UB bug still present in v16, [split by Baronius] Options

[Baronius]

The bug was known for v15 already. Wouldn't it be easier to fix it in UB itself?

[This topic was split from this]

[Sikret]

UB has many other serious bugs even if we put aside its issue with the Crooked Crane area; and it has those bugs for years. That's why when Kulyok said that it was a "well-made" mod and it's authors have not found "some free time" to fix it yet, it looked such a weird and out of place comment.

Note that this thread is not about the G3 fixpack. Baronius brought up the fixpack only as an example to show that creators of UB are also following the same modding philosophy or method (or whatever we call it). Releasing seriously bugged mods(= mistaking players for testers), not giving serious attention to testing before releasing mods, and sometimes not even fixing the bugs properly despite the bugs being reported.

As I once mentioned elsewhere, some of the bugs in the G3 fixpack were so easy to detect that it wasjust enough for them to run the game and test (for example) the corrupted spell by casting it for one single time; nonetheless, such easy-to-detect bugs were all there in their publicly released version. This is a solid proof for the fact that they either don't test at all or have miserably incompetent testers.

As for giving prority to large-scaled compatibility and spending long time to write codes which do not assume any of the vanilla game's dependencies, I agree with DavidW that it's a choice or a decision a modder makes. However, I beleive that there are other factors which influence the rationality of either choice:

Authors of smaller mods need to give higher prioirty to compatibility issues, because no one will play their mods if they prove to be incompatible with a big number of other mods. Moreover, the small size of their mods will make the whole process easier for them.

Authors of big mods, on the other hand, can use their time in more optimal ways by adding more and more new content to their mods, testing, bugfixing, etc.

For example, consider Improved Anvil. There are many players who play IA virtually with no other mods installed (even without mods which are fully compatible with IA). Why? Are they crazy? Of course, not! Improved Anvil adds so much new content to the game that the player not only doesn't feel the need of installing other mods, but also is not willing to break IA's overall atmosphere by installing even those mods which are completely compatible with IA.

Now, assume that I have (say) 15 days of free time to work on IA's next version. Is it an optimal use of time for me to spend these 15 days creating complicated codes to make IA compatible with a few other random mods? Or is it a more rational use of time to spend the time to add (say) two other big quests to the mod and test them? For me, the second choice is the rational decision.

And it's not merely a matter of limited time we have to spare. Even if we multiply by 3 the number of days in the previous example and assume that I have 45 days of free time to work on the mod, is it better to to spare that time on making the mod compatible with more smaller mods or will it be a better use of time to spare that time to add (say) 6 other big quests and adventures to the mod, again the second choice is the rational one for me.

This post has been edited by Sikret: Mar 25 2008, 04:35 PM