New community venture announced - discussion

[Jennik 0]

Hi everyone and all of you creative members of our community in particular.

We have promised we will support our community as much as possible and here comes another service we want to offer to you. From January 2010 we plan to introduce a new section at www.arma2.com called Guerrilla / Community. This page will be dedicated to the entire community content created for ARMA or ARMA 2, as we feel it deserves more public attention.

What we offer is the possibility to participate in the content published at this website. It's the opportunity for you to present your work to a much wider public and newly recruited players too!

As I wrote in this official announcement, we will appreciate any advices / suggestions. So, here is the place for discussion, everyone is welcome!

[Undeceived 392]

Good stuff, BI!

I'm sure that via the official site the good work of the community will be more known everywhere!

[Falco1.01 19]

That is great! :)

[turin turambar 0]

If you really want to support the community, you should select the most exquisite, well produced mods (single or multiplayer missions, new vehicle/weapons, etc, game changing mods like ACE or SLX are too much) and integrate it in the game in a future patch, with author's permission of course. There are a lot of people who aren't "in the community" who doesn't know what to download from the hundreds of addons, or from where.

[maddogx 13]

If you really want to support the community, you should select the most exquisite, well produced mods (single or multiplayer missions, new vehicle/weapons, etc, game changing mods like ACE or SLX are too much) and integrate it in the game in a future patch, with author's permission of course. There are a lot of people who aren't "in the community" who doesn't know what to download from the hundreds of addons, or from where.

Not going to happen, simply because not all mods are for everyone. I wouldn't be happy if patches kept getting bloated up with custom content I might not want. Better to let people download and install what they like, instead of forcing stuff down their throats.

I think it would be better if BIS included a "News & Updates" screen directly in the game, which could basically get all the info from the new community portal. That way peeps who aren't active in the community could still see what's going on, what mods are getting released etc.

[.kju 3244]

gday Jennik :)

it is good to see more work on the media front. That said personally I am not

yet convinced that this project will be that useful.

The community news websites do a great job for one.

To make addons more useful to the casual player, way more important is

technical improvements to simplify the addon use.

The 'future' part is the most important here I think.

Yet it won't be easy to make this project successful.

At the same time your editor and editing video podcasts were very well

received. You may want to reconsider to continue these (as well). After all

the game has so many excellent features most non hardcore fans do not

know about. Same goes for the tips on how to play the game and interaction

- this is very useful for the new and casual players.

Thankfully the blog got some updates again these days. This is also a great

addition, that could receive more regular posts and presentation on arma2.com.

Thanks. :bounce3:

[RavoC 10]

Lovely!

---------- Post added at 01:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:00 PM ----------

Not going to happen, simply because not all mods are for everyone. I wouldn't be happy if patches kept getting bloated up with custom content I might not want. Better to let people download and install what they like, instead of forcing stuff down their throats.

I think it would be better if BIS included a "News & Updates" screen directly in the game, which could basically get all the info from the new community portal. That way peeps who aren't active in the community could still see what's going on, what mods are getting released etc.

Could be cool but downloading certain stuff while running the game in the meantime will sure as hell give some errors I think. What's there actually to be said as "news" anyway. I check everything every time around here but that's just because since some time now, I'm addicted to this game.:p

[icebreakr 3157]

Jennik: great stuff, hopefully it will be maintained by guys who "are around" :)

[maddogx 13]

Could be cool but downloading certain stuff while running the game in the meantime will sure as hell give some errors I think.

That wasn't what I meant it to be used for. Downloading and installing addons should still happen outside the game - the in-game news portal should be just that. A news portal. :)

[myshaak 0]

Nice one! I think it would be great if there was an in-game mod manager, where you could select and download new mods, view their description, compatibility etc. and that would also check the server for mod updates and DL them when you want to.

EDIT: MadDogX beat me to it. But I believe that mods should have some universal manager. Sometimes it is a pain in the ass to find all the addons to run a specific mission, it would be most useful if there was a software communicating with specialised server that would automatically download you what you need.

Edited December 16, 2009 by Myshaak

[PhilippRauch 0]

yeah... SWAT4 had a ingame mod manager .. for example .. right?

But i doubt that will be possible in arma due to the whole prefetch or how ever it was called (all mod .pbo are loaded/processed at gamestart)

If i understood all infos correctly ... but would be nice indeed.. but using shortcut method is easy already..

Edited December 16, 2009 by PhilippRauch

[icebreakr 3157]

We spend at least 30min per week to tell rookies and even some regulars how to set up proper -mod line. And the ever lasting "ohh, I need to restart game in order to work?" ;)

[Jennik 0]

We spend at least 30min per week to tell rookies and even some regulars how to set up proper -mod line. And the ever lasting "ohh, I need to restart game in order to work?" ;)

I'm afraid implementing MOD Manager into the game would be possible. There are already couple of them made by community, aren't they?

But, I have heard something about pbo file association around here as the possibility to run mission / campaign / addon by double click only. However, this won't probably solve the MOD issue.

[turin turambar 0]

That's my point, geeks are oursevels usually forget that most people doesn't even know wtf is a "command line parameter".

[.kju 3244]

It is true Jennik. It is a complicated job and may not be feasible at this point.

At the same time BI could consider community suggestions to make the development and

use of community made addon download and management tools easier.

After all the in-depth research by the community in this topic gives the people a lot of

experience and understanding of challenges and problems.

So small specific changes to the core game and interfaces to query information from

the client or server would make these tools a lot better. :)

[TRexian 0]

What would that part of the site be? A place to announce WIP and releases of stuff? I thought that's what these forums were for? :D

[mr burns 132]

To make addons more useful to the casual player, way more important is technical improvements to simplify the addon use.

Ingame Mod activation & deactivation? Yes.

Update Tools or Addons at Ease & the like? No.

Addon installation and distribution is fine & simple as it is right now and has proven to be sufficient for about 9 years. People who are willing to read a little into the matter will find themselves downloading and using mods quicker than they learned to tie their shoelaces. Anything else equals pissing in the wind.

The only real improvements could be made in terms of documentation (for mod makers and users) and a huge signpost pointing any newbie into the right direction.

Flashnews for instance was very well accepted and i hardly see a big difference in this new initiative,

disregarding that now Placebo would not be the one writing that stuff up.

[.kju 3244]

Mr Burns you may want to check tools made for other games by game developers itself

or by community members. One can make useful and user friendly tools (quake engine,

or recently TorchLeech for Torchlight; or for operation systems (apt/yum/zypper)).

It is always possible to have the basic browser download link and at the same time

simple to use, time saving, money saving and useful tools.

Only because Addon Sync and Six updater are not as good in their interface and user

concept, it does not rule out that it can be done better and that tools will become better.

Edited December 17, 2009 by kju

[mr burns 132]

It is always possible to have the basic browser download link and at the same time simple to use, time saving, money saving and useful tools.

That´s perfectly fine as long as one does not get an advantage over the other, or (especially) one entirely messing up the functionality of the other.

Pardon my example, but 6th Updater is the best i can think of right now.

I´m sure it´s useful for developers, i´m also sure it was developed with their best intentions in mind. But for the end-user it only made things worse because of completely fucked up version standards (i don´t even need to mention the installation, that´s peanuts).

I understand it´s nice to get up-to-date mods within a few clicks w/o the need to download hundreds of megabytes, but the downside should be obvious - instead of pretty straightforward numbers like v1.0 / v1.1 and so on you´ll have v1.1112 / v1.4352 / v1.6842 etc.

How does that make things better?

Because dev´s can rush out mods earlier and update on a daily basis?

I´ll be damned if anyone agrees to that..

Rather put more effort into testing and release the 'big-bits' just like all the time before.

It friggin works, and on top of that eases any form of MP business with addons.

Any peptalk about the mentioned tools neglects the fact that things like those aren´t needed at all.

They´re just there because the developers wanted it so.

Why fix something that isn´t broken?

Back on topic: Flashnews, as mentioned before. Good effort. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Just hope it doesn´t turn into a "my mods news is nicer than yours" war kind of thing .. which...might just happen :dance:

[.kju 3244]

Because it can be way better, save you the user, you the new site guy, and the developer a lot of time.

ACE2 is available via FTP, HTTP, YAS and Six Updater right?

Are you forced to update every day. Seems not.

Is it possible to make standard patches. Sure, just the users expect the devs to put the

time into it. And no one (especially no user) is willing to spend time on it.

So again using Six Updater or Addon Snyc as reference is no fitting, nor relevant.

PS: Discussion about existing tools is definately the wrong thread here.

Going beyond specific tools and discussion in a general way is fine, everything else is just misplaced.

[Guest]

If you really want to support the community, you should select the most exquisite, well produced mods (single or multiplayer missions, new vehicle/weapons, etc, game changing mods like ACE or SLX are too much) and integrate it in the game in a future patch, with author's permission of course. There are a lot of people who aren't "in the community" who doesn't know what to download from the hundreds of addons, or from where.

Then every modder would have to sign licence agreements etc. And as Arma 2 is commercial, all the mods made will need to be fully licenced by whatever is included in the mod.

[Yoma 0]

That´s perfectly fine as long as one does not get an advantage over the other, or (especially) one entirely messing up the functionality of the other.

Lol do i see some sneaky reference to people making addonsync repo's without the .rsync folder, thus "thrashing" the functionality of Sixupdater?

Well I didn't build that silly dependency, right?

[mr burns 132]

ACE2 is available via FTP, HTTP, YAS and Six Updater right?

Are you forced to update every day. Seems not.

There only needs to be one guy who updates regulary finding himself not able to join a server where, let´s say, people aren´t as quick with and fond of updating, and there you go - biggest drama since QG.

It´s the same the other way around with server updating regulary but users not, you won´t get me into those tools anytime before hell freezes over.

With http only releases you can always tell someone to go there and download this. Simple as that.

Subversion clients lead that construct ad absurdum.

PS: Discussion about existing tools is definately the wrong thread here.

Going beyond specific tools and discussion in a general way is fine, everything else is just misplaced.

Your right. But i´d happily take an infraction for the sake of pointing out the obvious (yet, obviously, not so obvious at all) arguments against the recent trend, and not at least answering your posts in the very same OT discussion ;)

edit:

Lol do i see some sneaky reference to people making addonsync repo's without the .rsync folder, thus "thrashing" the functionality of Sixupdater?

Well I didn't build that silly dependency, right?

It was a mere reference to the exact opposite - making http based up to date mirrors nearly impossible. That thing you refer to .. well, was my first time dealing with the stuff and also we warned them downloaders about it beforehand :D

Edited December 16, 2009 by Mr Burns

[.kju 3244]

It does seem relevant according to the Future section of the announcement:

---

This service is not meant to be a competitor to established community websites,

this service should hopefully complement the incredible work that the numerous news sites

have performed for many years, nor do we plan to host files or images of user made stuff

at Arma2.com for now. We hope this concept may prove itself viable and useful so

we could introduce even more at www.arma2.com in the future.

---

The version check by ACE has no real relation to different means of downloading addons.

IMHO it is not good designed at the moment. Older server version vs newer client should

be hardly a problem from what I can tell. In any case I am sure you can deactivate the

check. Just ask ACE people how it's done.

Edited December 16, 2009 by kju

[STALKERGB 6]

Hmm sounds interesting, as kju pointed out with the FOR NOW bit in the extract he quoted, does BIS plan to eventually host the mods they really like or will it stay as a news portal?