Webpage improvements

[rubyFeedback]

Hey guys,

Would it be possible for spellhold studios to actually add more core folks to a listing?

For instance, Lava is creating tons of mods - recently he created:

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/87427/mod-lhannd-the-fallen-ranger

I actually want to contact Lava but I am not using beamdog forum, and direct email is often too complicated. I'd rather suggest issues on github, and if people ignore it that is fine, and if people make use of my feedback that is also fine.

Specifically my long term goal is to abandon weidu and handle all installation of mods and stuff myself, via ruby. I have been using ruby for about 20 years and I can use it on windows fine. But I am not a modder and weidu is confusing and causes issues too. Sometimes the cmd.exe it spawns just freezes and then nothing happens. Also many mods ask questions I don't want to answer because I already know what I want and don't want, so I really need a batch installation.

Now, this is not Lava's fault or problem of course, but right now I simply do not know who is who. I can do a bit of research on beamdog forum but often they just respond to other people asking questions (perfectly understandable) and I don't know who they are. Different people created different mods; and some mods were taken over by other folks and are in maintenance mode only. Finding useful documentation is very difficult. Look at the homepage of weidu for instance:

https://weidu.org/

That seems to have been written in the year 2003 and never updated.

Actually https://spellholdstudios.github.io/ has a better overview and in fact I can find a link to Lava too:

http://www.shsforums.net/user/9063-lava-delvortel/

But that link does not work. So no way to contact Lava I guess.

What my hope here is that folks maintaining https://spellholdstudios.github.io/ could invite everyone to join forces, even if they maintain separate github repositories or other repositories. Just a unified, central entry point, at the least for Baldur's Gate (I don't care about other games, but either way unifying people's effort onto github would be super-helpful for other people too).

My hope is also that https://spellholdstudios.github.io/ could eventually be extended to add hints and useful additional documentation. For instance, I am trying to find out how to handle multiple mods properly without relying on weidu. Creating files and directories I can do just fine via ruby; I don't know what else I have to do. I could call weidu.exe from ruby via system() or `` Kernel backticks (the usual way in ruby how to call external programs, but we can also use popen or popen3 for more advanced control of external programs). But there is just a lack of documentation in general and that is frustrating, since I have to invest more time than necessary. I can only invest some time into games and then have to work on other more important issues again, so I kind of appear but also disappear again.

Anyway. My hope here is that this issue may be considered and the webpage of spellhold studios could be extended. Of course we may use another webpage too but someone has to start, so my hope is that spellhold studios webpage (or rather the folks who maintain that) could extend it into a general helper-website. And invite more people to maintain the webpage of course. For instance it would be super-great if all mod authors could automatically be added if they'd want to. Then they can update content on their own as-is.

Anyway thank you for reading this and perhaps considering it! If someone knows Lava's current contact info that would be nice; also some mods are no longer available, beamdog forum links to pages that are gone. So it would be nice if spellhold studios could also provide up-to-date links for people knowing where to find repositories. Not everyone is using the beamdog forum (I used it in the past but lost my password and login name and I am so lazy that I rather want to just stay on github - it is so much easier to use IMO than traditional webforums, if that plural form even exists ...).

[skellytz]

Need to contact Lava? He's over here: https://www.weaselmods.net/ We're trying to bring the forums back and then we'll sort out the GitHub organization. Thanks!

[Gitjas]

Please consider - and respect - that IE mods are made by people as a hobby, spending countless hours of unpaid voluntarily work. It is the modders' decision how to provide their mods to the public. Plus, what you are asking for is not simple, or it would exist already. A general mod hub, an install order list, a list with current download links - it's all been discussed, started, abandoned, outdated, people burnt out. It is bound to fail simply to how IE modding works, technically as well as how the community is structured.