I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

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GamerZakh
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I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by GamerZakh »

Hello, I didn't want to just jump in to this forum and derail anything, but after talking to Ninelan about it they recommended I create a thread here. I've always been open to questions and criticisms, me having a pretty public platform myself I'm kind of an open target, but after not really getting any complaints on my own channel about the GOG Cut I decided to engage on reddit as I saw a number of modders there and it's where I've been responding to every question, concern, criticism, etc I can find to make myself as available as possible.

Now I'm unsure what hasn't already been discussed as I know you've all discussed a number of things and I myself had lengthy talks on reddit already about the permissions issue, the choice of mods, the reasonings for whatever, or why the project exists at all, but if there's anything left I'd like to make it clear that personally I'm looking to make sure any issues are sorted and concerns are dealt with.

Note, I am NOT a GOG employee, I do not represent them, I never had access to communications, I was not paid by them to do this, and I only ever knew what my point of contact told me. I do not know what they said to any of the modders and I have no idea what modders said to them. I have made it clear that their mistakes were mistakes, but I have no control over how GOG operates.

On reddit, I've been told that I'm ignoring feedback but people rarely clarify, so if I'm still missing something I would like to know.

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Jay_H
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by Jay_H »

Hello Zakh :) For my part, it's good to meet you.

Everyone who wants to discuss the GOG Cut is welcome to post about it respectfully in this topic. Accusations and flaming against Zakh, GOG, other modders, or anyone else will not be tolerated. Either speak in good faith or not at all. I hope this can be a good method for greater harmony as we work together.

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Interkarma
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by Interkarma »

Hey Zakh, welcome to the forums! :)

For my part, I'm delighted to see the "experiment" of GOG Cut take place. I am disappointed there were issues with explicitly contacting all modders for approval before launch (and one modder mis-credited) but I certainly don't believe there was any ill-intent there. GOG have been very responsive with fixing problems as they've come up and I can't complain about that.

Thanks for dropping in to answer any questions from our little community here. If I see anything directed at me, I'll answer when I can.

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Ninelan
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by Ninelan »

Well, I spotted the Twitter post and I'll have to reiterate my previous statement.
"Even after it was over, I was expecting a blow. But the sun continued to shine down all the same on me, on Alamut, and
on the two dead bodies lying before of me."
-Bartol
Man, I'll explain it in depth again :lol:
I would not go around stating that the modding community has benefited much in new faces, or that future data might prove it.
We've got enough experience to confirm that it doesn't matter(I'm not trying to be a naysayer just because). We've been here seeing releases of popular Daggerfall videos, the Steam release, GOG finally releasing Daggerfall separately, etc.
And it all follows the same patterns. The users that stick and contribute to modding arrive essentially 'randomly'.
And then you combine it with the usual ebb and flow of modders making mods, it's very unreliable to infer the recent influx of (proper) mods (of which many have been in production before it was released) have been due to GOG.
Even from the Steam release, there were barely any mod releases... most of which of the new faces were again insignificant face replacers.
I would personally be ashamed to look at that and say the modding in this game is blooming. :? The most influential mods don't have schedules that correspond to re-releases.
And the amount of people joining the server, looking back at logs all the way from April...are insignificant and remains in the ~3 per day range. (5-0 being the extreme ends)

So, DL statistics...I looked at so many statistics.
This is what we can infer from them:
-The Steam release effectively doubled the 'normal' baseline of daily downloads for most mods.
-There are regular spikes from any time somebody publically with a large platform promotes Daggerfall, with game platforms being the biggest.
-The GOG cut spike is minimal at best for some of the popular mods, very significant for some smaller mods or nonexistent(it's a mixed bag). For a few mods, it's barely noticeable above the baseline established by Steam and generally lower than the Daggerfall release GOG did on average.
-The DL amount for mods included in the cut and those not, is so similar we can infer that the GOG cut specifically is not behind any increase in mod DLs, but the publicity that surrounds it. (Who would download dream after already getting it via GOG?)
-I don't have access to GOG cut statistics...

Generally promoting any sort of favour in an increase in publicity is a bit poor taste, given the GOG cut could have been anything DFU-related, and of all the times Daggerfall has been released on any platform, it is by far the smallest increase of all of them. :oops:
You can support me and in turn my art on my Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/fireflyness

GamerZakh
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by GamerZakh »

Hey Ninelan!

Yeah I was just being a bit overexcited about DFU mods growing, I didn't mean to say the GOG Cut had any significant or lasting impact. It was just a tweet because I was excited and I didn't write it very well as I was trying to be half joking too, so it didn't mix well. The intention for the tweet was for people to go look up more mods, but of course could've been written better. Also just to be clear, GOG themselves have said nothing about the effects of the GOG Cut on anything. What I said on reddit was also speculative, which I think I made clear in one post but not in the other, so the one where I wasn't clear read really presumptive.

I have only mentioned the recent mods in 2 places and I've edited the reddit post to say it's speculative at best and I would delete the tweet but a productive comment happened below it, so I'm waiting a day to make sure that's sorted first.

Thanks to you calling my speculation out, I'll refrain from mentioning any effects until more data is in and will be more cautious about what I say about that data.

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King of Worms
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by King of Worms »

Hi and welcome to the forums. 1st I need to thank you for the videos and promo you do for Daggerfall, I still remember the very well done vid of DREAM + recommended mods, you put a lot of work into it.

Ad the GOG release, my feeling is, it was a bit rushed... Ive personally offered some advice on mod compatibility etc to the GOG community manager who contacted me with a question if DREAM is approved for the GOG cut. I just wanted to see the final mod list and maybe give some notes on that - never happened.

Than I saw the mod list after release, and it made me a bit worried, as I saw some mods I consider not too compatible with my mod. Than Ive heard Handpainted models - buildings is enabled in the compilation, which goes against my recomendations and it can possibly cause some issues with loading of cities as well. Bestiary mod has some strange issues with DREAM etc...

At that point, Ive decided to just ignore the release and hope for the best... I honestly did not even test it, because my offer of feedback - which I mentioned twice - was not accepted so why even bother. Im not bitter about it, just stating my reasons why I dont invest myself in the release, just hoping it works and ppl have fun. I really do :)

EDIT: I agree with Ninelan on the impact analysis of the GOG release...

GamerZakh
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by GamerZakh »

Hi King of Worms!

I did put a lot of work into that first video from a while ago and that was pretty much my first proper time getting into Daggerfall. I was honestly really chuffed that you liked it haha.

The GOG release did feel rushed, or rather, from my side the release felt kind of 'unsure'. I think Gavin mentioned somewhere that it felt like a passion project and it did kind of feel like that from my side too. There wasn't a team behind it or any significant resources, so I'm unsure exactly how the timing of the release was decided or (maybe more importantly) who decided it. Considering it's a free 5GB download, I expect someone had a say about the cost of bandwidth, and that might've made someone want to tie it into the Summer sale to cover the cost, but that's just me guessing.

I'm unsure why you weren't sent the final modlist, I don't think that would be confidential for any reason, but honestly I don't think that was a decision. Employee-wise, it *might* be the case where there were literally only 2 people who were running this whole project (I only know 2 names). A case of being understaffed and remote work probably just made it hard to keep up with everything. I weirdly only kind of realised that GOG was still doing a lot of work from home close to launch. I should've realised earlier because on video calls they were often clearly not in office lol, I guess I got used to seeing people at home over the last 2 years.

As for the mod choice, I do know there were some incompatibilities where things wouldn't be fully optimised. To explain, the choices I was making was for the average player. And by 'average' I mean they don't really know what Daggerfall is, they've never touched a mod before, the words 'mod manager' is like an alien language, and you'll never see them on forums or reddit. They also have an intense hate of pixels for whatever reason. So the choices were built around creating an initial 'wow factor' to hook these people.

As for Handpainted models - buildings, wait, I didn't include that. Handpainted models - main and Handpainted models - treasure piles I put in, but not buildings. Did it end up in the build at the start? I'm checking now and it's not in the mods of my current install. It was definitely not in the build I sent to GOG as I'm looking at my backup on my side and it's not in there. I don't think it was in there at launch because I didn't get any warnings on my save files for that.

Also, BIG note on Bestiary, it's totally bugged with the unlocking feature and rotating the view of creatures as it lags. So although the mod is included, it's settings are set to not use the unlocking feature and to limit the rotation angles. It's a shame with that mod because the unlocking feature is so cool but when you get out of the first dungeon and you've unlocked Harpy and Nymph because killing humanoids unlocks random entries, it's just not useful. It's by default set to "you have to find the item" and "all entries unlocked", so it's a cool thing you can find but it's severely nerfed to avoid the bugs.

To further explain my approach, I extend these kind of choices to some of my other modding setups. In Skyrim, I install two conflicting lighting/shadow mods. They specifically say they are not compatible and cause flickering glitches. However, those glitches happen in 5% of interior cells where their setups directly conflict but together the other 95% of interiors and 100% of the exteriors looks better than any 'clean' mod setup. So at the cost of incompatibilities and the chagrin of modders, I set it up to create a much more striking 'wow factor'. I'm not ignoring the issues, I'm fully recognising them and making a specific choice that the benefits outweigh the problems, and understandably many disagree.

As for your feedback, I would've totally welcomed any feedback from you. It's just before the release, I wasn't really able to talk to people directly as projects like these are 'loosely confidential' kind of things. There isn't a contract or anything but you're not really supposed to go around talking about it. I expect whoever you talked to was just jumping between a dozen different things and couldn't keep up with everything.

I hope this explains things! I've been writing so much about this the past few days, so apologies if I said anything confusing or disjointed. Hoping my wires aren't getting crossed between the different discussions.

EDIT: On modding, generally because Dream was the biggest mod, I followed your instructions and recommendations first before adding anything else. Including all the presets, recommended mods, settings, and ini changes. I took a few liberties after that, but it's like 95% exactly as you wrote down on the Dream page. Including avoiding any mod you put under "Not recommended Mods".

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Orbarth
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by Orbarth »

Without entering into the discussion about the mods permissions that is a very big issue of its own, personnally i would have prefered if that gog release would have been only a package of Daggerfall Unity + Daggerfall and separately in their "extras" those "Gog Cut" mods package.

Reason is that some people may prefer to run DFU more native visually, without all the modded graphic stuff that takes so much place and are not up to everyone's taste (i prefer strongly content/gameplay mods over visual ones).
Additionally would also help people wanting to add mods to their gog version of DFU without running into incompatibilities due to lots of mods they may not want but being already present

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King of Worms
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by King of Worms »

Thanks Zakh, now it indeed makes all much more sense.
I think I will DL the package after all and see for myself :)
Might give some feedback afterwards. Thanks for a your reply and your time spent on the project and explaining afterwards, you do it in your free time as a passion, you do a lot..

GamerZakh
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Re: I'm that Zakh guy that helped with the GOG Cut - Questions/Concerns/Criticisms?

Post by GamerZakh »

Hey Orbarth!

I'm not sure if there anything that hasn't already been said about permissions, but I do think it's a big issue.

For preference on whether it should be modded or not, that was a choice to make and we wanted to offer something that didn't exist. There's a huge number of people who would play something with mods but not vanilla, but also would never touch a mod themselves. Some people might prefer to run DFU without mods but *typically* those who prefer more vanilla retro gaming are aware of how to disable mods or just download DFU by themselves.

People wanting to add mods to their gog version, if they're installing new mods then they'll be aware of modding incompatibilities and stuff, and if they aren't they are opting in to start learning about modding and they'll be more willing to understand that. What's a much more common problem is when someone who has never modded before begins downloading and installing mods at random and it just breaks the game, and they get frustrated about that because they can't figure it out and give up.

After facing the public for 10 years while focusing on old games, I can tell you for certain that many wouldn't even touch a game if they saw a pixel. Personally I'm pro pixels but I've also found that you can hook new gamers with graphics mods on an old game and as they get into older games they start to appreciate the pixel aesthetic.

Edit: And thanks King of Worms! I just always try to do my best in any situation.

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