Place Controversial items, exotic guns, and dead rising-esque weapons into mod manager mods

[dwarfkoala]

I understand that this is probably going already on people's minds, but it's not an issue yet, so I figured i'd make one.

As of now, thanks to Galenevil's framework and bevapdin's heroic effort to make mod manager functional, we can now load mods into mod manager. We already have a couple mods, but as a whole mod manager has not seen much use.

There are piles and piles of arguments about what cataclysm should be on the forum. It ranges from "the most realistic zombie simulator possible" to "dead rising style zombie apocalypse" to "B-movie sci fi apocalypse" to "minecraft with zombies". Clearly, it is impossible to create one single maingame implementation that satisfies everybody. Keep in content, and people who don't like the content are mad. Remove content, and people who liked the content are mad.

I think that this argument is tainting the game community. Mod manager is, to me, the single most hopeful method of solving this deadlock. If we place the more controversial things into mods, then we can satisfy every party. Don't like swords? At the click of a button you can take swords out of your game.

Here's the three groups of items that seem most controversial to me:

Controversial items

I am seriously hesitant to peg any one thing as controversial, but some items to some people severely break immersion. Such items include the infamous fursuit, the kitty outfit, and so forth.

Advanced Guns

I, personally, am all for more guns in the game. There is, of course, some obvious questions as to how New England is full of exotic weaponry. Rivtech weapons, RPG-7 rocket launchers, grenade launchers, really really rare weapons like the American 180 and the tec-9.

Dead-rising esque weapons

This is probably going to be the easiest one to do, as the distinction between "semi-realistic" weapon and "dead-risingesque weapon" are obvious. Chainsaw latajangs, flameswords, probably the flamethrower spraycan, the still-in-PR block buster and vierhandler, and so forth.

I project at least a 10% decrease in whining if we do this, dependent on weather conditions and local topography.

Information on the behavior of mod manager can be found in a variety of places, including https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/5551 https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/5405 We cannot currently use mods to remove things, but we can put maingame things into a mod. It should be completely possible to put preexisting content into a mod.

This will not solve inherent balance problems with the combat system, so that will have to wait.

[KA101]

Just gonna point out that "ridiculous" is a value judgment and can come off as insulting. Thanks for keeping that in mind.

[Zireael07]

Let's name it 'controversial outfits' instead of ridiculous.

And yes, I agree completely with dwarfkoala that it should decrease the whining. Balance problems will remain (although they are being fixed in separate PRs), but at least there will be no "remove X because it's stupid/silly/doesn't match the lore" whining.

[Chase-san]

I wouldn't mind seeing this as a replacement for the classic zombies toggle as well. We could pick and choose our enemies. (Though all the classical zombie types should remain in the main game, imho).

But zombies like smokers, and shockers, and other enemies could.

[dwarfkoala]

Controversial, not ridiculous. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/5909 I'm liking John-Candlebury's medieval items mod moving. Let's see how this goes.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

Why exactly does everybody want to chop the game into pieces and call them mods now?

Variety is the spice of life, right? Part of the fun of C:DDA is the wide variety of stuff to play with in-game.

[Chase-san]

It will still be there, it will just be more customizable.

[dwarfkoala]

Yup, and this seems like the best way to reach an agreement between content-remove and content-keep parties.

That said, I would like a flag for mods that makes it on by default.

[KA101]

I'll revisit these when that flag's installed.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

I foresee three big problems with this:

1) Who decides what's 'core' game content and what isn't? Where does one draw the line? Seems like folks agree that zombies are important, but does that mean everything else in the game gets chopped and moved to 'mods' aside from zombies and rocks and sticks? Whose call is it?

2) Who decides what's 'controversial' or 'ridiculous'? There's a lot of very mercurial, easily-offended voices in this debate. If it's currently in the game, you can safely assume that the development team thought it was a good idea. Contrary to the current popular opinion, we don't merge anything without actually testing it and taking into consideration whether it's a good idea or not. So when everything starts getting winnowed for being 'silly' do we draw the line at chainsaws? Chainsaws as weapons are pretty silly. Do we draw the line at teapots? I mean, a pot can do everything it can and then some; it's just a flavor item if you want to get technical. Do we draw the line at skirts and dresses? A lot of the player base seems to think anything that suggests that there's female members of Cataworld is objectionable or comedic.

3) Why not make a mod that packages all that you want together with none of the things you don't, instead of removing the things that you don't want from the vanilla game? The job of the developers is to weed out the bad and merge the good. Aside from a vocal minority, most everyone has been quite happy with our decisions in this regard. Why should the entire game have to change to satisfy a few players? If you don't like something you don't have to use it, and if you want a version of C:DDA that contains nothing invented prior to 1850 or so, why not make a mod that includes only the stuff you want; so as not to mess with the default gameplay that everyone else is enjoying?

[Chase-san]

You seem to be very vocal against separating the current core content into mods. Are you that against an extra click or two when creating a new world?

The problem with having subtractive mods is I am not sure if they are even possible with the current system, and even if they are/were, every time something new is added to the 'core' the mod will have to be updated to remove it, and replacement mods (that replace the core) are a great deal of work.

This way, everyone wins, not just the majority, the minority can get what they want too, and the majority isn't really hampered or harmed by it.

What is more, separating the current content into mods isn't a very difficult process, and shouldn't be a massive block on future development.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

Simplest solution I see would be a flag that allows mods to overwrite and remove (sorry, I wasn't aware they can't currently do that) content, rather than ripping content from the main game files.

In other words, a flag that says 'use ONLY content from this mod'.

[Chase-san]

Being able to update and remove content from the core (or other mods) with mods would be nice, but then we get into the whole 'load order' fiasco other games suffer.

Using only content from a certain mod is a replacement mod, which as I mentioned, is a great deal of work.

[kevingranade]

Just to clarify my position, items that exist in reality being pushed out to mods based soley on "ridiculousness" or being controversial is a non-starter. There are valid arguments for limiting the variety of guns, melee weapons, and other functional game items. Those arguments fall flat when applied to decorative clothing items unless you want to move all decorative clothing items to a mod. If it really bugs you that headbands with fake cat ears exist in the game, your options are to edit them out of the json or wait for mod manager v2 that will let you blacklist individual items.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, I don't really see the movement of decorative clothing items out as a reason for a mod split. That said what I do see as valid reasons for moving content out for now:

Unrealistic weapons - These are things like the heatblades. Could you make one in real life? Yes, but would it be something anyone would actually consider doing? Not really. These "Dead-rising"-esque weapons can probably be moved out into their own "mod" (Possibly name it "Wack Cataclysm" or something similar).

Variety limitations - Because not everyone can recite from memory the differences between a M16 and an AR-15. Yes, it's a good idea to have a wide variety of weapons or armor, but when you start to create things that are 90% and up identical with different names it's time to shuffle some of that content out.

[dwarfkoala]

For disclosure, I'm only mentioning the controversial outfits because of the massive flamewars on the forum. hoping to reduce that here.

[Griffinhart]

I say go whole-hog. Rip out all content from CDDA so that it's just an engine. Everything else can be mods. "Vanilla" CDDA would just be a naked PC armed with only their fists, and nothing to fight against (not even baseline "normal" zombies).

(I'm only mostly kidding.)

[kevingranade]

This increased controversy rather than reducing it. Lesson learned, no longer even considering things are a bad idea just because people are complaining about them, they have to actually be a bad idea.