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[Putnam]

I think that Masterwork--not the mod itself, but the levels above that, the GUI included--is something that is, in general, poisonous to the modding community.

In fact, I think the GUI is the single worst part of the mod. It's not the GUI that I'm complaining about, however. In fact, that's a good idea.

The races are the problem.

Again, not a problem with the raws, but with they way they're packaged. The races are basically standalone mods included as part of the Masterwork whole. There is a not-insignificant (relative to the total population) amount of DF players that, like me, refuse to play Masterwork primarily on ideological grounds. Unlike me, they tend not to do anything about it, I guess because they're not quite as invested in the modding community. Due to this, those people will never see Masterwork's races due to a flat refusal to try Masterwork despite it being... not one mod. This divides mods into two camps, Masterwork and non-Masterwork; such a division is not good for the community.

Due to this fact, the races would work better as a standalone package, not part of Masterwork. There's no reason to include them in Masterwork except that some of them happen to use stuff that Masterwork already uses; perhaps there's some odd sense of inclusionism or something I'm missing entirely, but I really don't see why other entire mods with entirely new themes need to be included in Masterwork.

I've decided to stop work on Fantastic and mod collections for this exact reason; there are whole mods hidden in both those and Masterwork that people will never get to see simply because they're mods hidden within another mod. This just makes the whole thing more confusing for people. Thus, quite counter-intuitively, the GUI is one of the least user-friendly things around for people who want to try mods.

Unfortunately, I have no call to action for this. I'm not in control of the GUI, nor the races. Even if I were in control of the GUI, I would find it very difficult to say to all of the people who had designed races for Masterwork to just pack it all up and move it to vanilla. I do think, however, that the modding community in general would benefit from not having what is, at this point, essentially two separate mod releases subforums, one of which just happens to have a name associated with it.

Note that this is my complaint about the GUI specifically; I have other grievances about the community as a whole, but you can see those just about everywhere, so I decided to start this topic up with a new one.

I wasn't warned to do this (I haven't even derailed much recently), just felt like it was getting annoying.

If I ever feel an urge to derail something again, I'll just quote it, post the quoted reply in here than quote the reply into the original topic, with an encouragement to continue discussion here if at all.

[Meph]

There is a not-insignificant (relative to the total population) amount of DF players that, like me, refuse to play Masterwork primarily on ideological grounds.

Could you please make a poll about this and show some results? Because my best guess is that 5-10% of vanilla DF players at some point played MDF, which is not a high amount. And judging from the post I made in the general discussion board, most people that dont play it, dont play it because its too large, too hard to learn, or they dont like mods in general. There were only a handful of people, which (very loudly) made their opinions heard about ideological grounds, as you put it. Most DF players dont even have a forum account.

I honestly dont understand you anymore. People that write races for Masterwork do so for fun, in their free time, for no other reason than trying out things and learning how to mod. Boltgun migrated into MDF because players of his mod specifically requested it, he was using some borrowed MDF parts in the Succubus race all along. Smake wrote the Orcs because he is a big fan of MDF, and the first to come up with extra races. The Hermit, Kobolds, Warlocks and Humans were done by me. IndigoFenix's motivation I dont personally know, he just came out of nowhere and said: I want to do this, bam, have this extraordinarily complex and well done Gnome tech.

All other potential races are in concept stages, with Eko and his Nagas being the most developed I think.

The core concept is that they are hobbyist. Fans of DF. They are the modding community you are talking about. They are not paid game developers that owe their players anything. If they want to write a mod for a mod that some people might not see, than thats neither their fault, nor mine, nor the GUIs. If someone says "I won't play Masterwork because I disagree on an ideological basis", then they miss out on these races. Thats their own fault. No one is forcing them to do so. Dont blame the modders, please.

The last point I would like to add is that I only hear this from you. Not Boltgun, who had a mod for vanilla, but continued on MDF. Not IndigoFenix, who wrote the complex Gnomes, just to see them not get the attention they (In my opinion) deserve. Not Deon, who lost his positions as "Author of Genesis, god of modders, they guy every modders thrives to be". No other modder has approached me with this. Did you ever consider the possibility that you are wrong?

Edit: A little extra on the Why of extra races: The mod has too many features for one race, so I decided to stop future additions to Dwarves and write self-contained specifically-themed other races to play.

Edit2: I added a poll myself, about which parts of MDF are used most/least.

[smakemupagus]

I wrote Orcs for Masterwork because my wife plays Masterwork.  I'm happy that other people enjoy playing it too, and I enjoy chatting with the people I've come to know here on the forums, but I'm not trying to maximize the audience.

If anyone want to write a total conversion of Orc Fortress to vanilla or any other mod they have my blessing.  I've done it before to play orcs in other mod settings that i enjoy and it is not a trivial project to do it with a low bug count, there are ~700 reactions and are intertwined from the ground up with MW concepts like generic leather, extra butcher objects, mithril, saplings, (... ed. they still may have a few core buildings in common with MW Dwarf mode that date back to the early days), etc.

[sayke]

Does Masterwork include lots of shiny stuff, like other races? Yes, and good! I say, the shinier the better, as long as it's coherent, which Meph does a pretty good job of keeping it =D This is an incredibly minor quibble.

Are their some folks might not want to play with the other races because they're stuck with sane, categorized, generic leathers and woods, or some other quibble like that? Too bad! I think many more people love the generics, love the integration, and love all the options that Masterwork gives you. I am one. This is an incredibly minor quibble as well.

If you think that each race should split into a separate mod for vanilla, and Meph should just stick to dwarves, then come out and say so. I don't think you will, though, because that would make each race mod significantly worse! In my opinion and in the demonstrated opinion of all the modders who made extra races for Masterwork, the race mods are better built on Masterwork, because Masterwork infrastructure is better than vanilla. It seems pretty straightforward to me, man...

Look, Masterwork is going to be difficult for you to compete with, just because Meph puts a ton of time and great creative work into it. It is the most popular DF mod right now because he made it awesome, getting constant feedback from the community, and changing his priorities along the way.

I'm not trying to get personal here for the sake of upsetting anyone, but I have to say, Putnum, that you just seem jealous of Masterwork's success =P I suspect that you would like to discourage Meph into quitting modding. You have no call to action or constructive suggestions. Rather than encouraging, and doing what you can to help, you come up with an evolving litany of comparatively loud complaints that are at most held by several other people in the entire world, and seem quite minor in the grand scheme of things.

I think that, rather than targeting vanilla, more modders should just target Masterwork. Problem solved! Everyone who wants to play mods should just download Masterwork, and they'll have a whole pile of awesome stuff in one convenient and coherent package. I'm only being semi-facetious here. Why not? =P

[smakemupagus]

I think that, rather than targeting vanilla, more modders should just target Masterwork.... Why not? =P

Well.  There are quite a few systematic or balance changes that simply might not fit with the vision of another modder.  The renaming & reorganization of professions, to use one example. 

I'm probably going to make an effort to not visit this thread regularly, because i have trouble not taking it personally.  Long story short if someone wants to demand that I port Orc Fortress then, lol.  If someone wants to lead an effort to adapt or port it and wants to ask for my permission/help/input then PM me or start a thread and I'll be happy to support you. 

[Findulidas]

I think that you are assuming to much putnam. Even in europa universalis where people actually played a specific mod more than the actual game there still was a modding community that did other things and everyone knew that the makers of the actual games still where to ones that made it happen to begin with.

[Kodos343]

refuse to play Masterwork primarily on ideological grounds.

Um... what?

Also I don't see the problem. Masterwork is something people make sub-mods for by their own volition, or not. There is not some Masterwork mafia coming by and coercing people to submit their mods or else. I'm reasonably certain neither Meph nor anyone acting on their behalf approached any of the creators all 'you have a nice mod there, buddy, shame if something were to happen to it...'

I'm not trying to be insulting and, please, forgive me if I'm reading something into this wrong, but I really don't see the issue, here, and if I had to be honest it just seems like you want to use some elements Masterwork but because of your odd hang-up (seriously, ideological grounds? What? It's a mod for a video game about Dwarves, not the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, not some profound philosophical, religious, or political issue.) you just can't bring yourself to do so. The fact that Masterwork's GUI is so modular and lets you basically tweak, activate, or deactivate just about any and all features makes the idea of anyone having 'issues' with it absurd. Like there is no rational reason I can conceive of why anyone would have a problem with using Masterwork if they like some feature but dislike others - they can just turn them off. And irrational hang-ups do not compelling arguments make.

I mean, again correct me if I am wrong here, but reading your post it sounds like your saying 'the people who refuse to use Masterwork cannot enjoy the features of Masterwork.' Like, um, yeah? That's what happens when you don't use a thing - you don't use the thing.

[Meph]

I think the point was that if the 8 races would have been released indepentantly, that a larger portion of players would have access to them, because it is more obvious that its 8 mods, instead of 8 options within one mod. The issue I have with this is that the mods are not made exclusively for the players, but also for the modders, who can do whatever they like, where and how they like it, because its their intellectual property, and no one has any right to demand anything of them.

Meph puts a ton of time and great creative work into it.

I did about 4 months fulltime on DF this year, but I dont think I will be able to do much more in any foreseeable time. The planning and scope of my next tour has increased a bit, instead of doing the trans-siberian railway to asia and cycling around a bit, I will also cycle back the silk road, which adds another layer of complexity and ~6months time. I might very well be on the road for a full year.

[Illogical_Blox]

There is a not-insignificant (relative to the total population) amount of DF players that, like me, refuse to play Masterwork primarily on ideological grounds.

Could you please make a poll about this and show some results? Because my best guess is that 5-10% of vanilla DF players at some point played MDF, which is not a high amount. And judging from the post I made in the general discussion board, most people that dont play it, dont play it because its too large, too hard to learn, or they dont like mods in general. There were only a handful of people, which (very loudly) made their opinions heard about ideological grounds, as you put it. Most DF players dont even have a forum account.

I honestly dont understand you anymore. People that write races for Masterwork do so for fun, in their free time, for no other reason than trying out things and learning how to mod. Boltgun migrated into MDF because players of his mod specifically requested it, he was using some borrowed MDF parts in the Succubus race all along. Smake wrote the Orcs because he is a big fan of MDF, and the first to come up with extra races. The Hermit, Kobolds, Warlocks and Humans were done by me. IndigoFenix's motivation I dont personally know, he just came out of nowhere and said: I want to do this, bam, have this extraordinarily complex and well done Gnome tech.

All other potential races are in concept stages, with Eko and his Nagas being the most developed I think.

The core concept is that they are hobbyist. Fans of DF. They are the modding community you are talking about. They are not paid game developers that owe their players anything. If they want to write a mod for a mod that some people might not see, than thats neither their fault, nor mine, nor the GUIs. If someone says "I won't play Masterwork because I disagree on an ideological basis", then they miss out on these races. Thats their own fault. No one is forcing them to do so. Dont blame the modders, please.

The last point I would like to add is that I only hear this from you. Not Boltgun, who had a mod for vanilla, but continued on MDF. Not IndigoFenix, who wrote the complex Gnomes, just to see them not get the attention they (In my opinion) deserve. Not Deon, who lost his positions as "Author of Genesis, god of modders, they guy every modders thrives to be". No other modder has approached me with this. Did you ever consider the possibility that you are wrong?

Edit: A little extra on the Why of extra races: The mod has too many features for one race, so I decided to stop future additions to Dwarves and write self-contained specifically-themed other races to play.

Edit2: I added a poll myself, about which parts of MDF are used most/least.

Nagas? Cool!

I personally don't play Masterwork, but that's only because a) we have limited internet and b) it isn't updated to 40.xx. Once it is... BAM, I'm gonna try it. I like the extra race; dwarves can be... a bit stale.

[Putnam]

I think that you are assuming to much putnam. Even in europa universalis where people actually played a specific mod more than the actual game there still was a modding community that did other things and everyone knew that the makers of the actual games still where to ones that made it happen to begin with.

Not saying anything about vanilla DF as it relates to Masterwork here, just how mods built on vanilla are related to mods built on Masterwork, so the maker of the actual game doesn't have much to do with this.

Spoiler: sayke (click to show/hide)

If you think that each race should split into a separate mod for vanilla, and Meph should just stick to dwarves, then come out and say so. I don't think you will, though, because that would make each race mod significantly worse!

...I thought that that was implied pretty heavily, yeah. Anyway, significantly worse? I doubt that. The races are, in general, pretty creative and well-done, so I figure their wouldn't be much loss of quality if they were made with vanilla instead.

In my opinion and in the demonstrated opinion of all the modders who made extra races for Masterwork, the race mods are better built on Masterwork, because Masterwork infrastructure is better than vanilla. It seems pretty straightforward to me, man...

I am a modder who's made an extra race for Masterwork. I had to give up completely while it was partially done because Masterwork's infrastructure is most certainly not better than Vanilla, mostly because, unlike vanilla, the raws are updated regularly. This is good for the players, sure, but not really so good for the modders.

Look, Masterwork is going to be difficult for you to compete with, just because Meph puts a ton of time and great creative work into it. It is the most popular DF mod right now because he made it awesome, getting constant feedback from the community, and changing his priorities along the way.

It's difficult to do that when you don't have a community.

I'm not trying to get personal here for the sake of upsetting anyone, but I have to say, Putnum, that you just seem jealous of Masterwork's success =P

duh

I suspect that you would like to discourage Meph into quitting modding.

wow no

Rather than encouraging, and doing what you can to help, you come up with an evolving litany of comparatively loud complaints that are at most held by several other people in the entire world, and seem quite minor in the grand scheme of things.

Mostly because I can't do anything to help in the Masterwork subforum. I try to help on Reddit, but guess what? My mods get no attention there, while if Meph says that he plans on asking the community for an idea on an update he'll get ten times as much as any other poster could hope for. This is highly discouraging.

I think that, rather than targeting vanilla, more modders should just target Masterwork. Problem solved! Everyone who wants to play mods should just download Masterwork, and they'll have a whole pile of awesome stuff in one convenient and coherent package. I'm only being semi-facetious here. Why not? =P

It actually would solve the problem, but only until Toady decides to release another raw-breaking update, at which point all modders will be SOL until Masterwork updates.

I honestly dont understand you anymore. People that write races for Masterwork do so for fun, in their free time, for no other reason than trying out things and learning how to mod. Boltgun migrated into MDF because players of his mod specifically requested it, he was using some borrowed MDF parts in the Succubus race all along. Smake wrote the Orcs because he is a big fan of MDF, and the first to come up with extra races. The Hermit, Kobolds, Warlocks and Humans were done by me. IndigoFenix's motivation I dont personally know, he just came out of nowhere and said: I want to do this, bam, have this extraordinarily complex and well done Gnome tech.

All other potential races are in concept stages, with Eko and his Nagas being the most developed I think.

The core concept is that they are hobbyist. Fans of DF. They are the modding community you are talking about. They are not paid game developers that owe their players anything. If they want to write a mod for a mod that some people might not see, than thats neither their fault, nor mine, nor the GUIs. If someone says "I won't play Masterwork because I disagree on an ideological basis", then they miss out on these races. Thats their own fault. No one is forcing them to do so. Dont blame the modders, please.

I'm not blaming the modders. I'm not entirely sure what part or tone of my writing is coming across that way. It's not like anyone got up in the morning and said "I'm going to split the modding community! Nyahahaha!".

The last point I would like to add is that I only hear this from you. Not Boltgun, who had a mod for vanilla, but continued on MDF. Not IndigoFenix, who wrote the complex Gnomes, just to see them not get the attention they (In my opinion) deserve. Not Deon, who lost his positions as "Author of Genesis, god of modders, they guy every modders thrives to be". No other modder has approached me with this. Did you ever consider the possibility that you are wrong?

I always consider the possibility that I am wrong, in everything I do.

The reason I do this is... personal. I used to work on modding almost as you much as Meph does now. I used to juggle all 5 of my mods about equally, updating them, etc. I didn't get an audience because I was making mods that didn't have any sort of broad appeal, but then I made one that did and... it got no appeal. I go to Reddit and find that everything is attributed to Masterwork. Just a couple days ago, someone posted a new metal their, Mithril. I was happy. Someone replied with (paraphrased) "isn't this in Masterwork? and can you make wolfram and cobalt?". I grabbed wolfram and cobalt for him from the files I'd already made based on those metals, but then said that mentioning that the most famous fantasy metal of all time is in the biggest fantasy hodgepodge mod around is entirely pointless. I got downvoted because I complained about Masterwork being brought up for no reason. So now I'm going on tirades and posting rants because nobody else is and it's scary, very very scary what Masterwork is doing.

And this happens all the time. The recent DFHack hints thread ended up casting me as a villain for thinking that DFHack things belong in the subforum where DFHack resides. I got things like this:

Oh well, not my intention to create polemic, I just wanted to ease the learning for other people, but sounds like putnam doesn't like that, sad coming from a modder.

How is wanting a thread about "DFHack tips and tricks" being moved to the subforum dedicated to utilities such as DFHack me not wanting to help people? Is it really that horrible to say that not everything in Masterwork should be considered its own thing instead of just another part of Masterwork?

I guess it is.

I think the point was that if the 8 races would have been released indepentantly, that a larger portion of players would have access to them, because it is more obvious that its 8 mods, instead of 8 options within one mod. The issue I have with this is that the mods are not made exclusively for the players, but also for the modders, who can do whatever they like, where and how they like it, because its their intellectual property, and no one has any right to demand anything of them.

Does this read as demanding? I demand nothing. I'm pointing something out. I explicitly ended my post saying that I demand nothing and that I cannot demand anything exactly because the modders did what they want and I could not tell them not to do it. I don't understand why you're misrepresenting my like that except perhaps that I didn't make myself clear the first time.

[slay_mithos]

Personally, I don't care much about all this thing.

In many games, I am used to go dig around a lot, and fix all the incompatibilities to the best of my abilities, in order to get what I want from my games.
It includes Minecraft, Torchlight 2, kerbal space program, the elder scrolls games, among others.

While it's an OK thing to do, when you want to combine things to your personnal liking, it is very, very time consuming, and any partial incompatibilities that requires the user to go dig configs, raw files, and other scripts also require more than just a basic understanding.

In most of those games, packages of mods, already configured, tested and very easy to install, because it allows many less experienced players and those that don't want (or don't have time) to monitor hundred of threads for compatible versions and fixes to enjoy the modded experience.

In my book, as long as those pack makers are not trying to appropriate the work of others as their own, it is something that benefits the whole modded community.

The thing here that is different is that Meph worked a lot more than your usual pack maker, because he is also the author of a good part of the raws, meaning that he also interracts with a lot of script authors in order to make his mod.


To your average player, all this false debate about MDF kiulling the modding scene and whatever seems more of a case of smaller mod makers not liking the fact that one mod pack became a goto for many lazy players.
Just like many players started with the lazy newb pack, MDF is an easy to use package, that proposes a pretty complete modded DF experience, with the ability to further configure it through a simple launcher.
It requires very little time or knowledge to use it, and it provides the player with a lot of tools that can also be found all around the forums in the form of scripts.

Yes, I understand that it's frustrating to have very little exposure when you make a new mod or script, but let's be serious here.
The main reason of all this complaining is that modders are just jealous, and are trying to use wording to make it sound like they are pursuing a noble cause (defending the modding scene in general), while insulting the years of work of Meph and many others.


People that want a specific experience will still hunt for the latest and greatest scripts, and will still pick pieces all around the forums for the raws, combining up to hundreds of separate mods and scripts into their own package, and enjoy it.



Also, Putnam is particularly vocal about his hate about MDF, going as far as flaming on a thread I made to help players find out and use those utilities, even continuing to do so after I moved it where he pretty much demanded it to be moved, and not contributing in the slightest in a topic that was made to benefit from various random people posting their tips.
While I really enjoy the scripts you made, and after reading a lot of them, find that you are a very competent programmer, this toxic attitude is just making a wall, because you are not even trying to engage in any discussion, just trying to push your point forcefully.

[Meph]

Fake-Edit: I got carried away a bit, so the text got a bit longer than usual. It might have gotten a bit... offtopic here and there.

I interpreted your "I cant demand it", as a "I cant demand it, but if I could, I would", because your entire post suggests that that would be the best solution from your point of view. (releasing the races as individual mods, so that non-mdf players have access to the content)

I am a modder who's made an extra race for Masterwork.

To be quite frank, you did not. You started one, wrote several scripts, but abandoned before doing any graphics or more than a handful of workshops with a few reactions each. It in no way reached the dimensions of any other race that has been released.

So now I'm going on tirades and posting rants because nobody else is and it's scary, very very scary what Masterwork is doing.

The bay12 forum is one of the most friendly and open online community I have ever seen. If Masterwork would be scary/indimidating, people would tell me. Toady One, PeridexisErrant, anyone who writes mods/utilities... players of mods... people could just send me a PM, approach me on Reddit, or on this board. I am known for being extremely receptive of community feedback. But people generally like this thing that is MasterworkDF (even with the silly name). I make my design choices by either personal fun or public opinion determined by polls, I always acted towards what the people voted for. If you could show me that the majority agrees with your point of view, I would change what I can. But... they dont. The community you speak for, that you fear is being scared/poisoned by MasterworkDF does not agree with you on that regard. Even if you were technically right, and this devolves into some kind of benign dictatorship, the majority of people in the modding community seem to be ok with it. It isnt even something that you or me could affect directly, with the exception of me closing up shop. And its not that different from the time when I started modding, when it was "Do you play vanilla DF or Genesis?"

Mostly because I can't do anything to help in the Masterwork subforum. I try to help on Reddit, but guess what? My mods get no attention there, while if Meph says that he plans on asking the community for an idea on an update he'll get ten times as much as any other poster could hope for. This is highly discouraging.

You have a Legend of Zelda, SPC, Homestuck and Dragonball mod, all of which are highly specific total conversions. Your Automaton mod is dead, and Fantastic DF does what Masterwork, Deons Essential DF, my Accelerated DF or igfigs Modest Mod does, more or less. And its not my name that does magic on reddit, its MasterworkDF. I never started another mod (besides Accelerated, which doesnt get much feedback either), because I would have the same problem as anyone else: I wouldnt get much feedback or players. I'd love to do a Shadowrun total conversion, but it would be geared to an almost non-existing audience: Players of DF that also like Shadowrun and mods. Its not a large audience, so I'll probably never do it. Masterwork is so generic-fantasy-like because its the largest target audience. People identify with one part and can turn the other parts they dont like off.

To use another example: I am pretty awesome at what I do. Not modding and DF, but my RL stuff. I am seriously really really good at it. If there were 10 people in the world in my age group that know as much about and have done as much as I did when it comes to travel/outdoor/survival/extremesports, I would be surprised. I know about a dozen that reach my level, but they are usually 5-15 years older than me. ... ... ... yet, my facebook account (the professional one, not the private one) has about 50% of the likes than the Masterwork Dwarf Fortress facebook account, for which I never do any advertisement, use very sporadically, and that I dont even understand how people find it, because there are no links posted anywhere.

Why is that? Because I dont focus on advertisement, but on doing stuff. People that do a fraction of what I do and focus on PR have fancy websites, videos/youtube channels, interviews, get lots of money, public recognition, etc etc. Thats because they do split up their work and effort between doing something and doing the surrounding PR stuff. Do I complain about my obscurity? No, because I know where it comes from, from my unwilligness to spend time and effort on it. I know the reason, I could change it, but I dont mind not being famous for what I do.

If you want your mods to be more famous and get more recognition than they currently do, you have to learn about PR. Target audience, presentation, social media, lets-plays, tutorials... just look at how much effort I put into the presentation of the human mode I wrote. You cant write a mod about SCP, post about it on reddit, and be surprised how little feedback you get.

When I did the Hermit, my first post on Reddit got 1 comment, 10 upvotes. Test-release got 1 comment, 7 upvotes. Full release with other Masterwork-specific content got 27 comments (which include my own), and 41 upvotes. 28 upvotes for the Human release, which was 30 days of work. I just did some digging on Reddit, "top rated posts in the Dwarf Fortress subforum", the first mention of Masterwork mod is on place 687, and its about a funny artefact. The top rated post by me in there? When I showed Reddit what mifkis TwbT can do, and way lower on the list, place 820, with 149 upvotes, a post by me about the fundraiser I did. Masterwork plays a tiny role on Reddit. Yes, larger than other mods, but compared to vanilla DF, its nothing.

I myself dont even care for Reddit votes or comments. I honestly dont care if I get 100 or 0 comments. Its a utility to get information to a broader audience, I dont use it for self confirmation. I only started going on Reddit, because I was told that the mod is being discussed there and that people post questions there, instead of the bay12 forum.

You are completely overthinking this. And I say that as the person who, besides Toady One and Threetoes, is most heavily invested into DF. I have the largest and most popular mod, I am the only person who sits down and does stuff fulltime now and then, I am the only person who gets (semi)regular donations (20$ this month, yeah, 45$ last month, yeah), and who has a calender/to-do list for his RL that includes DF. (Jan:Fundraiser, Feb:DF, Mar/Apr/May:Travel, Jun/Jul:DF, Aug:Travel, Sep/Oct/Nov:PR/Tour planning, Dec:Travel), and even I say to you: You are completely blowing this out of proportion. DF is a niche indie game thats free on the internet, a byproduct of one mans passion to write a world simulator; people may or may not enjoy it. For some people it is a form of art, but as sayke puts it: Its not a Isreal/Palestine conflict. It is really not important in any way. Its a nice pasttime for people that like a challenging game, I started modding to make it run on my crappy netbook, ended up staying for the friendly people that populate this forum.

I realized that at this point I am mostly just rambling, but I really cant wrap my head around your intention or motivation. Its all rather irrational to me. "There is a not-insignificant (relative to the total population) amount of DF players" that agree with you on the topic of not playing Masterwork for ideological reasons? I have to take the american teenager girl stance and say: I cant even. It makes no sense. DF has somewhat around 200k download a month (I would really love a real number on this, but I can only guess from old interviews with Tarn Adams), and the board has just below 50k users. Lets assume that a unreasonably optimistic 10% of them are active forum members that post regularily, thats 5k. Even if all of them say 'Masterwork is poisoning our community', than its 2,5%. While 10-20k people download the mod per version over the course of one month. If you would go around the forum and gather 100 people that agree with you, that means you have found 100 Naysayer that want to change Masterwork or get rid of the sub-board, or release the mods independantly. Thats  0,5-1% of the total amount of Masterwork users. Thats neither large nor significant. It would be changing the mod and taking away things from 10k people, because 100 people want it so.

If you find 10.000 people that agree with you... About 5% of the DF player base... even that wouldnt be what I'd call significant. You will of course never find as many (neither would I to defend my point of view), simply because this is an obscure indie PC game. Its nothing people lose sleep over.

Edit: I really shouldnt be forced to mention it, but seeing the post just above mine: Please. Everyone stay civil. I tried to back up everything I said with data and math, and I wouldnt like to see anyone just throwing around false accusations that heat up the attitude in this thread even more. Being demotivated by lack of feedback is not the same as being jealous/feeling envy of other peoples perceived success.

[smakemupagus]

I'd love to do a Shadowrun total conversion, but it would be geared to an almost non-existing audience: Players of DF that also like Shadowrun and mods.

Wait...... there are any people in the world that wouldn't want this?  People are strange.

[Meph]

I'd love to do a Shadowrun total conversion, but it would be geared to an almost non-existing audience: Players of DF that also like Shadowrun and mods.

Wait...... there are any people in the world that wouldn't want this?  People are strange.

Bad smake. No. No shadowrunner thieves that want to attack the mega-corp you are building up, with other corps sending private armies against you. No Dunkelzahn/Lofwyr megabeasts, no hermetic&shamanistic mages that summon ghosts, no insect spirit nightcreatures... Monofilament whips (so... vanilla DF whips) and guns. I absolutely dont have any concepts layed out for this. Stop talking about it.

[Putnam]

Also, Putnam is particularly vocal about his hate about MDF, going as far as flaming on a thread I made to help players find out and use those utilities, even continuing to do so after I moved it where he pretty much demanded it to be moved, and not contributing in the slightest in a topic that was made to benefit from various random people posting their tips.
While I really enjoy the scripts you made, and after reading a lot of them, find that you are a very competent programmer, this toxic attitude is just making a wall, because you are not even trying to engage in any discussion, just trying to push your point forcefully.

Are you serious? Flaming? After you had moved it? Tell me where I did that.

Meph: You're... really focusing on that "not insignificant" thing I said there. That was not what I meant to get across at all. I didn't think about it when I was writing it, I was just thinking of the first example I could think of of the kind of person who would never see any of the Masterwork mods.

You have a Legend of Zelda, SPC, Homestuck and Dragonball mod, all of which are highly specific total conversions. Your Automaton mod is dead, and Fantastic DF does what Masterwork, Deons Essential DF, my Accelerated DF or igfigs Modest Mod does, more or less.

I also had another mod that actually purported to be something interesting and novel (a bit more modern, but still magical, not like Fantastic or Masterwork but... the opposite), but I stopped because every time I tried actually playing it I found the most obvious (however minor) problems in there that I had to fix... you have the problem, I'm pretty sure, but I'm  bothered because some of them were not minor and in fact were complete show-stoppers and nobody reported them because nobody played that long, and this happens every time I play one of my mods. It's disheartening.

You are completely overthinking this. And I say that as the person who, besides Toady One and Threetoes, is most heavily invested into DF. I have the largest and most popular mod, I am the only person who sits down and does stuff fulltime now and then, I am the only person who gets (semi)regular donations (20$ this month, yeah, 45$ last month, yeah), and who has a calender/to-do list for his RL that includes DF. (Jan:Fundraiser, Feb:DF, Mar/Apr/May:Travel, Jun/Jul:DF, Aug:Travel, Sep/Oct/Nov:PR/Tour planning, Dec:Travel), and even I say to you: You are completely blowing this out of proportion. DF is a niche indie game thats free on the internet, a byproduct of one mans passion to write a world simulator; people may or may not enjoy it. For some people it is a form of art, but as sayke puts it: Its not a Isreal/Palestine conflict. It is really not important in any way. Its a nice pasttime for people that like a challenging game, I started modding to make it run on my crappy netbook, ended up staying for the friendly people that populate this forum.

I would schedule things around DF, but I can't because it's not worth the time. I used to do this nearly full-time, spending a very large amount of my non-school hours with DF modding, but it's not worth the time anymore. I want it to be worth the time, there's very little I find more enjoyable than DF modding, but I hate wasting time and DF modding is beginning to feel like that because there isn't much room for anything other than Masterwork.

If you really want to know why, I'm beginning to think it's because, when it comes to DF modding, I used to be, oh, #3, but number 1 is so large that it's not really worth it to keep that up anymore. I keep coming up with excuses, but it all comes back to me wanting to make stories with Dwarf Fortress mods and being unable to because I can't write stories nobody actually plays mine. Just from looking at the first three pages of the community games board (150 topics), 13 are Masterwork games not made by Meph and 7 are not-Masterwork, but modded. I'm not comparing Masterwork to vanilla here, I never was, it's not about that at all; I'm comparing it to other mods, and compared to other mods put together, it's gigantic.