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[sayke]

A monopoly over original content!? What, now nobody else is allowed to create original content because Masterwork is just too good!? 

Gosh... Of all the complaints I've ever seen about a mod, that one has to take the cake: It's too good and thus nobody wants to play anything else!!

[Baffler]

The complaint is less "this mod is too good, nerf plox!" than it is "most everything good gets absorbed by this mod sooner or later, and it chokes out other things."

[Nopenope]

This is not Masterwork. This is Text Will Be Text, a DFHack plugin. Meph did not develop this. He was not involved. He most likely doesn't know how it works (based on his insistence of not being a programmer). It is not Masterwork, it's something that it grabbed and ate and put into the settings without a single word as to what it actually is except on the very surface. The very fact that you think that this is somehow something Masterwork does is the exact reason why I dislike it so much.

Incidentally that's one of the reasons I play the mod sometimes, even though I turn off many features. As far as I know he's the only one who took the time of putting all the newest dfhackery features into one single mod (and respecting compatibility), and for that I give him credit because having to fetch every little thing that isn't included in the main repo really does get old.

The complaint is less "this mod is too good, nerf plox!" than it is "most everything good gets absorbed by this mod sooner or later, and it chokes out other things."

But absorbing other things is good in some ways. The bay12 community does an amazing job at filling the obvious missing features in DF due to its decentralized nature - there'll always be someone ready to come up with something new after a while. However, due to its very decentralized nature, third-party content management gets really clunky after a while. This is not a criticism, only a comparison of order and chaos, so to speak - both have their upsides and drawbacks.

Let's say you're a long-time user, meaning you've been on the forums long enough to be aware of most notable stuff. Let's say you play DF with soundsense, dfhack (with twbt or rendermax, neither of which are in the main repo), rubble and dwarf therapist on (not saying everyone does this, I don't either, but I'm willing to bet a majority does play with one of them). Let's say you mod your own little thing such as fixing raws or minor creature additions. Let's say you're a fan of druidism and add the script to your hack folder. Sure it's a little tedious to all of this by hand, but then you have your very own DF customization. Until there's an update (dfhack or df) that breaks everything and then you have to refetch everything, or wait because of course not every maintainer is going to keep up at the same rhythm, if at all. That's where an all-encompassing thing like MW comes into handy. Because it includes every cool feature, I know that everything will be up to date and tested for me when it does update. Sure there's a lot of this "everything" that I won't use, but the parts I will are there.

I feel a lot of people are criticizing the Masterwork philosophy (have everything cool into one mod) which in my opinion is a good thing and should even be a standard - the problem is that sometimes it doesn't keep up with that philosophy and not everything is cool to my tastes.

...Masterwork is replicating the rise of monopolies...
In the DF modding community, each mod is analogous to a small business with players being customers.  Masterwork is taking those businesses and turning them into a monopoly.  The only way we dissolved those was by courts.  This does not bode well for the economy that is the DF modding community if it winds up going as far as monopolies did.

The reason small businesses can't keep up with big monopolies is because they don't have the power, workforce and such to reach as wide an audience as big monopolies do. This is different here, because MW is maintained by one guy, like literally every other project on bay12 save for dfhackery. Anyone can start their own all-encompassing pack that isn't MW if they take the time to do it (which is incidentally what PeridexisErrant does).

[Meph]

Along with the many features like seeing items at different z-levels, images of items on the ground like a picture of an axe for an axe, etc..

This is not Masterwork. This is Text Will Be Text, a DFHack plugin. Meph did not develop this. He was not involved. He most likely doesn't know how it works (based on his insistence of not being a programmer). It is not Masterwork, it's something that it grabbed and ate and put into the settings without a single word as to what it actually is except on the very surface. The very fact that you think that this is somehow something Masterwork does is the exact reason why I dislike it so much.

Slow down there Putnam, you know exactly that I made the 3 tilesets. Twbt allows me to add things that way, but I wrote the how-to on itemgraphics, made the first item sprites, made the vanilla override files that that Lnp/start pack now uses, and Masterwork is still the only mod using it. Yes, I did not write that plugin, but without my work the StarterPack wouldnt have item graphics either. I also released a vanilla version with them... saying that I did no work is a bit wrong.

When I started the mod, everyone was playing Genesis.

Mdf got so popular because of the modularity (I hope thats an actual word) and because I put in more hours than any other modder. Yes, I do get donations, but as it stand atm its way below 1$ per hour

Masterwork is also open source, whenever people ask about the Gui source or if they can copy raws, I allow it. Its not only a black hole that sucks things in, its also a giant repository of mods that people can learn from.

About the MDF smothers the community: It might have an effect. But what could I do to stop that? Stop mod developement?

If there is a big modpack, it will be the same. People wouldnt download individual minor mods, instead take "Putnams Mod Startr Pack", and say the same things about it... for example that it has item graphics and multizlevel view... Disregarding who the real author is, even if he is listed in the credits.

[Authority2]

I've heard of Masterwork, but I've never tried it. Maybe when it's updated for 40.x.

[snelg]

Been playing it almost exclusively before the newer df releases. The mod feels a bit bloated but since most of it can be turned off it's not that much of a problem. I especially like how it adds possible alternate sources for resources you might not have available in your embark location (for instance sand, water or trees). I'm not too fond of the magic or diseases. But since it's modular I can just get rid of those. Also never tried any of the other races.

New creatures were interesting as well since it does make exploring more interesting.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

About the MDF smothers the community: It might have an effect. But what could I do to stop that? Stop mod developement?

If there is a big modpack, it will be the same. People wouldnt download individual minor mods, instead take "Putnams Mod Startr Pack", and say the same things about it... for example that it has item graphics and multizlevel view... Disregarding who the real author is, even if he is listed in the credits.

I'm not saying to stop the mod.  You've put a colossal amount of work into it, and as you said, even if you did, another would just come along and replace it.  The black hole effect is a symptom, not the core difficulty.  The core is that more people will flock to ease of use, not wanting to go through the process of manually installing, which most mods do.  Maybe if they were  simple to install and uninstall, maybe it would be different.  That's why I am going to be trying to do this.  If it's ease of use, then that might solve the problem.  If not, then at least there would now exist a simple to use mod and utilities downloader.

I feel a lot of people are criticizing the Masterwork philosophy (have everything cool into one mod) which in my opinion is a good thing and should even be a standard - the problem is that sometimes it doesn't keep up with that philosophy and not everything is cool to my tastes.

Personally, I don't think it should be a standard.  As I've seen from this thread, there are a great number of complaints about the on/off system masterwork uses, because you only want one or two things, and if its all bundled together, then there is going to be stuff you don't want that you cannot isolate out.

[Paphi]

If such a huge amount of Masterwork is optional, why is it even all bundled together to begin with? My opinion is that overhaul mods should have a clear idea of the changes they effect and the end result of those changes should be fairly concise - enough to summarize the reason behind every change, at least. Frankly, Masterwork has gone far beyond the conventional definitions of mod, and I don't see this as a good thing.


In regards to this idea of a monopoly, I agree. To those who wish to take the metaphor literally, obviously it seems inane. But when something becomes as large as Masterwork, for better or worse it creates an atmosphere hostile to new content. Why bother creating something if your creation, if bad, attracts few-to-no users, and if good, is merely absorbed into Masterwork? So it places this throttle on creative input.

There are obviously no hard restrictions on revealing content, but when the very real possibility of having your creation absorbed against your wishes into this blob is constantly present, that reality makes people apprehensive to contribute. There have been many situations in regards to Minecraft where someone creates a mod and then is forced to defend their objections to having their content packaged with another mod, which is completely backwards, which further leads to large mods being made intentionally incompatible with nearly any other mod.

In a community as large and varied as DF's, this foreshadows a very dark road. How long until there are just a handful of big mods that don't work with each other? How long until people have to release their mods quietly so as to keep them out of the large modpacks? How long until DFHack scripts stagnate due to conflicts over ownership and maintenance?

If I make a tool, I know how this tool works, and I can use it to make other tools that all work together. If I borrow a bunch of tools from different people, I have to rig everything else together based on this non-standard group of tools which are not mine and which I do not understand.

Perhaps the largest issue with MW simply is Meph putting every little neat thing he sees into his pretty box.

[Putnam]

I don't think Meph would include something against one's wishes.

[Paphi]

Granted, I doubt Meph would blatantly steal work, but I worry about the precedents being set by MW, and what I've seen in other, arguably less sensible, communities.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Granted, I doubt Meph would blatantly steal work, but I worry about the precedents being set by MW, and what I've seen in other, arguably less sensible, communities.

So more along the lines that people are compelled to make their mods based off of Masterwork or else their efforts wouldn't get attention, rather than work basically being stolen?

[Nopenope]

stuff

You extrapolate too much. There are many people who play with a few minor mods, it's not like MW is actually a threat to other mods. It's not like there's a competition going on since major mods and minor mods target people with different tastes, not even mentioning people who use both. I have yet to see a single modder on bay12 who complained that his creativity was "stifled" by MW. Plus the "mod aggregation counter" is reset whenever Toady or the dfhack team does an update since it usually breaks everything but minor mods.

As for ownership, I think it's bad taste not to allow people to reuse your work, so I don't feel the urge to defend the people who do this. I for one make my own modding soup which is not useful to anyone but me, but people who release something for people to use must expect people to, well, use it. Fortunately, again, I have yet to see a single person on bay12 who was disgruntled that someone deemed their work interesting enough to use it in their project.

And having every little nice thing, is, well, pretty nice. That's even the point, I don't see why anyone would object to someone doing it.

[Eric Blank]

I've been turned off of masterwork most by the need for a launcher to manage all the various components that don't all make sense, the necessity of extensive documentation which isn't effectively provided, the sheer number of component parts and the standardized materials system. You can't opt-out of that. But what if you want to? Then don't play masterwork, apparently. ??

I'm no stranger to throwing things into my game just because it sounded cool at the time, but at some point you just wind up with mod pudding that you can't keep track of, update efficiently, and many things which don't necessarily play nice together. How do you even keep mods from other modders that you include up to date and compatible?

Its also remained unclear to me; just how friendly is masterwork's raw structure towards introducing other mods which rely on the vanilla raw structures? Are all the normal materials, tissues, interaction templates and inorganics still there or would every other mod need to be made compatible with masterwork?

[Putnam]

Every mod needs to be made compatible. I completely gave up on making a race for Masterwork due entirely to the general (ironic) bloatedness of the raws.

[sayke]

If such a huge amount of Masterwork is optional, why is it even all bundled together to begin with?

Because this way it's optional. That's what the bundling does!

Why bother creating something if your creation, if bad, attracts few-to-no users, and if good, is merely absorbed into Masterwork?

Well, if it's bad, then it shouldn't attract users in the first place... And if it's good, why wouldn't you want it included as an option in an easy-to-use collection of similarly good things?

When the very real possibility of having your creation absorbed against your wishes into this blob is constantly present...

That is actually not a possibility, at all. Meph is very careful to ask for permission and give credit where due.

How long until there are just a handful of big mods that don't work with each other?

What about having big modular mods where people can turn things on and off as they like?

How long until people have to release their mods quietly so as to keep them out of the large modpacks?

This is an absurd "concern", and has nothing to do with Masterwork. Meph asks permission and gives credit. If somebody else doesn't, then feel free to take it up with whoever that is.

How long until DFHack scripts stagnate due to conflicts over ownership and maintenance?

This has nothing to do with Masterwork.

If I make a tool, I know how this tool works, and I can use it to make other tools that all work together.

That's one thing Meph did, and everyone else is welcome to try to do it as well!

If I borrow a bunch of tools from different people, I have to rig everything else together based on this non-standard group of tools which are not mine and which I do not understand.

That's another thing Meph did, and everyone else is welcome to try to do it as well!

Perhaps the largest issue with MW simply is Meph putting every little neat thing he sees into his pretty box.

And that is an issue because...? The box is too pretty and full of neat stuff!? God...

Dear gord - this has to be the loudest complaining that the grapes are just too sour that I have ever heard in my life! =D

"In an old fable by Aesop, a hungry fox noticed a bunch of juicy grapes hanging from a vine. After several failed attempts to reach the grapes, the fox gave up and insisted that he didn't want them anyway because they were probably sour. Nowadays when somebody expresses sour grapes, it means that they put down something simply because they can't have it. The phrase is often used incorrectly as another way to express bitterness or resentment." (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sour+Grapes)

I've been turned off of masterwork most by the need for a launcher to manage all the various components that don't all make sense, the necessity of extensive documentation which isn't effectively provided, the sheer number of component parts and the standardized materials system. You can't opt-out of that. But what if you want to? Then don't play masterwork, apparently. ??

Yep! If only having several types of wood is just too problematic for you, rather than the hundreds of near-identical types of wood just with different names that vanilla uses, then you are welcome to customize the mod to do that.

How do you even keep mods from other modders that you include up to date and compatible?

Yea, how does Meph even do that, anyway? By putting an immense amount of time into it, that's how. Let me know when you put a tenth as much in!

Its also remained unclear to me; just how friendly is masterwork's raw structure towards introducing other mods which rely on the vanilla raw structures? Are all the normal materials, tissues, interaction templates and inorganics still there or would every other mod need to be made compatible with masterwork?

Eh, you've got to tweak it a bit, but it's doable, as exemplified by the fact that multiple other people besides Meph have made excellent races for Masterwork that have been added in, to excellent effect!

Every mod needs to be made compatible. I completely gave up on making a race for Masterwork due entirely to the general (ironic) bloatedness of the raws.

If the raws are so impossibly bloated, why do you think other people were able to make such cool races for Masterwork, then, and not any other mod in existence? Smakemupagus (Orcs), Boltungs (Succubi), IndigoFenix (Gnomes)... -Nihil- just got a new race working a few days ago.

If someone is jealous of Masterwork, I would expect them to come up with all kinds of weak-sauce reasons to complain about it. I think the onus is on folks who complain at things like MW, without constructively working on solutions, to demonstrate that they aren't just yowling out of jealousy