ModCast 29: "Penal Colony"

[Dale]

I wasn't under that impression at all. But as a matter of fact, I wholeheartedly disagree with you Dale, Modcast should be honest, and review the mods truethfully. If there is an issue with the mod, they should state it, and give an honest oppinion of it. I really wouldn't see the point of modcast if they sugar coated everything, and ignored glaring issues.

I didn't say not be honest, I said promote the positives of the mod rather than focusing on the negatives. I made no push for sugar coating or anything of the sort. But for any new modder to have the negatives of their mod so eagerly spat up such as what happened (even if true or not) it would be a severe slap in the face. I can imagine PiMan may think twice next time before writing a mod.

And if ModCast stops new content from being created then Tony's gunna be left there with only bad Wouter impersonations cuz all the modders would refuse to have the mod's talked about. And we don't need more of that!!

 

[GarretSidzaka]

I agree mostly with you dale. i truly love to point out the good things about a mod. i will point out major issues or problems if they affect the user, but i don't want to dwell on them. this is my personal stand point.

 

[PiMan]

I'm not thinking twice about it. I'm aiming to be a game developer, and the best (practical) way to get a good folio is to have a few popular mods up your sleeve. Even with a lack of popular mods, I would be happy with a few good mods.
Somebody else might be discouraged though.


And I know that my mod will get more hits as a result of the ModCast, but those hits will largely be limited to people who have seen my mod on the front page of CivFanatics and decided not to listen to the podcast. However, the people who were most likely to look up my mod, based on what they heard in the podcast, will have been discouraged by the content of the analysis, despite much of it being false.

My point is, that to feature it and criticise it is better than to not have featured it, but to feature it and do the research about it would have been better again.

If I was really angry about it, then I wouldn't have recorded a response, I would have just written a few angry posts. I appreciated that the crew had taken the time to record an analysis to my mod, so I felt the least I could do was record my response.

 

[phungus420]

Dale, I suppose you and I just have a different definition of honesty. To me, intentionally ignoring the obvious (simply because it is negative), and only accepting positive atributes of an object, gives a false impression, and thus isn't honest.

I'll use you as an example, since you've thrown your hat into the ring. With Dale's Combat Mod, if it were to be covered in modcast, they could just ignore the fact that outside of RevDCM the AI is clueless and cannot use the DCM components, and only focus on the new combat abilities of the DCM mod. But that would ignore a major playability factor, ie the fact the AI cannot use the features makes it unusable for many modders and players, given their goals. To ignore this would give a false impression of the mod and thus is necessary to note when reviewing it.

To advocate that Modcast should take such an approach and ignore pertinent negative aspects of a mod in order to protect the feelings of the mod makers, would in my oppinion make modcast next to useless.

 

[kaibayashi]

phungus, dale never suggested or condoned ignoring the negative aspects of any mod, just giving a more balanced view and promoting the good points a mod has. TBH I haven't listened to the modcast myself, but to analyse and degrade a mod such as Piman's, regarldess of the accuracy of the review, is kind of pointless at such an early stage in a mods development. Sure there may be holes and problems, and people should be made aware of these, but these should be brought up as opportunities for the mod to move forward and to imrove, not as a stick to beat the modder with.

 

[xienwolf]

Personally I think it would be kinda cool if instead of making Code Corner be about checking out a full mod, you just looked at one specific bit of code within a mod. Most ModComps are just a piece of code, so you can review all of that just like you would review a full unit model. But most Mods are in continual development, but do some REALLY amazing things with the code which someone who doesn't have time to play them might not ever know about. By grabbing these nifty chunks of their code to talk about you can do a full review of how cool they are, discuss the potential for future use of them, and entice other modders to swing through and cannibalize the functions, thus checking out the rest of the mod while they are in the neighborhood.


I know that personally that would be of far more benefit to me. I hear you talk about units and sometimes think "Hey, I'd totally use that one!" But when you talk about mods you devolve into history or politics or just gameplay preferences so much that I don't ever find myself giving the programmer a "mental pat on the back" for a job well done.

So I think you'd get a ton more material to cover if you changed scope like that. And since you would talk about the potential functions of the newly modded things instead of the raw "how did he make the code bend THAT way?!" aspect, it would be of use to both the mod programmer and other mod makers (I know you could easily do a full hour of discussion about the possibilities of a few of the things I added to promotions which there wasn't near enough time to elaborate on when I had appeared as a guest. And since I work off FfH base code there is almost no chance I ever export these amazing functionst to base BtS personally).

 

[Dale]

Dale, I suppose you and I just have a different definition of honesty. To me, intentionally ignoring the obvious (simply because it is negative), and only accepting positive atributes of an object, gives a false impression, and thus isn't honest.

I'll use you as an example, since you've thrown your hat into the ring. With Dale's Combat Mod, if it were to be covered in modcast, they could just ignore the fact that outside of RevDCM the AI is clueless and cannot use the DCM components, and only focus on the new combat abilities of the DCM mod. But that would ignore a major playability factor, ie the fact the AI cannot use the features makes it unusable for many modders and players, given their goals. To ignore this would give a false impression of the mod and thus is necessary to note when reviewing it.

To advocate that Modcast should take such an approach and ignore pertinent negative aspects of a mod in order to protect the feelings of the mod makers, would in my oppinion make modcast next to useless.

There's a difference between saying that the mod has a flaw in its functionality, and that the mod has a flaw because the maker didn't research and then being completely wrong in its nit-picking. The reviewer's opinion was more about the modder himself than the actual content, and that opinion was very wrong and showed the reviewer didn't even play the mod but just "looked" at it instead.

And if the comment you used as an example was used in ModCast then that too is basically incorrect and shows the reviewer is biased against the mod (as also happened in ModCast). In your example comment, whilst the AI in DCM may be unbalanced, it does indeed use the new concepts.

I also know because I read the particular thread at the time of recording that the reviewer was fairly hostile to a post from Tony asking him to make a review of the mod because he himself is Australian too. Which leads me further down the road of hostility and bias creating a very negative review only focusing on the negatives of the mod (which the reviewer was totally incorrect about) rather than the positives of the mod.

Bottom line is, the reviewer should not have got his panties in a knott and talked about how the mod adds to Colonisation. Instead, the reviewer made negative claims which were totally wrong which creates an incorrect impression of the mod to the listeners (who would now avoid rather than try the mod). Better to discuss how a mod adds to the game, not be a wanker about the review and come off like a tool.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

@xienwolf
that sounds like a neat concept. I hope Ken sees your post and thinks about it. but all that code piecing would be up to ken. im only in intro to C++ so i would not be able to pick apart the code for Civ mods.

@Dale
I am a little frustrated about all this discussion. I did not play the mod, nor did i make many comments about the mod, in general. I think that this episode is a hard one to judge us on, as we only had three people on the entire podcast. I will admit now that i didn't play the aussie mod, as i didn't have Col installed at the time.

lets all just relax about this.

@PiMan
im sorry you were insulted on your mod. and its silly that there was so much contention based on someone's misread. during the recording, i kinda spaced out, becase i hadn't played the mod, nor do i know a single thing about Australian history, NOT A BIT!!
I will invite you now to come onto the show sometime, and to bring any mod you want for review. Just PM me middle of next month.
Once again, I apologize for our offending you. That has never been the goal of my podcast

 

[Dale]

Sorry Tony, I'll back off. Cheers mate.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

Sorry Tony, I'll back off. Cheers mate.

Never implied that you were on my back, mate

and all of the listeners will know im sincere about the podcast, always

 

[xienwolf]

The concept I am pushing is actually for YOU to be able to discuss Code Corner, since you are generally the main energy behind the conversation if the guest of the week doesn't step it up himself.

I would encourage you to specifically avoid talking about the actual code used, but just to ask the creator (in thread or PM) what the possibilities are for his new work. Or just to randomly speculate yourself.

With the Artwork you already do this: "Man, I'd tear some &%*(& up with this guy. He's got a little flamethrower and (*&$. Wouldn't that be great if when he killed a unit they like... rolled around on Fire and (*&@$#%?"


So do the same with small parts of a mod (taking Random Invisibility Mod just because I know nothing about it either):

"Dude, he says that like, there is only a CHANCE to see the units now. So I could see your huge blockade of Destroyers with my little Sub and be like: Yeah? Well I just promoted to Stealth Engines *(&$%! So I'll totally get right past all of you, maybe... I mean, wouldn't that be awesome to park your sub right outside their city and then be all like 'Oh *(&)( man, I hope he doesn't manage to see me this turn!'

He says that you can set the chance to see an invis type on a per unit basis too. So I could make an "Inspector Gadget" unit which has some small as (*@$&% chance to see every invisible type there is, just to screw with my opponents and make them wonder if they can sneak up on me or if I'll totally gank their $#@%@"



No need to actually mention the code itself, and since you are just focusing on one set of possibilities it should open up more discussion, plus you might be totally wrong about what the mod actually lets you do, but inspire someone to go out and write what you talked about because it seemed useful


(Granted, some mod concepts don't give way to much discussion. Like Tsentom's Python Traits which was the first random one I clicked on. I can't go into much detail about how many things you can do with a trait that starts your city at size 2 instead of size 1. BUT, since he has a LOT of changes, I COULD talk about what sort of other traits I could design by mixing and matching what he already made. Or speculate which combinations of the traits he designed would be the most powerful)

 

[PiMan]

@PiMan
im sorry you were insulted on your mod. and its silly that there was so much contention based on someone's misread. during the recording, i kinda spaced out, becase i hadn't played the mod, nor do i know a single thing about Australian history, NOT A BIT!!
I will invite you now to come onto the show sometime, and to bring any mod you want for review. Just PM me middle of next month.
Once again, I apologize for our offending you. That has never been the goal of my podcast

Having not listened to any previous modcast, is it standard for only one person to have played the mod being featured?

And I would be happy to go on your podcast, but I don't think I'd be any good. All I really want is for the crew to take a minute of their time to apologise for the mistakes made, which Dale and I have listed in full.