Author Topic: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?  (Read 8058 times)

Insight

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Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« on: 2016-09-13 11:45:02 »
I am following this forum for around (let me check my profile :-P) eight years now and i have seen great tools / mods / changing stuff for different games, but mainly ff7.
Most mods have been started within their own little universe and contributed to the modding scene. That's great. But it got highly complex with the time with those different mods and dependencies of each other.
As far as i can guess, that was the time when the "Bootleg Configurator" (for FF7) came into action. It deserved its purpose, but couldn't withstand the advanced mechanics of the 7th tool.

It has now been around eight months and i am asking myself: Is Iro is coming back or not? What will happen to 7th?
I mostly fear that we might being stuck with the current version which is far from being perfect (imo).

Since the last two projects were being developed by behind closed doors, which always is a risk if it gets abandoned, and it got shot down because the key developers have been absent (like now with PitBrat? and Iro).

I am just wondering what will be the next step when it comes to modding for ff7 (or 8, other titles)?
I currently see three options:

1) Recreate 7th heaven (checking the compiled code and try to continue the work, and put it on GitHub e.g.)
2) Start a fresh community project on GitHub (or other platforms, idk) where the code can be viewed and might continued by any person who is strong in coding.
3) Moving to another platform which already implements the features we have. Idk if such a platform already exists.

What do you guys think? Any opinions / leads?

Greetings :-)
« Last Edit: 2016-09-13 15:09:15 by Insight »

Fischkopf

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #1 on: 2016-09-13 21:47:19 »
What makes you think 7h is dead?

Insight

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #2 on: 2016-09-14 07:50:10 »
Because Iro has been absent for eight months and we dont know if he is coming back or not, like i have written in the OP.

EQ2Alyza

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #3 on: 2016-09-16 09:48:00 »
7H tool is currently on its last breath I fear. If Iros can't check in at least once a week to just read messages and PMs from those testing the current version, then it will never improve. It's a good tool atm that is functional,  but it still needs work.

The only thing keeping it afloat are catalogs and the few modders who provide IRO versions of their mods to import manually.

If we need to develop a new tool again, then my vote is to create it identical to the current functions of 7H but have a written gameplay on what to develop/fix to make it a complete 1.0 version.

I can't code, nor do I want to learn. I can certainly provide ideas and testing though. Also consider me a good PR admin for all the users coming with questions.
« Last Edit: 2016-09-16 09:51:04 by EQ2Alyza »

Insight

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #4 on: 2016-09-16 10:50:29 »
7H tool is currently on its last breath I fear. If Iros can't check in at least once a week to just read messages and PMs from those testing the current version, then it will never improve. It's a good tool atm that is functional,  but it still needs work.

The only thing keeping it afloat are catalogs and the few modders who provide IRO versions of their mods to import manually.

If we need to develop a new tool again, then my vote is to create it identical to the current functions of 7H but have a written gameplay on what to develop/fix to make it a complete 1.0 version.

I can't code, nor do I want to learn. I can certainly provide ideas and testing though. Also consider me a good PR admin for all the users coming with questions.

That's what I am thinking as well. There can be a lot of improvement,especially when it comes to handling the mods itself. I am not a friend of the current XML structure e.g.

I understand that you don't want to learn a coding language and you don't have to. You are doing fine as now, if you are counting the stuff you have done in the past. :-)

I can offer front-end (wpf) and back-end programming in c#. I will only support an open source approach.

I have no knowledge about the stuff Iro has programmed which is the core of 7th heaven ^^" it should be someone who has already experience in that topic. I could learn that, but my time is scarce.

Just my thoughts about this.

Iros

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #5 on: 2016-09-27 17:59:58 »
Hi,

Unfortunately I do not have the time to work on 7H. Ficedula has contacted me with some good ideas about improvements to the software, so I have sent him the source, and he says he will upload it so that other people can make changes or fixes to it.

I hope the community can improve it further!

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #6 on: 2016-09-27 21:47:04 »
I'll take a crack at it. There's definitely something funky going on in the mod list view that slows the ui down. Might redo in a platform agnostic base. This was made in .NET right?

Our 'main' catalog should honestly be in the program from the get go. UI is functional but a little annoying to get up and going the first time

Taking that a step further, it would be totally doable to even manage a 'reunion' install of the game. If you want to use the translation, the app makes a copy of the game dir and installs it there. Turn off the reunion, then the app executes the mod friendly version of the game. (If dlpb wanted to do that of course.)

Finding mods in the catalog should also be searchable and filterable.

By my measure, you could then do just about anything from qhimm through this one app. No need to read 50 pages of forum posts or use the forum search
« Last Edit: 2016-09-27 22:07:11 by KnifeTheSky77 »

ficedula

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #7 on: 2016-09-28 07:37:52 »
Quote
This was made in .NET right?

Yes, it's all in .NET
The source is up at:  https://bitbucket.org/ficedula/7h/overview

@EQ2Alyza: If you're able to keep track of outstanding issues and let us know what's a confirmed bug and needs fixing that would be extremely helpful.

Luigi Brosse

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #8 on: 2016-09-28 08:24:43 »
Thanks for sharing Iros!

Kaldarasha

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #9 on: 2016-09-28 08:56:00 »
We should make a few development threads for 7th Heaven. The normal Release thread, an FAQ (only for tech related issues) and a roadmap with a global aim, subaims and the milestones to reach every aim, this would help new interested people to claim in into the development process more easily. 7H is currently pretty good controllable, but unattractive and not so intuitive as it could be. I could imagine that someone could write a better mod creator which writes the entire xml.mod and the mod author does only link to the sources and defines when they are active. I have plenty more ideas but atm other things to do in real live. I really hope that this would push 7H forward. (Oh before I forget it, it would be great if you could make support for the steam version).

Insight

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #10 on: 2016-09-28 13:45:41 »
Great stuff, finally the community will be able to progress even further :)

When I have free time, I could help out,but it is the same with Kaldarasha, life calls atm.

ficedula

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #11 on: 2016-09-28 20:28:13 »
We should make a few development threads for 7th Heaven. The normal Release thread, an FAQ (only for tech related issues) and a roadmap with a global aim, subaims and the milestones to reach every aim, this would help new interested people to claim in into the development process more easily.

Sure, go for it.

If anybody has some time, I have a test version at: http://www.ficedula.co.uk/7H_1.52_test.zip

This doesn't have any new features over the last 1.52 release, but if it works (works for me, so hopefully it's good...) then it'll confirm that I've got all the dependencies working correctly - I've had to upgrade some packages and correct some half-complete changes to get it compiling.

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #12 on: 2016-09-29 00:18:43 »
I'll see about getting travis-ci building from the repo if you grant me access, haven't used a continuous integration service with bitbucket OR a .net project yet, which could be interesting

If you could possibly list those deps, that could potentially save some investigating
« Last Edit: 2016-09-29 00:20:51 by KnifeTheSky77 »

ficedula

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Re: Managing FF7 Mods? What's going to happen?
« Reply #13 on: 2016-09-29 06:37:16 »
Repository is public, anyone should be able to pull from it?

The dependencies are (now) all specified as nuget packages, so anything that supports nuget should be fine.