One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

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teleportationwars
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One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by teleportationwars » Wed, 31. Jul 19, 10:20

https://www.egosoft.com:8443/jira/browse/X4-41

A number of modders have left over this. A thread has been around forever. Pms have been sent. The Egosoft guys who lend their time to the discord didn't know anything about it.The creator for the workaround has been gone for a very long time. The workaround itself is hard to use. I suspect a new maintainer would have taken it on if Ego had communicated they wouldn't or couldn't fix it. Nobody wants to make a community menu because the workaround makes that such a burdensome task. Not to mention a fear that all the work will evaporate if they do fix it. I don't think the work would be lost but multiple people have communicated this fear to me.

If Egosoft had communicated that this bug would not be fixed, the community could have congealed around a solution allowing less capable modders to use lua.

h2odragon3
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by h2odragon3 » Wed, 31. Jul 19, 10:32

What they said.

I would love to implement several things that require more UI than is currently available to me without the workaround. That the workaround is likely to break with the next official release of the game makes those ideas too much trouble to pursue for now.

Being told to "file a bug report" alongside the one from december doesn't do a lot to inspire me, as a modder or player.

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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by linolafett » Wed, 31. Jul 19, 17:49

We have it on our long list of things to implement, sadly the priority is not high neough to get this pushed on top of the list.
Therefore i can not say at all, when we get around resolving this issue.
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SirNukes
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by SirNukes » Wed, 31. Jul 19, 19:49

In my experience, the workaround is simple to use and there's no reason to expect it to randomly stop working. It's also super simple; anyone could remake their own version if they wanted (though there isn't really anything to change). Complaints about it seem overblown (sorry).

The main bother is that it introduces a dependency for any mods using lua. And perhaps that the thread with the workaround also has right-click menu modding stuff, and a lot of people seem to confuse the complexity and complaints about the latter with the workaround itself.

teleportationwars
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by teleportationwars » Wed, 31. Jul 19, 21:02

Getting to the workaround can have a very long trail.

1- you spend n hours wondering why lua addons wont load.
2 - you've found the _gnull error in your log. Now you google and hope it serves the workaround.
3 - you ignore the largely inscrutable workaround page and happen to pick the right folder
4 - you find the readily available files of the workaround include the method you probably tried, 50 lines of md to manage a list, and packed files.
5 - hopefully you didn't come at this too blindly and know how to use the xrcattol...
6 - you run around asking what subst_01 means because you don't want to use something you can't understand
7- you come to the thread for help which is entirely clogged by an api that breaks with every update
8 - you realize the api has nothing to do with the workaround

at some point you just stomp away mad.

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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by kmunoz » Fri, 2. Aug 19, 07:28

linolafett wrote:
Wed, 31. Jul 19, 17:49
sadly the priority is not high enough to get this pushed on top of the list.
I find this incredibly strange.

UI malleability is one of the critical holy grails of modding. In game after game I see modders straining against UI limitations, cobbling together workarounds, mashing things into places they don't really belong, just to be able to create new methods of interaction for players.

The example that immediately comes to mind is the difference between Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2. Modders of NWN had to contend with an interface that permitted UI interaction only with the dialogue system, and so while they were able to make incredibly complex systems, the interfaces were always really clunky. Then comes NWN2 and suddenly everything is XML and now you can make entirely different games with interfaces that share almost nothing in common with the vanilla game. Interface modding was so simple that NWN2 practically became its own development platform for a time.

So the idea that fixing the one bug that gets in the way of a massive open field of possibilities would be low enough priority not to have been handled long before 2.5 is just truly, utterly baffling.
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by X2-Illuminatus » Fri, 2. Aug 19, 18:31

There are a couple of criteria that need to be taken into account when deciding which bugs get fixed first. Usually this will be something along the lines of severity of a bug (e.g. game breaking vs. a feature not working), how many players are affected by it, how much time does it take to fix it, who (which dev(s)) can fix it, how much time these devs have, how big the effect on other aspects of the game is. While Interface modding is something that may indeed offer a "massive open field of possibilities", the amount of players being directly affected by the bug is rather low. Vanilla players are actually not affected by it at all, and the amount of modders looking into interface modding is rather small either (personal opinion).
SirNukes wrote:
Wed, 31. Jul 19, 19:49
And perhaps that the thread with the workaround also has right-click menu modding stuff, and a lot of people seem to confuse the complexity and complaints about the latter with the workaround itself.
teleportationwars wrote:
Wed, 31. Jul 19, 21:02
Getting to the workaround can have a very long trail.
Would either of you, SirNukes or teleportationwars, be willing to describe the gist of morbideth's workaround without the 'right-click menu modding stuff' in a new topic to help new modders find and understand the workaround? (This could then be linked in the Tools and Tutorials sticky, too.)
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teleportationwars
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by teleportationwars » Fri, 2. Aug 19, 22:46

Nukes has made a better workaround and will post it with better documentation at some point.

Kairos le voyageur
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by Kairos le voyageur » Tue, 13. Aug 19, 16:35

X2-Illuminatus wrote:
Fri, 2. Aug 19, 18:31
There are a couple of criteria that need to be taken into account when deciding which bugs get fixed first. Usually this will be something along the lines of severity of a bug (e.g. game breaking vs. a feature not working), how many players are affected by it, how much time does it take to fix it, who (which dev(s)) can fix it, how much time these devs have, how big the effect on other aspects of the game is. While Interface modding is something that may indeed offer a "massive open field of possibilities", the amount of players being directly affected by the bug is rather low. Vanilla players are actually not affected by it at all, and the amount of modders looking into interface modding is rather small either (personal opinion).
SirNukes wrote:
Wed, 31. Jul 19, 19:49
And perhaps that the thread with the workaround also has right-click menu modding stuff, and a lot of people seem to confuse the complexity and complaints about the latter with the workaround itself.
teleportationwars wrote:
Wed, 31. Jul 19, 21:02
Getting to the workaround can have a very long trail.
Would either of you, SirNukes or teleportationwars, be willing to describe the gist of morbideth's workaround without the 'right-click menu modding stuff' in a new topic to help new modders find and understand the workaround? (This could then be linked in the Tools and Tutorials sticky, too.)

Actually, i'm ok for the part of vanilla player not beein concern but, I tryed to talk about the game to my friends on 12 friends 9 told me they bought the game but they didn't played it at all because of the UI,

that's really sad for new players witch find the interface not visualy satisfying at all. actually I was wondering reworking it on my free time to make it easiers for new and eyes sensible players but it seem to be complicated. ( I know the game have a lot of mechanics but the ui and the way it's build is not really user friendly. i hope it will be fixed for 3.0 actually.

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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by DaMuncha » Tue, 20. Aug 19, 19:25

One of the ideas I had for mods was a news letter in game. I guess doing something like that in game is impossible now.
Just... another... bug.

teleportationwars
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Re: One bug stops modders from making menu mods.

Post by teleportationwars » Wed, 21. Aug 19, 13:53

DaMuncha wrote:
Tue, 20. Aug 19, 19:25
One of the ideas I had for mods was a news letter in game. I guess doing something like that in game is impossible now.
Not an easy mod to make but certainly doable. The only obstacle is the lack of docs on the ffi stuff that actually draws the menu.

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