Question about mod tools and techniques

[anonymson]

I'm more than happy to help out, but at the moment I have no idea what tools are required and how to do stuff. Then there's the entire issue of who has control over what material and how it's distributed. Coming from a SC4 background like MandelSoft I can say the workflow is quite different from what I gather here. My biggest annoyance with the ETS2 community so far is the fact that most mods seem to be distributed only through shortened links that forces a user to click them providing an ad revenue for the creator. In my view this approach is inherently wrong and content that we create in our own spare time should be free of charge. If there's a real issue of getting profit from this content, then add a donate button or force the user to actually pay real money for it (will result in piracy).

[Nico]

I don't really want to start a big discussion again about those pay links but think about this:

1: It takes 5 little seconds. After that you can download and play 1000 of hours on this map.
2: We have to maintain this website and buy licenses for software (Im happy to do that but Im not crazy, and I think I can speak for ScuL as well).
3: Those links have almost no harm. I know a pay link for a picture or for a one file mod is annoying but I think that our mod can be catigorised as a bigger one.

If it annoys you a lot Im really sorry but that is how we decided it to do. No real profit making is intended, for that I have a job.

[anonymson]

1: It takes 5 little seconds. After that you can download and play 1000 of hours on this map.

Timing is not a problem. The problem is that forcing a user to provide ad revenue by hiding your links in ad wrappers is a bit objectionable to me.

2: We have to maintain this website and buy licenses for software (Im happy to do that but Im not crazy, and I think I can speak for ScuL as well).

Interesting, what software you use? So far I've only heard of Blender being used for 3D-modeling which is free software. This site runs phpBB, which is also free software. Please enlighten me though, I haven't really looked into what tools are required in this community.

3: Those links have almost no harm. I know a pay link for a picture or for a one file mod is annoying but I think that our mod can be catigorised as a bigger one.

I agree that your mod is quite big and is more deserving than a small one file mod, as you write. On the other hand, the biggest and most widely used Simcity 4 mod, the Network Addon Mod (of which I am a team member), has been downloaded over a million times and has been developed solely by members in their spare time, all free of charge on several different sites. The same approach applies for all other custom content in the SC4 community.

If it annoys you a lot Im really sorry but that is how we decided it to do. No real profit making is intended, for that I have a job.

It annoys me a bit, and I think it only makes this community more posionous by having such and approach. I still enjoy your mod though, I was just very surprised to find no way to download it without having to click an ad wrapped link. Having an link shorterner type of ad wrapper also makes it impossible to see the URL it leads to. I'd prefer an transparent approach, I really dislike link shorterners overall.

[ScuL]

This is totally off-topic in this thread but there are few points that have to be expanded

1) You can't compare the Simcity community with the ETS2 community. The first one seems (from what I've heard) much more mature with people contributing in an adult way. The ETS2 community consists of a huge chunk of people in the age category between 11 and 16 who have no money, and generally there is a lot of ripping and re-releasing under another name going on. If you don't protect yourself towards this into some extent you get a 13-year old boy re-releasing your mod under his name on some website in Turkmenistan blended in with other rip-off truck models for instance, which then result into negative feedback about the map mod. It's because of this level of immaturity that we have somewhat "shielded" our stuff.
2) We use Zmodeler3 which was originally the only tool to edit SCS models. It costs quite a bit of money but now that we are used to its workflow it seems pointless to try and learn Blender (which in my opinion is a piece of shit to use)
https://www.zmodeler3.com/
3) In the end how we distribute our files is our own business. The amount of revenue generated by links & ads is minimal but it helps us to sustain the cost (this website runs on a dedicated server which costs €70 per year as well plus €20 for the domain)

Now please get this thread back to sign fixes and not the mod/piracy/protect debate

[MandelSoft]

Issue #1 can be solved by select distribution channels. For the SimCity 4 community, there are only a select few distribution channels (STEX, LEX, PLEX, ToutSimCities, SimCity Kurier), which make it easy to control who's releasing what and where and if it's a valid release. The ETS 2 community misses these select distribution channels, which makes it harder to monitor these files.

The SimCity community does contain younger people (13 is the minimum age for all of the SimCity sites due to website laws and rules). I've met quite some people from the 13-16 demographic on SimTropolis. Most of them seems OK, but as always there are a few rotten apples (being a moderator there, I know how to deal with them). And occasionally, we spot some plagiarism too, which is easy to spot on this central distribution channels, and we deal with the offender appropriately (not with an instant ban, but at least with a warning that this is not allowed by the site rules). But still, selected distribution channels does help to prevent mod stealing. The better question is: who's willing to set up such a service for ETS2? I think that might be the biggest problem here...

Although you may like Zmodeler, Blender is an alternative for people who don't like to pay money (or find it too risky) for a tool that may or may not work like they want to. If you want to edit SCS files in Blender, you'll need the Blender2SCS plugin for that. It does take a while to get used to the tools, but if it does the job, so be it. You'll also need the SCS Extractor to unpack SCS files, though this doesn't work for protected mods, but it does work for the base game.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to my PC this week, so I may be back later with my fixes

Best,
MandelSoft

[Nico]

No problem. If you want we can provide even more tools like SCSeditor for editing the pmd files in an easy way. (also used for creating .tobj etc )

Anyway nice that ur helping (and that u are from the Netherlands )

[NikolaD]

I have one question and that is whether it is possible when creating a mod or maps or fashion for example, to make you say when entering a city or passing by a club to hear some music or hear the horn of the car or to create a sound that would entered a little vibrancy to cities, which would contribute to a more realistic look ....

[MandelSoft]

So, I've made a huge overhaul of the A4/A15/A16 interchange in Rotterdam. It looks gorgeous, yet, there are some bugs that prevent this beauty from functioning:



There are only a few quite severe problems with it:
- The Rotterdam area is now full of invisible walls, making the East interchange undriveable. Something tells me that the crash barriers are causing that. Does this ever happened before while you were making the Scandinavia Map?
- Traffic is disappearing on random points, especially on the "forks". Did this happen to you too, and if so, what's the solution?

Best,
MandelSoft

[Nico]

Wow that looks very good. Do you have something like skype to get some contact?? Maybe, if you want, you can improve SCS parts and be a part of Promods.

So for your problems:

- The Rotterdam area is now full of invisible walls, making the East interchange undriveable. Something tells me that the crash barriers are causing that. Does this ever happened before while you were making the Scandinavia Map?

Select all the roads. Now go to item properties and tick the box no boundary (for roads and prefabs)

- Traffic is disappearing on random points, especially on the "forks". Did this happen to you too, and if so, what's the solution?

Prefabs were give to us by FLD. I see that you used the newest ones which I never used or tested. It could be that they are faulty. For that we need to contact FLD.

[MandelSoft]

Thanks for the help, Nico, the No Boundaries thing did the trick and now everything works like a charm. Too bad the prefabs don't allow AI yet, but hey, it's functional

I'd like to help you out, though I might not have that much time in the future. The summer holidays are almost over and I have another community to manage too. But at least thanks for the offer.

And yes, I do have Skype. I shoudn't be hard to find there

EDIT: I think I've find out why the AI keeps on disappearing: It turns out that the game doesn't like two prefabs (puzzle pieces may be a better term for this now) directly connected to each other. This means I have to do a little reconstruction at the transitions and the splits...