility of the public at large.

I will stay with my stock game.

Thanks to all you gentlemen who participated in this amiable discussion.

Hatch

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Hatch

I understand the need to preserve some of that data of realism undisclosed, submarining has by nature been "The silent service" but to counter you point, even though the realism model published by SCS in the stock isn't real life, I beleive a compromise should have been reached by the designers in the fashion that although those values aren't real, they could at least be made into a proposition that satisfied the players gaming experience, not having been made it so extremely bad that warranted a Modder to seemingly step into the fray and stand on the bow and say "I bested their work, I've brought the simulation to a level of reality that the manufacturer couldn't" That my friend is arrogancy at its most blatant display.

Were proud, were arrogant, were proudly arrogant. (points to who can name where I took that line from…) But we sat down and fixed the problem. If our arrogance fixes problems then we need more arrogant people in the world. Damn it this country was built on arrogance! Arrogance is the American Way! O>

You keep saying the way it should be, we are telling you how it is.

[OneShot]

Two things ... first its pretty interesting to see how Mr. Hatch (to keep in tune with how he adresses people) nicely side stepped more or less every single argument that might prove him wrong or at least points that way. Now thats a class act :rotfl:

Second, just some food for thought and to pick up a line from MaHuJa about Mods normally being the result of someone "scratching an itch" ... ever read : "Just for FUN - The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" ? Its about Linus Torvalds who began Linux, which you can actually call a Mod. Well he didn't mod a game, he just sort of modded his PC by writing his own Operating System.

P.S. : MaHuJa was right, as I pointed out in another thread Counter Strike started of as a Mod to HalfLife. And interestingly enough was later adopted (actually the modders themselves) by Valve.


Cheers
OneShot

[Hatch]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Were proud, were arrogant, were proudly arrogant. (points to who can name where I took that line from…) But we sat down and fixed the problem. If our arrogance fixes problems then we need more arrogant people in the world. Damn it this country was built on arrogance! Arrogance is the American Way! O>

You keep saying the way it should be, we are telling you how it is.

No Mr. Tlam, lets be accurate here, you claim that you fixed the problem, if there was ever one, now get someone who really counts to back that statement for you, SCS springs to mind.

[Hatch]

Originally Posted by OneShot

Two things ... first its pretty interesting to see how Mr. Hatch (to keep in tune with how he adresses people) nicely side stepped more or less every single argument that might prove him wrong or at least points that way. Now thats a class act :rotfl:

Second, just some food for thought and to pick up a line from MaHuJa about Mods normally being the result of someone "scratching an itch" ... ever read : "Just for FUN - The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" ? Its about Linus Torvalds who began Linux, which you can actually call a Mod. Well he didn't mod a game, he just sort of modded his PC by writing his own Operating System.

P.S. : MaHuJa was right, as I pointed out in another thread Counter Strike started of as a Mod to HalfLife. And interestingly enough was later adopted (actually the modders themselves) by Valve.


Cheers
OneShot

No Mr. Oneshot, I have not sidestepped your arguments at all, I’ve reaffirmed my claims with some of you gentlemen’s answers, you in fact confirmed pretty much all my initial claims in one way or the other, as for me having a weak case, you have failed to prove me wrong, that’s why I stated on my initial post: So lets have it, take your best crack at me…� One can be arrogant if one knows the truth is on ones side.

“For if you spend word for word with me, I shall make thy wit bankrupt�
William Shakespeare.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Hatch

I beleive a compromise should have been reached by the designers in the fashion that although those values aren't real, they could at least be made into a proposition that satisfied the players gaming experience, not having been made it so extremely bad that warranted a Modder to seemingly step into the fray and stand on the bow and say "I bested their work, I've brought the simulation to a level of reality that the manufacturer couldn't" That my friend is arrogancy at its most blatant display.

You "believe" a compromise could have been reached. The reality is that the stock DW still AFAIK uses the "uber-65" (this one dates back to Sub Command) and the 400 feet dipping sonar (they flat out tell you in the manual that this is wrong, so secrecy has nothing to do with this, but they are doing it anyway).

It really doesn't take a genius to build a mod that corrects these two points. Now, one can make theories all day long as to why it is done like this, but it doesn't change that this is what they decided, and it is, to put it bluntly, quite wrong.

No Mr. Oneshot, I have not sidestepped your arguments at all, I’ve reaffirmed my claims with some of you gentlemen’s answers, you in fact confirmed pretty much all my initial claims in one way or the other, as for me having a weak case, you have failed to prove me wrong, that’s why I stated on my initial post: So lets have it, take your best crack at me…� One can be arrogant if one knows the truth is on ones side.

Your claim is that you think more people would use our mod if SCS endorsed it. No ****. Except that if they endorsed it, it would be integrated into a patch, and people like you would never realize that they have endorsed our thing and that's why you finally have a longer than 400 feet long dipping sonar... any thank-you would be very low key.

Another of your claims is the potential of viruses. I've already dealt with that one by pointing out the mods that are actually being done in DW are of the types unlikely to hold a virus.

Most modders are hardly malicious and mean well, a point I believe you would agree on. Malicious people, I'm sure, have better ways to attack computers than burying trojans into a less than bestselling game's Mod DLLs. DW is not that popular a game - a sim, in a world that likes First Person Shooters...

A third claim is that they are used by a few people. Well, the good mods like LWAMI and the old SCX for Sub Command are placed publicly on websites. It is not like the makers distribute them off private FTP or Bittorrents or requiring password access. You just have to look for mods. SubGuru (where LWAMI and a bunch of others reside) is only like third on the search list you get by typing in Google '"Dangerous Waters" mods'. One would think if you are interested in mods, you would do that much, would you?

As for the point as to whether the modders are qualified ... well, in this board I've heard of people who are Navy men, or have been on very real Russian Akulas (I'm not sure even the Sonalyst guys had that privilege) to verify they do use that cream color and SSAZ sonar - you catching my drift?

On the final point, regardless of credibility is it an improvement? Well, why don't you download it and see - I promise that replacing a few text files won't infect your computer. Personally, I understand some people like playing the helo. I find it hard to believe they belive a situation where they can only dip to 400 feet to be the superior one. I was conservative in naming my examples to ones that are quite clearly off, and so were everyone else that had answered so far. If you are so frightened, then I can only say like the others my sympathies.

[MaHuJa]

I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong, (even though that is my opinion) but questioning ones own beliefs semi-regularly is healthy. I would indeed like you to pick apart the arguments that came before, which you sidestepped instead - perhaps we're wrong somewhere.

However...

>...an untested, unendorsed and unreliable, hacked edition of my favorite game,

Untested is certainly not the case. Unless you refer to a specific type of testing, in which case you should specify it clearer.

Unreliable?
The mod hasn't made anything more unreliable - the only issues are also issues without the mod.

Hacked?
Now *that* a poor choice of word for any discussion - without specifying what you mean, which is why you wrote something in the first place...

And for the big one... unendorsed...

Just how far would it have to be endorsed before you would play it?
-Included in patch
-Developers say they like it?

Originally Posted by Jamie

I hope that the modders enjoy working on their projects as much we (and the rest of the community) enjoy playing them.

>I am certain that these thoughts are shared by the greater majority of players and gaming groups on the internet today.

If one considers it on the per-game basis, the player breakup would be in categories like:
1-Players who didn't like the game, and shelved it. (or returned it, either way they're not relevant)
2-Players who liked it somewhat, but didn't want to spend a lot of time at it
3-Players who liked the game a lot, but don't even look for improvements.
4-Players who liked the game a lot, and start looking for improvements/mods but don't use them.
5-Players who liked the game a lot, and start looking for improvements/mods and start using them.
6-Players who liked the game a lot, and start "tinkering".

Every game will have a different distribution of players in those groups. If you want to include #2 or even #1, then of course you're right - but then the whole thing is totally beside the point.

If #3 counts depends on the definition of success - is it a good product VS is it a "market-successful" product. The latter will require them to be counted. The former doesn't because this group would need it stuffed down their throats... That is, we'd need somewhat more "push" marketing. Usually this costs money. While IMO #6 should be counted, they are such a minority (I agree with you there) that they don't make a difference.

#4 vs #5 (&6) should give you some indication of the quality of the product. Add #3 to the left to get the "market-success".

Now here's what I consider an important point:
If a better product is available, but not as widely used, why go with the inferior one?
Note that the better product also provides backwards compatibility. There are no cost differences involved, no maintenance cost differences, or anything such.

Way I see it, you're going for the inferior product because "the biggest portion of the others has it". For me, this is a quite backwards way of thinking.


I would have you try the mod properly, and then explain why you'd want to discourage people from trying it. But given the way you've been speaking, I doubt you will, so I will have to modify the question: Why will you NOT try it?

By the sound of you, you may have been 'burned' by (a) bad mod(s) earlier, and associate the troubles you had with that with all mods. Is that why?


>I kick myself for even thinking you could make a difference with the public at large producing something worthy of even the slightest benefit of the doubt which would warrant a second look.

Please do keep the incendiaries tucked away somewhere safe, ok?


[i]>then find a mechanism to somehow get endorsements or at the very least, a public nod of approval from the developers to justify your work, and above all, gain the credibility of the public at large.

First of all, the "public nod of approval" is there. See the quote from the simhq interview mentioned earlier. Justification is *already* covered as soon as the modder himself (or the rare herself?) plays it and likes the changes. (Scratching ones own itch is the primary purpose...)

As for the last part of the sentence, I'll go by what you meant and not what you said...

That is, for reasons mentioned, a slow process, and one we're currently going through. The only "quick" way would be if SCS adopted the lwami mod, perhaps similarly to the way valve adopted CS - though maybe without the hiring part. For what we know, they may be restricted from doing so by reasons we can only guess at. The other way is to win them over one by one. (I suppose you may have noticed we've been trying with you )


As Jamie said in the aforementioned interview, the community tries to increase the games success; to have it continue and grow better. We do that in several ways, but one is to have people use a mod which makes the game better. (At least we are convinced it is.)

[Hatch]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

You "believe" a compromise could have been reached. The reality is that the stock DW still AFAIK uses the "uber-65" (this one dates back to Sub Command) and the 400 feet dipping sonar (they flat out tell you in the manual that this is wrong, so secrecy has nothing to do with this, but they are doing it anyway).

It really doesn't take a genius to build a mod that corrects these two points. Now, one can make theories all day long as to why it is done like this, but it doesn't change that this is what they decided, and it is, to put it bluntly, quite wrong.

If they "endorse" any of our modifications, the most likely result is that you will just see a patch with that change - any thank you would be relatively low key. Being a person who doesn't trust mods, you won't bother keeping up with them. Which means you'd dumbly install the patch, and never realize that an endorsement happened, and then you come back and tell us about how our mods are unendorsed...

Exactly Mr. Kazuaki, I would dumbly install it without a whimper of dissent if it came from a developer sanctioned patch, if you made the changes, no one would ever know, you'd still remain an unrecognized contributor, shall we say, an anonymous footnote to the designers, which validates one of my initial points sir, as long as you do not have that endorsement, your chances of increasing your credibility and hence your audience are thwarted beyond repair.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Hatch

Exactly Mr. Kazuaki, I would dumbly install it without a whimper of dissent if it came from a developer sanctioned patch, if you made the changes, no one would ever know, you'd still remain an unrecognized contributor, shall we say, an anonymous footnote to the designers, which validates one of my initial points sir, as long as you do not have that endorsement, your chances of increasing your credibility and hence your audience are thwarted beyond repair.

We don't care about a bigger audience. Our audience knows we are creditable. Your right when you say mods are for modders.

�Submariners are born tinkers�
-Captain Edward L. Beach

This is the type of sim that attracts people like us, people who are highly knowledgeable and skilled, who like to take things apart and rebuild them better than before. Subsimers are always in search of realism, mods bring us that. You are looking at it from the perspective of a gamer, we are looking at it from the perspective of someone who could one day be standing in the conn of a US Navy fast attack submarine one day (or already has).


Also if you never seen a developer sanctioned patch screw up a program and require the community to step in and fix it you must live in a hole in the wall.

[Hatch]

Mr. Mahuja, you have argued your points well, though you did not dispell my doubts alltogether, I will give you gentlemen a fair shake in this discussion and see for myself what the MOD actually contributes or subtracts from the game. I will be back.

Thank you.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Hatch

Mr. Mahuja, you have argued your points well, though you did not dispell my doubts alltogether, I will give you gentlemen a fair shake in this discussion and see for myself what the MOD actually contributes or subtracts from the game. I will be back.

Thank you.

I recommend you attack an AEGIS ship with missiles from a good distance (say 50 to 100 Nmis) in Stock and LWAMI. The difference is shocking.

[Molon Labe]

I think it needs to be said, that the bugs and issues in stock DW 1.0-1.01 were well on their way to killing the game. It was a lot of fun to play out of the box for a few months, but as players started to learn the game well, and change their tactics to keep up with everyone else, we reached a point where it was the game's problems that defined those tactics and it ceased to be fun (except for a few limited kinds of matches that DW's predecessors did better at).

Then LW/Ami came along, and fixed the issues that were killing the game. DW became balanced again, and player skill and tactics started to matter.

As much as I'd like a game that works out of the box, and official patches to correct problems, the reality of the situation is that SCS was not willing or able to spend the time and money to fix what was broken. The modders were.

[sonar732]

This topic should be on the brink of being locked. For one, it started as a "bait" if you will on placing the topic in the DW Mod Workshop forum.

• 1. The reaction was a no-brainer from the DW modding community.
  2. I can put money down that the a few of the modders were on the BETA testing team due to their experence and speak with SCS regarding the mods.
  3. The BETA team was experienced in their perspective backgrounds and spoke with SCS regarding the shortfalls of the game and still do with each perspective patch.
  4. With the DOD contracts that hold SCS to economic stability, it is understood and I've stated it multiple times, that you can't expect them to be able to give us the realism you want. If they did, the DOD would surely take them to the cleaners.
  5. Hence where the modders come in, as stated, it's a no-brainer that some of them are on the BETA team and talk with SCS on a regular basis.
  6. I have been in phone conversation with multiple members of this community who contribute. As a former member of the USS Alaska SSBN-732, we hold a spirit de corps for each other and respect the other's opinion.
  7. I'll have to admit that due to my family constraints; 5 kids, going to school full time, and working full time, I haven't had time to contribute to different aspects of the game that multiple members are aware of. However, that doesn't stop my respect for the other's contribution.
  8. As a former sonar operator, you won't find a non-DOD game that emulates my former job as close as this does. Yes, there is Harpoon. However, Harpoon doesn't have the classic interface that the US Navy spent 5 months of training for me on.
  9. This game is all about ultilizing tactics with RL emulation. You couldn't employ the classic tactics; surface, air, or sub-surface using the patches that SCS provide us due to #4 above. For instance, give me a shadow zone to hide in and I'll sneak up on you in a heartbeat, or a strong surface duct that would render the surface fleet death to where I was. Before the LWMod, you couldn't do this...now you can!

I've said my peace as both a player and "contributor" to this community. Enough said.

[XabbaRus]

I asked him to move it from the SCS forum to here as it was the most appropriate place for it.

amongst other things...

[Hatch]

Ok I'm sold (can't beleive i'm writing this, but it is fair to acknowledge your good work) I made up a mission with the editor to test acoustic detection ranges, the thermocline layer did not really differ a lot from above or below the layer as far as passive and active detection is concerned, if I pinged (I was using a helo) from above the layer (which was at 954 feet), i got a contact, then I went below, and I also got a contact, the difference in visual representation of the contact did not change any, alhtough it is possible to detect the contact from above and below the layer not taking into account where the contact resides at that point, one of these situations should give you a better visual return, that is a brighter blip on the active display, or a stronger aural reception on the passive mode, which you would then interpret as the contact being below or above the layer, which in turn will determine your attack presets for the weapon.

The longer dipping cable certainly is nice, now I can see your point, on an MP game, that poor helo driver would never have found a sub below 400 feet (assuming the detection parameters would work as I described above), same is true for the sonobuoys.

I'll keep on testing the other enhancements you denote on the readme file with the other platforms.

After testing your MOD in a very superficial way, I find that the realism improvements are there.

Gentlemen, I congratulate you on a fine job, and I apologize for my doubting your word, now if you can only get SCS to implement these improvements, everyone who plays this game will be a winner.

Hatch