Crimes of Modding..

[Halie Satanus]

A light hearted or very serious survey on the worst crimes a modder can commit...

Gahh, was going to add a poll which was very amusing but I have to catch a plane...

[J@mes]

are you creating one or asking what the crimes are?

[MasterOfNone]

No.1 Crime - Not finishing what they start.

[Empress Meg]

Not proofreading! I hate not understanding what someone is trying to tell me in the install instructions or stop reading a delight comment on a certain unit because they cannot spell or bother to find someone who can.

Devoirs The Empress

[C.M.]

Starting a new mod instead of helping a similar one that needs help and eventually ending up with two dead mods instead of a released one.

[Visitor13]

Starting a new mod instead of helping a similar one that needs help and eventually ending up with two dead mods instead of a released one.

Definitely.

And another - not backing up on your work in multiple places like every other second

[Aradan]

Not deleting map.rwm...

Starting a new mod instead of helping a similar one that needs help and eventually ending up with two dead mods instead of a released one.

Ditto!

[Ramashan]

This might go under 'finishing what you start' but;

Offering help, doing some work, then slowly disappearing as you go to help out on another mod. If your not happy, no longer interested, have other obligations, or have problems with the way the mod is progressing, tell someone. Just don't disappear with work half done and without an explanation.

[Theodotos I]

This might go under 'finishing what you start' but;

Offering help, doing some work, then slowly disappearing as you go to help out on another mod. If your not happy, no longer interested, have other obligations, or have problems with the way the mod is progressing, tell someone. Just don't disappear with work half done and without an explanation.

Amen!!!!!

[Pompeius Magnus]

Offering help, doing some work, then slowly disappearing as you go to help out on another mod. If your not happy, no longer interested, have other obligations, or have problems with the way the mod is progressing, tell someone. Just don't disappear with work half done and without an explanation.

exactly!

since I start with my own AoD2 project I made a lot of experiences.
One guy joined the team and I waited partially 6 months for "any" result.
Finally I saw that this User was member in 7 or 8 different mod-projects at the same time.
I kicked him out of the team because it's poinless to have such a "team"-member (actually those guys have no idea about the term "teamwork".

Another case - happened 2 or 3 months ago:
A User joined my team and he promised me to help with modelling+skinning.
Exactly 4 days!!! later he wrote a pm to me and asked for leaving.
meanwhile I prepared a lot of things for him: screenshots, plates, schematics, internal decisions etc). He said that it's suddenly to much work for him. 4 days before he was 100% sure that he can help us.
That was the shortest membership in my TWC-history

[Marcion]

Maybe not the most offensive, but the most damaging mistake to make would be trying to cross the Pacific in a dixie cup. Just about every mod I've ever seen ends up dying because people go at it with a huge number of ideas but far too little resources and ability. You want every single ruler from Portugal to Pakistan represented with unique traits and religions and a complete unit roster for each, but you're really just the "idea guy" who knows a little bit of scripting and basically needs a team who will do whatever you say. That sort of thing has gotten a little better over the years, but even the people who have some experience and ability falter because they go at things haphazardly, and get bogged down. Maybe you get about a dozen of your 50 planned factions done, and have a ton of half-finished models for the rest. But it's almost finals week, and your sister's wedding is right after that, and you'll have to start looking for a real job soon, or your parents will stop paying the bills. Modders tend to flake out a lot, which is to be expected since they aren't getting paid in anything other than "D00D YOU RULE!" It gets real easy for a project to stagnate when people might have to quit at any time, so what you need to do, and every modder really needs to do this: set reasonable short-term goals. Get something releasable within two months at most, even if it's just a handful of new content, get things done and on the table in a systematic way, and review your work and methods to see what needs to be done next. Try to get it so people who aren't sure if they can continue into the next cycle quit during the review period. You might have your whole team leave, but that's way better than having them quit in the middle of something. And with stuff to show off, you're sure to attract new people. I can go on all night about this, but if your serious about running a tight team, look up some books on team software development. Some people do this professionally.

[J@mes]

not setting up CGF error logging to trace is a crime.

[Harry Lime]

Changing more than one thing in a mod then upon testing hitting the dreaded unspecified error. Gah! The time I've wasted going back & starting all over again, this time more circumspectly.

[OTZ]

Changing more than one thing in a mod then upon testing hitting the dreaded unspecified error. Gah! The time I've wasted going back & starting all over again, this time more circumspectly.

The sad part is that you may have to "re-learn" this lesson over and over again.

I know I have...I've gotten complacent many times and gone ahead with mulitple changes prior to testing, and then ahving to start from scratch because of the U/E.

[Augustus Lucifer]

I know I have...I've gotten complacent many times and gone ahead with mulitple changes prior to testing, and then ahving to start from scratch because of the U/E.

Indeed, after a while you get to feeling that you have the changes down pat and can make 5 or 10 at a time that have potential for completely unrelated and unspecified errors, and then you don't capitalize something in an obscure file and POW! RIGHT IN THE KISSER!

I think the biggest crime a modder can commit is not documenting their progress for future modders to build upon. Some information about M2TW areas are still lacking, even though they're included in prolific released mods .

Number two would have to be not backing up your files. I make daily backups and in most cases back up individual text files, and will .rar a full version of the mod folder after significant changes have been made and it is determined to be stable. If I hadn't backed up files I might have torn my hair out by now.

Other offenses:

3) Asking for help BEFORE trying to find the answer on your own, I don't mind other people needing help, which is why one of the few areas I check is Mod Workshop, and I ask a good bit of questions, but only after an hour toying with the search function.

4) Spreading your self too thin. People that work on 7 different mods, even if their work is semi-quality, should spend some of that time having a life.

5) Making a new mod because your idea differs slightly from someone else. If we have an RTR, and EB, and an RS for E:TW they are all going to die out. The breadth of work needed to make a mod doesn't lend weight to mods that are theoretically the same, so if we have the same "Well EB has heavier scripting", "Well RS has named legions", "Well RTR has history", or whatever, we may not have a rome mod to cherish any time soon. People have done more as a mini-mod than the difference overall is between a lot of the existing mods.

Cheers,
Augustus

[MasterOfNone]

Not bothering to modfolder their mod. This makes me think that they do not believe their downloaders wish to play any mod but their own, or that they expect their players to setup multiple copies of RTW et. al. and use up their HDD space - or it leads me to believe they do not have a good coder (who could convert it in 3 days) which makes me suspect how well the mod is coded in the first place.

And I agree with all the above especially the point about intuitive coding and build management. I hopefully always code with the thought that, should I die, someone could understand easily what I was doing...

And I might die after making this post

[Maraxus]

Poor marketing, no screens, no readme file, nothing, at least not in one easily accessible place. PEOPLE YOU NEED TO PROMOTE YOUR MOD TO GAIN FANS!

[jimkatalanos]

hmmm, how about using other's work without permission?

[Ummagumma]

hmmm, how about using other's work without permission?

Especially with an "I made this" tagline..

[jimkatalanos]

Especially with an "I made this" tagline..

That's the worst crime.