Stainless Steel 6.2 fixpack - volunteers?

[Gorrrrrn]

Judging by KK's status report there's little prospect of him issuing a fixpack for the minor issues that have come to light since 6.1 was issued.

I'm not in a position to volunteer to roll them all up but maybe someone here could.

Note this is ONLY to fix existing problems, not make any major changes.

Items for inclusion would hopefully include:

Revised BAI and CAI (Lusted)
Revised Traits, Events, Ancillaries (Quark)
Terrain mods (Lusted and Wolfslayer)
bug fixes for scottish border horsemen; pirates event; mercenary elephant card and any other odds and ends.

This would be to fix the exisiting 6.0/6.1 vanilla installation and not mess around with any sub-mods or introduce any changes that the existing sub-mods depend on.

SO a simple small fixpack any offers?

[gracul]

Its hard to release a fixpack, cuz then all the mod creators would have to work on your fixpack to get it right.
Some submods are just too big enchancement over vanilla to be just leftout (thinking about SSTC-no horse spread, battle for baltic, visual enchacement pack, and RAJ)

[Gorrrrrn]

No- the big submods would have to be left out - there's too many dependencies and too many people have issues with one or another of them as they are at present. (I have also proposed a big Stainless Steel 6.5 which would have the big sub-mods incl SSTC etc as an Advanced Gameplay version.)

The idea is simply to have a one stop fix for some of the annoying minor bugs that continually cause problems and which need to be re-installed every time you re-install the whole SS mod. So It would be install 6.0 (pts 1+2); 6.1; 6.2. Then any sub-mods

Hopefully all the fixes would be compatible with existing sub-mods - nobody has complained that the exisiting scattered fixes cause any problems.

[Friesian]

Very good initiative. I'm always a bit afraid to install al those sub mods that are around these days, you never know if they work together well.
Those minor bugs keep popping up in the treads. Fixing them in a patch should not be a problem for any of the sub mods. Dont forget to include the fix for the BYG recruiting bug.

[Barser]

Hmm most of the sub mods would have to be changed to work together with the fixpack:-/. I would rather have an ss update with a lot of the new roosters + stone forts, grape shots and other things included in ss. Af few other sub mods also (some optional).

[Firebat11]

SSTC should be added standard in this I believe. There really aren't any downsides to it.

As for submods, some are really good - but not everyone likes them all, so it'd be hard to implement that.

[CDMan477]

Something fairly simple would be a list describing many of the sub mods and instructions on installation order and compatibility. All this info can be confusing to people unfamiliar with modding.

[Gorrrrrn]

from Firebat11:

SSTC should be added standard in this I believe. There really aren't any downsides to it.

The only downsides I can think of are that it requires both BYG's Grim Reality III and the latest Real Combat/Real Recruitment and looking at the installation instructions it looks horribly complicated. (It would also bloat the size of the fixpack, ideally I'd want something under 20MB so it can be downloaded relatively easily even for those (like myself) without broadband.

As neither BYG GR or RR are standard in vanilla SS6.0 (they are optional installations) they should remain optional. It would over-complicate the whole point of a fix-pack to have anything that depends on optional items included as standard.

(there is a case for including the BYG hotfix if users have already installed GRIII with SS6.1)

(As I have mentioned I would advocate a new Stainless Steel 6.5 which would include the enhancements such as the Visual improvement pack and similar and leave the SSTC/RR/RC/BYG's GR/ and those other sub-mods that depend on them to an Advanced Gameplay version, which would bundle the whole lot up in one installation.)

Can people let us know which of the existing proposed components of a fixpack:
Revised BAI and CAI (Lusted)
Revised Traits, Events, Ancillaries (Quark)
Terrain mods (Lusted and Wolfslayer)
bug fixes for scottish border horsemen; pirates event; mercenary elephant card and any other odds and ends.

would cause problems to other mods?

[Firebat11]

from Firebat11:



The only downsides I can think of are that it requires both BYG's Grim Reality III and the latest Real Combat/Real Recruitment and looking at the installation instructions it looks horribly complicated. (It would also bloat the size of the fixpack, ideally I'd want something under 20MB so it can be downloaded relatively easily even for those (like myself) without broadband.

As neither BYG GR or RR are standard in vanilla SS6.0 (they are optional installations) they should remain optional. It would over-complicate the whole point of a fix-pack to have anything that depends on optional items included as standard.

(there is a case for including the BYG hotfix if users have already installed GRIII with SS6.1)

(As I have mentioned I would advocate a new Stainless Steel 6.5 which would include the enhancements such as the Visual improvement pack and similar and leave the SSTC/RR/RC/BYG's GR/ and those other sub-mods that depend on them to an Advanced Gameplay version, which would bundle the whole lot up in one installation.)

Can people let us know which of the existing proposed components of a fixpack:
Revised BAI and CAI (Lusted)
Revised Traits, Events, Ancillaries (Quark)
Terrain mods (Lusted and Wolfslayer)
bug fixes for scottish border horsemen; pirates event; mercenary elephant card and any other odds and ends.

would cause problems to other mods?

You don't need RR or Byg III to run SSTC

[gracul]

from Firebat11:
Revised BAI and CAI (Lusted)
Revised Traits, Events, Ancillaries (Quark)
Terrain mods (Lusted and Wolfslayer)
bug fixes for scottish border horsemen; pirates event; mercenary elephant card and any other odds and ends.
would cause problems to other mods?

Yes.
scottish border fix would conflict with sstc
pirtes event would conflict with byg
revised traits etc would conflict with byg, rr, and lingua mod.

And like i said, SSTC is too much an improvement for it not to be treated as base for fixpack/patch.

[aduellist]

gracul, I think we get the point that you're a big fan of SSTC. However, not all of us are. That's why it's an optional submod. There are a few submods I've been interested in, but not installed, because they require SSTC and I don't want SSTC. Basing a fixpack on SSTC would place it firmly in the "I won't use it because it requires SSTC" category. It would then be an SSTC fixpack.

As Rozanov stated, this fixpack should not be dependent on any of the optional submods. It's for baseline 6.1.

[gracul]

Im not a big fan of SSTC, im not even using it in my Irish campaign atm. BUT, rejecting stuff like SSTC would be like "i dont like the new map, it should be optional". More and more submods edit the same stuff, the most successful submods should be incorporated into the mod, even if there is a couple of people that dont want the change.
Some people don't like Burrek's skins, some people don't like BGR2 or other stuff, but 'most' people like that, and thats why its incorporated into the mod.
Let us not make it harder for the mod makers.

[Gorrrrrn]

Gracul I'm not rejecting SSTC and BYG and RR/RC, just saying they aren't required to fix the problems with baseline 6.0/6.1.

I'm all in favour of a bundled together SSTC/BYG/RR/RC and other mods SUPER-MOD being made, but that's not a fixpack, that's a new version of Stainless Steel.

(Many thanks for the corrected pirates event fix - just what IS needed in a 6.2 fixpack!)

[PlanetEx]

Like that idea. And for sure it should be possible to create an option for the installation of submods. They need to make changes anyways with every new version of SS. So a fixpack is a needed new version of SS and the changes in the mods themself should be only minimal.

PS: It's offtopic, but is there a "good" solution for the language problem in SS6.1? I have the german version of the game + the optional "german language file" from KK installed (and the old event.* files deleted). But this causes, that most Nations have Mediterranian Voices (all east european + scandinavian) and most of the factions don't even have speeches before the battle (like england for example). I really tried everything and would be glad if someone knew a solution.
In all versions before it worked more or less fine.

[Confederate Jeb]

Just a heads up, the Hobilars also sometimes get the Border Horse bug as well.


Would this fix the game so that you won't CTD while looking around the main menu? That would be a good one to try and correct.

[The Noble Lord]

Excellent initiative Rozanov, what is your plan.
How can those problems be fixed then.
You reckon that the small glitches could be fixed by
putting together: SSTC/BYG/RR/RC into one superfix??
Is it only gonna be used for SS 6.1 or previous installments as well??


CHEERS

[gracul]

Just a heads up, the Hobilars also sometimes get the Border Horse bug as well.


Would this fix the game so that you won't CTD while looking around the main menu? That would be a good one to try and correct.

The main menu bug occurs due to the game buffering some files that it doesn't even need at main menu stage. I haven't really checked if its a limit on the size of all the files, or a limit on the number of files.
Some solutions can be made but they will only extend the number of factions you can click on, since with all those new factions in SS the game won't be able to load up custom battle anyway after being in one of the campaign menus.

[AnthoniusII]

Dont start SS 6.2 without CBUR!!!!

[S.P.Q.R. Praetorian]

If Kong doesn't want to do one then don't bother him. I know you guys just meant well but a lot of sweat and tears went into this mod and I'm sure he wants to have a long if not permanent vacation from modding.

[Gorrrrrn]

Excellent initiative Rozanov, what is your plan.
How can those problems be fixed then.
You reckon that the small glitches could be fixed by
putting together: SSTC/BYG/RR/RC into one superfix??
Is it only gonna be used for SS 6.1 or previous installments as well??

My suggestion - in the hope that someome might pick it up and work it all out - is that a small fixpack be constructed called 6.2 which simply fixes known issues with the baseline SS6.0/6.1 so we don't need to apply lots of awkward little fixes every time we re-install the prog and can inform new people to install it to avoid some of the common issues.

Regarding a new baseline 6.5 version of Stainless Steel it would use the 6.0 / 6.1 / 6.2 files plus the various finished sub-mods (which are not dependent on RR/RC/SSTC/BYGIII) such as the Visual Improvement Pack as a complete download.

Regarding SSTC/RR/RC/BYGIII and all the sub-sub mods that depend on them I was suggesting that someone might like to roll them all up into an Advanced Gameplay version of Stainless Steel 6.5.

Having only 2 versions of Stainless Steel 6.5 would mean that any further mods would only need to make themselves compatible with those 2 versions. At the moment we have so many possible variations of combinations of mods that it's getting very confusing for people who want to move on from the basic SS6.0, not to mention time consuming for the mod makers.

As for KK it's up to him whether he takes any notice of this.