The Wonderland Board

Hi guys,

Today, we've introduced (semi-)mandatory title tagging for RTW Levels/Custom Content after receiving feedback that modded levels are sometimes hard to spot. We haven't rolled this out to WA area because we understand that WA operates very differently from RTW. Nonetheless, with mods becoming more and more commonplace, it should be easy for users to figure out whether they need a certain mod to play the adventure just from looking at the title. This is an opportunity to see if the current ways content are titled can be improved to help users search for other contents as well.

I've come up with a few possible schemes:
1. Tagging mod-related contents only - Require* tagging for modded adventures/hubs/content that depend on mods; mods go into Other Custom Contents
2. Tagging mods and custom contents only - Apart from 1, require content in Other Custom Content to be tagged (e.g. RTW-Style "New LevelTexture/Music Pack" or another style such as "[LEVELTEX] [MUSICPACK]")
3. Full tagging - Apart from 1 and 2, require tagging for adventures and hubs (using your best judgement)

* by require we mean "please do this for cleaniness's sake" - we don't plan on actually enforcing these guidelines as 1) they're guidelines; 2) it would take us too much time to go through each "violation"

We can also do nothing, but from user feedback not knowing that a particular adventure uses a mod seems to be annoying in general, so it's not a very good option.

We'd like to know what you think about the schemes above, and what improvements can be made.

I'll leave this thread open for a while before we come to a decision, probably nearer new years 2017.

I think the cleanest way to do it is to make the title stay the same (plain level name) for non-modded levels and to add [MOD] to the front of the title if any mod is required to play. This will help people who don't want to play modded levels at all.
To explain further to people who do want to play the level with the mods, somewhere in the first post there should be a paragraph explaining which mod(s) are needed, with some kind of download and installation instructions (or a link to a topic or website with that information).
I would count anything which is not provided by Midnight Synergy as a mod. For example if something changes the game mechanics like adding more kinds of magic, that is a mod. If something uses custom music, that is a mod. If there is a custom texture, and the method of using custom textures is provided by Midnight Synergy, then it is not a mod and should not be tagged as one.
I personally do not think there should be a [TEX] tag for textures. Of course, the first post of the topic should list textures used along with a download or a topic link.
I'm not sure what a Wop is and no one has explained very well, but if instructions for using them are not provided by Midnight Synergy, it's basically a kind of mod and should be tagged as one.
Thanks for letting us have a say in this!

cloudrac3r wrote: I would count anything which is not provided by Midnight Synergy as a mod. For example if something changes the game mechanics like adding more kinds of magic, that is a mod. If something uses custom music, that is a mod. If there is a custom texture, and the method of using custom textures is provided by Midnight Synergy, then it is not a mod and should not be tagged as one.

The definition of "mod" in our case would be any modifications to the game executable itself. Custom content such as music, textures and custom objects (wops) do not count, nor is twisting existing game mechanic to do something new.

I think it's widely accepted in the WA community that custom content will almost always be needed for user-created adventures to be run; mods on the other hand require more effort to put in place and it might not be something everybody wants to do.

Hi,

Just a quick note to say that due to the diversity of adventures/hubs and the nature that almost all of them require custom content one way or another, we will not be requiring threads to mark their adventure/hubs as modded at this time. However as a courtesy may we ask all adventure makers to state the requirements clearly in the adventure thread.

Thank you to all forum members who have provided opinions on this subject.