moho25
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Posts posted by moho25
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Thanks, Tarsh!
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I also noticed something interesting, that makes me think the removal of the projects was either voluntary or really clumsy. If you look at each project page's source code (right click > view page source), you can see there is absolutely nothing. ie empty files, 0 bytes, not even hidden content. I find it unlikely that someone would make such an error, not on purpose.
I didn't think to look; good idea.
My thought is it either is intentional, or Projects and the forums were still on the same server and someone screwed up. Either way, we shouldn't have to guess. BW should have provided some notice. In their minds, the general notice might have been enough, but I doubt the community would think so.
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@Readers--
We need anyone with a twitter, instagram, or facebook account to post messages to BioWare. Something to the effect of:
@BioWare: Why are all BSN Project pages broken? (screenshot of empty page) When will this be fixed?
If they don't reply, proceed with something like:
@BioWare, You've closed the forums b/c you prefer this type of communication. The community would appreciate an answer about this problem.
Then, just keep pestering them. Daily. Use the general BW twitter and the twitter for any employee you can find. Keep it respectful, but direct. Press them for an answer as to whether this is a permanent removal of projects.
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To clarify on the copies of BSN Project archives:
1. Creeper - 1 copy of valid mods (valid mod = has a download)
2. Tarshana - 2 copies of everything (invalid and valid) on different boxes in different physical locations
3. krlewis - 1 copy of everything (I think)
Someone had mentioned at some point combining archives. While that would provide more redundancy for invalid projects, I don't see it as 100% necessary right now, and we're talking a lot of space. So, we'll stick to what we have for now, and re-evaluate in the future, if necessary.
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@sky -- Thanks very much for the offer.
I *think* we should have copies of everything in our archives. I wrote that post when I had just rolled out of bed, and my mind wasn't thinking about those atm, lol. Still need to grab some coffee.
if we do need copies, we'll be sure to let you know :)
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@sunshinen -- Mod authors should have copies of their own projects. Please get back in touch with those authors and ask them to upload themselves to the host of their choice (preferably Nexus).
If the mod author doesn't have a copy, and it's not a popular mod -- or at least a mod with a recognizable name so that one of us could see if we have a copy -- then it might be lost.
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Yeah, I can't access any projects. I can log in and see the list of projects, but am unable to click on a project to view.
I know I go on and on (and on) about BW in an unflattering light, but they continue to prove they deserve it. I love that they pull this s*** with no actual warning. Yes, the notice has been in place, but they could have at least provided a warning of imminent closure with a date. Three days. A week. Two weeks. Something.
Instead, they tell us projects are "safe" for the time being... and then start turning off servers the day after the forums are removed. Classy.
I'll wait on making an announcement on the website until tomorrow. Maybe we'll get lucky and it's a glitch with the forum removal.
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@Inventoriers/Everyone --
Thanks to the hard work of Tarshana and all other BCN inventoriers we now are close to having a completed inventory. To be clear, this does NOT mean we've heard from all authors, nor does it mean that all BSN mods are now available elsewhere. It means that the BCN inventory spreadsheet of all BSN Projects is almost complete.
In preparation for the end of this stage of the project, the spreadsheet has gone read-only. I'll be finishing QA on the DAO mods, Tarshana will be wrapping up the final BSN Project entries (many of which are spam), and then there will be some changes to make the document more appropriate for folks to use as a reference (e.g.,, the Instruction sheet will be removed).
If you are a present or former inventorier and end up hearing from a mod author you've contacted during this time, please do one of the following:
- Leave the information in this thread for Tarshana to add
- Leave the information as a comment associated with the author name on the sheet; Tarshana or I will insert it into the sheet itself
Thanks again to everyone who helped create the inventory. You guys are amazing.
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Once Tarsh and I have wrapped things up we'll use the sheet data and take a look at:
- Mods not hosted elsewhere
- Mod authors who haven't responded to BSN communications
- The WIP BCN coalesced mods
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Remember, only a few days before the forums are taken down. Be sure to download any content important to you!
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FYI, should be getting to QA on the DAO tab today. Then I'll take a look and the Complete ID sheet.
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Glad to be part of the team and will be willing to help do whatever need be even after the apparent deadline... btw have we had 'official' confirmation that everything will actually go dark after the 25th?
BSN isn't going dark on the 25th; just the forum is. BioWare confirmed that prior to the forums going read-only.
Shortly after the forums went read-only BW made a change to the BSN notification message upon log in, which states they will be phasing out the site. They just give no timeline. We also have no idea how much notice they will give the community prior to its removal.
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@Creeper -- Thanks for the update on your archive. Good to know.
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1. QA PROGRESS.- ME3 sheet has been QA's and tidied
- ME2 sheet has been QA'd and tidied
- Instruction sheet has been updated; be sure to look at this
2. SHEET NOTES FIELD.
Those of you inserting "Cannot find way to contact mod author" can omit this. We already have a field for "Mod Author Contacted? Y/N". If the author hasn't been contacted and the mod isn't uploaded elsewhere, then the default explanation is that we don't know how to reach them.
3. RELOCATING SHEETS.
If you need to do this for workflow due to smaller screen size, that's fine, just remember to move the sheets back into alphabetical order when you're finished :)
4. LEAD INVENTORIER.
Considering the huge amount of time Tarshana has sunk into this project, I thought it was appropriate to make her "Lead Inventorier". Every project manager needs a back up, so Tarsh is it :) If I'm not around and a decision needs to be made, her word is law :)
Other inventoriers, please don't take this as a slight. Tarsh has put in more man hours than anyone else and she's readily available, so she was the logical choice. Everyone here has been doing fantastic work and the community owes you a HUGE thank-you.
5. COALESCED MODS.
I think what we're going to do for these is follow Tarsh's idea. Over the next week or so she's going to review the popular coalesced mods for ME1/2/3. From there we'll build 1-2 BCN INI/coalesceds that combine the most popular features.
These will likely include:
- Keybinds for clean screenshots and flycam
- Keybinds to deconstruct the spacebar
- Casual outfits
- Unlimited ammo, etc
I already have much of this set up for all 3 games in my own coalesceds, so we'll use them as a starting point. We'll likely release 2 for each game, one that doesn't include the gameplay/cheat modifications and one that does.
In the spreadsheet, *most* coalesced mods will be removed from the game pages and moved to the Complete ID list, where they are noted only as "coalesced". We'll have a better idea of what will stay on the game sheets once Tarsh finishes her review.
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Left to QA: DAO and Complete File ID List. Coming soon.
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1. Spreadsheet edits : I didn't think useful to let you know of every single edit I made besides of inventorying. I didn't remove anything, so your instructions are still valid. I just added upon the existing structure (I'm thinking of my table). You can even ignore it while inventorying (unless you come across empty projects), since it updates itself automatically.
If you want me to help integrate this table with the process, just ask.
I wasn't aware of your decision for NWN, sorry about that. It's not that bad though, both sheets can be easily merged.
2. QuarianAnalyst and Shae : I recontacted one of QuarianAnalyst's contacted authors as I went through projects. I noted it in the contacted authors sheet. Haven't tried all of them, though.
As for a percentage of authors that respond, it's relatively low. See for yourself, about 50% of mod authors have nothing in their "contact notes" cell, which means they haven't answered.
1. Adding an entire new sheet is not a small edit -- nor is the quantity of information you added to that sheet -- and is not something anyone but myself should be doing. If you want to create a personal sheet for yourself on your PC that you utilize when working on the project, you can do that. I know Tarsh does, b/c I've had a different version of this discussion with her, already. When it comes to sheets in the BCN Google doc, that's something that needs to be run past me and everyone here. I have some other sheets I want to hit first, and then I'll take a closer look.
2. With the new fields on the CMA sheet it's now very clear that few mod authors are getting back to us. Unfortunate. But, helpful for me coaxing Nexus into perhaps giving us a bit more leeway a la Filefront, lol.
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@Inventoriers --
1. QuarianAnalyst.
Sorry folks, but I think we're going to need to re-contact the authors this inventorier contacted. I'll amend the OP and be clearer that when people join the project -- even for a little while -- that they will be expected to follow up on mod author contacts even after they leave. By that I mean that if the mod author gets back to them after they leave BCN, they are still expected to update the spreadsheet with that information.
2. QA progress.
- ME1 complete & tidied
- DA 2 complete & tidied
- Utilities complete & tidied
3. Duplicate Entries.
I've only found one set of these so far, so overall, you are doing a great job. Keep being careful.
4. N/A, No, Null.
I know these all seem the same (Tarshana), but they are not. They also mean different things in different columns. Please take another look at the column comments to be certain you are filling in the fields correctly (Tarshana). Rofl. Just teasing, Tarsh.
5. Utlities/Builders.
I've renamed this sheet to be a bit clearer. Cleaning up the Utilities sheet took me about 3 hours today. It was a bit of a mess, but I understand that these are often gray areas. I moved some mods to their game pages, removed some "invalid" projects, etc. Just so it's clear:
A utility is anything used outside of the game. A coalesced mod is a mod, b/c Coalesced.bin is a game file installed into the game directory (more on those later); these are not utilities. Builder's Resources also go on this sheet, since they, by default, are meant to be used by the DAO Toolset (99% of the time). I'll also clarify this on the Instructions page when I get to that; I'm going through the game sheets first so I can see where the issues are.
6. Coalesced Files.
Tarsh tells me that there are a metric shitton of these, so I am pondering what to do about them. Generally, I don't want us to make value judgements about what should and shouldn't be catalogued onto the game pages. However, inventorying 101 unlimited coalesced mods doesn't make sense. It takes time and there is no value to cataloguing them all. So, for now, feel free to keep skipping over most of them unless it seems like a particularly good one. By "skip" I mean annotate as "redundant" in the same location as the "invalid" mods. Tarsh gave me an idea of how we might handle it today, but I want to ponder at least overnight.
6. Forum Archives.
Twelve days until the forums are taken down. Felexea now has everything on their site but the Fan Creations forum, due to permissions issues. Tarshana is currently backing this up, but it may or may not finish before the 25th. Does anyone else have a backup of this content?
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That's it for today. More tomorrow :)
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Hello,I did not realize I needed to check in here as well.I grabbed "all below here" because I have all but about 100 of the projects. I extracted them from the pages, but the problem was I was unable to do it while logged in and you only get something like 3978 pages rather than the 4171 total. So I am browsing the pages going through them side by side, logged in and not, to catch the ones I don't have and putting them into the list of pages where they are supposed to be. I hope that makes sense.Also on the inventory sheet I found a couple that were incorrectly marked invalid, and after I put in the rest of the ones I have, I'm going to spot check the rest.serenai
I guess a better way to explain is that I am extracting the pages in bulk. I've been trying to do it for a while but kept hitting snags, then had to get some work done, and now I have a week and a half to pack and find another place to live. But I was trying to get all these extracted so that Miss T didn't have to do them all.
I marked off the rest of the list so that nobody else would work on them while I was. You've taken my name off, and my edits are gone from the Project ID list so I don't know where I was with the ones I found as incorrect. So I guess I'll just finish this on my own and send my info to Tarshana, and she can copy and paste what she needs.
Good luck with the project.
I think there's been some miscommunication and confusion.
We don't need BSN Project pages archived -- we already have the entire thing archived. That is different than the project inventory on the spreadsheet. The archive is a "safeguard" for if and when BW takes down BSN before the project inventory is complete.
The spreadsheet is meant to serve as a resource for mod users (and even modders). It is the new BSN. A place where they can look up information about the mods and find new download links, if those links exist. It's also used to track the permission status associated with each mod, whether the author was contacted, etc.
This is manual work. It needs to be done by hand and cannot be automated. I removed your name from the Project ID sheet b/c inventorier names should *only* be adjacent to pages they are actively working on. You cannot work on "all below here", indicating the remaining 300 pages. This was the *only* place I removed your name from on the sheet. And, I only removed it after looking through all game tabs and seeing that you had no entries. I didn't remove it from anywhere else, so if it is gone, that's not something I did.
If you want to help with the inventory that's great -- we welcome it. But, it means looking up projects by hand, contacting mod authors, and entering the necessary data in the various game tabs and CMA sheets.
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@Inventoriers -- Next batch :)
1. Author Contact Sheet.
- Tarsh tells me this is still being used, and it is up to date. Yay.
- Serenai has been removed for now. @Serenai, please introduce yourself in this thread and if/when you start inventorying, go ahead and choose a small set of pages at once -- just 1 or 2.
- The changes to the sheet format have been made and look great. It's now quite clear that many mod authors are not responding to our attempts to contact them -- which is good info for Nexus to know :)
- Please don't forget to update the status of author's contacted. This will now be easier.
- This sheet has been fully QA'd and has some new comments/questions for inventoriers, please take a look.
2. BSN Pages, Sorting, and Entry Protocols.
Please make sure that you are sorting BSN pages as per the spreadsheet instructions. This prevents multiple inventoriers from overwriting each other's work.
3. Baldur's Gate.
Sheet tidied and QA'd.
4. NWN 1&2.
These are old titles with relatively few projects overall. This is why separate sheets were not created in the first place.
- The recently created second sheet has been removed.
- The single entry on this sheet has been relocated to the existing sheet.
- This sheet has been renamed to "NWN 1/2" for clarity.
- A new column has been added to this sheet to define whether the mod is for NWN 1 or NWN 2. Tarsh will be updating all previous entries.
This sheet has also been QA'd and tidied.
5. More Website Updates.
Tarsh FORGOT (lol) to share some important info about the DAO Toolset wiki courtesy of Sunjammer, so the website has been updated with this info.
Also updated is info from Fextralife's archive, where the BW Fan Creations forum will not be ported t their forum due to the gray nature of mod permissions, as some authors used those threads as surrogate mod hosting. (bad!)
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I may not get to any other updates today, and there's still a lot to be done, so more tomorrow :)
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@Inventoriers -- The first of likely many posts, lol...
1. Sunshinenbrick.
You've been added to the website as an inventorier. Thanks and welcome! :)
2. Instruction Sheet.
This will see more modifications, but the link to the Nexus thread has been updated.
3. Shae and QuarianAnalyst.
Have we re-contacted all their authors? Tarsh, I think you mentioned something about this. Both came and went very quickly, so I doubt that they will return with any mod author responses.
4. "Serenai"
This inventorier has placed some info on the Inventory Status sheet, but I see no evidence of them in this thread. Anyone know who this is? If not, I'll remove the edits from the sheet.
5. Inventory Status Sheet.
This sheet seems very outdated, with the last entry for page 179. Are folks no longer using this sheet? Why or why not?
6. Author Responses.
How are we doing with these? Do we have a lot of authors who haven't responded? Anyone have a rough percentage of how many are responding?
Also, it looks like the "Response" column on the Contact Author sheet is actually playing a dual role right now. We've got notes related to how authors have been contacted and we have notes related to their response. This makes it difficult to easily tell if an author has responded. Seems like the following changes would be helpful:
- New "Contact Notes" column -- All comments related to this will be relocated here from the "Response" column.
- New "Replied" column -- This will be a color-coded column green/red that serves as a quick visual indicator on whether an author has responded. I can probably also make it autofill green once the Reply Details (see below) is filled in. Otherwise it will default red.
- Reply Details -- The current "Response" column will be renamed to this for clarity.
I'll work on implementing these and updating the sheet.
More incoming.
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Hello,
I have got two questions:
1. Will Bioware delete the Toolset Wiki, too?
2. Will the BCN "save" the Toolset Wiki in case?
rosvita
P.S.: I hope, that these questions were not the topic of some other older postings. Please, excuse me, in case!
1. We doubt it, but when we find out, we'll update the website.
2. We already have a backup of the DAO wiki, as does Fextralife.
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I've just come across this mod for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. What are we supposed to do with it ? It's most likely the only mod for this game, and has nothing to do on BSN.
Ignore it. I never should have been uploaded to BSN and isn't a mod for a BW game.
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I'm spending this morning catching up and it looks like we've had a few things happen while I've been busy with the toolset. Looks like we need to revisit some topics:
Spreadsheet Edits
I thought this was clear, but perhaps not. Nobody should be adding/removing/reformatting spreadsheets. All inventoriers should be doing is inventorying -- unless it's something they run past me first. Significant changes like this impact everyone involved in the project, as well as the instructions on the front page. They need to be discussed prior to implementation, which is part of my role as project coordinator. Unfortunately, Google does not have any granularity in editing permissions. Folks can either edit or not, so we're on an honor system.
If you feel like you have a good idea for a change in format to the spreadsheets, bring your idea here so it can be discussed. From there, I'll implement the change, or give you the verbal on implementing it yourself. It may seem like a pain to jump through these few hoops, but it will prevent problems like the ones already discussed in this thread.
It'll take me some time today to go through the changes I'm seeing, so expect some revisions incoming. My guess is I can't fully revert without losing a bunch of work from everyone, so we'll adjust however we can.
Inventorying Protocols
Similar to the spreadsheet edits, these again should not be changed without the project coordinator's go ahead -- whether that's me or someone else. We've put specific measures in place for a reason, all of which are summarized on the instruction page. All inventoriers are working off those stated protocols. When people change protocol midstream it leads to confusion. If someone wants to discuss a change -- which is no problem -- we need to do it here and make a decision. From there the instruction sheet is amended and everyone take a look to make sure everyone is on the same page. *Then* inventoriers start implementing the change into your actual workflow.
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More incoming as I play catch up. Expect lots of new comments on the sheets as protocols are clarified.
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In response to post #43210170. #43211035, #43211650 are all replies on the same post.Will Nexus be bundling a certain amount of extensions with the tool (that are optional) that retain all the features in MO that NMM lacks (last time I checked, anyway)?moho25 wrote: Just had to check if it was April 1st.
Wow. This is... surprising.
I'm a pretty diehard MO fan. It does have a significantly steeper learning curve than NMM, yes, but is a much more powerful tool. It's a flat out amazing tool, actually, despite the somewhat dated GUI.
Which is why I fall into the "concerned" camp. People used MO precisely b/c they didn't want to use NMM. B/c they wanted (possibly even needed) the additional features and level of control that MO provided. So, the big concern, of course, is: will those features be retained? Or, in the goal to try to please/appeal to everyone -- advanced and novice users -- will the new tool end up with too many compromises? Ultimately, the question is this: Do the goals Nexus has for NMM redux align with what MO users expect (and were expecting) from MO?
Well... I guess we'll find out.Tannin42 wrote: One goal for the new NMM is to be very extensible so the goals we have don't necessarily have to 100% align with the expectations of every single user.
There just has to be a developer somewhere willing to implement the adjustments.Tastou wrote: A moddable mod tool?
Also, will it retain MO's virtual file system rather than modifying the Data directory, physically? -
Just had to check if it was April 1st.
Wow. This is... surprising.
I'm a pretty diehard MO fan. It does have a significantly steeper learning curve than NMM, yes, but is a much more powerful tool. It's a flat out amazing tool, actually, despite the somewhat dated GUI.
Which is why I fall into the "concerned" camp. People used MO precisely b/c they didn't want to use NMM. B/c they wanted (possibly even needed) the additional features and level of control that MO provided. So, the big concern, of course, is: will those features be retained? Or, in the goal to try to please/appeal to everyone -- advanced and novice users -- will the new tool end up with too many compromises? Ultimately, the question is this: Do the goals Nexus has for NMM redux align with what MO users expect (and were expecting) from MO?
Well... I guess we'll find out.
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I'll get to it some time this week, along with some other work on the spreadsheet. The old thread is locked, but the final post has a link to this thread. Also, all website links are updated.The only issue with that link is that it is on the last page. People won't necessarily think of looking there, a link at the top of the first page would be more visible :smile:.
Which is why I said I'd get to it.
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giftfish, the 53rd line of the 1st tab of the spreadsheet should be updated with the new forum post. It still points to the old one, which is now locked.
I'll get to it some time this week, along with some other work on the spreadsheet. The old thread is locked, but the final post has a link to this thread. Also, all website links are updated.
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Yep, what Kkjiro said.
You can view Nexusmods virus report associated with the file, and see that it's due to Texmod -- which is a widely used program in its own right. Luckily, we've figured out how to use TPFs w/o Texmod, so those EXEs will no longer be present in the toolset with the next stable release. Which will be soon.
Btw, you can pretty much count on every file on Nexus being virus free. I've never had a problem in... 6 years. And, if a file has almost 30K downloads on Nexus (like the toolset) and your AV is reporting it as malicious, it's virtually guaranteed to be a false positive. If it actually contained a virus, Nexus would have pulled it long before 30K downloads.
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@inventoriers -- Just touching base.
Things going okay? Any issues I need to be aware of?
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Thanks, Dark0ne. I was actually a bit confused and wondered what happened to the post.
Sorry to hear about your loss, krlewis. You and your family have my condolences. We'll still be here when you're ready :)
BioWare Continuity Network (BCN) - Preserving the BSN
in PC Gaming
Posted · Edited by moho25
Different URL, so it makes sense. The galleries aren't particularly helpful, anyway, as far as the projects that have yet to be inventoried. It's the descriptions that are needed, and any potential third party links. Luckily, we have copies.
I'll update the website tonight, with the information as "questionable" and provide the link to Tarsh's ticket.
If anyone has contacted BW on social media, please post here with a link. The entire reason they removed the forum and switched to social media is it makes it easier to ignore the things they want to ignore, and only engage at moments of their choosing. They control the discussion. On a forum, the community has a much greater role in controlling the discussion. We're not going to get an answer unless we're persistent, and it's almost certain that the random dude working customer support for EA has absolutely no idea what BSN Projects are.