More Awesome Than You!

I was thinking about this a lot yesterday and have started thinking about it again today, and I'm wondering if this is just me thinking stupid thoughts or if this is true in general...

What I was pondering about was the seeming lack, or at least what I perceive as a lack, of tutorials and technical information that is freely shared and available in the community. Now I know there are some tutorials out there and there are some really great ones in various places, but there just seems to be a big lack of tutorials that go beyond the basics and into more detailed information and specific techniques.

For example, there are some basic modding (IE BHAV editing and the like), tutorials out there, but there don't seem to be any that go much deeper. In another example, I know there are some more advanced object creation tutorials out there, but some of these are very outdated or no longer correct/needed due to a new technique that was discovered.

But it's not like the techniques are simply not KNOWN, you can see certain creators using them all the time. Yet it just seems like no one wants to write tutorials explaining how these things work or at the very least write a brief thing that will lead people on the right track to get them to be able to use the same method. You may think "well can't you just open their file and see what they did?" That is partially true, but it may not always be apparent, and people, especially aspiring creators, shouldn't have to go digging around in other people's files to see what they did.

On top of that, there seems to also be a shortage of technical info. For example, the formats of the various resources sometimes change with new expansions, or have new things added, and ever since the original formats were figured out, it doesn't seem like the new formats have been explained anywhere. Of course, I could be wrong on that and may just be looking in the wrong places, but it seems like this is happening to me. However, I feel that if more programs and tools are going to be written, this info needs to be publicly available, not buried somewhere or hidden in a location that only certain people can get to.

Now I'm not saying there's a complete lack of info, but it seems to be so scattered and so sparse that it's difficult to track things down. This is not community friendly. If the community's creativity and ingenuity is to continue to grow, there needs to be a movement to make things happen from all creators. But what I want to know is this: Am I alone in feeling this way? Does anyone else think there needs to be a more open exchange of information? And if there is to be a more open exchange in a centrally located place, WHERE should it be done? At an existing site or at a totally new one? Or should we just try to repost everything in multiple places?

Of course, regardless of what you all say, I do intend to make an effort myself to make more tutorials and share what I know, but I want to know what you all think as far as how I (and I hope others) should go about it?

Thanks for any input you can give. :)

You are absolutely not alone.  You should have seen what I had to go through to track down all the necessary information to make a working custom career, and that seems to be one of the more well-documented forms of mods.  (It struck me as terribly ironic that for a while, whenever someone reported a problem with their game, one of the first answers I'd see was usually "You've probably got a bad custom career, they tend to be buggy."  Well, duh.  Trying to follow two different outdated tutorials and guess at what's changed in SimPE since they were written will do that.)

But yeah, it's the same with a lot of things.  Figuring out the basics of Material Definitions has required me to track down several different MTS2 threads and some from here, and there are some truly useful bits of information--like the fact that you can cut down the file size of many CC items, in some cases dramatically, by compressing the contents--that are perhaps common knowledge in some modding circles, but nobody seems to have gone out of their way to call attention to them.  All too often I'll see someone post a query along the lines of "Where can I learn to do this or do that?" and someone else will post back, "Well, there's no single place you can go to learn that, you have to figure it out by trial and error or get advice from someone else who knows."

God knows how many talented people have been put off the idea of modding altogether because they couldn't figure out how to get started.  Heck, I've been mucking around with it for well over a year now, and there are a bunch of things I'd still like to learn about meshing and BHAV's and so on, but where do I find some real beginner's information?

Personally I'd love to see a centralized archive of some form, maybe in a wiki format. But I don't know how much cooperation you're going to see community-wide, between the drama queens who don't get along with anyone and the "I'm-too-busy-creating-incredible-stuff-to-answer-your-pitiful-questions" crowd...

I wouldn't necessarily say that we (not that I should even assume I can speak for teh community) are stingy per se... but rather I think we (just my assumption) are lazy. :P

I've found that, at least in my personal experience (or maybe I have just been very fortunate) that pretty much, everyone I asked for help has always been more than willing to share their knowledge and/or expertise with me. Including and especially, ye Olde Fat Obstreperous Jerkiness himself. Of course, you pretty much have to kinda sorta demonstrate some level of experience, and at least be as tall as his beefy arm, or what not. :D But even still, most everyone that I've encountered has been more than willing to share what they know.

You just gotta start off by reading up on the basics. It really isn't all that hard, and you don't even really have to be a "real programmer" to make mods for the sims (as far as I'm concerned :P). I think most people are willing to help others who help themselves. Who actually demonstrate that they are making in the very least, some modicum of effort towards learning something for themselves, rather than just being a leech and bitching and complaining and wanting to have stuff handed to them easily and cleanly on a platter (*cough*cough* present company excluded i.e. me, 'natch hehe, I'm such a brat). For the most part, I've seem many peeps be extremely helpful, even more than they really should (in my not so humble opinion), answering even some of the basic questions that could have been easily read in a tutorial or what not.

It's kind of funny how "programmers" tend to be. I find that many of us tend to be more into the "doing" and somewhat into the "helping" but not very much into the documenting. Documenting tends to be for chumps. :P Who needs to document or use comments? If you wrote the code, you better damn well be able to know how to read it. And if you used very obscure, totally abstract, non descriptive function and variable names... well then, you only have yourself to blame. ;D

Yeah... but seriously... documenting/commenting has to be the least fun (or at least in my case, least fun and/or least favorite activitiy) when it comes to coding. Wiki's are kind of neat tho, in that they allow you to be a tad more descriptive and creative when it comes to writing descriptions (that is, if the wikimaster isn't a wikinazi :P).

Anyhew... I just thought I'd reply cuz. I dunno if I would actually contribute. I kinda, sorta would like to, but I'm not all that confident in my writing ability and/or sardonic wit to go with it. Just to demonstrate my laziness, I'll admit that I didn't even bother fully reading your entire post before I decided to launch off into my semi ranty, or at least super rambley, aimless tirade. ;D

Ste

ETA: far too many stupid smilies, plus, i swear i will go back and read your post in its entirety... well... eventully... heh.

Part of the problem is the explosion of MTS2. In the beginning, MTS2 was more modding-centric and such techniques were discussed more frequently. When MTS2 became overrun by people who weren't pushing the frontiers of creation, most of the pioneers headed elsewhere. As MTS2 was no longer really a suitable environment to discuss technical issues without being swamped in clueless people trying to enter above their area of understanding, these discussions stopped happening.

Well, for the most part, very few people take an interest in file formats. Those few remaining people have either scattered to the winds, or have some vested interest in keeping SimPE as a monopoly on editing. Nobody has seriously expressed an interest in breaking the back of that monopoly before now. The other part of the issue is that when some technical bit of info is discovered, it's not readily apparent if anyone actually cares. In the absence of any apparent desire to use this info, the people in question thus don't bother to write it down anywhere or tell anyone unless someone asks.

There *SHOULD* be more exchange of information, but the problem is, there's no singular way to achieve this. Every attempt to do so tends to become enmired in politics, especially when the people who tend to start such efforts are not the people who actually have any real interest in the pursuing the matter. MTS2 is an example of this: Delphy doesn't do anything with the game itself, and it is unclear what his motives are in doing this at all.

Of course! A TRUE Klingon warrior does not comment his code! Also, programmers that stop to document things typically forget what they were doing. Half the time we don't even know what we're doing at all, and it's hard to write something when you're not sure it actually WORKS. By the time you finish, it's now a chunk of code where you can no longer remember how you got there in the first place, so you just use it by cutting and pasting.

Programmers also prefer answering directed questions over "How do I do some amazingly vague, general task" questions. Part of this is part of the programmer thought process: Programmers, accustomed to speaking to computers, think in small incremental steps. If you ask a programmer about some large, general task, you will get a blank stare. Ask a programmer how to plant a tree, not how to create a forest. Ask where the wrench is, not how to change the tire.

Well we could try to make a MATY wiki again but have it tend to revolve around Modding than Retardo Land stuff.  However, I know Pescado's against this due to the fact that there are wikis out there for Sims that don't even.  The Sims 2 Wiki at Wikka barely has anything on it, thanks to the fact that no one can make new articles.

I'm certain there's some partnership with MTS2 and SimPE about not disclosing DBPF package info.  It's sort of suspicious that there's no data about it out there (Supposedly there's a Mac viewer for it) and any data that was given on making a tool like SimPE was destroyed by MTS2.  Speaking of formats, how is Lua related to Sims?  Is it the sourcecode for the package format or something?

Hell, there's problems even compiling SimPE with Visual C#.  Open my foot.  I think it's hilarious that Quaxi's making such a big deal of the code switching to .NET 2.0 and saying it's the next big thing when .NET 3.0 is the actual next version.

Currently, I'd say Dizzy and Ingelogical are probably the resident experts on .package formatting. There may or may not be an intentional conspiracy to suppress the information (programmers are not known to be the most randomly forthcoming), but the apparent obfuscation surrounding every aspect of SimPE is difficult to crack. Even apparently *GETTING* the source is severely obfuscated.

Isn't the localization package the source?  Anyway, the problem with the localization package/source is the fact that you need to use a Microsoftian product to compile it and it doesn't run unless you mess with it.  There's no way to get the old interface back easily anyway, for some reason Windows Forms likes to make everything huge.

Now since I haven't looked since Petz came out but when I last looked on how to do a career all I got were "this tut is no longer helpful due to the new SimPE & it's not going to be updated" ect ect. Maybe you'd be willing to help me out cause I still want to do it! hehe.

But on the whole, yes I agree it is hard to track down the needed information. It seems to be to scattered, it wasn't until recently that I fully figured out how to do the simple simple (I only say simple now cause I finally got it) re-coloring of objects. Damn that was hell to follow old tuts that didn't match the new SimPE. But I did it and I was damn happy to figure it out finally. Following two or three old tuts. I also managed not to ask any questions along the way! I'd now be willing to write a tut for it that goes along with the new SimPE. But where would I put it? I like the idea of a wiki thing, or maybe there could be a new forum only for tuts and such.

The thing about all of this is like others have stated some want it handed to them without having to read it fully. Or as Pescado said to many people come into topics they don't even know the basics about and clog up the post with questions not really related making the discussions dwindle to nothing. I personally love reading those discussions about programming or coding, even though I am usually lost the whole time, because I occasionally pick up a tid bit here and there but never add in anything. Although I am one of those who would rather try to figure it out myself given a real starting point, or at least a decent recent tut that actually explains the version of programs I have to use. Where as a lot of people are not like that and just ask and ask instead of trying to re-read or whatever!

Once I figure something out I am more than willing to try and write it out for others to try to learn from so I would actually be interested in helping the cause. However I fear that with new EP's and new versions of SimPE coming out people might lose interest in keeping up to date. And I also fear that since I do not understand SimPE that well I might not be able to update with it but I'd certainly try!

Oh and Pescado I have read on your "SimPE must be destroyed" thread and LOVE the idea of seperate programs(?) for seperate aspects of it. Such as a gameplay altercation, a re-coloring one, ect ect. Because there is a lot in there I will never want to touch or even look at so I'd like it if I could focus on just one section kind of like Bodyshop in a way.

Mac viewer: http://homepage.mac.com/petergould/DBPF/index.html

By format info, do you mean a) how to split a package file into resources or b) what each resource does?  I know I've found the information for a) in the past, including how to decompress compressed resources.

I think what JMP meant by "fits on a floppy" is that the end users should be able to download a program that "weighs" less than 1.44 meg and just runs.  You shouldn't have to download a ton of other stuff to get it to work.  The size of the compiler is the developer's problem. 

BTW, there's a lot of stuff on the MTS2 wiki.  Don't know what you were looking at but here is stuff that I found useful:
DBPF format in general: http://216.32.95.40/wiki/DBPF
String tables: http://216.32.95.40/wiki/STR
Packages (including compression): http://216.32.95.40/wiki/Packages
File format codes: http://216.32.95.40/wiki/InternalFormats

I haven't tried to work on careers in a while, so that may very well be.  Wonder why it's not to be updated.   Was that the tutorial using Bidou's Career Editor or the one for doing it the hard way?

Anyway, I agree with pretty much everything you said...nothing's more annoying than tearing your hair out trying to figure out a basic procedure that you know should be simplicity itself, and then realize that it is, once you know what you're doing, but you couldn't have acquired that information any way except trial and error.  It's wonderful that many of the people in the know are willing to help out--several of them have been very kind to me, and I'm certainly grateful--but who wants to have to tug at a more experienced modder's sleeve every single time they need to figure something out?  Especially when there are some (not the majority, but some) who clearly can't abide being pestered, and as often as not the guy whose signature contains a list of ways not to try to contact him is the acknowledged expert on what you're trying to do... *Sighs*

Anyway, whinging aside, it'd help if people would at least remove hopelessly outdated tutorials to cut down on confusion.  Or if some of the less arcane functions of SimPE (heh, and the more arcane ones, which would make Pes happy) were spun off into standalone programs that wouldn't change their interface every time they updated.  I can't imagine there's any overriding technical reason why some of the spiffy plugin functions couldn't be made to work separately if their creators wanted to go that route.  I know some people are already considering or working on such projects, and God bless and best of luck to 'em.

Speaking as a writer rather than a programmer - I understand the programmer reluctance to document, and I think it is at the heart of the problem. I mean, I don't know if I was any help at all with the ACR documentation.

Programmers are not the most sociable people. It's an inherent nature of the alien thought process required to be a programmer: It distances you from the peasantry.

SimPE is very fond of arbitrary interface changes. It's one of the things that absolutely pisses me off about it...particularly when those interface changes actually REMOVE information and functionality!

Granted, but oddly enough, Pes, you strike me as one of the more accessible ones.  At least to those of us who don't mind being kicked, stomped, beaten, harpooned, exploded, neck-wrung, creatively insulted, and otherwise burninated on a regular basis...


Yeah, no kidding.  Or effectively hide it, even.  I think it struck me that something wasn't quite kosher a few iterations back when I suddenly couldn't find where to change a GUID or Group ID.  :p

I've had the same problems that others are complaining about here. I'm not a complete idiot - I taught myself Flash for christ's sake, but SimPE has proven to be damn near impossible to learn, because the tutorials are outdated and each new version of the programme is completely different from the last. I admire Quaxi, and appreciate that he is willing to offer these amazing tools to the community for free, but really some consistency is in order. I can't even figure out how to register a unique GUID with this latest version of SimPE, and that *used* to be one of the simpler tasks!

Oh... I thought I was getting deja vu as I have just come from this same thread over at N99

I can't see the slightest benefit in starting a 2nd Wiki.  I don't think I need to explain why do I?   Anyone can contribute to the existing one it's not like there is any censorship on it.

The lack of decent info is intentional. There has always been a deliberate effort by Maxis and EA to prevent modding. They no longer actively pursue modders, but they don't encourage modders either. There are several reasons, but the main ones are:

1) Internals for Sims are horrible, arbitrary and unsightly. They don't want people to know what bad code designers they are.
2) Freedom to modify your game scares people in high places (i.e. people who don't realize that Jack Thompson is an idiot who lies for a living).
3) Modders sometimes make better original objects than EA hackers, thus reducing the value of their product.

Not to contradict, Dizzy, as I have no personal experience with trying to pry information out of Maxis/EA, but I know I have heard people say that Maxoids have been very helpful in figuring out some of the code.  Is that a left-hand/right-hand thing, do you think?  Or something that no longer applies now that Maxis is out of the picture?

Also, to borrow a page from the ongoing paysite/free site debate, I'm not sure it's to EA's advantage to discourage modders from making great content...it keeps interest in the game alive between expansions and adds to the overall value of the game (and I'd be very surprised if it hasn't given EA programmers some pretty spiffy ideas they wouldn't have had otherwise.)  It's even been suggested they've hidden certain content specifically so modders could find it, though I know a lot of people don't buy that claim.  Maybe they're trying to have it both ways...

Could very well be a lefthand/righthand thing. On one hand, they SEEM to share information, but then promptly attempt to have noteworthy modders murdered, like the noteworthy attempt on Dizzy.

For what it's worth, the wiki at MTS2 has been the exchange that got things where they are. People long absent deciphered the file format and divined the basic purpose for the various parts, based at least in part to the work that was done on SimCity4. Those that have done additional research since, myself included, stand on the shoulders of giants (my apologies to Sir Isaac Newton).

There is plenty of room for the critics to contribute themselves to the effort. There are plenty of known facts that have been disclosed in threads here (like dizzy's discoveries) and at MTS2 which are not in the wiki because NO ONE HAS WRITTEN IT UP. If you're waiting for someone else to do it for you, then you're a part of the problem.

The only in-depth thing I have done at the wiki is the GMDC reference. I didn't start it, and I didn't discover everything in it, but I have made my contribution and I keep it updated. I have some additional recent work that will be added when I get the last research finished.

<* Wes *>

(b.t.w Where/what is N99??)

Well, some of us don't write anything up either because it would be quickly nuked, or because we don't actually have access to do so in the first place.

This is all just reverse-engineering. EA permits custom skins, walls and floors. The rest are all hacks.

If EA was interested in overall value, they would have released the source code to their game engine. Have they ever released source for anything? Have they ever allowed anyone other than EA/Maxis to use Edith?

Clearly, the decision makers are focused on short-term profits.

Inside information sharing events have become a lot further apart since MaxoidTom disappeared.

There are claims that they've allowed some people to use it, but I dismiss these claims as nothing more than lies and propaganda created by the Liberal-controlled media.

There are rumors that MaxoidTom was either forced to resign and/or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, perhaps due to accidentally blurting out the wrong thing.

Neighborhood 99 at http://p218.ezboard.com/bstarlightsims

So it would look as good as Blender?

Wes, I had another thought about your tool proposition at the PJSE forum, if you want to give it some thought.

I looked there this AM. Will cruise on over soon.
<* Wes *>

This too is what I want to see, but my question is still "should it be at the MTS2 Wiki or elsewhere?" While I know that the sims2wiki is open to everyone to edit, I personally don't see a lot of contributions made to it (yes, I've contributed some and plan on doing more) but still, in general, there seems to be little info being added/updated.

Note that I'm not trying to say anything bad about MTS2 or the sims2wiki, but still, it seems to be a general observation, and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. And if there is a general consensus that there's no need for a new location, what can be done to encourage people to edit the existing wiki?

I agree partially with this. There do still seem to be some discussions going on, but nowhere near the level that was there before. Plus, at this point, it seems to all be from the same people. Then again, I may be looking in the wrong place or something, who knows. :P

All the more reason for a movement to get this info more publicly available now. :)

I agree that the politics is a major problem, and while there may be no set way to completely avoid such politics, there have to be some ways to reduce the amount of them that goes on. At least, I would think that if a completely neutral place was started that such a thing could happen.

So far as I know it's just like another type of thing used by the game for certain behaviors and whatnot. Specifically, I believe it's used in areas that Simantics (normal BHAVs) CAN'T be used. I don't know that there's a lot of documentation on it though, but I have seem SOMETHING about it on MTS2 in the forums. I'll have to track that down again.


Well, that may be partially true from EAs standpoint, but there have been modders that have decoded and continue to decode the file formats. That's what I'm mainly talking about, the fact that the info that is discovered in this process hasn't, at least since the initial findings, seemed to be updated.

Well, I hadn't thrown that idea out on these forums yet, but clearly it seems that it may not be a good route to take.

Indeed, and kudos to Breon, Datafarmer, Karybdis, DarkMatter, and all the others that worked on that and to MTS2 for having the info available at their old wiki.

And as I previously mentioned, I have done some contributing to the MTS2 wiki in the past and I'm not saying I don't plan to in the future. But I'm not an expert in all the fields of custom content creation, so I can't contribute to anything and everything. My main question is that if there are so many creators and modders out there who DO know how certain things work, why haven't they contributed to the areas that they understand? Surely it can't be that hard for people who may know bits and pieces about certain things to post that stuff at the wiki, and it's not like doing so is an incredible burden or anything.

And for you and others who do contribute what you know, thanks. :)

------

Wow, that was a lot to reply to. :P

I hope I'm not coming off as a whiner or anything, I'm really not trying to whine, I'm just trying to understand all of this. If it comes down to only a few people, myself included, going around and scavenging all the little bits and pieces of info we can find and adding them to the MTS2 wiki, so be it. At least that's SOMETHING which is better than the little that goes on now. *Shrug*

What I just said at N99 is how about putting together a list or database of the most uptodate tutorials and info, then the actual content could be anywhere, it would just need a team of people to ensure the links were up to date and still led to relevant information.

Politics is hard to dodge, and paradoxically a "neutral" place is most likely to be consumed by politics. I mean, MTS2 seemed pretty neutral...but due to the apparent detachment of the administration and general non-involvement, traits you'd THINK would promote neutrality, it has instead paradoxically fostered politicization. When the people in charge of the site have no involvement in the actual business, it seems that they quickly become targets for manipulation by those who do, and lacking any grounding in the matter, tend to be easily swayed in one extreme direction.

See: Quaxi was originally a largely neutral party, but has since effectively fallen under the sway of a number of others who have shut out the inputs of everyone else, resulting in SimPE becoming the monstrosity it is. Since Quaxi himself does not actually attempt to really use what he produces, he doesn't really realize what's happening.

What are you blathering on about now?  Who are these people and how have they shut out your input?

I've been in the IT business for several years. (and I still CAN't Type!  Oh, yea!  that means I'm in IT - we can't type!)  One of the major problems, as has already been discussed here, is that programmers and creators, while they may be excellent at producing products, aren't necessarily able to discuss what they do coherently with lay people.    As J.M.alluded to, programmers look at the immediate problem, not the overview.  So, if you ask them a specific question on how to fix a specific problem, they'll go through that index in their mind and pop out the answer.  Don't expect them to write a manual though.  Programmers type even worse than I do.  :0) They are brilliant, but myopic and tend to be lazy about writing down their spaghetti code.  AND, It takes a lot of time to write stuff well.

What is needed is the rarer person - the one who stands in the door - the one who is not a programmer, but knows enough about what is going on, who will turn around and translate what the programmer has done/said for those who don't have a clue. AND, the door person, needs to be a technical writer.

I've spent a lot of time trudging thorough various sites seeking tutorial content.  Lots of them are fantastic but I've had to bash my head on the keyboard a few times trying to figure out what they were trying to teach me - a lot of it is due to the fact that meshing is a complex subject and you need to be a very good, logical writer to note the exact steps you use.  The main problem is the order in that they tend to present their instructions in inverse order or in illogical steps or use inconsistent labeling.  In stead of giving exact, 1,2,3 steps, they tell you things like,  "Now copy your file to your tutorial folder and extract the cres and save it to your project folder. etc.  (I'm making up those steps.)  In the end, I finally figure out what I am supposed to be doing and re-write the instructions for myself.  But, I am not so rude to post that to the original tutorial author.   i have just about decided to write a start to finish create, modify and add to your mesh tutorial that covers the basics, except, I always find new things that I don't know how to do yet.  :0)

the other problem is bandwidth,.  I've had such terrible connectivity problems (I live out in the middle of nowhere) that I just don't have the time to wait for pages to load, so I just ask and come back later and hope my head doesn't get bit off for not looking in the obvious to them place. So far I have had excellent responses to my specific questions.  Upload files and photos really help clarify the issue.  A skilled mesher can  spot the fact that I've sproinged a mesh and tell me exactly what I did wrong when I didn't have a clue that I'd thought was a great thing, was in actuality that I'd done did a bad thing anyway.  (Now if you can figure out the above content and rewrite it skillfully, you are the next DOCUMENTATION EXPERT!)  :0)

V's rewrite:
Because of my poor connectivity I risk being slapped for not doing my own research but just posting questions and then coming back later. I have found, however, that when I ask specific questions and include files & photos I usually receive excellent responses. In fact a skilled mesher can spot a problem and tell me exactly what I did wrong even on files that I thought were good, working meshes.

*****
I would be glad to be of use to the community, so I'd be happy to volunteer to rewrite whatever documentation needs to be written if nobody else better or more anxious is dying for the job.

I want to be careful so as not to appear to be commercializing anything. I don't wanna catch heck. :)
I had the same connectivity problems and lack of options, being 'way out in the middle of Texas.
I finally decided to try a satellite internet service.
For about $50/mo I get 500Kbs service. While it is not as good as wired service, due to the inherent lag of satellite round trips (a minor speed-of-light problem), it has worked pretty well. I have some difficulties when it rains hard, but I usually shut down then because of lightning.
I was also burdened by poor dialup modem speed... the fastest I could get connected at was 26K. And that cost nearly half of what the satellite costs. I did have to shell out about $200 for the equipment, but I think I paid that much money for my first modem (back in the olden days).
Enough said. I'm not recommending anything, just reporting my own solution to the problem you describe (I no longer cringe at anything over 1MB in size).

Sorry, just had to respond...
For all you programmers that don't comment your code... :P (tongue lashing)... QA's worst nightmare!!! Argh!  >:(
I've been on both sides, and it is not too hard to put comments in your code, comments help with debugging.
End rant.  :-X

I've thought of going into this area. I made a business card once with my occupation as Nerd / Human Interface.  ;D

I liaise between the IT dept and my team at work, I literally have to put things into different sets of language for the communication to happen sometimes.

A TRUE Klingon warrrior does not comment his code!

Klingon warriors do not write code, they tend to leave it to programmers, like we humans do.

Obviously you've never heard of things like "CodeWarrior".

"CodeWarrior" was originally a C++ compiler for Macs.

Interestingly no one has disputed the existence of Klingons...

All true Klingons are warriors, whether they program or not.  Only wussy Federation geeks think the two are mutually exclusive.

And you obviously haven't been to a Star Trek convention lately, Inge.  If we denied they exist they'd kick our collective ass.

Lol I have *never* been to a star trek convention.  I am not even sure I believe Captain Kirk really went to space.  I think he was an actor or something.

Say it ain't so! *sobs uncontrollably* ::)

In the very little programming I've done, I've had comments all over the place. This is probably because I'm not actually a programmer, so I think in English rather than code.

I'm another one who would be willing to help with translating programmers. I've felt the same problem in regard to finding advice on how to do things -- I've figured out a couple incredibly simple things on my own, but I can't go any farther. I also find many of the tutorials that do exist to be extremely difficult to understand. It seems that SimPE isn't the best way to really learn how to mod, either. It's great for recolors and editing saved games, but there isn't any way I can see to tear into the real guts of the game with it.

Like it or not, SimPE is the best way to learn to mod right now. Other solutions are in the works, but nothing for beginners.

Same, I've done a little Visual Basic, a little Java, a little fuzzy logic Clips etc. My code looks like an essay with code bits in between - just so I can remember what it's supposed to do!  ;D

And no self respecting Klingon would ever write some shifty little virus or worm. Klingons would program a septicemia attack that would spread across the intergalacticnet like a big blue ball visible from across the galaxy...

And by "best", you mean "only", right? How's that I/O library coming?

@miros - I didn't even know the MTS2 wiki was still around, I'll have to take a look at it later.

I'm terrible at commenting my code, even if I bother to do so at all.  My comments usually just state the obvious like "assigns X to Y" when the code is "x = y;".  I haven't programmed a whole lot though and only know some C.

I don't know about this "middleman" stuff, if you're a good programmer you should be able to explain your work to a common person.

And if you really don't care whether anyone understands your code or not, remember 90% of edits are by the original author - I bet in a couple of months' time *you* won't remember what the hell your code was doing unless you comment it! :P

I dunno about explaining it to a COMMON person, unless "the magical computer fairy waves her wand and makes it happen" qualifies as an explanation.

Actually, what you want there is a teacher - we do that sort of thing all the time.  The crucial skill is being able to guage the level of understanding and capabilities of your readers.

I love that explanation!  I'm sure my students will love hearing explanations along the lines of "the mathematics fairy waves her magic wand and makes it so, just shut up and do it already!".   ::)

I'm feeling guilty right now that I can't offer any useful help on this.  I can write and I have plenty of time, but I'm a research/analyst type not a techie.  We know enough to be dangerous is the way I think of us "super users".  Anyway I've never done any meshing or even a recolour and I don't have or want all the EPs.  I'll check out the wiki's and see if there are any areas I can contribute on.  I spend a lot of time helping simmers learn and find things... that's a role I like..  If there's a place I should hang out and help... point me at it.

Yes, you should be able to do your own commenting, especially if you "comment as you go."  I.E. get one small thing working and write a sentence that tells what it does and why. 

You also want to code in error checking; "f = fopen()" should be immediately followed by "if ( f == -1 ) return"

In terms of "learning to comment":  Better variable names help!  "x = y" could be anything.  "drawHeight = height / 3" tells you that drawHeight is going to be used to draw something scaled to 1/3 the original size.  That's what you'd put in your comment for people too tired to read the code properly.  Yes, people look at code tired, especially open source projects that they're working on in their own time.

My last boss required lots of comments -- the theory of what you did in the original code or why it doesn't work and how you fixed it for bug fixes.  One of my coworkers laughed his butt off when I said "search for a comment containing the words 'some moronic programs'" when he needed to see a certain bug fix, but he found it.  Between comments and white space, actual code was far less than 1/2 of the line count in most of our source files.

Another important form of commenting is a separate "change notes" file so that testing could quickly see which bugs had been worked on.  That way they don't waste time retesting Bug X that hadn't been fixed or skip testing Bug Y that was only partially fixed.  This is helpful even if you have a bug database!

@dizzy -- there's a py-to-exe utility that will turn your python files into freestanding executables that will pass JMP's "fits on a floppy" test.

The problem with that approach is that when I write it, I have no idea whether it actually works or why. :P

Pff. That doesn't work. fopen returns NULL on failure, and also requires ARGUMENTS, so the correct response would be something like if( !( f=fopen(blahblahblah) ) { die_horribly(); }

In reply to the first post in this thread,

I totally agree with all of Jade's points, and I think that there should be a central wiki that is totally user-driven, such as the users submit content, the users vote on what they think the wiki should consist of, how it should be organized, etc. instead of the site administrators making all of the decisions about the wiki. The wiki should be easier to use and easier to find than the currently existing MTS2 wiki.  This wiki should consist of:

• Links and repostings of tutorials already made on various websites
• New tutorials that people write
• Information about the file formats that TS2 uses, information that would help users create new modding tools
• Comments and explanations about various parts of TS2 game files, such as what some BHAVs do in the objects.package of the TS2 games
• General helpful information about various parts of TS2 game files, such as what to do and not do when modding a BHAV in an objects.package
• Any other information that the TS2 modding community would like to be put on the wiki

I strongly emphasize that the database should be a wiki because it is the only way that one can ever hope to achieve a totally user-driven website.  If enough people will support me and help me maintain it, I volunteer to create a wiki on my website and have it serve as the new database for the TS2 modding community.

If you mean py2exe, that only works that way if your code is pure Python. If you also need pygtk+gtk+glade+gobject (which is how I get a UI), then you need something like an installer (which fails his no installer rule).


I didn't say "better" than anything else, did I?  :D

I/O is pretty much complete. At this point, it's a matter of doing a standard tool for parsing your .dat files (i.e. something more or less like sed). And maybe a packer if I actually care about doing compression.

...what *IS* a .dat file? I don't remember these files being a part of any TS2 filespec.

That's what you get when you use the "extract" tool. It doesn't matter what they're called. I just called them that so you can easily clean them up when you're done with them (i.e. "del *.dat").

I think the biggest problem is time. Good, user-friendly, technical documentation takes a lot of effort to produce. I've contributed a single tutorial to MTS2 so far and that only got done because I was off work sick for a couple of days and bored. I found that most of the information I needed was already out there but tucked away in various tutorials/threads, odd other bits I figured out myself or already knew. I also find that a lot of the info seems to be step-by-step 'how to do X' with no explanation of the bigger picture. As a programmer I've always wanted to understand why I'm doing something and how it works, not just blindly follow instructions.

(I've always commented my code/used sensible variable names etc, but I've mainly worked in teams - if it's well-written you don't get bugged by 'what', 'how', 'why' questions every five minutes.)

Even more important to comment as you go.  Write a comment about what you intend it to do, write your first attempt at the code.  If it works, great.  If it doesn't, you compare your code to your intentions and fix the discrepancy.  I don't go as far as "write the whole program in pseudo code or comments first, then fill in the code," but some people do!


a) I have too many languages in my head.  Some languages return NULL if the file didn't open.  Some return -1.  That's the purpose of context sensitive help.  Click fopen, press F1, you get all the info you could possibly need.
b) It's easier for most people to read if the fopen is on one line and the error check is on another.
c) I used return as an example.  Technically, it should be "throw();" and there should be a whole series of "try{}catch{}" statements in the routines that call it.  But at the level we're discussing, simply having the error check in there is the important thing.  Too many people would write that routine assuming the filename is valid, exists, etc., and never put in the "if (!f) returnorthrowordiehorribly();"  Unfortunately, several of those people work for EA/Maxis.
d) You probably don't want an often-used/low-level routine to "diehorribly."  This leads to unexpected program termination (i.e. crashes), corrupt files, etc. because the routines that called the low-level routine never got a chance to clean up after themselves.


Suggestion: optionally use the 4 letter "resource type" (if it's composed of printable characters) as the suffix on the extracted files.


I think a central repository of links to existing stuff would be more helpful.  Possibly include a comment on whether the info is correct/wrong/outdated/wrongheaded.

Feel free to rewrite the code.  :P