Coming Monday(?): Fusion Power Is NOW!

[Buster's Uncle]

...Coming Monday, Good Lord willing and the creeks don't rise-
-the scenario, in easy and hard versions, was already saved on my hard drive as of yesterday...

Note that today's the 31st, and we're aiming for the 2nd, 'cause this is real.

[Mylochka]

Love the art!!! (she says immodestly) 

[Buster's Uncle]

Sum star track chick did the art I modded up there.  She's good, for a Chekov fangurl...

[Vishniac]

It's already noon here! 

if you could remember us of what to do with which file we'll download...
I am already fed up with my different folders of "basic SMAC", Yitzi 3.3, Yitzi 3.4. I hope it's playable without patching another time (3.5?  )

[Mart]

We are on recent patch version 3.5d

[Buster's Uncle]

It's coming as soon as Mart comes back -he was just here when I logged on a few minutes ago- or I finish my morning net patrol and wake up.   We've been ready for two days.

[Vishniac]

When going to download 3.5d, it says:

It requires all files (other than terranx.exe) from version 3.5.

but it is the same size (2.93MB) as 3.5

Should I download 3.5 and then 3.5d, or just 3.5d ? 

[Buster's Uncle]

The former.  You need the .txt file he altered for 3.5, then overwrite the .exe with the 3.5d update.

I despair of getting him to organize with better instructions and a good Changelog - and include all needed files each time and reduce the work and wondering for the endusers...

[bvanevery]

Anyone including yourself could just package all those changes and instructions, without Yitzi's involvement.  It is not like his work is legitimately licensed in any way and you'd be in any kind of legal trouble from him for taking his work and running with it.  If he's not much involved anymore then that's just the reality of the situation.  You'd actually be doing his work a favor, making sure that others can and do use it, regardless of any 'politesse' about him doing it.  Whatever he wants out of packaging and crediting, I doubt "let my work die" is the outcome he seeks.  Call yourself a "Maintainer" not the author of the changes, give him the credit and send the needed stuff on its way.

If I thought it was valuable to have a Yitzi patch as a requirement for people, I'd just do it myself.  But my jury's out on whether Yitzi patch provides any play advantages for single player, as in my experience, it makes no impact on AI competence whatsoever.  Thus my own extensive mod I'm working on, I've written it against straight SMAC.  When I've deployed and gotten people to try it out, eventually I'll take up the question of whether Yitzi offers improvements.  Then whether to package with Yitzi, make 2 versions, make a merge tool, or just say hey I think everyone should play with straight SMAC.

In short at this point I don't even understand what Yitzi patch does, because none of the changes were visible to me as a single player.  Although among other things, I guess he killed some bugs?  For whatever reason my own single player experience hasn't been buggy lately, on straight SMAC.

[Green1]

You must also realize that these patches are not very easy to find and the components are not in one place. He has versions missing alphax.txts that you have to go to the first version of the patch series to get. That is just too much to ask someone to do. It should all be in one place. Not sure the reasoning behind that move if you want people to play test or use your work.

Also, I have found that his work often tends to crash my games a lot in the past with each release. While I am not a fan of hidden release bugs, I would rather have an obscure bug and a game that does not crash than obscure bugs fixed and crashy game. I have been  jumped in the past if I mention it, even though I have no ill will. But, it is the truth.

[bvanevery]

I've realized that the lack of a comprehensive ChangeLog is a serious issue for me, as a modder asking the question, "Should I write anything on top of this patch?"  Reading the most recent entries for "this is what this patch offers" did not give me anything like a complete picture of what the patch has in it.  I'd have to read all the patch releases.  If I do that, I might as well distill a proper ChangeLog from them, to fully document what 3.5d actually does, so that nobody else has to trundle through all that mess.

In short, this work wasn't entirely designed to be "followed" by other modders.  It could be made so, if it's worth it to someone... but so far I haven't become that someone.  I've got a Fusion Power GOTM to beat, and lots of playtest iterations of my own mod to do, and an AAR to do of whatever comes out good, and real life things to deal with too.  Only at that point would I start dealing with cleaning up Yitzi's packaging, as the preliminary inspection indicates "this is mildly irritating gruntwork to get to 1st base".

I've shouldered such gruntwork many times in the past in Open Source communities.  I have some instincts about whether it's worth my time or not.  I'm very clear that it's not worth my time today.

I do think that the logical patch issuance number would be "Yitzi 3.5e" though.  That would simply be straight 3.5, with a 3.5d .exe put in it, a comprehensive ChangeLog, and a ReadMe.txt saying why these things were done and by whom.

[Green1]

Well, I always default to Kyrubs. Kyrubs and Scients works 100 percent of the time. It also does not require you to work with it. Whatever works with Planetary Pack or GoG release works with Scients/Kyrub and vice versa.

No alphax dependencies or having to hunt through several releases for it, decent  minor changes to AI, and includes Scient's bug fixes. I have heard it introduces another obscure bug that is so minor I have not noticed it. It may not as ambitious as what Yitzi was trying to do,but it  is ALWAYS stable. Simple installation. Just put save it as terranx(k), put it in the SMAX folder, put a shortcut to it on your desktop as you wish, you have some old school gaming.

So yeah, I agree with you.

[bvanevery]

Great, guess I have to review Kyrubs and Scients work as well, to decide on what basis I'd be writing, supporting, or trying to canonize for other people's efforts.  Definitely not interested right now.

[Green1]

I can make it simpler for you.

Scient's was the first .exe patch to come out. It fixed a few exploits and a few bugs. Kyrub came later. While his major work was for the vanilla game AI and not Alien Crossfire, he did merge some of his AI improvements into Scient's. Kyrubs is called Kyrub's SMAX patch plus.

Both Scient's and Kyrub's are .exe files ONLY. They work with all saves from any version - patched or not -EXCEPT Yitzi's.

Yitzi's is FAR more comprehensive and FAR more prone to breaking. Yitzi forked Kyrub's SMAX patch PLUS and did his own adjustments, even adding new ways to use the alphax.txt file. Hence, Yitzi's requires it's own alphax.txt. Because of this, Yitzi patch games ARE NOT compatible with 1999 retail, Win2k , Planetary Pack, Mastertronic, GoG , Scient's, or Kyrubs exes.

[Green1]

If you are modding... make this agnostic to "patch".

Do not mod to "one patch". There is none unless someone can really pry.

Now if someone wants to be "THE MODDING DUDE", do so. It is a thankless public service and communicate with people. If you ask nicely, we will help. Otherwise, if you don't care, we do not care. We want what works.

A lot more agency when you do not depend on others... Healthier, too...