Defamation law suit preparation against @Zolika1351

[cammy8580]

What should happen

2.4.0 introduced a massive blacklist of many mods. I think the feature list should incorporate an acknowledgement of the blacklist and what mods are blacklisted just for transparency.

Checklist

• [X] Check the latest git build in case it's already implemented.
• [X] Search for other requests of the same feature.

[Tomasak]

blocks all mods that ships with forced downgrader that removes other mods without asking user

https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/assets/11007651/476ff606-d454-4a82-bdaa-6e8b871ee212

[ThirteenAG]

An apology from a person spreading lies and false information about this project and the team behind it, this list is gone in a heartbeat.

They have time to spend 14 hours a day with illegal Take2 property, write walls of text full of lies and defamatory allegations without a single piece of proof, I'm sure it's in the realm of possibility to write two words of an apology.

[cammy8580]

blocks all mods that ships with forced downgrader that removes other mods without asking user

Odd. I've had a couple of other mods that don't force any sort of downgrade get blacklisted. A comprehensive list of what's blacklisted wouldn't hurt.

[ThirteenAG]

Odd. I've had a couple of other mods that don't force any sort of downgrade get blacklisted. A comprehensive list of what's blacklisted wouldn't hurt.

Noted, I'll make sure to make a list when death threats stop.

[cammy8580]

Noted, I'll make sure to make a list when death threats stop.

Apologies, I was in the process of writing my reply before seeing what you posted beforehand.

[SandeMC]

Odd. I've had a couple of other mods that don't force any sort of downgrade get blacklisted. A comprehensive list of what's blacklisted wouldn't hurt.

Noted, I'll make sure to make a list when death threats stop.

I'd like to see those death threats. Especially coming from everybody in the community, as so far you're just claiming that somebody is sending death threats and everybody should be screwed because of that. Are those death threats from Zolika or did he commission anybody to send those death threats?

Not telling you to do anything specific nor am I on anybody's side, but I'm curious.

[ThirteenAG]

It was right there on this repo issues, but github deletes them for violation. If you're subscribed to all activity, you should've received an email with this.

[cammy8580]

It was right there on this repo issues, but github deletes them for violation. If you're subscribed to all activity, you should've received an email with this.

I think they're asking for you to provide some sort of proof. You should have them too, considering you're the owner of the repo. It's just really brash to make such an effort to punish your users for using mods that help extend the reach of fixes that FF 2.0+ don't cover quite yet, and then make blanket statements without any sort of proof. I'm not trying to take a side here either, but punishing your users does far more harm than good.

Not even just that, but also just to silently do this and not state that mods of which are blacklisted as a sort of disclaimer isn't going to help you, and are only going to cause more issue reports in the future of people complaining that their games won't work anymore. It's antithetical to not clarify which mods are listed and only more work on you.

[ThirteenAG]

I think they're asking for you to provide some sort of proof. You should have them too

Will you stop wasting my time? I don't owe you anything, and all proof I have will go to an appropriate authorities if this situation doesn't get resolved. This one was public right here, so I'll post it:

Not even just that, but also just to silently do this and not state that mods of which are blacklisted as a sort of disclaimer

I'm not giving free PR to this cancer you call mods. I'm not the one caused all this. You're barking at the wrong tree.

[cammy8580]

Will you stop wasting my time? I don't owe you anything, and all proof I have will go to an appropriate authorities if this situation doesn't get resolved. This one was public right here, so I'll post it:

I don't intend to waste your time at all, and I don't expect you to owe me, or any community member anything. I'm simply saying that your credibility is at question without any sort of proof of Zolika directly encouraging death threats to be sent your way, In the same way any other bold claim under any other topic would be questioned. The image provided still doesn't address Sande's point.

You are within your own right to show as much or as little proof as possible, but you can't attempt to push a narrative as if it's his fault for the threats and not expect people to question credibility. Threats like the one you listed come from the incompetence and immaturity of the people willing to take time out of their day to make pathetic insults towards you in a github repo. Unfortunately there are bad actors on either side that think providing insensitive insults and threats will do something, and Zolika faces the same problems as you do. People act on their own accord, none of that is Zolika's fault, and none of it is yours either.

I'm not giving free PR to this cancer you call mods. I'm not the one caused all this. You're barking at the wrong tree.

There isn't any PR being provided by making a disclaimer over a blacklist you instate. In fact, creating the blacklist in general doesn't help reduce hostility or anything along the lines of it. Regardless, the blacklist is going to harm your userbase wether if they support you or not, and is only going to further hinder users from achieving the goal of creating a greatly fixed GTA IV copy. I'm simply requesting for you to make it crystal clear as to what mods are blacklisted in order to be as transparent to your users and to not waste your time when people start pouring in asking why ZPatch or various other mods don't work with FF.

[ThirteenAG]

Zolika directly encouraging death threats

Why does it have to be directly? So if he enticed others, that makes it okay?

none of that is Zolika's fault

Forget about death threats and anything I say, others say, where is the proof that all he claimed in his blog post is true? You don't need to see the proof of that, right? It's only when I say something, it needs to be questioned and investigated, but when something is said towards me, I just have to suck it up and keep quiet, so people like you are not bothered with "drama" god forbid.

I'm simply requesting for you to make it crystal clear as to what mods are blacklisted

None that work with Complete Edition, which is the only thing Fusion Fix supports officially.

and to not waste your time when people start pouring in asking why ZPatch or various other mods don't work with FF.

That's actually a good thing, now we can tell them the truth and the reason why they should avoid installing closed source software from mentally unstable authors. Spread awareness and all that. Thanks for the idea!

[cammy8580]

Why does it have to be directly? So if he enticed others, that makes it okay?

To my knowledge, Zolika never "enticed" anything like that, whether it be direct or indirect. Not even in his original blog post. The only thing he stated is to support mods with creators that don't allegedly do such actions that your team has been claimed to do.

Forget about death threats and anything I say, others say, where is the proof that all he claimed in his blog post is true? You don't need to see the proof of that, right? It's only when I say something, it needs to be questioned and investigated, but when something is said towards me, I just have to suck it up and keep quiet, so people like you are not bothered with "drama" god forbid.

I don't want to start talking smack, but multiple members of your team spend time pressing members in other servers in similar fashion to what Zolika describes, and this doesn't come from me making a baseless claim. Multiple community members can back this up, including me, of which a server not even related to IV had your team members pressing me regarding my opinions on you and _AG. I am sure there are other community members that can shed light on what happens.

This itself, already provides far more credibility with anecdotal experiences, even without proof.

None that work with Complete Edition, which is the only thing Fusion Fix supports officially.

FF officially claims to support only CE, but also has at least a rudimentary form of support for preCE following FF 2.0, of which for the longest time had specific builds for preCE and CE. This is extremely apparent in not only your code, but your measures to block GFWL and non-CE mods despite them allegedly not being supported.

That's actually a good thing, now we can tell them the truth and the reason why they should avoid installing closed source software from mentally unstable authors. Spread awareness and all that. Thanks for the idea!

If you want to attempt to do so, It'll only be a matter of your word against his. You do you, man.

[ThirteenAG]

I don't want to start talking smack, but multiple members of your team spend time pressing members in other servers in similar fashion to what Zolika describes, and this doesn't come from me making a baseless claim. Multiple community members can back this up, including me, of which a server not even related to IV had your team members pressing me regarding my opinions on you and _AG. I am sure there are other community members that can shed light on what happens.

Interesting, so you're saying my "team", that only came to be last summer of 2023, starting with this commit: https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/commit/c9d76954bd839528480c2060c36348be6b4a7261 Before that it was almost solo(and mostly dead at that point) project, then more people joined in to contribute more fixes they wanted to implement. After that, they created a time machine without my knowledge, went back to 2020, bullied someone for 3 years, and came back, and didn't even tell me. Well, I would have loved to go back in time, and they didn't even invite me, in that case I agree, they are horrible.

[cammy8580]

Interesting, so you're saying my "team", that only came to be last summer of 2023, starting with this commit:

That doesn't disregard the possibility members of your team still doing this even if they weren't officially on the team. These same members of your team still partook in these actions, and them being apart of it now doesn't disregard what they were doing. And judging by how they still contiune to press members even after being on the team, nothing has changed.

Before that it was almost solo(and mostly dead at that point) project, then more people joined in to contribute more fixes they wanted to implement. After that, they created a time machine without my knowledge, went back to 2020, bullied someone for 3 years, and came back, and didn't even tell me. Well, I would have loved to go back in time, and they didn't even invite me, in that case I agree, they are horrible.

Again, what I said above. I cannot emphasize this any greater.

[ThirteenAG]

That doesn't disregard the members of your team still doing this even if they weren't officially on the team. These same members of your team still partook in these actions, and them being apart of it now doesn't disregard what they were doing.

He said she said. This is not a court room, believe what you want to believe.

Again, what I said above. I cannot emphasize this any greater.

Your only agenda here is this:

You're not looking for the bottom line. The conversation is pointless.

[cammy8580]

He said she said. This is not a court room, believe what you want to believe.

Even if you stand by this, only you and zolika can do anything to stop it. You are fully capable of doing so.

Your only agenda here is this: You're not looking for the bottom line. The conversation is pointless.

I am looking for the bottom line. When I refer to "your team", I mean the specific members that engage in this specific argument. If you want to take that specific screenshot and not include the conversation prior, you can do that.

The conversation itself refers to the response of people praising your team for their work for their aggressive push to completely discourage people from using preCE, and even making fun of the people who want to downgrade. It doesn't come from some unreasonable dislike towards your team. I have my reasons, as well as my own encounters.

You know who's who in this screenshot. There's far more than just this. I'd be more than happy to grab it, but your team seems to not like it when screenshots are grabbed from servers they're active in. This conversation came days after I joined and sent about a handful of messages beforehand.

Yes, I stand by what I said. Your team does receive uncritical praise despite said work coming at the cost of ousting one of the only prominent members in the community making a fix mod for preCE. I'm staying completely reasonable and respectful in my messages addressed to you.

[ThirteenAG]

Just because you got trolled (when? since it mentions ff 2.0, then maybe a few months ago tops), doesn't mean I've spent past 3 years harassing anyone. That's a lie. And everything else in that blog post is a lie. That's what I'm dealing with. If you don't like the way someone treats you, you are free to spread awareness any way you see fit. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[cammy8580]

Just because you got trolled (when? since it mentions ff 2.0, then maybe a few months ago tops), doesn't mean I've spent past 3 years harassing anyone. That's a lie. And everything else in that blog post is a lie. That's what I'm dealing with. If you don't like the way someone treats you, you are free to spread awareness any way you see fit. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

If you want to excuse it by calling it "trolling" and thinking i'm strictly targeting you, you can do so, If it makes you any happier. I have plenty more examples between you and your members laughing about preCE users simply because they use Zolika's mods and lurking in communities pertaining to GTRF or any other community to attempt to further fuel the ridicule. Going by potentially every member that joins specific GTA servers and instigating them about IV modder drama probably isn't a good look for your team. I'm not attempting to be disrespectful to you, nor your team, but this behavior is predatory at best for members of the IV community, and hiding it behind the excuse of "trolling" it only does worse for your team.

This happened literally perhaps a week ago. Never did I direcly say, nor accuse you saying you harrassed zolika, but your team still has the motive to keep players off preCE whenever possible, and make examples of them behind closed doors.

If you want to continue to call it lies, you are completely within your right to do so. A resolution cannot be reached without proper damning evidence to do so.

[Ash-735]

Just because you got trolled (when? since it mentions ff 2.0, then maybe a few months ago tops), doesn't mean I've spent past 3 years harassing anyone. That's a lie. And everything else in that blog post is a lie. That's what I'm dealing with. If you don't like the way someone treats you, you are free to spread awareness any way you see fit. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

If you want to excuse it by calling it "trolling" and thinking i'm strictly targeting you, you can do so, If it makes you any happier. I have plenty more examples between you and your members laughing about preCE users simply because they use Zolika's mods and lurking in communities pertaining to GTRF or any other community to attempt to further fuel the ridicule. Going by potentially every member that joins specific GTA servers and instigating them about IV modder drama probably isn't a good look for your team. I'm not attempting to be disrespectful to you, nor your team, but this behavior is predatory at best for members of the IV community, and hiding it behind the excuse of "trolling" it only does worse for your team.

This happened literally perhaps a week ago. Never did I direcly say, nor accuse you saying you harrassed zolika, but your team still has the motive to keep players off preCE whenever possible, and make examples of them behind closed doors.

If you want to continue to call it lies, you are completely within your right to do so. A resolution cannot be reached without proper damning evidence to do so.

Hey there, I've just joined GitHub because this is getting out of hand now, first off can you tell me how many team members are doing the things you claim? Second do you know how many people contribute to Fusion Fix? I really want to see if we can nail this down so we can dismiss a lot of these lies that are going around right now.

[ThirteenAG]

but your team still has the motive to keep players off preCE whenever possible

And how is that different from, let's say RDR2 or GTA V mods? Script hook updates every time there's a new patch, does script hook author keeps players from v1.0 of GTAV or RDR2?

Go to any server and claim you want some mod to work on v1.0 of gta 5(for free too). If you ain't laughed at right then and there, then your point is valid.

A resolution cannot be reached without proper damning evidence to do so.

So, I harassed him for 3 years, then just let him into this repo with subtle roasting of Complete Edition

https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/pull/87 https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/pull/100 https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/pull/114

chose to ignore this bullshit, helped(well, @Tomasak did) set up everything, make an automatic release, only to realize that it doesn't work, that he lied about committing other fixes, refused to fix even existing release, then did a fork after we deleted prece support, put more code under closed source allegedly malware, and called it fusion fix? And after I simply asked not to call it fusion fix, because I want fusion fix to be associated with open source software only, went berserk and dragged me and everyone else through the mud, you want more damning evidence? If that public stuff not it, and there's plenty more private that's even more disturbing, I don't know then.

[cammy8580]

Hey there, I've just joined GitHub because this is getting out of hand now, first off can you tell me how many team members are doing the things you claim?

At least 2 or more out of the 14 contributors listed under github. I am not including you, as I do not have enough knowledge of you in particular, and I do not wish to lump you into any sort of group of bad actors. I've been pushed out of the server (of which wasn't for IV) where most of this went down for reasons stated above despite lurkers being able to reign free in other servers.

Second do you know how many people contribute to Fusion Fix? I really want to see if we can nail this down so we can dismiss a lot of these lies that are going around right now.

Not sure of the exact number off of the top of my head. least 14 according to the contributors listed. I do not know if there are more as of right now, but I am fairly confident there are that aren't explicitly listed under github currently. As I stated before, I do not want to lump all of the team into it. I want it to be known that even specific members of the team (especially when they are some of the most active on both the repo and on discord) do not define the rest of the team, but do end up contributing to the potentially poor image that arises from what goes on.

[cammy8580]

And how is that different from, let's say RDR2 or GTA V mods? Script hook updates every time there's a new patch, does script hook author keeps players from v1.0 of GTAV or RDR2?

They are different. Quite different, in fact. You and I both know that GTAV and RDR2 have PC ports far better supported than the one for GTAIV and receive updates to this day that almost always address previous issues without removing content or worsening features. IV had a completely different development story for it than those games did. Almost every version had apparent differences from each one, some had objectively worse graphics, some better. It received FAR less versions during its lifespan, and CE doesn't do much service for maintaining mod support or really selling people to want to make the jump.

What's particularly different about GTAV and RDR2 though, is the fact that those games have actually proper ports that are maintained on-par with the console releases at the time (although their current lack of care to it recently is something to be worried about). GTAV doesn't have better previous versions in the same way IV did, and neither does it have any "new" version that guts out content or makes specific modding an absolute pain.

Go to any server and claim you want some mod to work on v1.0 of gta 5(for free too). If you ain't laughed at right then and there, then your point is valid.

This wouldn't happen, because V doesn't NEED this for the reason described above.

So, I harassed him for 3 years, then just let him into this repo with subtle roasting of Complete Edition

87 #100 #114

chose to ignore this bullshit, helped(well, @Tomasak did) set up everything, make an automatic release, only to realize that it doesn't work, that he lied about committing other fixes, refused to fix even existing release, then did a fork after we deleted prece support, put more code under closed source allegedly malware, and called it fusion fix? And after I simply asked not to call it fusion fix, because I want fusion fix to be associated with open source software only, went berserk and dragged me and everyone else through the mud, you want more damning evidence? If that public stuff not it, and there's plenty more private that's even more disturbing, I don't know then.

Have you possibly considered that Zolika saw the massive support being garnered for FF, and knew that his patch wouldn't have much standing in a community that wants to make a push towards CE? Whats to say he didn't grin and bear it and allow for him to put his differences aside to commit to this until he realized that it's simply not worth it?

I cannot understand the logic behind you advocating that Zolika has some form of malintent with his projects. Sure, his projects are closed source, but he has been a reputable community member for YEARS now. I can understand the thing about not wanting the project to bear a similar name, seeing the fork is so radically different in structure and you not wanting a closed source project to have the same name, but thinking he has some form of malintent against your project from the start with commits and pull requests claiming it was sabotage, or that since his project is closed source there is absolutely no trusting it is just a wild claim.

[ThirteenAG]

I cannot understand the logic behind you advocating that Zolika has some form of malintent

Fair point, but mix up his own admission that he has mental issues, that he does things out of spite, source code is private(for what reason?) and can contain malicious code that's executed only on someone's pc, at specific time or you name it how, and I would not advise anyone to use this "software" with the only hope that it doesn't do anything.

but he has been a reputable community member for YEARS now.

Same community that does this? He's a troubled individual in my book, nothing reputable about that.

[ThirteenAG]

And the most funny part, I have had no part of this and didn't know about these scummy practices throughout the years. He could simply stay away from open source and would continue to do whatever(it is not my job to be an antivirus), but mixing fusion fix with shit was more important I guess. This stuff only surfaced now from people tired of his bullshit, and they send it to me when they saw his blog post.

[Ash-735]

At least 2 or more out of the 14 contributors listed under github.

Right, so here's the issue I have, we know there's two people on the team who do have beef with Zolika, but I can also assure you, at least from our Discord, no one has harassed or sent death threats or even encouraged death threats to be sent to anyone, yes there's been a few jokes here and there, but hey, the other side was doing that too, we were called c**ks and idiots for supporting CE, now that's just banter right? You can't condemn one side for it without also condemning the other. Let me be clear here though outright, I think all of this warring over a specific game version is silly and preferably the stuff I contribute to the scene works on all versions of the game, luckily that's been the case as I do the texture work side of it. Parallellines who has done a lot of the shader stuff with others but was the main person behind the Z-fighting fix also previously had no issues with Zolika. Hell I'm still active in the IV Modding Discord which has warnings if people talk about the CE version because they don't want anyone to support it.

However, it's been recently that we're seeing people try and slander ANYONE on the team, and it all stems back to Zolika's "goodbye" post, which was incredibly one sided, left out a lot of information but worst of all, ended off with a note saying to avoid anything released by ANYONE involved with Fusion Fix. Parallellines questioned about that, you've seen that above, I also questioned him about how it comes across and they just responded "Oh well, it's been said now, I'm not changing it", so even though myself and Parallellines have previously been talking to Zolika over this period and had no ill intent or issues, Zolika was still happy to have us and others who are not involved to be slandered and down the line get hate messages. And to this day they still refuse to at least amend that blog post to leave out those of us who are not involved with this petty war that's fanned on by certain people in the community.

Whats to say he didn't grin and bear it and allow for him to put his differences aside to commit to this until he realized that it's simply not worth it?

And here's the kicker, I know this isn't because it was ME who reached out to Zolika and originally spoke with them months back, by this point Fusion Fix had already switched to CE, a choice that was mocked by Zolika and people on his "side" but I spoke with Zolika to try and sort out a deal, I KNEW that Zolika would NEVER support CE or allow any of their stuff on CE but there were people who wanted Fusion Fix on preCE versions, and despite certain people encouraging Zolika to just take the code since it's open source and "they can't do anything about it", I still spoke with them and proposed an alliance where Zolika would get access to this, all the code, everything, and was given permission to maintain a branch for preCE versions of the game.

This was done mainly due to the fact that at this point the rest of us were focusing on what could be done with Shaders and how we could take advantage of that, using CE as the point of entry (it's easier to port back that way) but another very important reason was that Zolika wanted to make sure their stuff (Zpatch, Zmenu, etc) wouldn't conflict with Fusion Fix, now, those are closed source products, we can't get too much into that without knowledge of what they do, so who better to handle that than the creator of the closed source things themselves right? Seemed like a win/win.

In return Zolika also agreed that they'd share some, SOME, not all, some of the source code for the areas we were interested in (mainly anything graphics or physics related at that point as obviously you can see we've shifted a lot of things around to shaders now). However, Zolika said they didn't trust anyone on the team, so we'd get the code later, but at first gave us some code for something related to the physics sleep cycle, which was pretty basic but OK, it's a start. Weeks went by and there were issues that were becoming outstanding on the preCE branch, Zolika kept stating that they were too busy and not working on anything GTA related at this point, ...all whilst still making commits for many other projects, again one of those is screenshotted above when I asked them about it.

This led to Tomasak to get quite angry with his replies towards to Zolika (again one of these interactions is shown above), Zolika immediately took offense to this and told me that this was proof no one on the team trusted him, and then he said he's pulling out of the agreement and that no one will get any more code from them. He then declared that "for the good of the community" he's going to spin off his own branch.

At this point most of us on the team were not bothered, we didn't get any meaningful contributions from Zolika and if Zolika was still going to maintain a preCE branch, then whatever, they're just doing what they've been doing anyway. The issues arose when we noticed Zolika had started making their branch of Fusion Fix become completely reliant on Zpatch, which is closed source, some of us questioned Zolika about this and he gave off some excuse, we requested multiple times to keep anything Fusion Fix related open source, Zolika refused this, I then advised that Zolika should make the part of the code in Zpatch that's "required" to make Fusion Fix work on preCE open source so it's not reliant on closed source code, that way they could just continue with things all peachy. Zolika refused this, this is what led to ThirteenAG changing the license and making it clear to Zolika that he's willing to go far enough to get this branch shut down because at this point anything agreed had been completely torn up by Zolika.

That's when Zolika started calling names and insult Fusion Fix, followed by them deciding to "leave" the GTA modding scene, citing they were being bullied by people on the Fusion Fix team. Not long after is when Zolika made their "goodbye" blog post.

That's the events from my POV, I didn't want to reveal all of that but over the past few weeks there's just been an increase in people believing Zolika's blog post and trying to start crap with the team members. To me it was Zolika who failed their side of the agreement not once but multiple times, in the end if Zolika just kept everything about Fusion Fix open source then they still could've been running that branch today.

Hope that clears some things up for people.

[ThirteenAG]

Can confirm that @Ash-735 was there at the very beginning of new commits and fixes past year, and an integral part of everything we've done since, a lot of features wouldn't be possible without his help with textures and other things.

[SandeMC]

I'm still reading into all of this, but jeez, shaming a person for having trouble using GitHub or hell, even mental issues? That's low. Like, honestly low.

For GitHub, you could've assisted him instead of bashing on him. Not everybody starts out perfectly being able to use it.

As for the "not having time" thing, honestly it's a personal thing. Demanding a person to contribute in an ultimatum doesn't really motivate anybody. And neither is being toxic to them.

No comment on anything else - I can't really deny anything said myself.

Also, my own two coins is that Tomasak is by far the most toxic member on the team. Do something about that, it's a bad image for your brand in general. And going off Ash's description, it seems Tomasak was the first bad influence on Zolika before he went haywire.

[ThirteenAG]

For GitHub, you could've assisted him instead of bashing on him.

We did assist in every possible way. Ask @Tomasak for details. And I've linked @Tomasak's edited Pull Request that was actually mergeable. https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/pull/100

or hell, even mental issues

I'm not shaming, stop projecting, just citing what he said himself. Maybe he lied about that too, I don't know.

As for the "not having time" thing, honestly it's a personal thing. Demanding a person to contribute in an ultimatum doesn't really motivate anybody.

We didn't demand a single thing. We simply waited few weeks for any "news/changes", and moments after broken branch and release were removed, there's time and dedication (to shit on us) to make fork. Nobody even said a single thing about it, until it was made dependent on another closed source asi. And even then, I only asked to change the name and leave fusion fix alone.

Also, my own two coins is that Tomasak is by far the most toxic member on the team.

Anybody is free to contribute to this repository in a meaningful way. I'm not here to interview each and every contributor and demand them to behave in a certain way.

For example, just now I realized that dancing.wtd was put in the wrong folder all this time, so instead of looking for z-mentions in the code with a magnifying glass, you could've fixed at least that. Priorities.

[SandeMC]

I have just one question then.

Why does it matter how a fork is called? It still links to the original repository, by core it's still FusionFix and your code (so renaming it would honestly only create more issues), he still was willing to port over new features into the fork (albeit with a dirty method, he didn't use merging). Aka, it was still FusionFix, but with his additions, which fell under how a "fork" can work - custom work stemming off existing work. It doesn't take over the name or anything.

[ThirteenAG]

Because people started coming to our issues and report someone else's mess. Because as soon as this author is exposed for being malware creator, rockstar servers hacker or anything of the sort, it's gonna affect my whole naming scheme. GTA IV fusion fix fork has a virus? Scarface fusion fix is a virus too then! Thanks! It's just a precaution, given the fact how this whole situation unfolded.

[SandeMC]

Sounds like far-fetching, but oh well. The more reasonable request would just be to ask not to be associated with the original repository in the readme.

[ThirteenAG]

Better safe than sorry.

[Ash-735]

I'm still reading into all of this, but jeez, shaming a person for having trouble using GitHub or hell, even mental issues? That's low. Like, honestly low.

I'm sorry but where did you get that from? He wasn't having trouble using his GitHub, it was only the Fusion Fix stuff that he said he was going to do but didn't do, or outright refused to acknowledge there was a bug when people reported one. As for mental health issues, I have done no such thing here that you'd claim as shaming. Could you clarify what came across that way?

For GitHub, you could've assisted him instead of bashing on him. Not everybody starts out perfectly being able to use it.

Again, they were perfectly fine using their own github and private code, and I believe Tomasak did offer.

As for the "not having time" thing, honestly it's a personal thing. Demanding a person to contribute in an ultimatum doesn't really motivate anybody.

I agree, but it's also not cool to lie and say you don't have time to work on anything GTA related, and then put out multiple updates for Zpatch, the Save Game editor, etc, etc, that clearly shows they had time to work on GTA related stuff and it felt like they wanted to use that as an excuse to not contribute after agreeing to contribute.

And going off Ash's description, it seems Tomasak was the first bad influence on Zolika

I did leave out other times where Zolika accused people on the Fusion Fix team for comments that weren't in our control, I remember one time getting a message from Zolika asking if I can stop sending people to comment on YouTube, it got to the point where somehow ANY negative comment Zolika got anywhere on the internet was somehow staged by other members of the team, which is ludicrous. In all honesty it felt like Zolika was looking for the first excuse they could get to ditch the agreement and took the comments from Tomasak as that reason.

Aka, it was still FusionFix, but with his additions,

His "additions" being making the open source code become completely dependant on closed source code for no real reason when this project is built on being open source. Again, we asked him to keep it open, we would've been fine with his fork, he could've still been working on it, he couldn't give a clear reason why it suddenly became a requirement to NEED Zpatch and he flat out refused to compromise and take that need and spin it off to be open source so the Fusion Fix wouldn't have to rely on something that's closed source.

[SandeMC]

I believe he left a comment somewhere that he's not that experienced with using GitHub. Thirteen then mentioned that on the gtaforums thread in a negative sense.

Anyhow, I'm trusting Ash's word more than anybody in this conversation and I believe we can end here. I don't have much else to add.

[ThirteenAG]

Thirteen then mentioned that on the gtaforums thread in a negative sense.

Boo hoo. I certainly should die for this, sure.

[SandeMC]

I did not send any death threats. Nor am I directly associated with Zolika, just shared a few words with him is all. My view is that both sides overreacted on everything, and now some retards unrelated to the main sides are attacking each other. And now you're blaming Zolika (and me, somehow?) for the death threats he didn't ask for.

[ThirteenAG]

I don't blame you for anything, and don't even know you. It was sarcasm.

[jack9267]

I cannot understand the logic behind you advocating that Zolika has some form of malintent

Fair point, but mix up his own admission that he has mental issues, that he does things out of spite, source code is private(for what reason?) and can contain malicious code that's executed only on someone's pc, at specific time or you name it how, and I would not advise anyone to use this "software" with the only hope that it doesn't do anything.

That "kill switch" got way out of hand and it's just simply a check so people hosting a server on GTAC can opt out of trainers. But people seemed to bring it up like it's some global kill switch when it's only up to each server owner who don't want cheaters on their server. It's terrible how out of hand just that one screenshot even got from just the words "kill switch".

Annoying when people get bashed for not being open source, you know it's someone's personal choice if they decide to open source something and it inherently doesn't mean it's malicious if it's closed source. Even now SilentPatch is only just becoming open source, but no one bashed at Silent for keeping it closed source all these years. How come no one accuses him of making viruses or malicious software? But Zolika is immediately considered shady?

Generally people want to see the source code to simply copy the code or understand how it works to make their own version of it. Sure if something is abandoned it helps open sourcing it so people can take over.

[ThirteenAG]

@jack9267 Nobody bashed him for not being open source. The issue we're dealing with here is his lies. Even in the last blog post I'm barely having any presence, despite him claiming earlier that I was personally harassing and bullying him for 3 years. Despite me having plenty of examples where HE DID ALL THAT. Towards different people, including myself, when I wasn't even aware of his existence after like 2021.

He's claiming:

The source code is now public, and in plain view, there's exact patterns taken from my fork:

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

This code (is this a code even, just a simple memory edit you can achieve with cheat engine) was Pull Requested. https://github.com/ThirteenAG/GTAIV.EFLC.FusionFix/pull/34/files

He claims it was stolen(what?) from him(how?) and let's assume that it was, for simplicity. How come the pattern is completely different, the offset is different, variable type differs, assembly code idk even why shown on this screen, absolutely irrelevant. So, your goal is to steal code, but somehow you know your way around iv exe, know differences between CE and preCE, know how to find the needed spot for every patch, then why do you need someone else's code at all? And it's not even a 100 lines patch that heavily modifies game's logic. So why even bring it up? And the most funny part, this code just patches and episode id variable check, which is like, anybody with no knowledge of programming can do with a cheat engine.

But what does it matter, when the entire goal of this deranged individual since last summer was to shit and accuse everyone of everything, for stealing his spotlight by making z-fighting fix, for being open source, for getting praise.

Now let's check out something else randomly, cuz ain't gonna bother replying to all.

I was hoping with this statement we will finally go our separate ways, but nothing was done to intentionally make anything incompatible. Simply because it's not possible with closed source project, just like it's not possible to make it compatible too. People still continued to use both projects simultaneously, and ofc because it's the same my code, some things are not compatible due to the same code running twice: Xliveless Addon is a requirement for Fusion Fix 2.0 to work on older patches to prevent cheating in multiplayer(I know it's dead, but all mods traditionally disabled multiplayer and this one is no different).

They also got mad at me comparing my widescreen fix for FlatOut 2 to his:

I was not even aware he made anything, until this tweet was forwarded to me earlier. Why would I get mad at that? The code is not published, so anything he claims he made is multiplied by zero in my book. Gatekeeping mods and fixes never done ANY game any favors, so it's a nothing burger. But what's more disturbing, is the fact he did not mention, that he's being doing stuff like this ALL THESE YEARS. Publicly and privately. Let's see more examples:

"Objective differences by showing comparisons", you were saying?

P.S. Blitz:

Afterwards, I came to a conclusion: I'll try to make peace, and work on a port of FusionFix to 1.0.7.0/1.0.8.0, and sending them ZPatch features they can port back to the main branch.

I don't know what peace he's talking about, you don't need any prerequisites to commit to a public github repository.

In September, I released a new mod called GTA IV Extra Options, adding various additional tweaks to the game, such as an Always Run toggle, an FOV slider, toggling pickup glow and cinematic cameras, and a few more. To make this compatible with FusionFix, I created a shared API that both mods could use for adding menu options, which my Extra Options mod requires, and my fork of FusionFix can optionally use if the API is installed. This immediately triggered the horde, and the first reply on the GTAForums thread was from ThirteenAG himself:

Right, I don't follow his "doings", so I'm not sure what's he accusing me of here. I'm allowed to only implement features that's never been done before? What a joke. I think it was settled on that at least would be good to rename his fork, because if or when his closed source asi starts to have detects on virustotal, or have real malware because he's bitter, begrudged or hateful at any moment in time, it's gonna backfire on fusion fix. Why on earth would I want fusion fix associated with this unstable individual? Why the hell can't I request someone not to do certain stuff with MY code? If he doesn't comply that's on him, but what's the point in pulling an uno reverse here?

For someone who doesn't want to associate with me, and now tries to deny my very existence, as well as calling my fork "unofficial" and said that it "will never work properly", they sure were fine with taking all that:

Naturally, when the flood of this person's shenanigans over the years started pouring into my DMs. Really disturbing stuff, I'm serious when I say the things posted here and there are only the tip of the iceberg.

[ThirteenAG]

Also he's already on damage control, couldn't make up his lies properly from the first try, but the web archive remembers:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240104125955/https://zolika1351.pages.dev/posts/final-goodbye

Notice the screenshot after text "The source code is now public, and in plain view, there's exact patterns taken from my fork:"

Let's check out:

And so on. I guess I stole code from his fork that exists since last summer, 5 years ago. Interesting how this is now edited out. Making up lies is hard I guess.

[jack9267]

What @ThirteenAG ?

Nobody bashed him for not being open source.

Quote from you: Fair point, but mix up his own admission that he has mental issues, that he does things out of spite, source code is private(for what reason?) and can contain malicious code that's executed only on someone's pc, at specific time or you name it how, and I would not advise anyone to use this "software" with the only hope that it doesn't do anything.

That there is a point against him for being closed source from you is it not? My code is private and closed source so now anything I make is malicious then based on your logic? Something being closed source doesn't instantly mean it's malicious. Sometimes people want to keep source code private, it's their work at the end of the day and they can do with it as they want to. No one should be forced into open sourcing a project.

[ThirteenAG]

If you upload your binary to virustotal and it says there's 7 or more detections, I will likely say it's malware without a source code. Better safe than sorry. How are you going to prove otherwise is not my problem.

I simply don't use closed source mods with rare exceptions anyway, and not recommending them to anyone, and I have the right to do so.

You said it yourself

people want to see the source code to simply copy the code or understand how it works to make their own version of it.

That's much more interesting than having a binary file.

[SandeMC]

If you upload your binary to virustotal and it says there's 7 or more detections, I will likely say it's malware without a source code. Better safe than sorry. How are you going to prove otherwise is not my problem.

I highly disagree with this. Just the number of detections doesn't matter in the slightest - go to the behaviour tab and actually look at what's it triggering at (or look around for what the trojan actually is more commonly). It could be some generic anti-VM detection, it could be executable unpacking (see "compiled" exe-ified python apps), it could be fetching more files, it could be else. Just looking at the number of detections doesn't say a lot.

[jack9267]

If you upload your binary to virustotal and it says there's 7 or more detections, I will likely say it's malware without a source code. Better safe than sorry. How are you going to prove otherwise is not my problem.

I simply don't use closed source mods with rare exceptions anyway, and not recommending them to anyone, and I have the right to do so.

You said it yourself

people want to see the source code to simply copy the code or understand how it works to make their own version of it.

That's much more interesting than having a binary file.

Virustotal does have false positives especially with hacking and I do my best to reduce down the numbers, using windows apis for things like http raises red flags so I use curl instead. So you never used SilentPatch ever I assume because it has always been closed source until recently? @ThirteenAG care to comment?

[ThirteenAG]

I have used silent patch and I have source for it right there on github. Can ask silent for confirmation.

But I think you misunderstood me, false positives and all this is of course a thing, but I don't mean that every piece of closed source software is malware. It's just much harder to prove it's not when the code is private, and when you do prove, not everyone going to bother to look at it. We've had our fair share of malware mods before, you never know which one is next.

And case in point, when people are already skeptical of you for other reasons, closed source is just another reason to be even more skeptical. Not for everyone of course.

[SandeMC]

I have used silent patch and I have source for it right there on github.

The classic GTA's SPatch is not open source currently.

[ThirteenAG]

Doesn't mean that I don't have the source.

[Tomasak]

GTA's SPatch

whats spatch

[SandeMC]

Doesn't mean that I don't have the source.

Well yeah, but that's source-available and not open source, so not really contradicting to the statement.

whats spatch

I just shortened Silent, jeez.

[Ash-735]

Even now SilentPatch is only just becoming open source, but no one bashed at Silent for keeping it closed source all these years. How come no one accuses him of making viruses or malicious software?

Hey, once again just to chip in here, Silent has never been accused because he's always been open in his approach on how he's fixed stuff or what he's changed, majority of fixes in SilentPatch are documented and explained on the forums, credit is given when someone contributes and Silent has let people have access to the code when asked, including ThirteenAG here, and as you may not know, the SilentPatch source is also found in the re3/reVC projects as Silent gave it to the leads of that to be adapted. Silent has also worked with other mod makers in the past to get mods working, such as working with SkyGFX to make sure features don't collide.

There's also the fact that SilentPatches have not triggered any virus scans, the one time it did so was due to a coding error which again Silent detailed how and why it was causing such issue. There's also the fact that SilentPatch doesn't send any information outside of the computer, you can understand why such a thing would be a cause for more scrutiny when it's closed source and the dev refuses to say why or reveal why.

You should check out Silents website for more details where he does a breakdown on his patches, they're good reads.