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Why Modmerge's existence sucks

First... Don't get me wrong.
Modmerge is a great tool and @ScottBrooks a god.
However...
Why was it needed in the first place?
Why haven't beamdog made an oficial statement? This is needed. let me tell you why:
I feel this was intentional from beamdog to boost sales from their site and get 100% earnings.

I've been feeling beamdog is pushing me to rebuy from their site since preorder for SoD was opened...

When preorders were announced i intended to buy them on day one to support the devs (I NEVER preorder). I assumed steam to be an option (i can only buy trough steam because of my local currency and exchange rates).
When I found myself mistaken I felt bad and like beamdog was telling me i had to buy it from them if i wanted to support them (hell... It even said something along the lines of "Want to support the devs? Buy directly from us") however I said to myself "Ok, ill buy it on day one". Not because I intended to play it on day one, but to give my support (I'm intending to wait until BGEET is released for my first run).

Then I learn that mod would be almost impossible with steam and GOG versions... but with beamdog's? No biggie...
But then again i told myself that it didn't matter, surely soon there would be an announcement or a silent patch fixing that mistake... "it was a mistake surely"... HA... Innocent, idiotic me.
But what did we get? radio silence... And then we got Modmerge, an unofficial tool, with no warranties, that will make modding cumbersome. (But at least possible).
AND AS AN ANNOUNCEMENT IN THE FORUMS!!!!

This at least to me, tells that beamdog seems that the issue is resolved... That there are no plans to fix the issue. And since the tool is unofficial, they can wash their hands.

So what would i have to do to be able to play BGEET when released? Rebuy EVERY BGEE game but FROM BEAMDOG. At HUGE exchange rates.

Maybe it's the anger but i really feel like this was intentional from beamdog... The silence, the release of the tool categorized as an announcement in the forums, the beamdog preorder exclusive, the "support the devs" line in beamdog's website... It's all fishy to me. And that is why i want an official statement on the issue.
After all... Modding is what kept this game alive all this years.

You all have a great evening.
darkkhaine
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Comments

  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    It is NOT -- I repeat, NOT -- Beamdog's fault that Steam & GoG are tools with their DLC formats.
    illathidMoradinwubblejackjack
  • StoltverdStoltverd Member Posts: 19

    Stoltverd said:

    Maybe it's the anger but i really feel like this was intentional from beamdog...

    snip

    And, now there's a solution. So no one is harmed after all. And you're especially not harmed, because you don't even own the game yet - wait. You don't even own the game yet. So this doesn't affect you at all. So why are you even angry in the first place...???

    Man, if you're one of the people who's been trolling these boards lately, for god's sake keep it in the SoD forum. Let the modding forums be for discussion about mods, there's plenty of other places around here for people to discuss their feelings. :angry:

    You didn't understand me. I havent started the playtrough, but i do own all the games.


  • StoltverdStoltverd Member Posts: 19
    edited April 2016
    Also that's not how steam handle dlc...
    What's more... Steam don't tell devs how to bundle or code their software. They can even say "fuck it" to steam api and tell the buyers to deactivate steam overlay so it won't crash.

    I have 880+ games and dlc in steam. 50+ in GOG. NOT ONE have the DLC packaged in a zip file...

    Edit: Also for your information. Releases are automated, prices set by the developers with NO intervention from valve, and the store page is done wholy by the devs.
    Thats why the "Infestation: Survivor Stories" fiasco came to be, that's why there are so many greenlight crap and thats how this exploit could be achieved: https://medium.com/swlh/watch-paint-dry-how-i-got-a-game-on-the-steam-store-without-anyone-from-valve-ever-looking-at-it-2e476858c753

    Edit2: Also... There is no way the program can read directly into a zip... it have to uncompress it first or use other methods. Meaning SoD was coded to work with a Zip. meaning the code for GOG and Steam versions are different.
    Swifty_Magee
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    he is right. i checked two steam games i have dlc installed and neither are ziped.
  • AmmarAmmar Member Posts: 1,295
    I agree, without a statement to the contrary ot seems to be Beamdog's responsibility.

    It is alao not the first time modding was broke/difficult for a while. When they moved dialog.tlk it was the same for a time.

    It is likely that someone will find a way to bindle the modmerger with Weidu in the future, but there was no reason to create hurdles like this.
  • GrammarsaladGrammarsalad Member Posts: 2,582
    There is a zero percent chance that beamdog intentionally sabotaged the gog and steam versions of the game.

    I'm not sure that this thread belongs in the modding forum.
    Swifty_Mageejackjack
  • StoltverdStoltverd Member Posts: 19
    @Grammarsalad Where would you put it then? I posted it here since modmerge was posted in here and well... It's about modding.

    @subtledoctor You are right of course. My interior tinfoil hat guy says that he had to do it before a huge community backlash. But reason says you are right hahaha.

    It's still very strange... As i said earlier, the program has to unpack the zip. Steam api can't do that. meaning the source code has to be different. Maybe one or more entire classes different. that's what huge game does. Bethesda has it's BSA files for example. Loading screens are there to let you look at something while the games unpacks the content, reads it and stores it in the memory.

    Would that mean there are 3 teams of coders? Three different source codes (not very likely but a possibility. Personally i believe the theory that there are just 3 different classes in the source)? If there are just different classes to access the data... Wouldn't that mean that GOG and Steam versions may have bugs the beamdog version have not?
  • illathidillathid Member Posts: 320

    he is right. i checked two steam games i have dlc installed and neither are ziped.

    That's interesting because I've got 15+ games on steam that package DLC in a zip... I wonder if there's some functionality you get from zipping it that you don't get otherwise? Can you turn DLC on and off from the checklist on the steam? I could see it being something like that.
    jackjack
  • StoltverdStoltverd Member Posts: 19
    edited April 2016
    Which games? I would love to check.

    Edit: Also no... You can't turn that on or off in steam. That would mean to have 2 versions of the game. one that can read the compressed file (more like uncompress, read, store and compress) and one that doesn't.
    More than that... They couldn't list HDD requeriments since the storage space would change.
    You CAN uninstall DLC trough checkboxes. But that doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand.
  • UlbUlb Member Posts: 295


    First of all, it was definitely not a mistake: Steam and GOG use that mechanism for the DLC in their games, so that is how Beamdog delivered it to them. Period. If that is a crappy way to bundle DLC with games (and it is) then you ought to complain to the distributors who are selling games that way - i.e. Steam and GOG.

    If a grocery store stacks all their tomatoes in a stupd way such that the ones on the bottom are crushed and mushy, you don't blame the farm where the tomatoes were grown... you blame the grocery store!

    But that's not what happened here. Let me give you another analogy:

    I buy a new BMW from my local dealership and then notice the gas tank only holds a gallon. Now I ask BMW what the heck is up with that and they tell me “Sorry, your local dealership only sells cars with 1-gallon tanks. You should have known your local dealership always does it that way.” I'll surely be pissed at my local dealership but I have every right to be just as pissed at BMW for a) going along with it and enabling my local dealership to sell their product in a clearly inferior way b) choosing to not inform me, their customer, about it and c) not offering me a solution or apology for this whole mess.

    What I'm trying to say is; while Steam/GoG might not be innocent about the whole issue their involvement sure as hell does not exonerate Beamdog who knew about it and most likely provided the code for its implementation.




    Now, there was clearly an oversight, in that, when Steam & GOG specified how the code should be delivered to them, someone at Beamdog could have stopped and thought "oh wait, if they give it to the customers that way, without unpacking it into the main game folders, then it will break mods!" But a) it wasn't necessarily clear that Steam/GOG were going to pass along the zipped archive straight to customers like that; and b) everyone at Beamdog was a bit preoccupied... you know, with releasing a major product. So, humans being the fallible creatures we are (except the Pope), it's an understandable oversight.


    Sorry but this can no longer be seen as a simple oversight.

    For this to be a simple oversight Beamdog would have had to issue an official statement and an apology after the issue had been pointed out to them. The modmerge tool would also have had to be build on company time and be released as an official tool.

    None of those things happened.
    Instead Beamdog (the company) chose to just ignore the issue. (That a single developer cared and came up with a fix for the issue on his free time is great but it does NOT redeem the company.)

    So at this point the whole DLC fiasco is no longer an oversight, even if it may have been one in the beginning. It is a clear and loud statement from Beamdog towards the modding community that says: “We don't give a shit about you.”.




    And, now there's a solution. So no one is harmed after all.

    Well, there is some harm.
    While modmerge or K4thos' weidumod that does the same thing will enable modding with Steam/GoG versions it means more work for the end-user and probably more work for some of the more sophisicated mods (like EET) as well.

    However, the one harmed the most by this is actually Beamdog itself. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose opinion of Beamdog has taken a severe hit from how they handled (or rather, not handled) this situation.


  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited April 2016
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
    illathid
  • argent77argent77 Member Posts: 3,428
    I had already expressed my concerns about this issue some time ago while beta testing SoD and got this answer:
    Yeah, the steam dlc process is not the most friendly thing in the universe.

    Short of giving you a whole other copy of the game(So SOD is a 4 gig download that includes baldurs gate), we didn't feel like we had any other options.

    The override directory should still work as is, so once we solve the reading problem, that should take care of most of the other issues(other then the talk table).

    Part of the reason for the sod-dlc zip file, is that it's exactly how we load the android .obb files, so it reused a bunch of code for that support.
    UlbJuliusBorisov
  • UlbUlb Member Posts: 295
    edited April 2016
    argent77 said:

    I had already expressed my concerns about this issue some time ago while beta testing SoD and got this answer: ...

    Thanks for this.

    This proves once and for all that it was definitely not an oversight on Beamdogs end. So they failed to inform their customers about this severe difference between the different versions of their game even though they were well aware.

    It also proves that Beamdog would have had the option to provide Steam/GoG users with a modable version (albeit at the "cost" of a 4gig download*).


    *Which is funny since at least GoG makes you re-download BG1EE and BG2EE for about 3 gig each anyway whenever a new patch is released.
    Stoltverd
  • GrimLefourbeGrimLefourbe Member Posts: 637
    Pretty sure that's not Beamdog's fault and even less so since you can ask for the game on the Beamdog client if you bought it on Steam (you need to go above the refundability play time on steam though obviously).
    illathid
  • UlbUlb Member Posts: 295

    Pretty sure that's not Beamdog's fault

    Well, argent77's quote just two posts above proves that it is Beamdog's fault.


    and even less so since you can ask for the game on the Beamdog client if you bought it on Steam (you need to go above the refundability play time on steam though obviously).

    Well, you can't do the same with the GOG version.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited April 2016
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
    illathid
  • GrimLefourbeGrimLefourbe Member Posts: 637
    I'm not sure I understand how the quote says that it's Beamdog's fault when the first thing said is "The steam dlc process is not the most friendly thing". It's pretty obvious that Beamdog had to make a difficult choice here.

    I would assume you can do the same with the GoG version too, just need to be nice and understanding when you contact the support really.
    illathid
  • UlbUlb Member Posts: 295


    I would assume you can do the same with the GoG version too, just need to be nice and understanding when you contact the support really.

    Well and I assume you can't since there is no evidence of that being a possibility. Also, I'm not understanding of the situation at all, so that wouldn't work anyway.

    As for the rest, I think it is all here in this thread so if you come to a different conclusion with the arguments brought forward I doubt there is much that could be said to change that.

  • mlnevesemlnevese Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
    Thread moved to General Discussion. General Modding should be used only for modding discussion.
    JuliusBorisov
  • UlbUlb Member Posts: 295
    *turns Mission Impossible theme off*

    Thank you for this post, I take it this is an official answer?
    If so, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

    *turns Mission Impossible theme back on*

    A lot of my concerns over this issue are less related to the actual DLC deployment and more to how Beamdog handled this situation communication wise.

    Would you not agree that informing your customers before release about the Steam/GoG versions and the difficulties they might cause for modding would have been the right decision?

    How can I be sure you just won't break mod-ability completely with your next game release, without giving out any information about that before hand?
    Cerevant said:

    ... so we invited to modding tool developers into our beta test and gave them access to the development team to help get those tools to support the DLC format. When this proved more difficult than expected, a tool was provided to convert the DLC installations into a more moddable format.

    Yeah, I know. Doesn't really go well with the "Mission Impossible" theme, does it?

    The way you say that makes it sound as if providing “the tool” (modmerge) was a decision by Beamdog though Scott mentioned that he did that in his spare time?

    Stoltverd
  • illathidillathid Member Posts: 320
    Ulb said:

    *turns Mission Impossible theme off*

    Thank you for this post, I take it this is an official answer?
    If so, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

    *turns Mission Impossible theme back on*

    A lot of my concerns over this issue are less related to the actual DLC deployment and more to how Beamdog handled this situation communication wise.

    Would you not agree that informing your customers before release about the Steam/GoG versions and the difficulties they might cause for modding would have been the right decision?

    How can I be sure you just won't break mod-ability completely with your next game release, without giving out any information about that before hand?

    Cerevant said:

    ... so we invited to modding tool developers into our beta test and gave them access to the development team to help get those tools to support the DLC format. When this proved more difficult than expected, a tool was provided to convert the DLC installations into a more moddable format.

    Yeah, I know. Doesn't really go well with the "Mission Impossible" theme, does it?

    The way you say that makes it sound as if providing “the tool” (modmerge) was a decision by Beamdog though Scott mentioned that he did that in his spare time?

    This is a molehill not a mountain. Updates break mods. That's a fact that mod makers and users just have to accept (I say this as the team lead for CK2 mod with over twelve thousand subscribers on steam).
    jackjack
  • CerevantCerevant Member Posts: 2,314
    Ulb said:

    Thank you for this post, I take it this is an official answer?
    If so, this is definitely a step in the right direction.

    Well, I wouldn't expect a press release about this, so but I'm official enough.
    A lot of my concerns over this issue are less related to the actual DLC deployment and more to how Beamdog handled this situation communication wise.
    Fair enough - we were kind of focused on releasing the game, and I did mention that we reached out to the tools developers. Its just things are pretty NDA-locked at that point.
    How can I be sure you just won't break mod-ability completely with your next game release, without giving out any information about that before hand?
    I think our track record has shown that while almost every update we've issued broke something for modders, we've done more things to make things better for modders.

    It is also worth mentioning that this feature could be pretty useful for modders:

    The DLC loader supports multiple .zip files. So you could package your own mod (or set of mods) and use the zip to install that package on another computer or mobile device. Including tlk files. (DLC zip files are processed in alpha order, common resources overriding the ones from previous zips)
    The way you say that makes it sound as if providing “the tool” (modmerge) was a decision by Beamdog though Scott mentioned that he did that in his spare time?
    Well, it is Scott's tool, and I didn't meant to detract from that. We were aware of the modding situation, and were thinking about how we could deal with it, but getting our first patch update out was our highest priority. We're grateful that Scott (our CTO and lead programmer) was able to get something to you guys that could get modding back on track like it did.
    mlneveseJuliusBorisovStoltverd
  • UlbUlb Member Posts: 295
    edited April 2016
    @Cerevant
    I'm pretty sure Beamdog as the developer itself would have not been restricted from informing the public about this, unless of course I fundamentally misunderstand how NDAs work for you guys. :)

    I still think this was handled rather badly by Beamdog but I have said that before and brought up all my arguments. You and a lot of people here on the forums seem to disagree with me, so there is probably no need to drag this out any further.

    On a positive note, I'm glad that you did address this in the end and shed some light on the situation, so thanks again for that.

    As for the .zip loader being useful for other modders, I'm not not a programmer myself or very adept with those things in general, but would not the latest .zip dialogue.tlk overwrite any other versions, thus making the .zip format useless for anyone that wants to use more than one mod?


    *edit:*
    illathid said:



    This is a molehill not a mountain. Updates break mods. That's a fact that mod makers and users just have to accept (I say this as the team lead for CK2 mod with over twelve thousand subscribers on steam).

    It is not just a molehill. It is an indication for a bad information/communication philosophy at Beamdog and as such it needs to be addressed.
    I would rather voice my opinion and critique if I'm not happy with something than to close my eyes and pretend everything is fine until *** hits the fan big time.
  • SethDavisSethDavis Member Posts: 1,812
    Ulb said:

    I'm pretty sure Beamdog as the developer itself would have not been restricted from informing the public about this

    Unless we had an NDA ourselves. Not sure if we did, but that seems like a pretty common thing with business agreements.
    Stoltverd
  • CerevantCerevant Member Posts: 2,314
    edited April 2016
    Ulb said:

    As for the .zip loader being useful for other modders, I'm not not a programmer myself or very adept with those things in general, but would not the latest .zip dialogue.tlk overwrite any other versions, thus making the .zip format useless for anyone that wants to use more than one mod?

    Yes, however: If you took your modmerge'd installation, installed whatever WeiDU mods you wanted, you could then create a loadable mod that includes all of the relevant strings.
    Ulb said:

    I'm pretty sure Beamdog as the developer itself would have not been restricted from informing the public about this, unless of course I fundamentally misunderstand how NDAs work for you guys. :)

    What we (as individuals) are allowed to talk about pre-release is pretty limited.
    Stoltverd
  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
    [Deleted User]
  • CerevantCerevant Member Posts: 2,314
    3) Could this .zip archive method be a way to finally enable modding on iOS? Maybe install a bunch of mods on the desktop and have a way to bundle up /override and dialog.tlk into such an archive, and side-load it in to "update" the app? Because if you guys could finally provide a way to make that happen you would make a lot of people very happy (and probably spur a bunch of new iOS sales).
    That is exactly what I'm describing.
    mlnevese[Deleted User]jackjackStoltverd
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