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Author Topic:   Murphy's Modding Laws :)
Bao Feng Xue
Knight

Posts: 95
From: ......
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 12 February 2002 03:22     Click Here to See the Profile for Bao Feng Xue   Click Here to Email Bao Feng Xue        Reply w/Quote   
Signs You're Playing A Bad Mod

10) The Blood Moors are populated by Izual Clones.
9) Version History: 1.00 First Release, 1.01 Fixed Huge Number of Crash Bugs. Read between the lines and you'll see: 1.02 Will Fix Many More Crash Bugs.
8) After five minutes of cubing you end up with gear that reduces Lister to a brand of obscure Le Mans race cars.
7) The readme contains the words 'only' 'Act1' and 'yet' in close proximity to each other.
6) Your merc takes over, sells your character to Qual-Kehk and asks for a better companion.
5) The mod creator had the bright idea to remove the hover descriptions such as Multishot and Lightning Enchanted to make the game more challenging.
4) You get mocked by the mod creator for being too stupid to guess that an 'Uranium Stone' cubed with a 'Blood Vial', two mana potions, Cow King's Hooves and a rare war staff obviously produces an Unique Grim Wand!
3) The Bloody Foothills have been beefed up; now you have to look at the monsters and blink!
2) White items are so rare, they go for 5 SoJs.
1) Your barb has +56 to All Skills and 12% Chance to hit a Hell zombie.

Why Players Are The Nightmare Of Mod Makers

4) They don't tell you what they think about the mod, or what can be improved, let alone the deadly crash bug you missed at the end of Act1.
3) They go straight for either the sorc or barb, and merrily ignore all the work you've put into the Defensive Auras and Spear & Javelin trees.
2) 'Hardcoded' is something the average mod player doesn't want to hear. You are the mod maker, you're supposed to be able to turn LoD into a shooter, Baldur's Gate or flight simulation game.

Why Mod Makers Are The Nightmare Of Players

4) They never draw big red arrows on the ground with the message: for that one quest item you need if you ever want to get past Act3, go here.
3) Horadric Cubes don't come with a manual.
2) Readme says: Unfortunately, the large amount of changes makes characters from a previous version incompatible with this new release... Sell that Monstrous Angel Blade of Total Destruction you've spent two weeks gambling for, and your character might actually make it in without getting too harshly corrupted.
1) They add new skills, without telling you whether the new skills are actually any good. After six failed characters, you decide to take the mpq apart and figure it out once and for all.

You Know You're Taking This Modmaking Thing Too Seriously When...

10) ...that book about modern witchcraft inspires you to host your business email address on vizjerei.com. (thx Jared)
9) ...you're at a party and they're telling jokes, and when it's your turn you tell about your latest, uproarishly funny palette screwup that resulted in a pink Na-Krul. Dead silence.
8) ...you remember people by their Phrozen Forum avatar, and don't recognize them anymore when they change it.

Murphy's Laws Of Mod Making

-Nozirub's Scary Law of Numbers: everything you do can and will be used against you.
--Niu Qelrah's Unique Law: if you beef up your affixes or make new ones, you'll have to redo all uniques and sets as well.
--Incandescent Law: all new monster graphics for Act1 is not enough.
--Gheociti's Law: all new monster graphics for all acts results in a monster of an mpq file.
--Merc Law of Edes: increase the difficulty of the monsters and your mercs get flattened, improve the mercs and your own character is dwarfed by the ubermercs, improve the characters and the increased difficulty of the monsters is effectively undone.

-Arch-Angel's Law of Wizardry: there really aren't much skills to replace the sorc's with.
--D00D's Deduction: this is something the player doesn't want to hear.
--D00D's Greater Deduction: and you can bet that 90% of the players will go straight for the sorceress.
--Dargold's Addition: a mod where the frozen orb graphics are replaced with bone spears will always be chosen over one where the creator has spent three weeks getting his new state of the art, hex edited Druid Summoning Skill to work.
--D00D's Greatest Deduction: sorc and barb skill changes count double, zon and pal skills don't count.
--D00D's Divine Deduction: you better put all your new skills on charges, or they won't even see them.

-Sirian's Law of Crappy Drops: either there are too many good drops, or not enough.
--Ownage's Uberdrop Law: if too many good items drop, people will get the very best items in two days of Mephisto runs and complain about how easy it is.
--Zen's Law of Scarcity: if not enough good items drop, people will complain about not being able to get the very best items in two days of Mephisto runs, and give up.

-Spamguard's Unavoidable Law: whatever you do, it's never what the players want.
--Ownage's Law of Certain Doom: this includes doing nothing.
--Williamson's Prodigious Law: players expect you to fix everything there is to fix.
--Spamguard's Conclusion: you better be a star at every mod making discipline, or you'll get flamed for Blizzard's mistakes.

-Reyalp's Law of Amnesia: players either skip the readme, or forget its contents as soon as they click exit.
--Eramthin's Deduction: players will forget to install the dll files and wonder where the new skills went, or gleefully run off in the wrong direction and then get angry with the mod creator because they can't find a quest location.
--Erutrot's Law of Tears: those people will then complain on the forums that the new skills are bugged or the game crashes when they enter a new area, and ask what the mod creator was going to do about it.

-Eboda's Law of Black Backgrounds: your inventory or monster graphics only look good on your system.
--Noi Tanmad's Troublesome Law: you can bet that exactly one item will have an empty hover text, no inventory graphic or missing xlation.
--Pusemit's Ticking Clock Law: you know you're about halfway done with your mod, when you think you're completely done.

-Dom T. Xenyako's Fear: mpq and -direct -txt are incompatible.
--E.B.T.Nacsiht's Deduction: the only system on which the mod works correctly, is your own.

-T. Lobyloh's Hardcoded Law: everything, everything can be changed... except the one thing you want. You can turn frozen orb into a homing ice cream cone that spins round the character playing a pretty melody and causes stun and fire splash damage; you just can't get it to obey to fire mastery.
--Bronezorf's Conclusion: when something is impossible, it never looks like that, and you'll only discover the truth after a week of banging your head against the wall.

-Llati Dekun's Red Button Law: screwing something up is as easy as removing an entry from expansionstring.tbl or adding an empty line in armor.txt. Undoing it usually means restoring from your latest backup, if you have one.
--Y. Obwoc's Law of Numberz: you only have to re-enter 1500 affix names and 300 unique and set names in fresh tbl files twice before you wise up and stay away from the other entries.

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Chineseman
Honorary Warlord

Posts: 357
From: The Philippines
Registered: Mar 2002

posted 12 February 2002 05:42     Click Here to See the Profile for Chineseman   Click Here to Email Chineseman        Reply w/Quote   
Hey, nice set of rules! I'll keep everything in mind. And keep everything in my harddrive. And keep every backup. Hehehehe.

From the looks of things...modding isn't that bad...it's just not a good idea!

Makes me not to release my mod at all...

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Applebuddy
Serf

Posts: 18
From: Illinois
Registered: Nov 2001

posted 12 February 2002 07:23     Click Here to See the Profile for Applebuddy        Reply w/Quote   
ROFLMAO. That was great! It reminds me of so many different aspects of making my mod game.

Keep up the good work!

------------------
No, I am not drunk, I am sotally tober. Another beer Mr. Ossifer?

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Wyvern
Honorary Warlord

Posts: 1137
From: A very large cave
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 12 February 2002 20:04     Click Here to See the Profile for Wyvern   Click Here to Email Wyvern        Reply w/Quote   
reminds me of how much work i gotta do on my mod

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