Author Topic: A matter of simplification  (Read 5292 times)

Kaldarasha

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A matter of simplification
« on: 2014-07-18 14:01:33 »
I have posted this in the 7th Heaven tool section:
I haven't added the mod path for only one plenty of reasons:
I have enough of finding out why a texture don't work and of the extra work with manual copy'n'paste, only because some authors wants to separate their mods and changing the name of a mod path (Bootleg, DK, Avalanche, Reunion). We don't need this with 7th Heaven anymore, (actually we never needed this). Lets call it 'textures' (because that's all what it is) and later will follow 'audio' and 'voice' into the mod folder (maybe 'extra_shader' if Aali finds a suitable way for the light layer replacement).
Lets came to this agreement, then we don't need the extra option to set Aali's modpath. And it looks better sorted in a 7.H mod, if every external texture (and its folder) is stored in 'textures'. I can imagine that someone is confused to see field.lgp and field at once. Some people try to learn how another mod authors has built their mods, so it won't only helps us to have a better sorted mod structure. I also don't won't to store the same texture doubled, one in bootleg/battle/ and one in Reunion/battle/ only to be prepared for a possible mod path swap. Of course I could direct 7th Heaven to use the mod path /mods/bootleg, BUT if I change it in the opengl config to Reunion then I need to direct 7th Heaven to the new modpath too or else none texture mod will work. This causes only problems at the end.

So for the sake of lesser (user) bug reports let us:
  • name the mod path for external textures 'textures'
  • point 7th Heaven only to .../mods
  • place in the 7.H. mods all external texture stuff in 'textures'

There is a lot of stuff in Aali's custom driver which is useful for moders and setting another mod path for testing is one of those, but I don't want to bug the average user with it. In future the New Timer option will also be gone, because the bug I had with it is solved. It's simply a 'it has to be on' option now.

I don't think that there is any advantage anymore to use for mods different mod path folders. In the end I will merge the mod folders anyway and a less experienced FF7 mod user will merge them in a bad way and complain then why it's broken now.
With 7th Heaven I practically don't overwrite textures anymore entirely. If a mod has a bad texture impact then it's easy to contact the mod author, so he can make his texture pack optional or even make a compatible version for another mod.