#10
Post
by wildweasel » Sun Nov 11, 2012 4:44 am
I feel I should be making a public statement about this whole thing, to clarify my stances, what irked me, and how to not irk me in the future. And, most importantly, an apology for flipping out.
Header the First: Mistakes Were Made
I was not asked or notified ahead of time that SNS was planning on using my mod for one of their meetups. This, in itself, I do not have a problem with. People shouldn't have to ask me permission just to play with my mods, and really, who am I to tell people they can't play? I will admit, I was a bit excited to find that Zandronum players could now play WW-Nazis-V2 in online co-op, even though the execution was not quite what I was expecting. I admit, it is a little childish of me to call the mod "neutered" when most of the changes are aesthetic.
Had this happened to another mod team that is more strict about changes made to their work (anything on /idgames that says "users MAY NOT use this file as a base for other files" etc.), it might have gone far worse than it has. Yes, mistakes were made, but it is knowledge for the future, that can be learned from. All it really means is that the organization team (whoever they may be) just needs to be a little bit more careful, and maybe I need to be a bit less pissy when stuff like this happens. =P
Header the Second: Knowledge for the Future
In the future, if you'd like to make a mod-of-a-mod based on any of my works, all you really need to do is get in touch with me and ask. As TerminusEst said earlier, the Nazis faction for ZDoomWars does indeed have my blessing (and he even reported regularly to me via PM on the ZDoom forums to ask my opinions on some changes, if I recall; I never asked him to do that, but it's still cool that he thought to ask me about it), and really, all it took was asking if it was alright. All I generally tend to ask of mods-of-mods is that the original credits remain intact, and that the final result not overwrite the original mod that it's based on.
Which brings me to the other thing: the mod used for SNS #45 was not named differently from the mod on which it was based. If any unfortunate SNS players happen to store all their WAD files in the same folder, Ivan's modified ww-nazis-v2.pk3 would overwrite mine, meaning the experience would be "stuck" in Zandronum mode, and some players might not notice what happened, perhaps coming to me to report bugs that only cropped up in the modified version (just hypothetically, of course; not trying to say Ivan's work is buggy at all). I've been speaking with ViciousPariah over IRC this evening, and he suggested to me that future SNS mods be named with the "sns" tag to indicate that they are different from the ones you could get from, say, the /idgames archives.
Header the Third: Apologies
I apologize, as sincerely as can be conveyed via text on a message board. I apologize to Ivan for flipping out about the changes made to my mod, and especially for implying that his modified version was "neutered." I apologize to the SNS players and organizers, if I've come off as hostile towards the whole thing.
