20. August 2019, 02:43:59

#75

ZylonBaneQuote

You know darn well that SS2 FM managers and mod managers are different things.

20. August 2019, 08:24:42

#76

voodoo47Quote

I think the only FM I have hard-switched to NewDark is the Minstrel, for the rest, extra goodies are provided in a patch form. so technically, they will work in their oldDark form, with all the bugs and issues that were present before the patching process started. this isn't a very big deal for Christine's stuff, but ugh, RttUNN is barely playable in its original form.

but yeah, SS2 FMs are not extremely important (their downloads are in hundreds, with the most popular mods going up to and above 100k).

20. August 2019, 14:35:30

#77

OlfredQuote

Quote by voodoo47:

and I guess we also have the first negative effect of the KEX port - modders being drawn away from Dark. yeah, people creating only KEX compatible stuff is not that great.

It's not really like I am drawn away from Dark. More so that I am currently working on other things and before I finally would come around and work on it, the KEX release is probably already out and there are probably tools already available by then.
On the other hand, if the KEX port comes out as being superior I wouldn't know why you should stick to Dark.

20. August 2019, 15:31:00

#78

voodoo47Quote

if we go by the BloodFS release, it will be a while until KEX gets where Dark currently is - so maybe somewhere further down the road, with the emphasis on the "maybe" part.

I wouldn't count on updated tools either - none were released for BloodFS so far (so you basically have to use the old DOS stuff, while avoiding doing things that KEX doesn't like, iirc), but maybe it will be different for EE. hard to tell.

20. August 2019, 18:45:19

#79

pripyatbeastQuote

Quote by ZylonBane:

I just don't see how it can be compatible with anything but vanilla mods unless they perfectly reproduce a lot of very specific NewDark features. The material system, DMLs, subtitles, the altered MIS file format, Squirrel scripting, tons of bugfixes, etc. You'd need an upgraded DromEd as well.

I've been doing my absolute best to find someone from the NewDark project willing to talk to me because this is our biggest priority/concern. If we can collaborate and integrate NewDark with our plans there will be zero issue with mod/fm compatibility moving forward. We want ss2 to be as open and mod friendly as possible, and like ss1:ee we want to release the source code to ensure it remains that way.

The main issue with NewDark from a business perspective is a total lack of control/authorship. We ran into an issue over the last year where our Linux port ceased to function, mostly due to the emulator, but we felt helpless to address the issue. We couldn't go into the source and update it because we didn't have it. Not being able to provide support for our products is a big issue for us and we can't reasonably rely on an anonymous group of modders to take requests from the developer when something else inevitably breaks.

I greatly appreciate the feedback shared here, but if someone from NewDark can step up and message me I'd really appreciate it. I'm going to be completely upfront and transparent, we need help on this. The source we discovered is not complete, we're missing some libraries and if we have to reverse engineer them there will be serious discrepancies with NewDark.

If you work on NewDark PM me, please.

Acknowledged by 6 members: fox, TaxAkla, Hikari, K-Bone, hemebond, edx