Responding from EEaW

[Corey]

This is basically a transfer of a topic that was discussed on EEaW. I figured it would be more useful to post it here, since the OP has an account in both places and I think it'd be more accessible to the people who care about TR here:

You know, it gets so crowded we barely even notice when someone poofs.

Slornie, and everybody else who cares: I did enjoy TR greatly. The one major complaint was the overlapping/missing voicing. I would like to point this out: why does the TIE Interceptor use the TIE sounds when it has its own set? Also, the AT-AT seems to have a problem with its firing animation. It's a minor bug, probably pointed out a million times over, but quite noticable.

I did a little poking around on your forums and found a reluctance to borrow stuff. RAW does happen to have an excellent AT-TE model, and other mods have stellar assets. While I admire independence and the wish to be unique, there is absoultely no reason perfectly good models, sound, etc. should be confined to a single project, and I would think/hope the "major mods" (TR, RAW,and what few equals they have) would have no problem sharing.

These are my only true issues with TR. I don't care so much about the NR Commando, since I play as the Republic so much. (Although while playing as the IR earlier, I lost a Juggernaut, two entire sets of Maulers, and three 2-Ms to bombs, though at different times). Overall, TR and RAW have to rank as two of the top mods made for this game, if not the top two.

Also, the reason why (I can't speak for TR's team, however) some of us don't want to borrow other people's work is because we enjoy the process of creating our own assets and putting them to use. It's more rewarding to release something that consists of 100% your own blood and sweat. This is true in numerous fields, especially music production. I can easily download a drum loop to put behind my track but it feels better to craft my own

Believe me, I get that. Because I only play the mods, I simply have a different perspective. The way I see it, you're not competing; RAW and TR cover two entirely different time periods, after all. Nor would there be any problems concerning credit, which is the number one problem modders seem to have. Again, it is infinitely more satisfying to have your own work in your mod, and for one person or a not-well-known team, easier than emailing a half-dozen others and waiting on an affirmative reply, which may not come. But considering what RAW is, and what TR is, a little sharing would probably help both mods quite a bit.

All I'm saying is this: I would hate to see TR hung up or forced to put out a final version that is far from its potential simply because of scruples such as this. (Also note that TR does not use any GB sound, even though many units could stand to benefit, because apparently this is not exactly legal. Has that stopped anybody else?)

There's several issues with this. First off, in just broader terms, not all models match. It's not just a desire to make our own content. That is part of it, because the reason to mod is because you actually want to mod, not just go around collecting all the models you can accumulate like so many other mods. Just go see how many times you see "model by EvilleJedi" in this community since 2006, and it's essentially every time a mod has a new unit. There's also the more important point aspect of standardization. Could we go around piling in units just for the sake of having units because the models are available? I guess, but none of it would match. You can say it's all Star Wars, but that's just design. Execution is going to vary between modelers, and it can be jarring in game. This is something we've done alot to work on in the last few years, and we don't want to disrupt it just for the sake of having units that are unnecessary to begin with. It's not like we're leaving out things that are actually necessary because we don't have models; if we really thought they made that big of a difference, we'd make them ourselves. The models and skins in our mod come predominately from myself and Codeuser, and some from Farseer, Slevered and Kalo. Between all of that we've all made sure that our methods are the same, especially between Codeuser and myself so that you don't end up with widely varying artistic styles.

With the specific example of the AT-TE, there's a few other points. For one, this is a perfect example of a unit that isn't necessary. Sure, we'd like to have it, but they're not lacking anything by not having it. If they really were, we'd just finish ours (I made a model a while back, it's just not skinned or animated). The payoff is just not worth the work. As for using RaW's models there's several issues. We've traded props in the past, but those are much less intrusive in the whole style situation I described before. Also,the reason we can't ask RaW for theirs is because RaW's AT-TE is not RaW's. It's Psyk0Sith and Neomarz's from the JKA community, with Z3r0x and TiJil's edits. As far as I know, Psyk0Sith and Neomarz have been gone for almost a decade, so it'd be impossible to get their permission.

I'd argue that it's our "scruples" that makes the mod what it is. If the downside is that we don't have a bunch of redundant or unnecessary units because we don't like being a compilation mod, so much the better. I don't see the downside. As far as the sounds from GB, then you're right, it hasn't stopped a lot of people. What it HAS done is led to a significant percentage of those people whom it hasn't stopped to having their mods taken down.

I'll start by saying this: I did NOT expect you to personally reply to that. I love Thrawn's Revenge and only want to help. I was not intending to criticize anything.

The AT-AT thing may not be a bug per se, but the unit itself sorta shrinks when firing and then readjusts itself for some reason. I have no idea why this is.

I suppose the correct thing to do would be to concede completely, because in all honesty, this is about as eloquently as I could imagine my point being counterargued. However, I do think mods should not evolve in a vacuum. There's plenty out there, and there are many ways to take inspiration without direct copying. For example, one thing RAW does with reused sound samples is to cut out all direct references to the parent unit. For example, Durge uses Urai Fen's sound, and what they did is simply cut out the line "Urai Fen here". If this was done with the T-1B and T-3B, for example, they would feel like their own units. (On a related note, why does the TIE Interceptor not use its own sound?)

I know sound is a rather nit-picky thing to talk about, since you can just mute it. But i my eyes, when people start to nitpick, you've nailed the fundamentals, and that separates the mods that languish and are never finished from the truly spectacular projects. I'm also very glad to hear back from the creator himself--having an accessible staff willing to take suggestions helps popularity a bunch.

While you're here, and I did ask about this on your own boards, is there anybody that knows how to make Luke's Lucky Strike work? It would be an even more valuable ability in TR, where projectile weapons do not penetrate shields. BTW, what was the reasoning behind that? I would think it had something to do with preventing cheap runs on a ships' shields; am I right?

Corey couldn't have said it better.
If you want an example of what they're trying to avoid, go and download any number of those "units mods" that add a bunch of the free release models out there. They're pretty ugly. Not to say the modelers aren't skilled but there's so much inconsistency it just does not look good. Not to mention a lot of those models just get added in for the sake of being in the mod; tons of redundant units simply taking up space.

Sound and VO's should be among the last things to worry about in a mod. If it plays well, looks good, and the VO's are at least relevant to the units, that's fine. I don't think the mod will be "far from fulfilling its potential" just because it's missing a few "Moving there now!" VO's.

[Corey]

I'll start by saying this: I did NOT expect you to personally reply to that. I love Thrawn's Revenge and only want to help. I was not intending to criticize anything.

Criticize whatever you want, as long as it's constructive we're happy to hear it. Hearing "this is awesome" feels great, but it's infinitely more helpful to hear "this part is cool, but this part is broken." We don't always do everything, but we read/consider all of it. The only time we get upset is when people come in with a list of demands and presume to tell us how to do our jobs. I try to respond to everything, too.

However, I do think mods should not evolve in a vacuum. There's plenty out there, and there are many ways to take inspiration without direct copying.

I want to expand on this a bit, but I need to be careful how I word it and it's 5am so I'll come back to it sometime.

The AT-AT thing may not be a bug per se, but the unit itself sorta shrinks when firing and then readjusts itself for some reason. I have no idea why this is.

I think it has to do with how inverse kinetics (how it adjusts its animations) deals with terrain when firing. There may be a line we can fidget with to fix it, but I've never had a good chance to. It's been pretty low priority because it's not exactly gamebreaking and it'll take a while to sort it out, if that's even possible, since we've made no appreciable changes to the original unit.

For example, one thing RAW does with reused sound samples is to cut out all direct references to the parent unit. For example, Durge uses Urai Fen's sound, and what they did is simply cut out the line "Urai Fen here". If this was done with the T-1B and T-3B, for example, they would feel like their own units. (On a related note, why does the TIE Interceptor not use its own sound?)

It's something we've considered and may do more of going forward, but honestly until 2.0 was done we didn't even have VO's on the table. There was simply too much to clean up, not the least of which being the EotH revamping project which only just finished after 2 years. It probably sounds lazy, but that kind of extended cleanup with old low-severity bugs hanging around for a while; even though the project is seven years old, it's also huge and was the first project for us, which is why I'm willing to publically bash every previous version of the mod. Frankly rebuilding TR from scratch after 1.0 probably would have been more efficient than trying to keep building on it. So yeah, we added and adjusted some VOs with 2.0 and will do more for 2.1 but the gains there are less noticeable. The TIE Interceptor thing is something that's sort of hung around for a while (it's been in my notebook for like 3 years; yes, I keep track of these things in a notebook with a pencil, it's sad). It's the result of when we switched from EaW to FoC. Our TIE Interceptor was coded into EaW before FoC was released, so when we ported the mod to the expansion, the new coding went with it and we just never put the sounds in. I've done it for 2.1 though.

While you're here, and I did ask about this on your own boards, is there anybody that knows how to make Luke's Lucky Strike work?

Honestly I have no idea what FoC's problem is with that ability and I wanted to look into it before I gave a response to that thread. We just started going into beta, so I've still got some finalization on a few pieces of content to do, but after that I'm focusing on bugs.

where projectile weapons do not penetrate shields. BTW, what was the reasoning behind that? I would think it had something to do with preventing cheap runs on a ships' shields; am I right?

It's partially that, and partially because it's more canon. You can really go either way on the canon thing I guess, since there's two types of shields; one which bombs couldn't go through and one which they could, but for balance having them able to go through basically meant the only viable tactic was to bomber spam, and then if you had fewer fighters and bombers than the enemy you'd probably lose.