WizWom, I see no disrespect here. Sikret told the secret (wow what a sentence) of Improved Anvil, or at least, one of the keys of the mod's success. He doesn't say that those who do modding as a hobby are unable to create nice works; he just tries to express that building and developing a very complex mod such as Improved Anvil requires extraordinary effort and devotion. That is, building a mod of such a size and complexity in such a short time without bugs is something what a hobbyist modder wouldn't be able to do with the current technology and methodologies. Simply because of time restrictions and lack of necessary knowledge. This doesn't mean that other "dedicated" modders cannot create nice works according to their own preferences and possibilities.
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Probably wasn't the smartest thing to turn down real money to work on IA, but it's your life. Maybe you think work on IA will get you an "in" into a game devel position, or something, not really important.
I don't know where you get these assumptions from, but they are really funny. And it reflects a certain view of life as well. It seems you believe that a person would only want to do such a hard work in order to
achieve something "serious", such as "game devel position", or something similar (and if not, then it's "not really the smartest thing to turn down
real money"). You forget that there are people who undertake hard work (hard process) because they
enjoy the result -- which is
not money, "game devel position" or anything else you believe to be
serious; instead, it can be
own enjoyment & entertainment and/or seeing how players enjoy your work. The process itself can be hard and not so enjoyable sometimes (when solving a certain difficult problem), but it is worth it. It means more to them than "real money", "game devel position" or anything such.
On the other hand, many of the mod makers whom you refer to as "dedicated modders" try to make this process (mod development) much fun and joy, which is also a completely correct approach. That is, they want to enjoy the process almost as much as the result. They want to achieve the result quickly (either by creating smaller mods in advance, or by developing them in a short time). Mod development doesn't play a central role in their life, because they can't afford the time or have no intention to learn IE modding in details. There is nothing wrong with this, however, it undoubtedly results in more errors and problems in mods. Why? Simply because IE modding is not easy. It doesn't matter what some modders and WeiDU programmers say or imply, IE modding is not easy, especially for beginners. We all know this. A lot of things in IE modding must be
learnt in theory and then
practised, just like when you study various things at school, for example. Without the necessary knowledge, it's impossible to create bug-free content for big and complex projects. But let's get back on topic: the hobby mod is finally released. New shiny topics in the mod's brand-new forum, the
bug reports start to arrive (resulting in many posts and activity), modders are happy to fix them and are happy because their forum has traffic, then in the next version they include the names of those in the mod's credits who reported bugs etc. There is nothing wrong with this, but it's different from Sikret's approach, that's all.
So the two approaches can peacefully live together, with precise compatibility notices and guidelines. However, when some of these "dedicated" modders try to force their techniques and mods on others (such as Sikret or myself) and when they fail, they attempt to discredit us with rhetorical and similar tricks on various forums (or worse, with unnoticeable propaganda and brainwashing), it's no fun anymore. For example, the following statement is a well-known element of the propaganda: "
Bugs cannot be prevented; every mod has bugs". It's often used to justify the presence of bugs in a poorly written mod, when some author decides not to support compatibility with it (mostly because the "compatibility" would introduce even more bugs, and would make the bug-free mods buggy as well). Of course, every mod has bugs, but it does matter how
many and how
serious! No, serious bugs are not inevitable. Using the statement "
all mods have bugs, it's natural" to justify the presence of serious bugs is
humbug. Humbug.
Similarly, when it's said to us "you don't support compatibility with mods you don't like", it's also nothing else than misleading credulous or inexperienced players, modders, visitors. They "forget" to mention the fact that we set up the strict guidelines to ensure two mods won't get into harmful interaction with each other (i.e. bugs won't appear), and thus protect our own hard work as well as the player's fun while playing. Those who find it normal to receive serious bug reports don't care about this and find our approach offensive (because they would be willing to fix bugs in order to make their mod compatible with ours); on the other hand, we do care because we know that applying some fixes is usually insufficient to make a complex mod compatible with another (or to make any mod compatible with a buggy one) in the long run. We know some aspects more deeply than others, but -- instead of listening to us -- several modders seem to know the details of
our own mods better than we (!), and sometimes even pretend to know more on a certain field while their knowledge is actually much smaller in that particular field.
So hereby (based on WizWom's last words) I ask the involved "dedicated" modders to respect our principles and methodologies, in the same way we respect theirs.
I don't state that all BWL mod developers follow the strict approach I outlined above. In fact, some of them might prefer the other way. On the other hand, the title
Distinguished Developer is only awarded to those who meet very strict criteria. If some people -- such as WizWom -- consider this as "elitism" (and as a disrespect to hobbyist modders), they are free to do so; it doesn't change on the fact that quality results don't come for free -- knowledge and hard work is required.
