Patching & Permissions

[Joehtosis]

So I've been building a load order for the first time in quite a while, and in the process I've been accumulating a number of worked out fixes that I've made for my own personal set up. I'd like to share them, but I have concerns over how privileges are fairly handled here, I don't want to disrespect anyone's wishes when it comes to their mod distributions. Asking permission is of course the default, courteous way to navigate this problem, but for many of these fixes that I've been handling, the mod authors have either been absent for years or asking permission would be otherwise impossible.

As an example: Let's take one of discovery's mods, atmospheres heaven and hell. I picked this one because I'm well aware there are certain sensitive issues about sharing his files here, so this would be a good case to work my question around. I did not enjoy the night-time fog values that came with the atmospheres.esp plugin. It made lighting mods and others like Road Lights relatively pointless because I couldn't see more than maybe 1/10 of a cell away from my player character. So, I made a quick fix and edited the fog values for the associated weathers in the plugin. Would it be fair game to share my changes that I made solely for the plugin, without actually distributing the rest of the mod, namely the textures and meshes? Or would this be off limits simply because of it's association with the mod makers wishes to no longer host the mods here?

 

This is an extreme case due to the circumstances which those mods are in, most of what I've done simply deals with mod authors who've just been inactive for years. Anyway, I'm curious where the line is drawn when it comes to just making a small edit to an esp, not redistributing all of the sourced files like audio, meshes, textures etc.

[Oblivionaddicted]

At worst you can always give people instructions on the way they can reproduce your fixes.

[bobbyskel78]

if you run your ... alterations that seem more of opinion than a fix or a patch, just make your mod a child of the parent mod in the CS, usually just having both checked and your mod as active when saving should be sufficient for that. this would require the other mod be present and thus should circumvent any permissions, as your mod is useless w/o the parent mod. this also gives a user the option to deactivate your mod if they don't care for it and just run the parent mod.

none the less, Nexus makes it clear they take permissions very seriously, so i would go ahead give credit where credit is due.

[Joehtosis]

 

if you run your ... alterations that seem more of opinion than a fix or a patch

It's an example. Your input on this is unsolicited.

just make your mod a child of the parent mod in the CS

Looked up how to do it easily in tes4edit, thank you for mentioning this.

none the less, Nexus makes it clear they take permissions very seriously, so i would go ahead give credit where credit is due.

Also irrelevant. I'm asking in regards to permissions. Some authors are inactive for years on end and I don't have years to wait. Some authors have unfortunately passed on and asking permission is impossible. Giving credit is a default whether they're active or not and doesn't pertain to this.

 

In any case, thanks again for mentioning the creation of parent/child esp files, that'll make most of this simple enough.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Joehtosis

[bobbyskel78]

just the opposite, i've been accidentally doing this, some what looking at examples of other author's works. creating a similar mod and seeing how that author approached it, wound up having both mods open, mine active, which can be useful ... until one plans to publish and finds their mod is slaved to another, yet in reality is totally independent.

GECKO offers a stupidly simplistic way of removing slaved mods. so really no reason not to have multiple mods open in the CS while building. I consider it the best way to learn is by aping the pros, i really love looking ... well too many to name author's, some in which will give one a head-ache trying to figure out all the mapping and reasoning for the code, yet many leave many comments in the code which make for excellent learning tools. kuertee, maskar, the wise one, ... too many to give kudos to all. these are my role models.

rules should really be loosened up for some publishing. i honestly can't think of how many mods i have cleaned, removed erred non-essential objects/actors as they were throwing non-stop errors in conscribe or messagelogger ... i forget how much i have fixed or coupled patches into one archive. seems it would make sense if the initial author isn't releasing such, another should without repercussions be allowed to upload and publish the work as such is. oh well. good luck in your endeavors joehtosis.