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[Great Cthulhu]

I agree. We don't need any "official mods". In fact what the hell? It sounds weird and makes no sense... 
Toady will "fill in those holes" if it will be necessary.

I think I may not have been clear in what I'm actually suggesting, because I don't want an official mod either.

What I am suggesting is something along the lines of:

• Toady gives us a list of things in the raws that he would like to have done, but doesn't get around to doing. (I think this list may contain things like SPEC_HEAT tags and the like, but I could well be wrong. In any case, whatever Toady decides is fine. If he doesn't like the idea, it's abandoned. Simple as that.)
• The community here on the forums does these things and compiles it into a mod so people can test it.
• Once everyone agrees the mod is done, we present it to Toady who incorporates it into his code.
• The next version of DF has all the content of the mod, so the mod isn't needed anymore.

So you see, at no point is there an official mod. It's just a work in progress until it can be incorporated into the DF code, at which point it becomes superfluous.

[Great Cthulhu]

Take a look at my mod sometime. You'll see...I dunno, a couple hundred different types of new vermin that I'm working on adding to the game. By the time I'm done, it'll probably be close to a thousand. None of it's official, most of it's pretty damn dull, and every bit of it was made to entertain myself, not the community. I like doing it, and I don't need permission to do it. Filling all those blanks-my way, and my way alone-is my entertainment.

If you really want to help with that kind of project, feel free to help me out with my mod. You can start right now by checking what I've got for typos and posting ideas, and I'll give you full credit for your work. Or you could help research medicine/surgery stuff. Just send me a PM, and I'll happily put you to work on that.   

But those are not the kind of blanks that I'm talking about. Whether or not a new vermin should be added is up to personal taste: it's inherently subjective. Only Toady can decide whether or not a vermin should be added to the main DF code, and if so, what its stats should be. (But of course, you are still free to create a mod to add them, as you are apparently doing.)

The things that I'm talking about are stuff like SPEC_HEAT. This is far less subjective. Every object already has a SPEC_HEAT (even if it's just the default) and the values are reasonably objective. The community can look this data up and provide a value with a reference to the source. Essentially, we'd just be doing the research for Toady.

[Dakk]

Adding more vermin is fine if it makes the game "more colourful" in my opinion, such as adding vermin that actually have some use apart from the [PET_EXOTIC] tag, such as silk worms, which would add a intermediate kind of silk into the game. More expensive then cave spider silk, but cheaper then GCS.

[GlyphGryph]

I don't see why there's so much hostility against Great Cthulhus idea - He's just offering the fill in the physics variables for materials, of which there will be a ton in the new release. Its boring, time consuming work, and doesn't actually matter that much to the game, and if Toady accepts it will save him what basically amounts to wasted time. This is a good thing!

And in case you haven't noticed, the game already has you detractors are calling an "official mod" in the battle champs module, even though its nothing such. This wouldn't be either - in fact, even less so, because there'd be no touching of the code. Its just looking stuff up for a bunch of obscure materials.

Well, I support the idea, (though I certainly don't have enough time lately to help). Anything that gives Toady more time to work on the stuff that actually matters to him. It is, of course, up to him.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'm not hostile to Great Cthulhu's ideas at all, infact I think it would be great to have done. I'm just pointing out that there's no reason or excuse to wait for Toady to approve anything. That's just a waste of time that could be better spent doing all the work involved. No "official" sanction required.

So many great ideas and projects that might really improve things for everyone, inevitably fall into the "we need officialness!" trap. In the "real world", there might be legal issues, so in that case it's understandable to be concerned, but in this case-in the environment provided by Toady-the percieved "need" for permission is illusionary. Yes, there might possibly exist a certain amount of security in the thought that Toady would now be aware of such a project-essentially "overseeing" it, and able to update the rest of the game around it-but that just puts the burden of *your* project on Toady's shoulders. He'd become responsible for it, which is unnecessary, and not very fair.

As far as using the "officialness" of the project to attract volunteers to it, again, that's putting the burden of the work on other people. And it's not like you can't still request volunteers for projects, without official sanction. I've proven that that works.

I'm not intending this to sound aggressive, but if you want to do the work, do the work. Put up or shut up, in other words.

[Mel_Vixen]

So coins got upgraded? What did you change about them toady?

[umiman]

They now come with retractable blades and homing capability.

[Jackrabbit]

They now come with retractable blades and homing capability.

As all good  currency should

[uberubert]

Old coins:
"one for you...." ->*splat*
"..and one for you" -> *splat*
"..and one for...." -> etc..

New coins:
"one for you...." -> =PEOW= *KABOOM*
"..and one for you" -> =PEOW= *KABOOM*
"..and one for you" -> =PEOW= *KABOOM*

[Random832]

I'm not intending this to sound aggressive, but if you want to do the work, do the work. Put up or shut up, in other words.

The problem there is that the work's not worth doing if there's no indication that it will be used - there's no point in gathering this stuff together for someone's own amusement.

[Dwarfu]

there's no point in gathering this stuff together for someone's own amusement.

You just dissed every modder out there...

[Great Cthulhu]

Heh. Well, not really, as he was just refering to the stuff that I was suggesting.

I can totally understand that people would only be interested in doing this work if the result will be used in mainline DF. It is after all rather boring to do, and most of it won't serve much purpose if it isn't mainlined.

[Dame de la Licorne]

I'd be willing to help, as summer vacation is coming up and what else am I going to do?    In any case, if multiple volunteers speak up, how would you arrange it so that several people don't do the same work?  (As in, inserting the same values into the same raw files, not the same sort of values into different raw files?)

[Great Cthulhu]

I'm not hostile to Great Cthulhu's ideas at all, infact I think it would be great to have done. I'm just pointing out that there's no reason or excuse to wait for Toady to approve anything. That's just a waste of time that could be better spent doing all the work involved. No "official" sanction required.

I'm sorry, but have you actually read my posts? You're completely misrepresenting my position.

So many great ideas and projects that might really improve things for everyone, inevitably fall into the "we need officialness!" trap. In the "real world", there might be legal issues, so in that case it's understandable to be concerned, but in this case-in the environment provided by Toady-the percieved "need" for permission is illusionary. Yes, there might possibly exist a certain amount of security in the thought that Toady would now be aware of such a project-essentially "overseeing" it, and able to update the rest of the game around it-but that just puts the burden of *your* project on Toady's shoulders. He'd become responsible for it, which is unnecessary, and not very fair.

I'm not worried about legal repercussions. I don't need "officialness". I'm not at all suggesting that Toady oversee the project. I am asking Toady if he would consider adding the changes to mainline DF, the reasons for which you can read in my previous posts.

As far as using the "officialness" of the project to attract volunteers to it, again, that's putting the burden of the work on other people. And it's not like you can't still request volunteers for projects, without official sanction. I've proven that that works.

I want to involve the community because I don't expect Toady to trust just me personally. If people want to contribute changes then that's wonderful, but it's by no means my primary aim.

I'm not intending this to sound aggressive, but if you want to do the work, do the work. Put up or shut up, in other words.

I am doing the work. You can download the mod right now. I said so in my first post on the subject and I've repeated it in later posts.

Edit: grammar.

[Great Cthulhu]

I'd be willing to help, as summer vacation is coming up and what else am I going to do?    In any case, if multiple volunteers speak up, how would you arrange it so that several people don't do the same work?  (As in, inserting the same values into the same raw files, not the same sort of values into different raw files?)

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

In my experience with getting melting point data for rocks, getting just one value is already a lot of work (the easy ones have mostly been done already), so I don't expect people to make a lot of changes at a time. If people post their suggested changes in a forum thread, then one person could go over them, add them to the lastest version of the mod, and post the newly updated version. This approach also has the advantage that everyone can see the proposed changes and give feedback.

If this turns out to be impractical, then we could try setting up a wiki somewhere with a page for each file in the raws. If it works for wikipedia, then why not for us?