Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: BFG on September 21, 2023, 02:58:14 AM

Title: Nexus Mods
Post by: BFG on September 21, 2023, 02:58:14 AM

...is a popular website for modding of any and every PC game.  Some stats I've seen show it to be THE most popular.  I've had an account for several years from which I've submitted multiple mods for the Elder Scrolls series.

I bring this up as it may be an opportunity to generate interest in SMACX amongst players that would never seek out (or even find) this site.  I've submitted the official patches and a couple other items; if anyone else has interest, have at it (or give me permission and I'll post your work).  Thanks.

Title: Re: Nexus Mods
Post by: bvanevery on September 21, 2023, 03:42:00 AM

I looked at Nexus Mods 5 years ago, and found no representation of SMAC there that I could recall.  No community to speak of.  So I never bothered with it.

I used to post pointers to my work on maybe 7 to 10 different sites.  Things like CivFanatics, etc.  I paid attention to how many people responded back, or how many downloads I got if that was measurable.  Crickets chirped at a lot of these places, so I stopped bothering with them.

The only consistently good venue was r/4Xgaming on Reddit.  So that is where I stayed and kept my presence known.  In addition to having a reasonably large nominal subscriber count, it has a steady influx of "new blood" who want to know about 4X games in general.  So if someone gives a list of parameters of what they're looking for, and SMAC fits, I talk up SMAC.  And if my mod also seems to fit under certain conditions, I talk up my mod.

My work is pretty much finished now.  It's been a 5 calendar year "long tail" of effort.  I've played my own mod a fair amount lately in the past few months, and I haven't encountered any defects, needed bugfixes, minor possible improvements, etc.  Nothing occurs to me.  Nobody's called anything to my attention either.  After all this time, it's pretty darned tested and pretty darned baked.

It might behoove me to check on all these sites again and make my "pretty much final product" known.  But... when I see dead SMAC forums, I really don't care.

As far as redistribution permissions, my work is under CC-BY-NC license.  That means you can freely redistribute it, and even modify it further, as long as you obey those terms.  The "BY" is particularly important.  I did it; you have to say so.  If you make a derived work, you still have to say so, since I made the original version of my mod.  "NC" means non-commercial, i.e. you can't make money.

I believe Thinker and The Will To Power are both under GPL license.  That means you can freely redistribute them as long as you make the source code available, or you include a known good pointer to where the source code is available, i.e. their GitHubs.  Of course, the total packages of both these mods are completely illegal.  The authors of the additional modding code have no right whatsoever to hack into the binaries, redistribute said binaries, etc.  I don't know if Nexus Mods cares about that.  If they do, then you can't redistribute their work there.  I don't know if they care about pointers to illegal work either.

My work is 100% legal.  I've only modded what anyone could have always done with the game, in .txt files, as shipped by Firaxis, and with the explicit permissions that Firaxis granted in those files.  I deliberately did not touch any file where they didn't give explicit permission to do so.  So I am very confident, that my work can be redistributed anywhere.

Part of why I was that picky about licensing, is I'm an indie game dev and intend to ship my own commercial 4X game someday.  I did not want Firaxis or Electronic Arts coming to get me at some point in the future.

Forums, generally speaking, don't need the actual work redistributed there.  They just need pointers to where you can get the work.  And I've never heard of any of them caring about legalities, as from their standpoint it's just an informational link.  Nevermind a link to a game that's suffered something like corporate abandonment, although of course it is for sale on GOG.  You just won't hear Firaxis talking about it any though.  The rights are split between companies, it's sort of in limbo.