4 replies to this topic

[Bill Bisco]

Guys, I've been reading through this forum for several days.  I have been reading through the Big World Project v15 for the last couple of weeks.  Every night I've been manually looking up and downloading the various mods I wanted while manually reading up on what I wanted to choose.  In the back of my mind I was worried about what I needed to do to learn to edit the bat file and to create new folders, and how to create a backup.

 

I didn't realize that the Big World Setup Program did what it did.  OH MY DEAR LORD!  THIS THING IS AWESOME! 

 

1. It downloads programs for me

2. It creates backups for me

3. It allows me to create alternative loading points

4. It tells me about conflicts and warns me about potentially troublesome installs.

5. It installs programs for me!

6. It seems to work!

 

A sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed to this program.  I have a few thoughts.

 

1. Most of the Stickied Threads here are a little outdated to what people should really do: Use Big World Setup.  This program seems the easiest way to avoid conflicts and problems for people and would probably cut down on people asking for help.

2. We should probably rename this Forum to Big World Setup or have a new forum for this program.  Mega Mod help is good, but really this program goes beyond that in that it prevents a lot of problems to begin with and makes people want to use mods a lot more!

3. Does the average pers on really only want to install just one or two mods?  I see links to downloading mods At SHS, G3, PPG, and elsewhere, but do the type of people who want to mod, really only want just one mod?  I see this post and it just makes me sad.  Don't go through all that work!  Just use Big World Setup and install just a few mods if you want?  Even for a minimalist, why would you want to go through all that work of looking up and downloading and installing, when you can just load up this program for you?

4. Shouldn't Big World Setup be very prominently displayed on the Website and Elsewhere?  Take a look at the SHS main website or this picture.  Shouldn't we have a new category called Mod Downloader and Installer Program?  I mean, Big World Setup is extremely useful!  It really deserves prominence methinks.

5. Shouldn't Big World Setup and Big World Project be released concurrently?  It's really confusing to have a Big World Project with a manual BAT version and instructions and have a Big World Setup that's not current with Big World Project.  Shouldn't these two things be combined or at least concurrent and complementing?  Perhaps have the Big World Project installation and method be somewhat deferring to the easier Big World Setup?

 

These are just my thoughts.  They may not all make sense or be good.  I'm just a regular guy who'd like to help.  Thanks for reading.

[dabus]

2) Dunno. We had a topic about being a bit out of "moderation" and I don't think that it'll get a new forum. Not for a game that's that old and not after all that time that flow down the river Styx since inserting support for component selection or other games that are younger.
4) Dunno. BWP is older or made the blueprints for a BWS install order and is not mentioned.
5) I think Quiet made some adjustments some time ago. Six or seven weeks and committed them into master / EET. So if you think it differs, maybe you have chosen the old download package which is not current due to some internal issues.
(Things like rewrite some important portions of the script, making errors on the way, discuss ideas about that, waiting for a go from somewhere, introducing a new method to save some time for guys who keep the configuration up to date while adding some errors then, finding and removing some bugs).

BWP adds mods every now and then in a new release, which is maintained by Leonardo and he's pretty much on his own maintaining it, so new releases can take some time.
BWS is more a rolling release now. Quiet shouldered the burden to get the configuration to a current level some time ago and Alien had the bitbucket-idea that helps them to share that load (while I'm happy to be more or less completely out of that updating loop).

Way before that happened, BWS was written to fetch mods for the BWP and then start the batches (which it still can do). We then added component support and so on, so it wasn't "out of sync" all the time. BWS mostly all the time used or uses the order and hints about conflicts (I did not want to get involved in that and so I was happy to convert the batch-instructions).
Leonardo was more comfortable with the batches because he wanted to have control over the install process and understand what's going on. I mean, he inserted new features like questions, different install types and so on.
Since I only knew how to script using AutoIt3, I used that, Leonardo was not so eager to fiddle with this language, so he stayed with the batch, where he could implement those mentioned changes.

Since BWP / BWS coexisted for years because of those reasons, I don't really think that'll change. But I guess you never know.
Thanks for your praise, although you're exaggerating a bit.

Edited by dabus, 13 May 2015 - 12:47 PM.

[Fouinto]

1. Most of the Stickied Threads here are a little outdated to what people should really do: Use Big World Setup.  This program seems the easiest way to avoid conflicts and problems for people and would probably cut down on people asking for help.

IMHO, some of them should be unpinned (and forgotten), others could be unpinned but linked in Jarno's FAQ...

[Bill Bisco]

Who's the Admin to contact for the forums?  Obviously a mod stickied The Big World Setup Template Thread. 

 

I'd suggest Quiet and ALIEN be made mods.  They're probably in one of the best positions to help clean up this forum.  I can post more ideas later.

[The Imp]

Who's the Admin to contact for the forums?

SHSForums Admins...

Choo Choo, Kaeloree, SConrad.

 

The fact that there's not manyones really working from the current staff on the Mega Moding Help forums... well it's a bit of thing of time, it's also a question of committing to the role, as it's a bit more time consuming that just flicking a few switches.
And there has been a few good candidates for it but I assume that they have either passed or just not been considered as the best for other reasons.