Modding Discussion Elitism in Starbound, How it affects Modding, You and the Future of the Game Itself.

The majority of your post is just a straight up lie, and it only shows that you haven't a clue what you are talking about here. I don't recall a single instance of anyone calling anyone else a "Moron" for not knowing something. At the very MOST we may have said they are lazy because they did not even bother searching or attempting to understand resources that were linked to them. The only, and I mean ONLY SINGLE INSTANCE where "Elitism" even came into play was in regards to the "Drawables" exploit that people were used to draw Goatse/porn on peoples multiplayer servers, or using mods to deliberately crash clients. If you cant understand why us more experianced modders wanted to keep that information from everyone, then please leave the thread. That ship has already come and sailed.

In regards to JSON and Lua, there are DOZENS of tutorials, and a good majority of them written by myself and @xxswatelitexx (Mostly Him recently, as school took over for me) teaching you all how to do some pretty advanced stuff, and even teach you the basics of the Lua programming language. We have not released part 2 yet, which we were waiting for the Lua API commands to stop changing so often which would make many of the guides obsolete in a week or so. You complain about not having the time to even GATHER the resources needed to learn how to mod? Imagine how much time it takes to WRITE the resources for you in a clear and easy manner for you to understand? I (And MANY others here) take a very substantial amount of time browsing the forums here helping who we can with various problems. At one point it was just myself and a select few others giving ANY sort of modding help on these subforums.

If you are going to call people out for being "Elitists", or say that we dont "contribute" to help you learn what we took the time to learn ourselves first - then make sure you point fingers at the right people, which by now is pretty much not a single soul. If we could figure out the things we know, then so can you. The fact that we dont always choose to help you all figure out that changing some JSON key named "scriptDelta" in a .object file will change the rate at which scripts run is not automatically "Elitism" just because you dont understand what most of these self-explanatory JSON keys do.

 

You can't have this knowledge because it's "exploitable". It's obvious, that's why we didn't help you. We're not elitist, you're just lazy.

What a fine example of the elitist attitude that is ruining this modding scene.

 

Because staying silent on a particular topic, and ONLY a particular topic makes us "Elitist". Yes. Exactly. Totally. And Elitists TOTALLY write tutorials teaching others how to mod, or check the forum daily to help others, or post "Need any modding/scripting help? Send me a PM" in their signature. Or got nominated for a badge given out for consistently helping others with modding

You're just as ignorant as the other guy.

 

It didn't sound to me as if @SteamCloud was pointing any fingers, especially at the helpful modders here on the forums. I think that he was referring generally to the type of modders who mod solely for the purpose of running around on multiplayer servers in cool armor, flaunting violently powerful weapons, and answering in vague, unhelpful ways when asked how these things were done. Sadly, these sorts of modders are still a problem.

 

Sounded to me like a collective circular motion of the finger in our general direction.

 

I honestly didn't read the date

That's exactly what I do actually but with a bit less game changing mods. Only things that add blocks or a couple good weapons and ship stuff ... Never mind I do exactly what you do

 

"She" is not pointing any fingers at anyone in particular or implying an "Elitist" attitude. The "moron" is implied when someone asks some kind of question and someone else responds with "If you had read ___, you would understand ___." This individual could have avoided responding or they could have given some link of where to look. I DO see many great tutorials on this site and am aware of the work involved in creating them. Sometimes they are hard to find and they are not all listed on the two mod link pages provided on this site.

Back to "Elitist"; I was slammed for posting links incorrectly on the main forum. When I blundered trying to follow the moderators instructions I was accused of doing something nasty. It did make me wonder if there was a really good reason why there aren't more people contributing to content on this and the wikis site. What do I really know? I haven't been here for as long as some people; all I know is what I can see as a new-comer.

I do know that many people (customers) will probably not bother telling you guys they are upset but might create nasty mods or slam the game in other forums. It may be an inappropriate response but many players (customers) are young children who are still learning how to behave socially. As such, more mature participants on this site are a role-models. What kind of message do we (adults) want to send to them?

 

I've only been "involved" with modding Starbound for about the past month. I bought the game a while ago, but stopped for a while, only recently returning. I can easily consider myself a newcomer as well.

I highly doubt that the main userbase of Starbound are children. The game is not marketed as such, and only really mentioned on sites that children do not normally frequent. You are (unsuccessfully) trying to play the "Think of the children" card when it does not apply. The "mature participants" of the site should know how to take criticism and appropriately apply it, or disregard it depending on how you view it, which is exactly why I don't believe in sugar coating my words, since we are all adults, we should know how to react when people may not be very helpful. The internet is not a children's playground.


The only time I've ever encountered someone say anything like "You would know X if you read Y" is when, yes, I should have read X. I was too quick to post a thread without doing proper research, which seems to happen a lot around here, most people don'e seem to bother researching their problems or questions before hand. Most time the people are indeed the ones to blame, not those that replied in a seemingly unhelpful manner.

 

I don't believe in sugar-coating either.

 

Even with that format, even THAT is still helpfull since it is directing them to read some topic that answers their question. In all the instances that I am personally aware of, the link was already given elsewhere within the thread and the user simply didnt take the time to read it. In regards to the modding tutorials not linked on the main sticky? Again, as I said earlier: That takes time! Not everyone has time to sit here and babysit each thread and continuously update the tutorials in a sticky. The information IS out there, and its on you to take the time to look - not us wasting our time to spoon-feed you on how to do something. We already took the time to WRITE the thing, the very least you could do is take the time to search. Learn to use the search features and narrow the topic type to include the "Tutorial" tag. BAM! Every single tutorial ever written on these forums. There is absolutely no excuse for not being able to do this.

Since you didnt really provide the entire context, I still have no idea as to what you are talking about. But if you are going to threads and posting how to incorrectly solve a problem (And thank you for trying!) of course you should be called out on your mistake. That way others know that the solution was incorrect - or potentially harmfull (Like say... suggesting someone merging all their mods into the pack file found in assets/packed.pak? I have and will call you a moron if you suggest something like this) when they come across the thread from searching for the same issue.

The average "customer" like you say is not a modder. They wont be doing anything like we are. They download mods and install them... that's it. This section is completely irrelevant. We are not talking about kids or messages here. We are talking about "Elitism".

 

Woo! Best answer!

Id like to thank people, for things, and stuff. Couldn't have done it without you!

 

Usually on our server we have a strong modding playerbase that mods vanilla, that is "mods" that work on vanilla MP, custom techs, drawables, animations, etc...
There is pretty amazing things done, but there's also "beggars" everywhere, they want the knowledge but they don't want for work for it. Usually most of the known things were work and effort of a person that should have the right to not share it. And that makes many people mad.

Usually there's things we don't share because the knowledge can be used for both good and evil, specially on the multiplayer scenario. So what keeps the biggest multiplayer communities of starbound safe? It's simple, the fact we fight to not let potentially damaging knowlegde leak.

It was a fight that even required hundreds of people complain to some mods on the official database to be removed, that even had the intention of be used for grief and attack servers, to a point of corrupt other players save files. And how frustrated we are the "mod policy" literally allows it. I honestly tell you, if some things that were publicly posted here, stayed public, by this time there would be almost no starbound servers alive.

That's just my input on a multiplayer modding scenario, that i don't feel to be much about Elitism. Not about actual Elitism on normal SP Mods.

 

So if I get this right, the main issues that contribute to some info being vague is that people do not want to support laziness and they want to make it harder for malicious people to cause trouble.

I will say that it is possible to help people by directing them to resources without telling them they are lazy and you do not have to get mad about it. If they are truly lazy then they will have to give up at some point. If they persist and are irritating about it then just ignore them. You can only do so much.

There are many wise people out there that say that you can not change negative behaviour in others with more negative behaviour (I understand how the blood can boil sometimes.) All you achieve is to build a wall and nobody improves resulting in the world becoming an uglier place for everyone.

I am not an expert on Servers but doesn't a mod have to be installed on the server for it to affect others in a negative fashion? At the very least does not everyone have to have the same mod installed on their computer? If so, it seems to me the real issue is that someone betrayed the trust of others on a server. Then the best strategy is to kick them off and remove the mod. It isn't cool to punish others because you want to prevent all and any possibility of anyone ever betraying your trust again. Nobody has rights to that sort of guarantee in life and if you try you can lead a very isolated( and boring) life.

 

Not to be rude, but every time you post, its only been revealing how out of the loop you are in regards to what modding is and isn't capable of. If you are going to present an argument on an opinion on the matter to have a legitimate discussion, I would expect you to at least be knowledgeable in what you are discussing.

No. Not even close. There are fully clientside mods that can completely destroy other players games.
Techs are completely clientside, so you do not need the mod on the server to run. Techs can provide complete scripting access to the entire games API to a very wide amount of features - Ranging from changing poly collisions, spawing limiteless number of projectiles around players, teleporting, destroying blocks, spawing items, making yourself seemingly invincible, etc. It also has the ability to put on custom scripted effects onto other players - and when that effect gets sent over to said player, they crash because the effect is not found in their assets. Then whenever they try and load that character, the game crashes and the character is essentially corrupt and is lost. You want to see people just do that sort of stuff to you in MP and destroy all your progress? You want people literally cheating their way through the game in MP?

Another example of non-serverside only mods are the entire category of item exploits since the data is saved onto the item itself. This topic itself rose around this problem. People were using the random generated items properties to draw huge pornographic images onto servers. Of course every single "Griefer" "Troll" or whatever you want to call them wants to know how, and we refuse to let them screw up multiplayer. This is the mindset of Narks that just because we are trying to be helpful in reducing the access to these people, we are elitists.

Give this a read and tell me what you think:
http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/pornographic-griefing-in-the-wild.76676/

You hit the nail on the head.

 

Yes the end is that starbound server software at this moment has no separation of client and server when it comes of mods (that is one big problem devs admit they will fix).
So they can enforce any kind of things on MP that can do really harmful things when the intention isn't good, from crashing the server / players, corrupting, lagging, to even mess up one player starbound installation. The power clients have is just incredible, and at this stage nothing on the server side can't help it.

That's why, if there was public information of things that could be used against servers, you can bet it would spread like a cancer and in not much time it would be a nightmare on the multiplayer communities because people would have one easy way to do it. So as you said "they want to make it harder for malicious people to cause trouble" is pretty much what we do. As @severedskullz exampled the drawables alone are used to do amazing things, but also troll people displaying porn images on their screens.

I can give one example of some time ago someone asked on reddit for "griefing / hacking tools for servers" and i was amazed of the replies leaking things that have to stay locked on a "pandora box", as the sound exploit that when used on MP can "RIP" HeadSet Players to a point, it can be even dangerous to one person health. I had once dealt with a situation like this and the person had to go see a doctor next day because it wasn't feeling well. I just informed other server owners, poked all the staff of Reddit to take that post down, and it was. Now imagine if there was a public post around with that specific information to all griefers/hackers to know they could do that!

If that example doesn't makes you understand why some knowledge has to be buried for security reasons and not elitism, i don't know how to explain it better.

 

Its people wanting to know that information, and us refusing to give it to them leads them to try and put some sort of "pressure" on us by calling us elitists to release said information. Nothing more. There is no such thing as "Elitism" in this game. Join #starbound-modding and people can learn everything there is.

 

It is interesting. I have until now had a suspicion of what may be going on. If I wanted to do something malicious (I would never do so) I would create a wonderful and amazing mod and load up to this site. Then I would wait for lots of people to download it. I would join a server (perhaps also invite people I like) and trigger the hidden code to activate the malicious code. I would sit back and laugh at all the people who had called me stupid and lazy.

 

Its even simpler than that. Make a tech thats spawns a projectil with a custom "Corrupted" (as in deliberately missing from other client's assets) status effect, join up any and every server, and use the tech on all the players you meet. BAM. Instant corruption of every single player's characters. You dont even have to upload the mod, you just need to join a server.

And as @Bacon stated, as a server owner, theres nothing you can do to stop it. Theres no such thing as asset integrity checks, or any seperation betwen client and server. The server just willingly does whatever the clients request. You cant just say "HEY SERVER! NO CUSTOM TECHS!". That stuff just doesnt exist.

 

If the most important issue is people protecting their characters then it should be possible to write a batch file that will backup your character every so often. It can't guarantee 100% protection but you wouldn't lose everything. I will look into it myself.