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InSayne Companionship - An NPC companion.


MisterInSayne

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Sure, it's far from up to par with you guys, and will have bugs as I'm still working on it... but fucking hell man, do you have any idea how demotivating and belittling you come across? What I've coded goes beyond what most mods on this forum do. And all you guys keep doing is badmouth it.

MisterInSayne, please please please (and God knows, we need to do this better ourselves too) remember the bits about how tremendously cool your mod will be should you manage to get it all working. It'd be insanely popular. Any misgivings we'd have about promoting NPC related things while our own work is still a way off should not in any way be seen as a criticism of your work. I'm sure that once we were confident we had the finishing line in sight, we'd scream about your mod from the rooftops - everyone check this fantastic mod out while you're waiting. To do that right now would be to invite abuse towards us. To do that when we're approaching public video stages of our own NPC work would be safer.

Especially given that there will almost certainly be people out there who don't want super complex NPCs - are happy with the lone survivor aspect, but would enjoy a single companion NPC for example (dog, human, otherwise). The mod and our own work need not be mutually exclusive systems, long-term :)

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Is still an assaulting way of going at it, aswell as a lot more examples. My point is still the same. It's a stripped down test version, no need to bash it...

Perhaps things could have been phrased better, but the trouble is - let's say that for the moment your mod work didn't exist and what we were doing is responding to someone asking why NPCs weren't in the game when in previous builds they were. Our response would be to describe all the ways in which the old NPC system was no good long-term, not capable of what we want to achieve, all that jazz. Fact is, the old NPC system was ditched for a reason - it did the job as a proof-of-concept, an early test, but the game has moved on since then.

The trouble is, to make those same statements now, it becomes irrevocably linked to your mod - any self-deprecation on our part concerning our old NPCs becomes a criticism of your mod. It's horribly unfortunate, and perhaps there was a better way to handle it and, furthermore, as Lemmy said earlier: should you manage to solve all the problems reintroducing this sort of companion NPC to the current build of the game then (potential for horrid comments towards us aside), we'd all be tremendously impressed by that and I'm sure it would prove to be a tremendously popular mod.

But should we have to defend why we couldn't have done this ourselves, we simply have to talk in terms of what the old NPCs were capable of versus what we want the NPCs to be capable of and it's difficult to talk about the new stuff without implicitly or explicitly (and often, to make the point you have to be explicit) criticising the old stuff and therefore, unfortunately, also the scope of your mod. It sucks, but all we can really do is to be critical of our old system and simultaneously full of praise for your work, which sounds contradictory but really isn't given one is our game code and one is a mod :)

 

 

The least you could've done is said "the current way this test version of the mod is made" or likewise statements. Instead of aiming it at the mod in a whole, aim it at the current state of what it is, at that moment, whenever you refer to it.

And that's just one thing of many you could've done to make this defensive instead of offensive. It's the same as if I'd say, there is no work done on npc's by you guys in 2 years, and all that's been done is scave off the npc's coding piece by piece. And I've gotten more results done than you have in 2 years.

While we all know this isn't true, to those who don't know the internal coding, this is all they know. The same applies to your statements, you made assumptions about my coding and my mod, without knowing the rest, and disregarding the full story. If you don't like what they are saying, don't do the exact same and reroute it to the next person...

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Sure, it's far from up to par with you guys, and will have bugs as I'm still working on it... but fucking hell man, do you have any idea how demotivating and belittling you come across? What I've coded goes beyond what most mods on this forum do. And all you guys keep doing is badmouth it.

MisterInSayne, please please please (and God knows, we need to do this better ourselves too) remember the bits about how tremendously cool your mod will be should you manage to get it all working. It'd be insanely popular. Any misgivings we'd have about promoting NPC related things while our own work is still a way off should not in any way be seen as a criticism of your work. I'm sure that once we were confident we had the finishing line in sight, we'd scream about your mod from the rooftops - everyone check this fantastic mod out while you're waiting. To do that right now would be to invite abuse towards us. To do that when we're approaching public video stages of our own NPC work would be safer.

Especially given that there will almost certainly be people out there who don't want super complex NPCs - are happy with the lone survivor aspect, but would enjoy a single companion NPC for example (dog, human, otherwise). The mod and our own work need not be mutually exclusive systems, long-term :)

 

 

Thank you, that really means a lot. About the complexity however, I've written advanced AI's before, and situational formulating response systems. The test version I released wasn't intended as a representation of what the mod will be in any way, this whole project isn't for making just the one mod out of it. But that's all besides the point right now.

My goal wasn't for popularity, sure it's a huge motivator, but all I'm doing is create something I like to make.

 

But, my point is, I fully agree with your post. As I stated before, I never intended to replace the npc's that used to be, or create an npc system that's mimics your idea's for it. The only reasons I used the old code, or well, started from there, was to learn and to try and make it compatible with whatever you guys were working on. I never knew the IsoSurvivor system was written off, and all I knew was that this was the system you were using. As shown yesterday, the LOS system I made was done in less then an hour, which should be enough proof to support me in this. I used your premade code, not because it was already there, not because it took less time than if I'd make it myself (because well, having no source code basicly made it so I wasted days testing to see why things didn't work, or how you guys did it). Instead, I choose to use the existing code just because I wanted to prevent people from looking negatively towards you as the original developers, and to try and keep it as native as possible.

Much good that did me... :/ But maybe know this might show why this all is coming across as hurtfull as it does towards me... I put a lot of effort and time in doing something that was basicly a huge mistake design choices, and only got a lot of shit for it in return.

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No one can comment on code only you have seen, dude. All they can judge on is what you've released. So yah, right now- what we've seen- is mainly old functions. No one is trying to bash your mod. It was just important that this be brought up. I realize when you're making something, it's your baby and it's hard to hear criticism. But please- you're not correctly interpreting the intentions of any of the devs here. No one has tried to criticize you at all. I hope you'll just reread some of these comments after maybe calming down a bit. No one is criticizing your work.

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I don't mean to give offence, but I was wondering if English was your primary language. When I saw your lengthy response and how you seemed genuinely upset about Lemmy bashing his old code, and those old functions I first had the thought. I'm not trying to belittle you or demotivate you in any way. I'm trying to point out the obvious and make it clear that the statements you are taking issue with are intended to be directed at those old functions. Whether or not you intend to do much more with the mod and your own code base it doesn't change the fact that right now you are using those things, and that is what Lemmy was referring to.

 

Now to your point about myself, or anybody, belittling your code. All I know for certain from the chain events that lead to me posting in this thread, is that you are, at the moment, using old / removed functions and basing your mod around those, albeit temporary or not. In the future if you do create your own stuff to drive the mod that'd be awesome! However, for now all I can do is comment on what is currently happening, which is based on that leftover stuff in the game, correct? So when anybody refers to anything in this thread as antiquated or outdated, they mean those old functions, bits and bobs leftover from olden builds, not your code. I'm not sitting here even looking at your code, let alone judging it... just your misunderstanding of context and trying to relay where this went off the rails.

 

Does that make my post any more clear? I'm trying to help you understand the context and the comments, not have a go at you! 

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I don't mean to give offence, but I was wondering if English was your primary language.

 

 

Seriously dude, I would consider it the furthest thing from "assault". Assault =  "bla bla bla *snip*

 

My appologies, I agree, assault wasn't the right word to use, I'm not a natively english speaker, which normally isn't an issue, but well, I guess I didn't fully know the exact definition of the word assault. bla bla *snip*

 

Stopped reading your post there because you don't read mine appearently... no offense...

 

No one can comment on code only you have seen, dude. All they can judge on is what you've released.

Can't the exact same be said as an excuse by the NPC shouting mob out there? I do understand what you're saying though.

 

I know the developers didn't ment it hurtfull or look at me in a negative view. And above all I hate that somehow I cause this situation... And that's not what I want for this, or want as something to worry about when I make a mod. :/

Anyway, thank you guys for taking this time to discuss this matter, and the effort you all did to clear this up means a lot to me. I guess I'll let things settle a bit for now, and see where to go from here, if I choose to go on that is... I mean, if my first week looks like this, I fear what's ahead.

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I don't mean to give offence, but I was wondering if English was your primary language.

 

Seriously dude, I would consider it the furthest thing from "assault". Assault = "bla bla bla *snip*

My appologies, I agree, assault wasn't the right word to use, I'm not a natively english speaker, which normally isn't an issue, but well, I guess I didn't fully know the exact definition of the word assault. bla bla *snip*

Stopped reading your post there because you don't read mine apparently .

I appreciate you're frustrated and upset but you're stepping into unlovely territory here. The problem is just like with my posts here, you are focusing on a small negative part of a long and totally reasonable and positive response and then being snarky about it.

Our position has been quite clear and is completely reasonable. Please reread all these exchanges again and try responding in a less hostile manner to people only trying to help and explain the situation.

Let me tell you myself and CaptainBinky, as well as a ton of Modders here, have been in the same situation.

It's a risk of modding an in development game. The amount of times we've trampled/undone/accidentally stolen blindcoder's mod work here is remarkable. We must have invalidated about 6 of his mods in the past year. He takes it with grace and understanding though. He gets it. And this says a lot about him and makes him the sort of person we feel comfortable in supporting and working with.

 

The problem is you're reacting like you've been attacked out the blue, when in reality EnigmaGrey has already explained the reason we were apprehensive and worried about this mod while we were still at EGX. This is not news to you.

 

The way you handle the frustration of modding conflicting with the game dev says a lot and let me just say Ringo, RJ, Tim and Turbo are not on the team now because they reacted in this kinda way on the forums. 

 

Consider for a moment how upsetting these 'belittling' comments we've made (amongst apologies and shouts of support and statements of how impressive your work is) then consider how hurtful comments like 'Oh the modders have to fix the game because the Indie Stone can't' are to us. Trust me, those posts won't be full of 'this is really impressive' and 'best of luck to you' like ours are, it'll be all out ripping the shit out of us calling us incompetents and claiming you're more talented than us and we should eb ashamed modders need to fix our game for us. We predicted it and it was literally within the first three posts on the Steam forums that someone said exactly that.

 

And the fact we'll likely be getting these daily until NPCs are released due to this mod. We've tried to be diplomatic, we've tried to explain the situation as apologetically as possible, but you're only concerned with how this affects you, that we didn't feed your ego sufficiently and gleefully Mondoiding your in progress work and singing about how amazing you are, despite me and EnigmaGrey explaining in no uncertain terms that the sheer existence of this mod will result in us getting abuse hurled at us on a daily basis and that we wouldn't be able to shout about it in the same way we otherwise wouldn't. I'm sorry but if we're all about comparing who read what and who's feelings are hurt by what, then myself and EG's posts dont' even register on the scale of shit we get over NPCs and frankly I won't apologize for being scared of getting more of it.

 

I understand the language barrier but you keep focusing on things you've misunderstood, things that we never even said, and this has been explained numerous times by numerous people. If I wasn't clear then I apologize for that but the 10 replies here explaining what I meant and your misunderstanding ARE clear yet you persist with the notion that we've been saying you're crap and your mod is worthless. Not true at all.

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You do realize, as well, that I was wondering, is past tense, and I was the one that suggested to the moderators of this forum that it perhaps not your native language before you posted that English is not your native language, your first big write-up today, in fact, as soon as I read your writing on the steam community hub.  (tophat)

 

I read your whole post, and I was wondering is a past tense way of saying that before you confirmed it, I suspected it  :shock: You accuse others of being rude and offending you but have no qualms with behaving in that way yourself. That is fine tho, I tend not to post on the forum anyways and I was only stepping in this thread in an attempt to help bridge the understanding gap and language barrier owing to the fact that I recognized similar forms of misunderstand from my stream! I'll leave it to the mods at this point as it seems clear that you have no intention of letting me help resolve the situation peaceably.

 

Best of luck to you.

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OMG stop fighting, start loving :)

 

as I said on the Steam Discussion, this IN MY OPINION, is where credit is due...

 

 

 

WHERE IS CREDIT DUE? -> SIMPLE -> -> TO THE INDIE STONE for a great game, a lovely community and being amazingly open-minded to the modding community ! (and for the codes ;)  :P 
Some credit-is-due to MisterInSayne for making his own mod that will be about COMPANION NPCs (unless you, MisterInSayne, have more plans :P ) based off of the Indie Stones Coding... :) 

 

Now there I can't believe how people can fight over pixels trying to say who is who and better, or not, and how the community backlashes, and wonders afterwards why the developers respond in a raw-like manner, well don't backlash and negate them. ain't it simple ;) ? MisterInSayne is making a mod  that may add a companion NPC, NOT A ARMY WORLD OF NPC's ! and the Indie Stone developperz are creating THE Ultimate NPC s... simple, hate it? leave. like it? encourage and have fun playing the GAME  :)

Batsphinx, on 05 Oct 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

In fact, the main thing this thread has done is get me hyped for a potential dog mod  :D

DOG MOOOODDDDDD !!!  :twisted:  :mrgreen:  :mrgreen:

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At this point I'm going to step in with a:

wxtirKR.pngModerator Warning

I don't care who says it, why they say it, and what language barrier you have. If you use language that seems to attack others, if your tone of response is not lovely, you will be given a break from this forum.

 

Some people in this thread (pointing *no* fingers, yet), have been getting more and more towards the unlovely line, and continuing in this vein will cause a response, not due to any disagreements over technical matters, but simply because:

 

My "Someone is being a dick to someone else" detector is going off.

 

Seriously, keep it lovely in here. Remember text communication is hard, we mostly all just want to get on with each other and see cool things come out of Project Zomboid. Mods are cool things we all love. However, saying that:

 

The next person to use an aggressive or unfriendly tone in this thread will be taking a minimum 24 hour suspension.

 

*Wanders back off into his hole, muttering under his breath about SSH, recalcitrant servers, failing harddrives, obstinate network connections, email spam filters being too happy to filter email, java being, well, java...*

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You do realize, as well, that I was wondering, is past tense, and I was the one that suggested to the moderators of this forum that it perhaps not your native language before you posted that English is not your native language, your first big write-up today, in fact, as soon as I read your writing on the steam community hub. (tophat)

I read your whole post, and I was wondering is a past tense way of saying that before you confirmed it, I suspected it :shock: You accuse others of being rude and offending you but have no qualms with behaving in that way yourself. That is fine tho, I tend not to post on the forum anyways and I was only stepping in this thread in an attempt to help bridge the understanding gap and language barrier owing to the fact that I recognized similar forms of misunderstand from my stream! I'll leave it to the mods at this point as it seems clear that you have no intention of letting me help resolve the situation peaceably.

Best of luck to you.

 

My sincere appologies. And thank you for that. I'm sorry for the way I responded and for clearifying it. I mean that, and I feel like an ass now...

 

 

 

 

I don't mean to give offence, but I was wondering if English was your primary language.

 

Seriously dude, I would consider it the furthest thing from "assault". Assault = "bla bla bla *snip*

My appologies, I agree, assault wasn't the right word to use, I'm not a natively english speaker, which normally isn't an issue, but well, I guess I didn't fully know the exact definition of the word assault. bla bla *snip*

 

Stopped reading your post there because you don't read mine apparently .

 

I appreciate you're frustrated and upset but you're stepping into unlovely territory here. The problem is just like with my posts here, you are focusing on a small negative part of a long and totally reasonable and positive response and then being snarky about it.

Our position has been quite clear and is completely reasonable. Please reread all these exchanges again and try responding in a less hostile manner to people only trying to help and explain the situation.

Let me tell you myself and CaptainBinky, as well as a ton of Modders here, have been in the same situation.

It's a risk of modding an in development game. The amount of times we've trampled/undone/accidentally stolen blindcoder's mod work here is remarkable. We must have invalidated about 6 of his mods in the past year. He takes it with grace and understanding though. He gets it. And this says a lot about him and makes him the sort of person we feel comfortable in supporting and working with.

 

The problem is you're reacting like you've been attacked out the blue, when in reality EnigmaGrey has already explained the reason we were apprehensive and worried about this mod while we were still at EGX. This is not news to you.

 

The way you handle the frustration of modding conflicting with the game dev says a lot and let me just say Ringo, RJ, Tim and Turbo are not on the team now because they reacted in this kinda way on the forums. (Jab would do good to self-reflect on this too)

 

Consider for a moment how upsetting these 'belittling' comments we've made (amongst apologies and shouts of support and statements of how impressive your work is) then consider how hurtful comments like 'Oh the modders have to fix the game because the Indie Stone can't' are to us. Trust me, those posts won't be full of 'this is really impressive' and 'best of luck to you' like ours are, it'll be all out ripping the shit out of us calling us incompetents and claiming you're more talented than us and we should eb ashamed modders need to fix our game for us. We predicted it and it was literally within the first three posts on the Steam forums that someone said exactly that.

 

And the fact we'll likely be getting these daily until NPCs are released due to this mod. We've tried to be diplomatic, we've tried to explain the situation as apologetically as possible, but you're only concerned with how this affects you, that we didn't feed your ego sufficiently and gleefully Mondoiding your in progress work and singing about how amazing you are, despite me and EnigmaGrey explaining in no uncertain terms that the sheer existence of this mod will result in us getting abuse hurled at us on a daily basis and that we wouldn't be able to shout about it in the same way we otherwise wouldn't. I'm sorry but if we're all about comparing who read what and who's feelings are hurt by what, then myself and EG's posts dont' even register on the scale of shit we get over NPCs and frankly I won't apologize for being scared of getting more of it.

 

I understand the language barrier but you keep focusing on things you've misunderstanded. If I wasn't clear then I apologize for that but the 10 replies here explaining what I meant and your misunderstanding ARE clear yet you persist with the notion that we've been saying you're crap and your mod is worthless. Not true at all.

 

I'm sorry for giving you the shit I gave you over this, I shouldn't have. I lost focus on what was actually happening. I did reread everything, and had a sitdown with a friend to clear things out a bit. My reaction wasn't based on me being upset or frustrated, rather just panic and confusion. It wasn't the critisism, or things like that. I mean, one of my mods is something that will be implemented in the upcoming version, and was made after it was announced, which pretty much means the effort for that mod by itself is unnecessary, and unneeded.

The way I responded was because of this coming from the developers, not users, not trolls, but the developers. I do agree my behaviour was wrong. But you clearly misjudged me for wanting my ego fed. I never asked for that, nor was that what I wanted to gain with this. I know you aren't saying that I'm crap nor that my mod is worthless.

 

My goal wasn't to ask to be glorified by you guys, it was just a request to tone it down. And comparing how I deal with this and would be 'handeling critisism in general or getting my mod trampled' isn't really fair. I mean, you respond differently to things regarding npc's than any other topic.

 

I am genuienly sorry for what happened here, and that things went the way they went. You guys get enough shit concerning npc's as is, and I should've been more careful. I wish I could undo the damage I've already caused at this point, but we all know that's impossible. And I'm sad to say that I regret my decisions that led to this point. Again, I'm sorry, and I think you guys are amazing. Like I've said before, I made most choices in an attempt to prevent this all from happening, and had no control over this ending up on the steam forums. And I understand the harm that has done.

 

And with that I'll be taking of my coding pants. I can't undo the damage I've already done, but I can at least make it so I'm no longer part of the problem. Because in all of this, the mod, this discussion, my behaviour, so far, I've only achieved making things worse, not better.

 

Once again, thank you, and I'm sorry.

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Heya,

 

In my years working with and for TIS, one of the biggest things I've learned is that nobody is perfect. Don't worry- I don't think anyone here holds anything against you, and I really hope you won't quit modding. We love our modders, and we love you. Even with the apprehension some of us had towards what this mod would mean for us as far as the public's perception, we were (and are) all rooting for you. Cheers dude.

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Just stepping over the thread quarantine line to send MisterInSayne a hug. I'm sorry this went in such a horrible direction but it seems like it wasn't the desire of anyone involved and we really tried our best to approach this in a way that caused the least offense possible. Clearly we failed in that but it wasn't our intent to hurt your feelings and we tried to make it clear at the same time how high regard we had for what you'd done.

 

NPCs are a bloody emotion minefield eh? ;)

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