Common misbeliefs, with examples Options

[Baronius]

Since much information can be read from incompetent sources that can't be considered credible, we've decided to open this thread, where I will occassionally publish examples, with explanations & facts. Other BWL members might also post here in the future. It will function similarly to a "blog", though I don't think it will be updated too often.

Interesting or surprising parts in posts may be marked with bold.

[Baronius]

Misbelief: "BG2 (and other IE) mods can be created easily, you just have to learn WeiDU which is surprisingly easy! Don't worry about bugs in bigger projects -- serious bugs are part of any newly released bigger mod, they can be fixed once they are found"

No, IE modding is not easy. While you can make a small mod with a good editor and some copied WeiDU TP2 code, it is not easy to make a complex, big mod at all. A big or medium-sized mod is similar to any slightly complex software: its creation is engineering work.

Engineering work, no less. Of course, it doesn't mean that its developers must be engineers in some relevant field (though it's an advantage), but a great amount of engineering approach and IE modding experience is required. Otherwise, the mod will have several problems, and will contain bugs and may introduce latent bugs as well (for latent bugs, see this thread). With a development framework (something which WeiDU can't offer), the error ratio and bug probability can be decreased, but for complex mod projects, skill is always required.

Modders who advertise WeiDU (or IE modding itself) as something surprisingly easy are lying. This is more than a friendly reassurance to a beginner -- it is misleading. They want to convince more and more modders to use WeiDU, because they want to spread the use of WeiDU at any cost (since it means more popularity for their WeiDU-based mods, and their WeiDU-based development techniques can also be spread). To sum up, the advertising of WeiDU as an "easy to use" tool is nothing more than *populism*. On a side note, BlackWyrmLair plans to develop a new system to replace WeiDU (something which will be more user-friendly than WeiDU, but we will never advertise it as something which needs zero modding skills), it should be released in a few years.

The misbelief which says that bugs are "natural parts of bigger mods" is spread by those who can't (or don't want to) make reliable, verified mods. E.g. they have too little time to test the mod and/or inadequate skills, but they want popularity and big traffic for their mod's forum (e.g. G3 Fixpack). In these cases, serious bugs always appear, and they try to justify the presence of these bugs with various baseless technical statements. A properly designed and verified mod does not contain very serious bugs at all, or only 1-2 at maximum. It is a lie that mods always contain serious bugs, and it's a misbelief that the probability of bugs can't be decreased for unreleased IE mods.