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[PrimusRibbus]

Agreed 100% on the ReadMe issue. Documentation is probably the DF modding community's weakest point right now. Having proper readmes, putting a handful of comments in your mod's raws, and encouraging people to update the wiki are a few small things that would greatly cutdown on redundant questions and misinformation in the forums.

[Darbuk.Ubildolush]

Rochndil, who is slowly working on a test version of the MMO, which may crash and burn with pretty colors...

Rochndil, what is this MMO thing of which you speak?

[Rhenaya]

Agreed 100% on the ReadMe issue. Documentation is probably the DF modding community's weakest point right now. Having proper readmes, putting a handful of comments in your mod's raws, and encouraging people to update the wiki are a few small things that would greatly cutdown on redundant questions and misinformation in the forums.

what more can we say?

Didn't you read the manual?  He he he he...  the manual...  ...

[Master]

I agree with the OP. Documentation is extremely important. For instance, I stopped using kobold camp because of the lack of documentation. A thread for documentation purposes unless you are going to include a full copy of the thread in the mod. Not everyone has the means to search out a thread every time the run into a problem with a mod.

Everyone should include, in their mod files, at least a general description of what files they changed and how they changed them. It is not too much to ask.

[Akjosch]

Everyone should include, in their mod files, at least a general description of what files they changed and how they changed them. It is not too much to ask.

That's easy enough if you keep your files in some versioning system (for example Subversion). As a quick example (it took me longer to write this than to create this file), this is how the Genesis mod, version 1.1, changes body_default.txt:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

Index: body_default.txt
===================================================================
--- body_default.txt (.../0.31.03/raw/objects/body_default.txt) (revision 246)
+++ body_default.txt (.../mods/Genesis/raw/objects/body_default.txt) (revision 250)
@@ -86,19 +86,19 @@
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:80]
 
 [BODY:7HEADNECKS]
- [BP:NK1:first neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK1:first neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
- [BP:NK2:second neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK2:second neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
- [BP:NK3:third neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK3:third neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
- [BP:NK4:fourth neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK4:fourth neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
- [BP:NK5:fifth neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK5:fifth neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
- [BP:NK6:sixth neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK6:sixth neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
- [BP:NK7:seventh neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK]
+ [BP:NK7:seventh neck:STP][CON:UB][CATEGORY:NECK][SKELETON]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
  [BP:HD1:first head:STP][CON:NK1][HEAD][CATEGORY:HEAD]
  [DEFAULT_RELSIZE:300]

[Rochndil]

Good morning!

Rochndil, what is this MMO thing of which you speak?

Work is eating my soul today, but I'll try to shoot out a quick reply or two.

The MMO (Metals and Minerals Overhaul) is my own major mod. It's a (IMO) more logical and consistent re-engineering of the whole metals production system. I've been working on it for half of forever, and actually got it into a functional beta state just before 2010 came out. So far, in the conversion, I've got most of the reactions updated, but nothing has actually been TESTED yet. I still need to convert over all the metals and minerals changes, and then see how it flies (or crashes). I may or may not do a public release of the tileset and related changes for a while, since that's a bit problematic with 2010 changing so rapidly currently.

Details on the MMO: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1900

I appreciate the discussion spawned in this thread, which is exactly what I hoped to accomplish. I've already learned about a potentially useful tool, this subversion thing, which I'd never heard of before.

Not everyone will agree with my concepts, and that's really OK. A discussion is a starting point, and where it goes from there is the interesting part.

I actually created and posted a sample readme.txt format file to DFFD some time ago, but it's missing for some reason. I'll try to get it back up there later today and provide a link here.

Hope everyone has a happy-ish tax day, too bad we can't pull the lever on the Infernal Revenue!

Rochndil, who got his extension done late last night...

[sunshaker]

Personally I hate correcting other peoples mistakes, especially if they make fixing my own harder (those times when I add an untested file of mine to an existing mod and then read the error log and find 50 mistakes I didn't make, it's happened much cursing was involved, I now test mine separately).

I prefer new material to be in separate files (makes it easier to find and see what they did so I can be inspired or learn how something works), but it isn't a huge deal. Though sometimes you have no choice but to alter existing files (molten rocks mod comes to mind or when I made Chert and Flint [SHARP] (and later removed them from the layers file)).

Documentation I care less about, it is nice to have, but sometimes is boring to read.

Not that I actually release mods (I'm more likely to just throw tidbits out here and there).

[Hyndis]

I mod all the time, but almost all of my mods are for my own personal use.

If someone else is interested in my work, like my tree farm/lumber mill system, or something else I have tinkered with and created, I will post it and include instructions.

But if its my own mods I don't bother to include documentation. I have a pretty good memory for what I have changed. Nearly photographic memory actually.

I do think that if you are going to release something you do need some sort of documentation, even if its simple. Just need to cover what the mod does and who made the mod as the basics. More detail is of course better, but at the very least there should be a brief description of what it does and who made it.

[CaptApollo12]

A quick suggestion before I go to school. A tag that will overight duplicate sets of input.

LIke a creature_CaptSpiders
in there is a GSC that has 10 legs
it overights the old GCS and future version changes would put the GCS back in the creature_subterianian causing error or separate species. If a tag could be put in the new GCS the program would throw out the existing CREATURE_SUBTERIANIAN GCS.
A little derail but I g2g ;/

[Deon]

CaptApollo12: It cannot be done now though. If it was easy like that, I would never mod original files.

[Ramirez]

As Deon says: unfortunately if you are altering something you either need to change the entry in the original raws (meaning that if you install a second mod that updates that original file, your changes are lost), or you delete the original entry and create a different entry for the modified entity (causing both the unmodified entry and the modified entry to appear).

[Rochndil]

Good evening.

As promised (threatened? I've uploaded my readme format file on DFFD. Feel free to use as you wish.

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2120

Rochndil, heading back to the reactions list...

[Fetus4188]

The bare minimum for a readme is merely something like:

Code: [Select]

My Mod Title
Urist McAuthor

http://mymodurl.com

<list of files included>
+ (optionally) <what each file is>
There's no reason someone shouldn't include at least that much with any release. At a bare minimum it allows technical users and modders alike to keep things organized and able to check for updates and attribute credit as necessary.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, it used to be possible. If only I can figure out how to reconstruct the current raws properly...

[Lofn]

You can sort of 'overwrite' tokens by making a creature variation that removes the body token and replaces it with another one.

On-topic, a readme containing installation instructions and a list of altered files is hardly a major effort to stick into a release.