@Alonso
The point is that it has nothing to do with PI as a tool but with modding IE games in general.
PI makes it easier for sure.
I get what you are saying but I think that you made a poor choice of words.
Warning people that it is a difficult process to mod IE games and that PI is not a miracle tool is ok.
Saying to people not to waste their time is a bit direspectful toward the creator of this tool IMO.
I'm neither a power gamer (even less advanced) nor I have particularly vast programming knowledge
OK, this made me smile. You've been playing BG for ages, you have in depth knowledge of every other IE mod, you have thousands of posts here and hundreds in places like G3, and you are not a power gamer...
please stop spreading around the notion that PI is a crap of a tool
I've never said anything like that. You might want to read my posts again.
Ok, need to clear some things out. Who do you consider a power gamer? Because *I think* we have a different understanding who power gamer is. For me PG is a player who don't focus on role playing, but rather on building his character in the best possible way from a game mechanics perspective, using the best strategies possible while fighting foes. Having said that, I do think that casual player can be a power gamer. I can play BG once in 10 years (tbus I'm a casual player) and still build my character in the most optimized way possible (as a power gamer).
@Alonso like @Adam_en_tium already wrote, what you are listing is the general problems of IE modding, not PI's? It is complicated to mod the IE games properly. PI helps with the process. But there is no more modder(s) who spent their free time to ensure an up to date install order list 24/7 in case there is a player who decides to set up a new modded game.
I'm not sure what you are expecting, maybe I missed your suggestions how this can be improved - the only thing I can imagine is the mentioned dynamic install order syntax that mods can now integrate for PI. Because an install order list of sorts that has to be kept updated will only lead to burned out fellow modders and will be outdated sometime soon in the future.
Thank you for your post, it essentially proves my point. If someone who knows all of this is not an advanced power gamer, then I don't what is. The fact that an advanced power gamer like you has struggled so much with PI illustrates very well how useless it is for the average player.
At any rate, I'm glad someone has managed to make PI work without having programming knowledge. I have updated my post accordingly.
As Cahir said: a powergamer is someone who thinks Kangaxx and Firkraag were wusses that need some major beefing up, who knows by heart where to find all the components of Crom Faeyr, Gesen's bow and the Equalizer and who would enjoy completely remixing all the kits and skills for no reason beyond having a different flavour of the playthrough.
I am very much a casual player (who burned a lot of time on learning how to install EET using PI).
@AntonII
The only thing which you have missed is that as of 0.8.0, there is a 'Dynamic Install Order' feature which is used by modders to set install order for their own mods. Not every modder uses it, it's not like one big install order list for 200+ mods but it doesn't require 24/7 maintenance.
I think I didn't notice because of the mod selection I use. I think there was just one mod that provided PI install order rules in my build. And I had quite many mods on, actually.
I mention several times that I'm working on MAJOR features which require a significant amount of work because there isn't even any kind of examples of how to do things that I want to do. Every programmer will find hundreds of guides on how to 'add a node into treeview' or 'how to connect to database' but nothing about stuff that I do.
I'm aware that I didn't respond directly to you and I didn't use your doc. I didn't want to discourage you by saying that the documentation is out of date and does not take into account any recent reports from players who have written thoroughly about things that were difficult to understand. I see no significant improvement in spending hours merging some parts of your docs into mine.
Right now, you went from 'offering help with documentation' into suggesting players 'stop wasting time for this' in roughly two weeks! Man, are everything is ok?
As if this wasn't enough for you, you went to the forum of widely popular EET mod and posted you blatantly general and unspecific 'feedback' about how "Other gamers who try to use PI just manage to waste their time and get frustrated.".
If you were honestly concerned about 'players being frustrated by PI', you would create your own guide/faq/thread ! Why you didn't do it? So much for your 'honest concern'.
All I see is frustration. Go for a walk, read a book or something.
@AntonII
The only thing which you have missed is that as of 0.8.0, there is a 'Dynamic Install Order' feature which is used by modders to set install order for their own mods. Not every modder uses it, it's not like one big install order list for 200+ mods but it doesn't require 24/7 maintenance.
I think I didn't notice because of the mod selection I use. I think there was just one mod that provided PI install order rules in my build. And I had quite many mods on, actually.
IE moding is more than a decade old. This functionality was added only two months ago, please give modders time to try using it. Or suggest the author of your favorite mod to use this feature
IE moding is more than a decade old. This functionality was added only two months ago, please give modders time to try using it. Or suggest the author of your favorite mod to use this feature
yeah, I see how this future might be quite useful in the future. It's just that I as a user don't get to rely on it very much right now.
As it is now, a user can hardly even tell which components of one single EEUI Tweaks mod are compatible with each other. The mod in PI links to a thread on Gibberlings which in one of the posts links to page 7 of a thread on this forum in which the relevant info is on page 1, albeit unfortunately outdated as it doesn't mention all the components. The readme file just tells me to run setup.exe in the BG2 directory (gee thanks).
This is a pretty elucidating example of the eagerness of some modders to add proper documentation to their work, so I don't put my hopes really high. Now, I am certainly grateful that they made all those mods - if you ever used the GUI with EEUI Tweaks you don't want to revert to the old gui. But installing the whole stuff is probably more of a chore we players will have to figure out.
How could PI make the players' life easier? Perhaps allow for annotation files. I mean, I make notes for myself that component 1090 or 1091 are incompatible with 1030, 1040 or 1041, that component 4010 is redundant if you use component 4005 or 4006 and that component 2090 is for Planescape Torment. That's useful info which would allow other players to make their builds quicker. I could also add a brief comment on what that module does (because it was quite a chore to find it all out). I would have very much enjoyed such annotation if someone else offered it for download, and I would offer the notes I had to make for download as well. Now you can tell me "just write a guide in a pdf", but that's more work than most players would be willing to do. Notes on the other hand are being done by everyone anyway.
Who do you consider a power gamer? Because *I think* we have a different understanding who power gamer is. For me PG is a player who don't focus on role playing, but rather on building his character in the best possible way from a game mechanics perspective, using the best strategies possible while fighting foes. Having said that, I do think that casual player can be a power gamer. I can play BG once in 10 years (tbus I'm a casual player) and still build my character in the most optimized way possible (as a power gamer).
Guess there was a misunderstanding here. For me a power gamer is anyone who has devoted a massive amount of time to a game and has very deep knowledge of that game, regardless of whether he uses that knowledge to make his characters super powerful, to create mods, or to enjoy the game in any other way he likes. But I see that many people use it in a different way, so I have edited my previous posts to prevent further misunderstandings.
@Alonso like @Adam_en_tium already wrote, what you are listing is the general problems of IE modding, not PI's?
No, I'm informing about the problem with PI. IE modding can be very complicated, but that's a completely different topic and I don't think I've said anything about that in these posts.
The Features list now mention that the PI can install mods. It was pretty oblivious for me but it's not a big deal to write it directly.
What is obvious to you might not be obvious to other people. Programs become more useful when you explain what they do, whether it's obvious to you or not. I can help with that if you're interested, my English is quite decent.
I was checking the documentation to see if there was something about the log but couldn't find anything. But I'm sure someone will add that to the documentation soon
About setting the install order you say you can do it "via copy & paste", but there are two arrow buttons on the left hand side of the left panel that allow you to sort the mods. So it looks like there are three sorting methods available, right?
What I need to explain? Yes, there is a three sorting methods available, what else do you want?
As I said earlier, I want to write a guide for this mod that is easy to understand and follow for everybody. Actually, I have already spent a few hours on it. I thought you appreciated the work I'm doing. But if you don't, I'll just drop it, of course.
I appreciate it but some things don't need to be 'explained by documentation' - people will simply try it and they will know how they work. Besides, it's too early for detailed documentation, many things might change/disappear over next months.
Fair enough. Should you become interested in documentation again in the future, just let me know.
If you want this tool to be useful for the wider community, you need proper documentation. Otherwise it will remain only useful to a handful of super advanced gamers. Once again, I offer my writing skills to get that documentation written, but I cannot do it alone.
@Alonso@Stoltverd
Guys, I'm grateful for your feedback. I'm currently busy with developing important upgrades for modders so improving docs will have to wait.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to improve docs as much as I can. But I also think that no matter how well-written instruction can be, nothing beats a video tutorial.
I have to choose: spending hours on creating docs which sill will be 'confusing' for someone or add new features for PI.
As I said, I will be happy to write the docs myself. You don't need to spens hours writing. All you have to do is answer my questions about PI.
If you were honestly concerned about 'players being frustrated by PI', you would create your own guide/faq/thread ! Why you didn't do it?
Actually, I have done it already, as you already know. I have written and posted a guide that contains all I know about PI. But that guide is not very useful because there is a lot I just don't know. I have already explained to you that in order to expand that guide and make it actually useful I need you to answer my questions about the parts I don't know. You ignored my offer, just like you ignored most of my feedback and the feedback of the other players who just can't make PI work. Once again, that's OK, this is your program and you do with it what you want (just like Roxanne does what she wants with hers). What is not OK is to deceive the community into believing that there is a mod manager available to everybody because, as I've explained several times already, that is simply not true.
So yeah, my concern about other players is honest. Your reply is not.
The Features list now mention that the PI can install mods. It was pretty oblivious for me but it's not a big deal to write it directly.
What is obvious to you might not be obvious to other people. Programs become more useful when you explain what they do, whether it's obvious to you or not. I can help with that if you're interested, my English is quite decent.
I was checking the documentation to see if there was something about the log but couldn't find anything. But I'm sure someone will add that to the documentation soon
About setting the install order you say you can do it "via copy & paste", but there are two arrow buttons on the left hand side of the left panel that allow you to sort the mods. So it looks like there are three sorting methods available, right?
What I need to explain? Yes, there is a three sorting methods available, what else do you want?
As I said earlier, I want to write a guide for this mod that is easy to understand and follow for everybody. Actually, I have already spent a few hours on it. I thought you appreciated the work I'm doing. But if you don't, I'll just drop it, of course.
I appreciate it but some things don't need to be 'explained by documentation' - people will simply try it and they will know how they work. Besides, it's too early for detailed documentation, many things might change/disappear over next months.
Fair enough. Should you become interested in documentation again in the future, just let me know.
If you want this tool to be useful for the wider community, you need proper documentation. Otherwise it will remain only useful to a handful of super advanced gamers. Once again, I offer my writing skills to get that documentation written, but I cannot do it alone.
@Alonso@Stoltverd
Guys, I'm grateful for your feedback. I'm currently busy with developing important upgrades for modders so improving docs will have to wait.
Don't get me wrong, I would like to improve docs as much as I can. But I also think that no matter how well-written instruction can be, nothing beats a video tutorial.
I have to choose: spending hours on creating docs which sill will be 'confusing' for someone or add new features for PI.
As I said, I will be happy to write the docs myself. You don't need to spens hours writing. All you have to do is answer my questions about PI.
Yeah, but what exactly do you need from ALIEN to write your doc? It's not like PI has a thousand functions you have not discovered yet. It's a pretty simple program. You copy your BG1 and BG2 folders somewhere and give PI the path. You put mods in a PI folder, you arrange them via drag&drop in the checklist, you check them, you perhaps reorder them in the other window, and you hit "install" and maybe answer some command prompt stuff. That's it. Then you can optionally check the logs folder for what went wrong.
That's all there is about this program right now. If you wanted to be helpful, you could have arranged this information in a three-pages PDF.
What's difficult about the install is not handling the program. It's finding all the infos about all the mods and arranging them into a stable, sensible order.
What's difficult about the install is not handling the program
Everything is easy when you know how to do it, and difficult when you don't. You know how to use PI, so it's easy for you. Rocket scientists know how to build rockets, so it's easy for them. It doesn't mean it's easy for other people.
If you wanted to be helpful, you could have arranged this information in a three-pages PDF.
Once again, I have already posted a guide with all I know about PI.
The guide you've written is not very good, to be frank. You start off with superfluous information about some defunct Big World Setup, then say that the whole thing is way too complicated for ordinary users, then drop some more acronyms like WeiDU, BWP and BPS. Then you give acknowledgements. None of this is something any new user needs to know.
The first useful part contains a step like "a. Optional step, ignore if you don’t know what BWFixpack is: Extract BWFixpack into the same folder and install it only once". As a user, I'd ask myself what BWFixpack is and what benefits I'd have from it. Your guide leaves it entirely in the dark. I just have no idea what the hell it does, if it even does anything.
Then you omit the rather important step of copying your game folders to somewhere outside of the steam commons folder, because otherwise a new patch will potentially destroy your build in the middle of a campaign.
You don't offer any examples of where to find mods. You don't mention PI's native mod downloader and don't explain that it only offers a limited selection of mods that are placed on certain github pages. You don't say what mods you need for BGT or EET installs and don't say what the difference between the two is. You just say "download the mods you want".
Then you have a rundown of features that you don't explain at all, a "technical limitations" chapter that bitches about a bug and an incredibly detailed chapter about "sorting orders" that confuses the hell out of anybody because you haven't even said why anybody needs a sorting order in the first place.
Frankly, I don't see who the "Target Audience" of your guide is supposed to be. The only information it gives is that project infinity is too complicated for people who are afraid of command prompts and don't know where files are on their computer. It looks like a hardly-edited copy-and-paste of a bunch of ALIEN's forum postings without any useful context added.
What's difficult about the install is not handling the program
Everything is easy when you know how to do it, and difficult when you don't. You know how to use PI, so it's easy for you. Rocket scientists know how to build rockets, so it's easy for them. It doesn't mean it's easy for other people.
The thing is, I'm not a rocket scientist. I joined this forum a month ago and figured out everything I know by wasting some time. A good documentation can be a useful shortcut so that you don't have to waste that much time. (I would have loved a warning that downloading more mods unchecks all checkboxes, for example. I learned it the hard way and it still hurts.) Your documentation does not offer any shortcuts. It wastes more of a user's time instead and I totally see why ALIEN didn't feel like babysitting you through improving it.
To do a bit more than just criticize, I wrote an own short FAQ for newbies. I tried to stick to relevant information for people who actually want to install a few mods using PI. Feel free to use, edit, expand.
If you were honestly concerned about 'players being frustrated by PI', you would create your own guide/faq/thread ! Why you didn't do it?
Actually, I have done it already, as you already know. I have written and posted a guide that contains all I know about PI. But that guide is not very useful because there is a lot I just don't know. I have already explained to you that in order to expand that guide and make it actually useful I need you to answer my questions about the parts I don't know. You ignored my offer, just like you ignored most of my feedback and the feedback of the other players who just can't make PI work. Once again, that's OK, this is your program and you do with it what you want (just like Roxanne does what she wants with hers). What is not OK is to deceive the community into believing that there is a mod manager available to everybody because, as I've explained several times already, that is simply not true.
So yeah, my concern about other players is honest. Your reply is not.
You could do all of this without any help from my side. Instead, you posted some general 'request' to 'make the documentation better'. Apparently , those were 'questions' which I should answer immediately. You didn't send me any direct questions about anything! People contacted me via the forum and even Discord but for you, apparently, it's me who was required to fulfill your 'communication frequency' requirements. I didn't so you felt justified to go with this rant. You have no justification to do all of this simply because I didn't respond to your 'questionable value feedback'!
So let me repeat: I didn't ignore your feedback, it was just worthless. Kapish?
The discussion with you was bearable until you claimed that I 'ignored the player's feedback' and 'deceive the community'. I have nothing more to say to you.
your guide looks like a hardly-edited copy-and-paste of a bunch of ALIEN's forum postings without any useful context added.
My guide is not a copy of ALIEN's posts. ALIEN's posts are a copy of my guide. So if the first posts of this thread have been helpful to you in any way, maybe you should thank me. It was I who wrote most of them. So why did ALIEN use my work but never listed my name in those acknowledgments you so much dislike? No idea, ask him.
@Alonso
I've once again included [in the first posts of this thread] most of the things from [your] document, thanks.
I'm afraid you're not very good at lying. You see, if you want people to believe your lies you have to make sure that the truth is not available for everybody to see. If the truth is available for everybody to see, it's very easy to expose your lies and you just manage to make yourself look bad. I suggest you stop lying about me, it looks like you don't know how to do it.
1. You accusing me of 'deceive the community' which is a really disgusting move from your side. All I did is created a mod manager to the best of my effort and put it available to use for everybody.
2. You claim that only 'super-advanced power gamers with some programming knowledge' can use PI
When casual users oppose, you said that they have lied. It's clear that your own opinion on this matter is more important than the opinion of people who use PI directly! It's no matter how many people will tell you that you are wrong, you won't change your mind. You need to ignore their opinions for justification of your rant.
3. You accusing me of I 'ignored the player's feedback'
There are plenty of examples when I include feedback either inside FAQ or even changed the way how PI works. Och, you don't see it, right? How can you since all you do is you mumble about 'docs being confusing' instead of actually creating the program itself?
4. You accusing me of 'ignoring my feedback'
The examples of 'questions' which you posted were not answered directly to you because of already included INSIDE FAQ! Looks like you require some special treatment like "Answer my questions or else..." I don't feel obligated to you with special care which apparently you expected!
And after all of this, you are quoting my own replies when apparently I INCLUDED YOUR FEEDBACK! What the hell is wrong with you?
your guide looks like a hardly-edited copy-and-paste of a bunch of ALIEN's forum postings without any useful context added.
My guide is not a copy of ALIEN's posts. ALIEN's posts are a copy of my guide. So if the first posts of this thread have been helpful to you in any way, maybe you should thank me. It was I who wrote most of them. So why did ALIEN use my work but never listed my name in those acknowledgments you so much dislike? No idea, ask him.
So now you claim that all PI docs were a copy of yours?!?[/b] Tell me, which comes first: my first post with instructions or your post with doc file? Yes, there are some sentences that were used, but to claim that my entire docs are based on your guide is a joke!
Alonso, you are the best example of a troll, who claims that is trying to be helpful by 'telling people how shitty things are'. All you did is posted you 'harmful and non-constructive opinions' about PI which will damage its reputation forever. Now, it doesn't matter if the PI will be redesigned, docs would be improved because people will remember only the nasty things which you have spread and won't check the new version. I hope that you are proud of yourself.
So let me tell you again: why stop here?
There is SHS, BWL, sorcerers.net, baldursgate.fandom.com , reddit.com/r/baldursgate , and probably some other places. You could post your valuable feedback all around! Just like Roxanne did. She uses every measure to write similar warnings about 'BEWARE, PI IS ONLY FOR EXPERTS, MY TOOL IS NICE AND EASY!" things across various boards. Since you are on some sort of mission to save users from wasting time, this is the way. Go for it!
My guide is not a copy of ALIEN's posts. ALIEN's posts are a copy of my guide. So if the first posts of this thread have been helpful to you in any way, maybe you should thank me. It was I who wrote most of them.
Even worse tbh. I thought you copied lots of unnecessary information the tool author posted somewhere. Instead, you chose to compile lots of unnecessary information.
A guide explains what a tool does and how to use it. Your guide does neither. It gives us a rundown of history of infinity modding and says that using the tool is very very hard, while it actually isn't hard at all.
The tool itself is intuitive and easy to use. I don't know everything about every advanced function, but that's not a problem, because while they maybe could make my life even easier, I can use the tool anyway. You just have to know where your game folder is and you can install mods using PI. Just press the download button and pick one.
Now PI doesn't do certain stuff: like checking whether a build is going to work or downloading each and every last mod known to man for you. That's a conscious decision and it's fair enough.
Now it's a lot of work to compile a EET build with dozens of mods yourself and that's the point where you need heaps of expertise. Doing this using PI is of course much more difficult than it was using BWS or it is using Roxanne's tool, because the tool doesn't tell you where to get the correct version or which mod conflicts with which other mod.
But that doesn't make the tool itself difficult. The tool is simple, as any lean tool would be.
It looks like there have been some misconceptions regarding my posts, so I'll try to explain as clearly as possible the reason why I have written them:
In a nutshell, the current situation is that there aren't any mod managers available for the Infinity Engine games. Apparently, Roxanne's tool should be avoided for reasons beyond the scope of this post. Regarding Project Infinity, as I've said, only very advanced gamers can use it, and even for them it is difficult to make it work. For casual to average gamers PI is simply impossible to use. This has been confirmed by others. A couple of weeks ago I asked in a different forum whether amy case is know of a casual gamer who has managed to make PI work. No (sensible) answer has been given so far. All the players who have answered my posts saying they have managed to make PI work are very advanced gamers, most of them have extensive modding experience, and still most of them have acknowledged that it was a difficult task. There are only a few very advanced gamers like these in the community (myself included). The rest are thousands of casual or average players who don't have a chance to make PI work. That's why for practical purposes we can say that there is no mod manager for the IE games.
The lack of a mod manager is a serious problem for any game. However, most other games are easier to mod. The IE games are so difficult to mod that the lack of a mod manager is not just a problem, it's a disaster. Still, that's not the worst problem. The worst problem is that nobody seems to be aware of this. Advanced gamers recommend newbies to use PI, apparently unaware that they are not going to be able to do it. I guess they do it because they fail to understand that the newbie doesn't know what they know.
Baldur's Gate is a twenty years old game. It's a miracle it still has a following nowadays. For that to continue we need a friendly community that welcomes new players and inform them honestly of the current situation. Letting people think that there is a mod manager when there is none (that they can actually use) is a deception, and people don't like to be deceived. The only possible result of that deception is to drive people away from the games and the community. I'm perfectly aware that the people who do this don't mean to deceive anybody and don't have any bad intentions. Quite the opposite, actually, they mean to help others. This deception is just one of those things that happen due to a number of circumstances. But that doesn't make it any better.
I would like to have a mod manager that works for everybody, and I have offered my help many times to achieve that goal. Unfortunately my offers of help have been mostly ignored, so that hasn't worked. Having acknowledged that, I would like people to at least be aware of the problem. Unfortunately that's not gonna happen either because I'm not an important member of the community, so my voice will not be heard. Therefore I'm doing the only thing that's left for me to do: warning others of this situation. It looks like that's the best I can do at this point.
I hope this clarifies all the misconceptions that seem to exist about my posts.
@Alonso You are making two wrong assumptions in your conclusions.
1.: You believe that @ALIEN has to tell you what he needs and then implement what you provide into PI on short notice. The problem is: ALIEN is busy with improving PI on a coding level - and RL. The assumption that *he* would have the time to implement all documentation *you* are missing is a misconception, because the active members of the community are generally spending their whole time alrady working for the community. I have the same problem with mod updates. I know how to do them so people ask me to update this and that mod. The reason I am not doing it is not that I am ignoring their wishes, it's just that I am already busy 100% doing other updates and my own stuff. Please note that I am not saying that ALIEN doesn't have to implement any documentation into PI. (Bolded to prevent misunderstandings.) What I am saying is that your expectation of him doing the documentation you want posthaste is unrealistic, because ALIEN is already spending all his time with the IE stuff he planned to do. That leads us to 2:
2. You are not an unimportant member of the community, because everyone who wants to contribute can do so, because that is what the IE community is: people who step foreward and do stuff. If you think that the already active members should provide what you are missing then you make mistake 1: active members are already 100% busy. So, you want to have more documentation on PI, and a place where people can ask beginner's questions, etc - open a thread and be the one answering the questions. Provide the documentation, help new users. Because ALIEN is already spending all his time, so if you think it's not enough, step in and help. Also, if you have suggestions how to improve PI on a level that needs change of code etc., ALIEN did listen and consider feedback afaik. Thus, work with PI, try it out, and if you see something that is too complicated in your opinion, let ALIEN know so he can improve it.
(Plus, ALIEN mentioned that he is reworking some functionality of PI so anything you write into a documentation now would become outdated, which would also be a valid reason not to implement it.)
But, as long as you do not step foreward and contribute but just go around badtalking PI because ALIEN did not do what you wanted him to, your actions are not helpful but destructive.
Please note: I wrote this post assuming that we are talking about the wish for more documentation only. If you also provided constructive feedback on the usage of PI which ALIEN straight out rejected to implement, than this would be a different matter.
Also, I do not agree to every of ALIEN's posts and the tone they are written in.
@jastey: You say I believe or want or expect a lot of things that I don't believe or want or expect. I don't think your post has much to do with what I have said. I can't understand where you got all those ideas about me.
I would like to have a mod manager that works for everybody, and I have offered my help many times to achieve that goal. Unfortunately my offers of help have been mostly ignored, so that hasn't worked. Having acknowledged that, I would like people to at least be aware of the problem. Unfortunately that's not gonna happen either because I'm not an important member of the community, so my voice will not be heard. Therefore I'm doing the only thing that's left for me to do: warning others of this situation. It looks like that's the best I can do at this point.
Which boils down to simply "I want to warn others of this situation". I'm struggling to understand why it is so difficult to understand that this is what I want. There is no need to second guess me or read between the lines. I think I have expressed very clearly everything I want, believe and expect.
Hi, since you asked in my post, I though I would give my experience using PI. Coming from recently modding skyrim it took some time to go back to "old" ways of modding (having something like nexusmods REALLY help).
Note that I have not read through every bit of documentation there is, so some of my feedback may exist in some form or another in a readme or FAQ.
UI
The Update-Mod button is kinda non-saying about what it actually updates since I could not really see any feedback from pressing it (maybe I missed it?) but I am assuming it updates all mods that has a github link in their metadata?
The Edit-ModConfig I have not even be able to press, so I have no idea what it does. Perhaps able to update some mods configuration before install?
You can separate a mod's components by right-clicking but it will not survive a restart/rescan which limits its use, unlike the SortingOrder feature which seem superior to me.
A mod will not load it's metadata until you actually press it, until then it will be called whatever the setup file(?) is called I think. This is not really a problem but the metadata name is obviously nicer to use.
A small observation I made; opening and closing mods and selecting components seems to lag which i found strange when compared to EET install which worked seemless to select anything I wanted. This is something which affects you every time and gets quite annoying.
Selecting Components
The first impression of selecting mods once you install for me was wierd since I had just come from using EET install tool and I could simply make selections, save it to an ini and easily load my selection later.
From the first page it says I can paste an install order but I was never able to figure out how to get this to work since I did not know where to paste it. The install order window did not select any components once pasted into it so I assume I am to paste to a different window? I would actually really like to know if I missed something important here.
I ended up using EET install to make a bg2 installation and then used that weidu.log as a base for my install, which is probably not the best way
SortingOrder
A function that I was happily able to use with great success. It was effective in its purpose but I noticed that if you have a blank line after a rule, it will duplicate the sorting in the install sequence window.
SortingOrder
LeUI *
<< blank line
Ascension*
InstallSequence
LeUI:0
LeUI:0
Ascension:0
Feature I would like to see
Able to right click the install order window and add new categories/select and remove old ones.
OR
Able to use the extracted mods folder to set up the install order categories. That is, I have a a few subfolders in my extracted mods that I have used to sort it a bit. It would be nice if I could use this file structure for my categories. This would also make sure everything is already sorted when I add a new mod, unless it is in the base folder which could go to default.
Bug (I think)
I had an install fail, and tried out the uninstall-everything option. Once it took way longer then simply deleting the game folder and restoring a backup I tried to cancel the uninstall process but each time I did it would simply start again. I eventually had to shut down the PI application for it to stop.
All in all, it was fun to learn a new tool and use it. I hope some of my feedback can be useful and I hope PI will continue to get better. Thanks for the time you took making a useful tool!
Not relevant to PI but if anyone knows
Installing ItemRevisions Revised and SCS lead to component 5900 installing with 3 warnings of being unable to copy something. Anyone else had an experience with this and knows if any issues will result of it?
But who needs this warning? Absolute newbies who freshly downloaded the game from steam and just want to play it as it is will likely never even know there are mods. People who find out about mods will likely first install them via an install file first. To mod the game at this level is remarkably easy with PI, by the way. You want try the "alternatives" mod, for example? Click mods, Gibberlings, Alternatives, Download-mods, check it in the tree, Set-install-sequence, start-installation. I can honestly not imagine a user who won't be able to figure this out, but if you want to help them, write a tutorial or do one for youtube.
People who want to install Trilogy with a lot of mods will pretty quickly realize that it's not very easy. I mean, the big world project pdf is intimidating enough. I guess you can additionally warn people that installing many mods at once is not easy at all because they all might conflict with one another. That's somehow common sense, though.
And for people who are willing to deal with that, learning how PI works will be a breeze.
And lastly, we all miss BiG world setup. Everything was much easier with it. But we're not getting it back, so we might as well get ourselves comfortable using PI. It's absolutely not as arcane a program as you make it out to be.
Comments
The point is that it has nothing to do with PI as a tool but with modding IE games in general.
PI makes it easier for sure.
I get what you are saying but I think that you made a poor choice of words.
Warning people that it is a difficult process to mod IE games and that PI is not a miracle tool is ok.
Saying to people not to waste their time is a bit direspectful toward the creator of this tool IMO.
Ok, need to clear some things out. Who do you consider a power gamer? Because *I think* we have a different understanding who power gamer is. For me PG is a player who don't focus on role playing, but rather on building his character in the best possible way from a game mechanics perspective, using the best strategies possible while fighting foes. Having said that, I do think that casual player can be a power gamer. I can play BG once in 10 years (tbus I'm a casual player) and still build my character in the most optimized way possible (as a power gamer).
I'm not sure what you are expecting, maybe I missed your suggestions how this can be improved - the only thing I can imagine is the mentioned dynamic install order syntax that mods can now integrate for PI. Because an install order list of sorts that has to be kept updated will only lead to burned out fellow modders and will be outdated sometime soon in the future.
As Cahir said: a powergamer is someone who thinks Kangaxx and Firkraag were wusses that need some major beefing up, who knows by heart where to find all the components of Crom Faeyr, Gesen's bow and the Equalizer and who would enjoy completely remixing all the kits and skills for no reason beyond having a different flavour of the playthrough.
I am very much a casual player (who burned a lot of time on learning how to install EET using PI).
I think I didn't notice because of the mod selection I use. I think there was just one mod that provided PI install order rules in my build. And I had quite many mods on, actually.
I mention several times that I'm working on MAJOR features which require a significant amount of work because there isn't even any kind of examples of how to do things that I want to do. Every programmer will find hundreds of guides on how to 'add a node into treeview' or 'how to connect to database' but nothing about stuff that I do.
I'm aware that I didn't respond directly to you and I didn't use your doc. I didn't want to discourage you by saying that the documentation is out of date and does not take into account any recent reports from players who have written thoroughly about things that were difficult to understand. I see no significant improvement in spending hours merging some parts of your docs into mine.
Right now, you went from 'offering help with documentation' into suggesting players 'stop wasting time for this' in roughly two weeks! Man, are everything is ok?
As if this wasn't enough for you, you went to the forum of widely popular EET mod and posted you blatantly general and unspecific 'feedback' about how "Other gamers who try to use PI just manage to waste their time and get frustrated.".
If you were honestly concerned about 'players being frustrated by PI', you would create your own guide/faq/thread ! Why you didn't do it? So much for your 'honest concern'.
All I see is frustration. Go for a walk, read a book or something.
IE moding is more than a decade old. This functionality was added only two months ago, please give modders time to try using it. Or suggest the author of your favorite mod to use this feature
yeah, I see how this future might be quite useful in the future. It's just that I as a user don't get to rely on it very much right now.
As it is now, a user can hardly even tell which components of one single EEUI Tweaks mod are compatible with each other. The mod in PI links to a thread on Gibberlings which in one of the posts links to page 7 of a thread on this forum in which the relevant info is on page 1, albeit unfortunately outdated as it doesn't mention all the components. The readme file just tells me to run setup.exe in the BG2 directory (gee thanks).
This is a pretty elucidating example of the eagerness of some modders to add proper documentation to their work, so I don't put my hopes really high. Now, I am certainly grateful that they made all those mods - if you ever used the GUI with EEUI Tweaks you don't want to revert to the old gui. But installing the whole stuff is probably more of a chore we players will have to figure out.
How could PI make the players' life easier? Perhaps allow for annotation files. I mean, I make notes for myself that component 1090 or 1091 are incompatible with 1030, 1040 or 1041, that component 4010 is redundant if you use component 4005 or 4006 and that component 2090 is for Planescape Torment. That's useful info which would allow other players to make their builds quicker. I could also add a brief comment on what that module does (because it was quite a chore to find it all out). I would have very much enjoyed such annotation if someone else offered it for download, and I would offer the notes I had to make for download as well. Now you can tell me "just write a guide in a pdf", but that's more work than most players would be willing to do. Notes on the other hand are being done by everyone anyway.
1) Mod conflicts are coming, no ETA.
2) Noted but this would be post-1.0 feature.
I guess you did. I've given my suggestions quite a few times. Most of them were completely ignored. Here they are:
So yeah, my concern about other players is honest. Your reply is not.
Yeah, but what exactly do you need from ALIEN to write your doc? It's not like PI has a thousand functions you have not discovered yet. It's a pretty simple program. You copy your BG1 and BG2 folders somewhere and give PI the path. You put mods in a PI folder, you arrange them via drag&drop in the checklist, you check them, you perhaps reorder them in the other window, and you hit "install" and maybe answer some command prompt stuff. That's it. Then you can optionally check the logs folder for what went wrong.
That's all there is about this program right now. If you wanted to be helpful, you could have arranged this information in a three-pages PDF.
What's difficult about the install is not handling the program. It's finding all the infos about all the mods and arranging them into a stable, sensible order.
Once again, I have already posted a guide with all I know about PI.
Everything is easy when you know how to do it, and difficult when you don't. You know how to use PI, so it's easy for you. Rocket scientists know how to build rockets, so it's easy for them. It doesn't mean it's easy for other people.
Not really. You say you want ALIEN to answer some questions. You never specified what questions you needed answered.
The guide you've written is not very good, to be frank. You start off with superfluous information about some defunct Big World Setup, then say that the whole thing is way too complicated for ordinary users, then drop some more acronyms like WeiDU, BWP and BPS. Then you give acknowledgements. None of this is something any new user needs to know.
The first useful part contains a step like "a. Optional step, ignore if you don’t know what BWFixpack is: Extract BWFixpack into the same folder and install it only once". As a user, I'd ask myself what BWFixpack is and what benefits I'd have from it. Your guide leaves it entirely in the dark. I just have no idea what the hell it does, if it even does anything.
Then you omit the rather important step of copying your game folders to somewhere outside of the steam commons folder, because otherwise a new patch will potentially destroy your build in the middle of a campaign.
You don't offer any examples of where to find mods. You don't mention PI's native mod downloader and don't explain that it only offers a limited selection of mods that are placed on certain github pages. You don't say what mods you need for BGT or EET installs and don't say what the difference between the two is. You just say "download the mods you want".
Then you have a rundown of features that you don't explain at all, a "technical limitations" chapter that bitches about a bug and an incredibly detailed chapter about "sorting orders" that confuses the hell out of anybody because you haven't even said why anybody needs a sorting order in the first place.
Frankly, I don't see who the "Target Audience" of your guide is supposed to be. The only information it gives is that project infinity is too complicated for people who are afraid of command prompts and don't know where files are on their computer. It looks like a hardly-edited copy-and-paste of a bunch of ALIEN's forum postings without any useful context added.
The thing is, I'm not a rocket scientist. I joined this forum a month ago and figured out everything I know by wasting some time. A good documentation can be a useful shortcut so that you don't have to waste that much time. (I would have loved a warning that downloading more mods unchecks all checkboxes, for example. I learned it the hard way and it still hurts.) Your documentation does not offer any shortcuts. It wastes more of a user's time instead and I totally see why ALIEN didn't feel like babysitting you through improving it.
What I mean by 'guide' is something like this:
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/41036-faq-for-the-megamods/
or this:
https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Category:Vortex
You could do all of this without any help from my side. Instead, you posted some general 'request' to 'make the documentation better'. Apparently , those were 'questions' which I should answer immediately. You didn't send me any direct questions about anything! People contacted me via the forum and even Discord but for you, apparently, it's me who was required to fulfill your 'communication frequency' requirements. I didn't so you felt justified to go with this rant. You have no justification to do all of this simply because I didn't respond to your 'questionable value feedback'!
So let me repeat: I didn't ignore your feedback, it was just worthless. Kapish?
The discussion with you was bearable until you claimed that I 'ignored the player's feedback' and 'deceive the community'. I have nothing more to say to you.
I suggest you check the facts instead of talking without knowing what you're talking about.
This is also false, and you know it:
I'm afraid you're not very good at lying. You see, if you want people to believe your lies you have to make sure that the truth is not available for everybody to see. If the truth is available for everybody to see, it's very easy to expose your lies and you just manage to make yourself look bad. I suggest you stop lying about me, it looks like you don't know how to do it.
1. You accusing me of 'deceive the community' which is a really disgusting move from your side. All I did is created a mod manager to the best of my effort and put it available to use for everybody.
2. You claim that only 'super-advanced power gamers with some programming knowledge' can use PI
When casual users oppose, you said that they have lied. It's clear that your own opinion on this matter is more important than the opinion of people who use PI directly! It's no matter how many people will tell you that you are wrong, you won't change your mind. You need to ignore their opinions for justification of your rant.
3. You accusing me of I 'ignored the player's feedback'
There are plenty of examples when I include feedback either inside FAQ or even changed the way how PI works. Och, you don't see it, right? How can you since all you do is you mumble about 'docs being confusing' instead of actually creating the program itself?
4. You accusing me of 'ignoring my feedback'
The examples of 'questions' which you posted were not answered directly to you because of already included INSIDE FAQ! Looks like you require some special treatment like "Answer my questions or else..." I don't feel obligated to you with special care which apparently you expected!
And after all of this, you are quoting my own replies when apparently I INCLUDED YOUR FEEDBACK! What the hell is wrong with you?
So now you claim that all PI docs were a copy of yours?!?[/b] Tell me, which comes first: my first post with instructions or your post with doc file? Yes, there are some sentences that were used, but to claim that my entire docs are based on your guide is a joke!
Alonso, you are the best example of a troll, who claims that is trying to be helpful by 'telling people how shitty things are'. All you did is posted you 'harmful and non-constructive opinions' about PI which will damage its reputation forever. Now, it doesn't matter if the PI will be redesigned, docs would be improved because people will remember only the nasty things which you have spread and won't check the new version. I hope that you are proud of yourself.
So let me tell you again: why stop here?
There is SHS, BWL, sorcerers.net, baldursgate.fandom.com , reddit.com/r/baldursgate , and probably some other places. You could post your valuable feedback all around! Just like Roxanne did. She uses every measure to write similar warnings about 'BEWARE, PI IS ONLY FOR EXPERTS, MY TOOL IS NICE AND EASY!" things across various boards. Since you are on some sort of mission to save users from wasting time, this is the way. Go for it!
Even worse tbh. I thought you copied lots of unnecessary information the tool author posted somewhere. Instead, you chose to compile lots of unnecessary information.
A guide explains what a tool does and how to use it. Your guide does neither. It gives us a rundown of history of infinity modding and says that using the tool is very very hard, while it actually isn't hard at all.
The tool itself is intuitive and easy to use. I don't know everything about every advanced function, but that's not a problem, because while they maybe could make my life even easier, I can use the tool anyway. You just have to know where your game folder is and you can install mods using PI. Just press the download button and pick one.
Now PI doesn't do certain stuff: like checking whether a build is going to work or downloading each and every last mod known to man for you. That's a conscious decision and it's fair enough.
Now it's a lot of work to compile a EET build with dozens of mods yourself and that's the point where you need heaps of expertise. Doing this using PI is of course much more difficult than it was using BWS or it is using Roxanne's tool, because the tool doesn't tell you where to get the correct version or which mod conflicts with which other mod.
But that doesn't make the tool itself difficult. The tool is simple, as any lean tool would be.
In a nutshell, the current situation is that there aren't any mod managers available for the Infinity Engine games. Apparently, Roxanne's tool should be avoided for reasons beyond the scope of this post. Regarding Project Infinity, as I've said, only very advanced gamers can use it, and even for them it is difficult to make it work. For casual to average gamers PI is simply impossible to use. This has been confirmed by others. A couple of weeks ago I asked in a different forum whether amy case is know of a casual gamer who has managed to make PI work. No (sensible) answer has been given so far. All the players who have answered my posts saying they have managed to make PI work are very advanced gamers, most of them have extensive modding experience, and still most of them have acknowledged that it was a difficult task. There are only a few very advanced gamers like these in the community (myself included). The rest are thousands of casual or average players who don't have a chance to make PI work. That's why for practical purposes we can say that there is no mod manager for the IE games.
The lack of a mod manager is a serious problem for any game. However, most other games are easier to mod. The IE games are so difficult to mod that the lack of a mod manager is not just a problem, it's a disaster. Still, that's not the worst problem. The worst problem is that nobody seems to be aware of this. Advanced gamers recommend newbies to use PI, apparently unaware that they are not going to be able to do it. I guess they do it because they fail to understand that the newbie doesn't know what they know.
Baldur's Gate is a twenty years old game. It's a miracle it still has a following nowadays. For that to continue we need a friendly community that welcomes new players and inform them honestly of the current situation. Letting people think that there is a mod manager when there is none (that they can actually use) is a deception, and people don't like to be deceived. The only possible result of that deception is to drive people away from the games and the community. I'm perfectly aware that the people who do this don't mean to deceive anybody and don't have any bad intentions. Quite the opposite, actually, they mean to help others. This deception is just one of those things that happen due to a number of circumstances. But that doesn't make it any better.
I would like to have a mod manager that works for everybody, and I have offered my help many times to achieve that goal. Unfortunately my offers of help have been mostly ignored, so that hasn't worked. Having acknowledged that, I would like people to at least be aware of the problem. Unfortunately that's not gonna happen either because I'm not an important member of the community, so my voice will not be heard. Therefore I'm doing the only thing that's left for me to do: warning others of this situation. It looks like that's the best I can do at this point.
I hope this clarifies all the misconceptions that seem to exist about my posts.
1.: You believe that @ALIEN has to tell you what he needs and then implement what you provide into PI on short notice. The problem is: ALIEN is busy with improving PI on a coding level - and RL. The assumption that *he* would have the time to implement all documentation *you* are missing is a misconception, because the active members of the community are generally spending their whole time alrady working for the community. I have the same problem with mod updates. I know how to do them so people ask me to update this and that mod. The reason I am not doing it is not that I am ignoring their wishes, it's just that I am already busy 100% doing other updates and my own stuff. Please note that I am not saying that ALIEN doesn't have to implement any documentation into PI. (Bolded to prevent misunderstandings.) What I am saying is that your expectation of him doing the documentation you want posthaste is unrealistic, because ALIEN is already spending all his time with the IE stuff he planned to do. That leads us to 2:
2. You are not an unimportant member of the community, because everyone who wants to contribute can do so, because that is what the IE community is: people who step foreward and do stuff. If you think that the already active members should provide what you are missing then you make mistake 1: active members are already 100% busy. So, you want to have more documentation on PI, and a place where people can ask beginner's questions, etc - open a thread and be the one answering the questions. Provide the documentation, help new users. Because ALIEN is already spending all his time, so if you think it's not enough, step in and help. Also, if you have suggestions how to improve PI on a level that needs change of code etc., ALIEN did listen and consider feedback afaik. Thus, work with PI, try it out, and if you see something that is too complicated in your opinion, let ALIEN know so he can improve it.
(Plus, ALIEN mentioned that he is reworking some functionality of PI so anything you write into a documentation now would become outdated, which would also be a valid reason not to implement it.)
But, as long as you do not step foreward and contribute but just go around badtalking PI because ALIEN did not do what you wanted him to, your actions are not helpful but destructive.
Please note: I wrote this post assuming that we are talking about the wish for more documentation only. If you also provided constructive feedback on the usage of PI which ALIEN straight out rejected to implement, than this would be a different matter.
Also, I do not agree to every of ALIEN's posts and the tone they are written in.
Which boils down to simply "I want to warn others of this situation". I'm struggling to understand why it is so difficult to understand that this is what I want. There is no need to second guess me or read between the lines. I think I have expressed very clearly everything I want, believe and expect.
Note that I have not read through every bit of documentation there is, so some of my feedback may exist in some form or another in a readme or FAQ.
UI
The Update-Mod button is kinda non-saying about what it actually updates since I could not really see any feedback from pressing it (maybe I missed it?) but I am assuming it updates all mods that has a github link in their metadata?
The Edit-ModConfig I have not even be able to press, so I have no idea what it does. Perhaps able to update some mods configuration before install?
You can separate a mod's components by right-clicking but it will not survive a restart/rescan which limits its use, unlike the SortingOrder feature which seem superior to me.
A mod will not load it's metadata until you actually press it, until then it will be called whatever the setup file(?) is called I think. This is not really a problem but the metadata name is obviously nicer to use.
A small observation I made; opening and closing mods and selecting components seems to lag which i found strange when compared to EET install which worked seemless to select anything I wanted. This is something which affects you every time and gets quite annoying.
Selecting Components
The first impression of selecting mods once you install for me was wierd since I had just come from using EET install tool and I could simply make selections, save it to an ini and easily load my selection later.
From the first page it says I can paste an install order but I was never able to figure out how to get this to work since I did not know where to paste it. The install order window did not select any components once pasted into it so I assume I am to paste to a different window? I would actually really like to know if I missed something important here.
I ended up using EET install to make a bg2 installation and then used that weidu.log as a base for my install, which is probably not the best way
SortingOrder
A function that I was happily able to use with great success. It was effective in its purpose but I noticed that if you have a blank line after a rule, it will duplicate the sorting in the install sequence window.
LeUI *
<< blank line
Ascension*
InstallSequence
LeUI:0
LeUI:0
Ascension:0
Feature I would like to see
Able to right click the install order window and add new categories/select and remove old ones.
OR
Able to use the extracted mods folder to set up the install order categories. That is, I have a a few subfolders in my extracted mods that I have used to sort it a bit. It would be nice if I could use this file structure for my categories. This would also make sure everything is already sorted when I add a new mod, unless it is in the base folder which could go to default.
Bug (I think)
I had an install fail, and tried out the uninstall-everything option. Once it took way longer then simply deleting the game folder and restoring a backup I tried to cancel the uninstall process but each time I did it would simply start again. I eventually had to shut down the PI application for it to stop.
All in all, it was fun to learn a new tool and use it. I hope some of my feedback can be useful and I hope PI will continue to get better. Thanks for the time you took making a useful tool!
Not relevant to PI but if anyone knows
But who needs this warning? Absolute newbies who freshly downloaded the game from steam and just want to play it as it is will likely never even know there are mods. People who find out about mods will likely first install them via an install file first. To mod the game at this level is remarkably easy with PI, by the way. You want try the "alternatives" mod, for example? Click mods, Gibberlings, Alternatives, Download-mods, check it in the tree, Set-install-sequence, start-installation. I can honestly not imagine a user who won't be able to figure this out, but if you want to help them, write a tutorial or do one for youtube.
People who want to install Trilogy with a lot of mods will pretty quickly realize that it's not very easy. I mean, the big world project pdf is intimidating enough. I guess you can additionally warn people that installing many mods at once is not easy at all because they all might conflict with one another. That's somehow common sense, though.
And for people who are willing to deal with that, learning how PI works will be a breeze.
And lastly, we all miss BiG world setup. Everything was much easier with it. But we're not getting it back, so we might as well get ourselves comfortable using PI. It's absolutely not as arcane a program as you make it out to be.