The dreaded G3 Fixpack Options

[Arkain]

Hi.

Well, to make a long story short: why is it not recommended? I'm curious why this fixpack seems to be the reason for many bugs or other problems. Because it's poorly modded? Because of the methods used to actually "fix" things? Something else?

[lroumen]

The problem is that many mods are just aging, whereas the bg2fixpack is rewritten anew every few months. The fixes (sometimes arguably more like tweaks) address many files which were always thought to be okay by other mods. That in itself is asking for trouble. It's nice that bg2fixpack tries to correct all flaws in SoA/ToB, no matter how tiny... but these can have quite some implications on older mods which are not updated every few months.
Can we always expect bg2fixpack to be full-proof in swatting bugs considering that they will be "ahead" of other mods? Maybe the constant upgrade of these fixes/tweaks only worstens its behaviour/compatibility with other mods (alignment, class and spell changes effecting mod scripts, etc.), since they also need to be updated to allow compatibility with bg2fixpack. Sikret above says it's a "players-are-testers" mentality, but I do not believe that to be (fully) the case (may still be, I don't know). I'm more inclined to think that it is a cause of what I mentioned before.

If they had just kept it "1 big fixpack with fixes direly needed" + "1 big fixpack with tweaks direly requested", I'm guessing it would have been received a lot better.



I am hardly surprised that some modders just use baldurdash as the startingpoint. The good thing is that it fixes the dire game-breaking bugs and that that part is static. It's been around for years. People know by now what has been fixed by it and if there are still flaws they probably fix it in their own mods anyway (seen as Anvil swats some bugs/inconsistencies not fixed by baldurdash). If players want features they use a tweakpack (ease-of-use, bg2tweakpack, ...).
Some modders are prepared to keep up to date with bg2fixpack, others just go with baldurdash and make their own environment, and some modders just don't upgrade anymore. I think that there is something to be said for both worlds (bg2fixpack vs baldurdash). The most important thing is that this is all fair game, as long as the actual player does not suffer as a consequence.



BG2fixpack and baldurdash aside.... The main problem between mod A and mod B is still the following:
How can a player tell that two mods may clash (let alone how can you tell that fixpack A + mod B == crash)? When you have read all the readmes and cannot find any note of incompatibility of 2 mods, can you really say that you have assessed both mods enough to say that they are truly compatible? I think the case of Unfinished Business and Tower of Deception is the classic example. You can rarely tell.



Concluding: No need to bicker, just keep your own mods tested and compatibility notes in your readmes as clear as possible.


If Sikret says in his readme and compatibility notes that bg2fixpack is not supported by Anvil, simply don't use it.

This post has been edited by lroumen: Jul 29 2007, 07:09 PM

[Sikret]

The problem is that many mods are just aging, whereas the bg2fixpack is rewritten anew every few months. The fixes (sometimes arguably more like tweaks) address many files which were always thought to be okay by other mods. That in itself is asking for trouble. It's nice that bg2fixpack tries to correct all flaws in SoA/ToB, no matter how tiny... but these can have quite some implications on older mods which are not updated every few months.
Can we always expect bg2fixpack to be full-proof in swatting bugs considering that they will be "ahead" of other mods? Maybe the constant upgrade of these fixes/tweaks only worstens its behaviour/compatibility with other mods (alignment, class and spell changes effecting mod scripts, etc.), since they also need to be updated to allow compatibility with bg2fixpack. Sikret above says it's a "players-are-testers" mentality, but I do not believe that to be (fully) the case (may still be, I don't know). I'm more inclined to think that it is a cause of what I mentioned before.

As explained before, the main problems with BG2 fixpack are two things:

First, they don't test their mod before releasing it. They just put the codes together and release the new version and then wait for the poor player to test it for them. I say this, because some of the bugs in BG2 Fixpack have been so easy-to-detect that if they had just bothered to load the game and test the changes for only one single time, they could have detected the bugs. Yet, the bugs existed in their released version which shows that they didn't bother to even test them in practice for one single time. This is that "Players are testers" mentality and "we don't need to test" attitude which I refered to.

The point is that testing BG2 Fixpack is much easier than testing a mod such as Improved Anvil. A bugged spell (in BG2 fixpack) could have been easily detected by casting that spell only once. Whereas, testing IA requires testing long quests and difficult battles. Sometimes we (testers and myelf) had to test a single quest several times to make sure that none of the options would lead to bugs. Yet, we did the difficult testing for IA and they didn't do the easy testing for BG2 fixpack before releasing it.

Now, if you think that BG2 fixpack is ok, Iroumen, then just tell me to release IA v4.3 right now before completing its testing procedure and then sit in my armchair to receive your bug reports. (No, I was not serious; my methods are different than theirs.)

The second problem is that they make arbitrary tweaks and then call them "fixes".