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A suggestion for modders...


DaveyJ576

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Perhaps I am the only dunce in the greater world of KSP players. If so then I humbly accept my ignorance. However, If I am not, then I would like to make a suggestion to anyone that, out of the goodness of their heart, creates a mod for the rest of us to use:

PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW TO USE YOUR MOD.

For someone with a computer coding background, how to use all the features of a particular mod may come as a natural thing. However, if my suspicions are correct, then a lot of players download a mod then struggle with how to use it. If you create a mod, please don't assume that its use will be as intuitive to everyone as you find it to be. A set of instructions or some type of Wiki would be extremely helpful to many of us who are less informed. I have several mods in my install where 60-70% of the settings functionality is a complete mystery to me.

I think that many modders philosophy is to have the player simply tinker with the settings to see what the effect on the game is. On the surface, that is not a bad idea. However, many mods require you to back out of the game, reboot, and start again after changing a setting. When you have a modded game that takes 10 minutes or more to start up that results in an overhead in time that quickly becomes onerous and tedious.

I fully appreciate how much work modders put into their creations. Spending all those hours on something that you do not get paid for is something that amazes me. But, it seems to me that if you are going to put that much work into a mod, then it would make sense to insure that ALL players, not just those with a coding background, will be able to fully appreciate your genius and hard work.

Thank you.

 

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On 9/21/2021 at 3:18 PM, DaveyJ576 said:

PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW TO USE YOUR MOD.

Here's a thought.  Maybe players of such mods that do have the expertise can help modders with documentation?

It is important to consider the modder/player dynamic.  Now certainly I cannot speak for all modders but as some have specifically stated it, I can say this is at least true for some.  Many modders aren't making a mod for you.  They are making a mod for themselves and they are nice enough to share it with the rest of us.

As such documentation, being the least favorite thing to do, is at the bottom of their list.

However, I would expect EVERY modder will happily take community help for writing documentation.

Personally I'd prefer this in every instance as a modder can use their valuable volunteered time working on the actual mod.

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2 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

Here's a thought.  Maybe players of such mods that do have the expertise can help modders with documentation?

anything players can do to help other players with mods is most welcome.

I have started enabling wiki's on my Github repo's and enabling public editing of those wiki's

So yes - help document the mod(s) you love, and help translate those same mods if you speak languages other than us-eng.

2 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

As such documentation, being the least favorite thing to do, is at the bottom of their list

yep. the only thing holding up Komplexity's full release is the wiki and documentation. (for example)

2 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

However, I would expect EVERY modder will happily take community help for writing documentation.

Personally I'd prefer this in every instance as a modder can use their valuable volunteered time working on the actual mod.

agree. and well said @goldenpsp +1 :rep:

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On 9/21/2021 at 4:44 PM, CobaltWolf said:

Ah, documentation. The most important part of any project... and everyone's least favorite to do! :)

 

8 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

Here's a thought.  Maybe players of such mods that do have the expertise can help modders with documentation?

Actually, in my experience, parts mods like @CobaltWolf’s BDB need the LEAST amount of documentation for a good player experience. Yet the dev team at Bluedog (especially @Friznit) have created one of the best Wiki’s in the game, one that is immensely helpful. Another is @IgorZ’s Kerbal Inventory System. There is an awesome guide for that mod. But the other day I was struggling with the brilliant Kronometer, a perfect add on mod for KSRSS, and one of the features wasn’t making sense to me. I had to ask the creator of KSRSS, the very helpful @tony48and he cleared it up,  but not without a lot of head scratching on my part.
 

So I totally agree that these forums are amazing assets for players, but often getting the clarification needed requires a lot of back and forth that takes up a lot of time and tries the patience of all parties. I can imagine the frustrations of players where English is a second language. 
 

So please provide at least some basic instructions. I understand that it is tedious, but often it is vital for the full enjoyment of the mod. 

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To be fair, Kronometer's devs did write 185 lines of documentation for it, available both on the repo and in the download:

So the problem isn't that Kronometer is undocumented, it's that its documentation doesn't answer your question. Why is that? Well, I don't know for sure whether this is the explanation for Kronometer, but sometimes it can be hard to anticipate what documentation people will need. It's possible to get so familiar with a complex technical problem that you struggle to see it from an outside perspective, so some devs just give up, or even do their best and fall short. (And when a mod is adopted, new maintainers tend to assume the status quo is "good enough", so early deficiencies tend not to be addressed unprompted.)

2 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

But the other day I was struggling with the brilliant Kronometer, a perfect add on mod for KSRSS, and one of the features wasn’t making sense to me.

This is just as much of an opportunity as it is a problem, because if you were confused about something, others almost certainly will have the same question at some point. If we all made a habit of capturing the things we learn from forum conversations and using them to create the documentation that we wish had been available (that README file can be updated with pull requests), then there would be a direct flow from "pain points" to gradual improvements. Obviously that takes time and work, but why is it more reasonable to ask the dev to do it instead, when they may not even understand what you (and surely others) found confusing?

2 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

a lot of back and forth that takes up a lot of time and tries the patience of all parties

... which is particularly inefficient if a dev has to do it one user at a time, over and over week after week, rather than collaborating on something that will help all users.

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3 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

So please provide at least some basic instructions. I understand that it is tedious, but often it is vital for the full enjoyment of the mod. 

I would humbly ask that you re-read my previous reply, because you obviously missed its message.

 

4 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

I had to ask the creator of KSRSS, the very helpful @tony48and he cleared it up,  but not without a lot of head scratching on my part.

 

@HebaruSan summed it up nicely.  Now that you got this valuable new information  What did you do with it?  Did you ask if you could help by adding it to the existing documentation, thereby helping to become part of the solution?

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either I spend time on documentation or I spend time fixing / updating / releasing. there is no and. 

I gladly take time to help; what would be great and a great show of respect is some reciprocity; take what is learned and improve the documentation.

3 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

@HebaruSan summed it up nicely.  Now that you got this valuable new information  What did you do with it?  Did you ask if you could help by adding it to the existing documentation, thereby helping to become part of the solution?

yep

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5 hours ago, goldenpsp said:

I would humbly ask that you re-read my previous reply, because you obviously missed its message.

 

 

@HebaruSan summed it up nicely.  Now that you got this valuable new information  What did you do with it?  Did you ask if you could help by adding it to the existing documentation, thereby helping to become part of the solution?

I did not miss the message, I understood it perfectly and your point is well made. However, due to my extremely limited experience with coding and game design, I only barely understood the underlying issue at work and even though @tony48was able to help I did not understand the mechanics of the issue well enough to be able to explain it any better than he did. So with that said it would not be helpful for me to attempt to write documentation and run the risk of muddying the waters further. 

Allow me to offer this perhaps somewhat imperfect metaphor. Many years ago at age 16, I was required to attend and pass a driver's education course as part of the requirements of getting my driver's license. Driving an automobile is a complicated act performed in a complex machine and thus it is understandable, indeed vital, for a new driver to receive the proper instruction. Imagine a situation where a driver's education course did not exist and after your first experience behind the wheel being asked by the car's manufacturer to write an instructional manual for future drivers. The resulting manual would probably be a hot mess. Now, at age 56, with 40 years of experience behind the wheel I could probably write that manual, but not back then.

Please believe me when I say that I appreciate the efforts that the Squad staff and all of the modders make when working on the game. I am able to set back and enjoy the fruits of their labor. I get how easy it is to sit up in the cheap seats and snipe away. I truly don't want to be that guy, and if I have come off that way I sincerely apologize. It just seems to me that providing some form of instructions that will lessen the learning curve of a complex simulation like KSP would be helpful for those of us way up in the cheap seats.

Thank you all for your input.

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8 minutes ago, DaveyJ576 said:

Many years ago at age 16, I was required to attend and pass a driver's education course as part of the requirements of getting my driver's license. Driving an automobile is a complicated act performed in a complex machine and thus it is understandable, indeed vital, for a new driver to receive the proper instruction. Imagine a situation where a driver's education course did not exist and after your first experience behind the wheel being asked by the car's manufacturer to write an instructional manual for future drivers.

I see two ways this metaphor fails:

First, driving a car is much more complicated than using a KSP mod like Kronometer. Since the metaphor relies on the complexity of driving to make its point, we may be skeptical how much it tells us about KSP mods.

Second, nobody's asking you to write a complete manual by yourself, unaided; of course that would be unreasonable. Rather, you had a specific question about a mod that isn't answered in its current documentation, and you have sought and found the answer elsewhere. It's strange to then claim that you are unable to write an answer to that question, when you presumably understand it well enough now to no longer need to ask it.

A better metaphor might be: Imagine you were handed a somewhat incomplete driving manual by a car manuacturer and asked to revise anything you found unclear. You might flip through it and note that its discussion of stop signs doesn't say whether a "rolling stop" is acceptable. Based on the lessons you took, you happen to know it's not (legally, at least), so you would probably be capable of adding or editing a sentence in the manual to specify this.

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4 hours ago, DaveyJ576 said:

I did not miss the message, I understood it perfectly and your point is well made. However, due to my extremely limited experience with coding and game design, I only barely understood the underlying issue at work and even though @tony48was able to help I did not understand the mechanics of the issue well enough to be able to explain it any better than he did. So with that said it would not be helpful for me to attempt to write documentation and run the risk of muddying the waters further. 

Unfortunately you didn't that was my current reply.  I'll do a TLDR

Yes this thread has that hint of entitlement.  The reason is this.  You seem to have the idea that all of these modders are creating mods for you (and by you the players at large of course).  I would say in general modders create their mods for themselves.  Most modders have something they wish was in the game, couldn't find someone who already did a mod, and had the desire to make one.  Then they are kind enough to share it with the rest of us.  It may seem to be a subtle difference but it is important.

This difference means that a modder will read your original request:

On 9/21/2021 at 3:18 PM, DaveyJ576 said:

PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW TO USE YOUR MOD.

And say, I don't really care if you use my mod, because they didn't make it for you. (and no that doesn't mean they literally don't care.  Of course I'm sure they get good vibes from people enjoying their creation)

Additionally, the mod you use as your example seems to have extensive documentation, with 188 lines of documentation.  That is actually a decent amount.

As to the other stuff @HebaruSan explained that better.  The TLDR is you don't need to be an expert level programmer to help.  I'm not but I have done plenty of pull requests for mods which were simple MM config patches and stuff over the years.

Edited by goldenpsp
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I appreciate the sentiment, but a whole thread essentially addressing all modders strikes me as bad form.

I can agree that there are some mods that add a layer or two of complexity that can seem overwhelming at first. The direction that MKS is/has been taking recently springs to mind, but there are a couple of others. My experience of such mods is that usually one of three things occur: Either an enthusiastic forum user will start working on a wiki of some kind, the modder will be very helpful in the thread when asked how it works, or the users who use the thread will jump in to help answer such questions. Sometimes there are the 'google is ur frend' (internet for 'IDK but don't want to admit it to you') type replies, but I ignore those IRL, so why should a forum any different? But mostly, the response is well meaning and well mannered.

I mean look, 6 years ago or so I made some flags. Flags. Yes, flags. It has matured somewhat since then, but at the time I started on them you couldn't really even call it a mod (I'm still not quite sure the definition fits), and while mostly the requests for things and comments were polite and/or helpful and constructive, I have had more than one comment on the thread demanding (yes, CAPS and exclamation marks were used) that I change the style of my flags or that what I chose to include was wrong or what-ever. Silly stuff that doesn't make you spill your beer, but if people do this with a simple set of flags, that let's be honest, don't take up even a tenth of the (free and unpaid) time spent on something like MKS, NFT or BDB, etc, then to my mind it's absolutely mind blowing that more modders don't just end up saying 'You know what? If you want this stuff in the game, you do it.' Hats off that they don't.

I'm not deliberately misunderstanding the OP, as I have felt your pain, but ultimately, apart from that pain slowly subsiding as you trial and error your way through (just like when you first got into orbit, or got a Kerbal to the Mun) - forgive me if this all comes off as a little condescending - it really isn't how I mean it - the TL/DR of it all is that modders (however simple or complex the mod) aren't paid to do what they do and as far as I'm concerned, a given modder could basically make what amounts to KSP2 complete with a colony system, life support, orbital and surface construction, and a Duna surface Diner with all the trimmings, and it would still be totally their call as to whether or not they explain how to order a coffee and bacon and eggs. I would hope they would answer a politely worded question, but wouldn't expect it.

Edited by DirtyFace83
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