A plea to addon makers

[sputnik monroe 102]

I must confide I'm a bit sick to death of having to tune every single unit I download. I wish the addon community was organized and worked together. As it is there are too many weapon packs out there containing the same weapons. Not to mention duplicate mods. Rather than making 50 mods that fall a inch short of perfection, why don't all the teams out there making the same kind of mod just work together? Just a suggestion, not meant as a flame or anything.

   I'm amazed at the stuff addon makers have made. But just imagine what could be made if they put aside their petty rivalries and egos and worked together. This game needs to be more like Falcon 4.0. By all accounts I've heard every one works together as one team and it's now the king of Modern Flight sims. Not bad for a game that's over 5 years old.

    Any how this is just a plea for all the talented addon makers out there. Please put aside your differences and work together. If standards and compatiblity are set and every one works together this game can become the king of combat simulators.

    Just a few pointers,

1.  There has to be a standard universal system like JAM implimentd for tank weapons and armor.  Their should be one for Aircraft also.

2. A new version of JAM perhaps? All the major Addon groups should get together and work on it. Lately it seems most people prefer Earl and Sucheys weapons or inquisitors. A JAM3 could use new weapon models by S&E and Inquisitor and others. Perhaps throw in some new weapons also and now your talking.

3. The major teams should work together. How many versions of the exact same weapon do we need? For example the AK74M? Do we need three versions of the AK74M that all use incompatible magazines? Of course not it destroys the game. Teams need to get together and decide who is making what. If after that if they still decide we need 50 more AK74M's and M4s then they should make them all use the same magazine.

4. This has been stated before, but addon teams need more mission makers. I can make missions for myself that are decent, but not every one can. A lot of people rely on other people to make missions. Trust me more people will use your shiny addons if there are missions that use them.

5. Rivalries must end.

6. A consensus should be reached on a standard system for all kinds of ammunitions, armor values and so forth. Once that is established websites should only host addons that follow the rules. Any addon that doesn't pass quality and standards or refuses to will not be hosted.

7. Perhaps their should be several standards so you know what your getting for example...

A. Wargames standard

B. Bis Standard

C. JAM standard

D. That other teams standard

   When you go to download a addon there are 4 versions for download, one for each standard. That way you know what your getting. So if your more into wargames league then you download the version of the new unit that matches its stats but if your more into the Bis's standard you dl that version.

   Any how I hope this spurs something positive. Once again it's not meant as a flame but as advice. So no one has the right to gte defensive over this ( since I'm not on the offensive )

[NZXSHADOWS 0]

Sounds good,

[dinger 1]

1. I don't think there can be. OFP has a relatively simple damage system and yet there are mods for weapons and weapon systems from vastly different eras. How do you make a sherman and an abrams tank work according to the same scale, yet prevent a grenade from killing one or the other?

2. WGL also uses Inquisitor's weapons, but has converted all jpg textures to .paas for better performance. The problem with JAM, in my uninformed opinion, is that there never was a single authority that dictated functionality.

3. First, many people make addons for their own enjoyment. For example, we at CoC are working on a Tomahawk cruise missile. I'm not going to come out and say that some other group souldn't release a Tomahawk. The fun in addonmaking is the creation. Second, sadly, not everyone has the same talent. Do I want to say to someone who enjoys working on OFP and enjoys making addons that "you suck as an addonmaker, therefore you only get to make the crappy and obscure stuff nobody wants to use?"

4. No objection here. An addon is not complete until it has a cool mission featuring it.

5. As long as there is a community that considers some groups "better" than others, and as long as people make addons for public adulation, there will be rivalries. Rivalries are not always unhealthy. They spur innovation.

6. See #1. You won't reach consensus. Worse, there's a dirty secret here, and that is that for OFP addons, there are two communities: A) the one that plays the game, and B) the one that plays with addons. A) usually depends on B) for the information on what to play. Many members of B judge a quality of an addon by taking it out on desert island and blowing stuff up with it. Simplicity and lethality are heavily favored. So to get an addon noticed, there's usually lethality inflation.

7. WGL has a standard, but it is one that's a little particular: armor values are generally below the default BIS values. BIS's "Standard" really isn't consistent, but it's close. with Unified Artillery 1.0, we tried to follow the BIS standard. With 1_1, we will adhere to the WGL standard. That means the explosions will be slightly bigger, but the armor values will be lower. For most UA applications, it won't be noticeable.

I am not, however, going to make separate addons for each standard. I'd like to but:

a) bandwidth is costly. 4 standards mean 4 times the bandwidth.

b) 4 standards mean 4 sets of config.cpps to debug. That's a royal pita.

[Major Fubar 0]

Checking my stopwatch to see how long before this thread bursts into flames...

...and before it does, please read my sig.

[Guest]

Nice idea, but here's a couple of problems:

1. It's a bit late for a lot of this stuff.

2. I'll just get in contact with every single addon maker. BRB (in 2005).

[sputnik monroe 102]

Quote[/b] ]I am not, however, going to make separate addons for each standard. I'd like to but:

a) bandwidth is costly. 4 standards mean 4 times the bandwidth.

b) 4 standards mean 4 sets of config.cpps to debug. That's a royal pita.

    Ok point taken. Perhaps websites could at least post what standard the addon is balanced to?

     

Quote[/b] ]Checking my stopwatch to see how long before this thread bursts into flames...

    Personally I can't see any reason for this to turn into a flame war. If some one can't handle advice and throws a tantrum maybe they should be banned, rather than the whole thread closed.  I see where your coming from though, post like this usually seem to degenerate.

[One 0]

not alot of people play online anyways, no one makes good missions anymore, so i dont even see what the point is.

take what you can get, and be thankful. i am. we're all lucky as it is anyways.

but maybe since you said sputnik, you have to tune every addon, maybe someone can create a tool that can work weapon load outs for you.. help you standardize things yourself for missions/servers, etc. something that can put custom/standard weapons and mags in with a few simple clicks. thats what we need...what do you all think? is it possible?

[Messiah 2]

don't agree with 5... friendly rivalry (as dinger said) spawns better and better innovations and addons - if BAS had no rivals, we probally would not see half the stuff we see today

[Major Fubar 0]

Quote[/b] ]Checking my stopwatch to see how long before this thread bursts into flames...

    Personally I can't see any reason for this to turn into a flame war. If some one can't handle advice and throws a tantrum maybe they should be banned, rather than the whole thread closed.  I see where your coming from though, post like this usually seem to degenerate.

It's a sad fact that a few (and only a few) addonmakers can't handle even constructive criticism or suggestions; and some board members can't make criticisms or suggestions without being rude and/or sarcastic.

If both sides are reasonable about it, there is no reason this thread should become a flamefest...still, if I were a betting man    

[benu 1]

I think it is sad that all the "standardisation projects" i had so big hopes for didn't get the recognition they deserved, like eg jam or ecp.

I really had hoped that other mods could be incorporated into ecp as "plugin", similar to the ecp configs for inq weapons or dynamic range, so you could enable eg finmod, csla and ecp at once without having to reboot the server all the time.

Or that addon makers used jam more often so weapons from different addon makers can interchange magazines in missions.

I would also be in favour of a public textures library, where addon makers add their new textures for others to use. Similar to jam, but for all kind of textures. This would have several advantages:

-smaller addons for everyone as all would share one set of textures which is updated whenever new textures are added to it by any team

-other addon makers could reuse the textures for a) making more versions (eg wood/snow/desert/etc) of their addon with less work and b) better looks ingame when mixing addons of several addon makers.

All this would make the playing experience for the people actually USING all those addons in missions and on servers much better imho.