Posts by Alblaka

Effective from now on, you may redistribute IC²'s original download (in any combination with other files or mods) in the form of 'ModPack's, without requesting explicit permission in advance, as long as following conditions are met:

• You must explicitely state, on the website, thread, blog or other public location (further referred to as 'location'), the presence of IC² in your modpack in a readable and user-understandable manner and English language (usage of multiple languages, including at least one English translation, is permitted).
• Either the download or the location must contain some sort of 'Credit's, listing up the 'IC² Dev Team' (this term is considered sufficient, it is not necessary to label the members of the Dev Team by name) as creator of IC².
• A link to http://www.industrial-craft.net/ or http://forum.industrial-craft.net/ must be present, user-visible, at the location of publication.
• You may not gain any direct revenue associated with the download of any data containing the redistributed IC² files. This literally applies to AdFly, but as well to other advertisment services, including those services basing revenue of website traffic.
• We may revoke the redistribution permissions or change the conditions at any time

You may contact me (aka Alblaka), head of the IC² Dev Team, to negotiate conditions different from those specified above, if the necessarity arises.

Since this occured a few times in the past week, I shall hereby add a new clause to this rule:

If you ask for release dates / ETAs / updates of an Addon, the developer of the Addon can you report your post for said thing and you will receive a ban according to this rule.

Rule is in effect from this very moment.

So, you got a question or problem with IC²?
That's not an issue and if you spend the few minutes reading this into running around and screaming 'HELPZ' all over the place, you will quickly find somebody willing to help you.

First of all, it's important to ensure you're in the right section:
The Support section of this forum is EXCLUSIVELY meant for
-content-related support questions
-help requests / troubleshooting in the installation process of IC
Anything else, exspecially crashes which occur during gameplay, belong into the Bug Section.

If you're actually right in this section, first, please take the time to check whether your issue is already solved somewhere.
A gameplay-related question can easyly be solved by taking a look into the Official IC² Wiki.
As well, check the thread titles of the first few pages of this section, may your problem is mentioned (and solved?) somewhere?
Assuming you can't find it as easy as that, try using the search tab in the upper right corner of the forum. Try to summarize your problem in a few single words. For example "I can't play IC, somehow I can't find rubber to craft the first cables" can be summarized to 'obtain rubber'.

If you still didn't find an answer or useful help, it's time to create a new thread.
Since you already searched from your issue by thread titles, you should have understood a descriptive thread title is important, so other people with the same issue can, in future, more easyly find your thread and the (hopefully to be found fast) solution. As well, exspecially since content and installation instructions may change from version to version, it's important to note the version you are using, the best way is to do this by adding a '[x.yyy]' in front of your thread title to indicate the IC² version used. (As of writing this, it would be [1.106])

Now try to describe your problem in detail. The more information give, the less people have to ask of you and the less time you have to wait before somebody finds a solution.

If there is a problem with understand the more in-depth and complex mechanics of IC², you could try taking a look into the Industrial Engineering section, it's often a source of tutorials and knowledge that, hands down, even surpasses the devs on occasions.

If you have troubles with IC² crashing upon game start, you may made a mistake during it's installation or are using missmatching versions of various mods. Read the sticky about how to properly deal with crash-logs and we can try to help you.
As well, whilst waiting for a response, you could try reading through the installation instructions (found in the Public Release threads) a second time, may you simply forgot something trivial? As well, from time to time, downloading files can cause said files to be malfunctioning. Redownloading everything (including Minecraft, Forge and IC²) occasionally can solve problems.

If you've read till here, congratz on learning how to ask for help in a manner that won't get you screamed at. Try leaning back, meddle around with Minecraft or otherwise find something to fill the time until your problem is solved. That is, if you couldn't solve your problem yourself by now

Don't mistake this: We do not need more moderators because the community is running rampant. Actually it's one of the better community's I've seen.
However, the forum tends to be a slight mess at times, with countless duplicates or pointless threads flooding various sections, usually Support/Bug/Suggestion.

As such, I've checked the option BB3 offers and found the tools necessary to set up Moderators in a way I think they're feasible.

Moderators will exclusively have the right to lock/ move threads. They won't be able to delete either posts or threads, not banning of users. They are meant to ensure the forum sections to be in a readable state, by moving threads to approriate sections as well as answering & locking duplicates. If there is a need to ban a user or specifically delete posts/threads, they will have to rely it to one of the admins. Accordingly, moderators in this forum will be 'less powerful' the moderators of any forum, accordingly not infringing with my concept of a '(nearly)-moderation-free forum'.
To pronounce this again the 'moderators' will effectively be the forum's janitors, nothing less and not much more. Keep this in mind whilst applying.

I'm intending to staff the following positions:

• Bugsport Moderator
  Responsible for moderation the Support & Bug Report sections. This 'position' will be filled with 2 (or if that proves not to be sufficient, 3) moderators. It seems more reasonable to have both of them be mods of both sections instead of splitting them up.
  Not going to kid around, this will be a bone job, you know the activity of these particular sections by yourself.
  This section requires people who simply have loads of free time at their hands.
• Suggestion Moderator Given to SpwnX
  Being, after Bugs&Support, the 3rd most populated section, I would like to see a moderator dedicated to this subforum, who's responsible for clearing up denied suggestions and as well increase the quality of overall reponses to suggestions. He is in NO obligation to answer every single suggestion, though he must at the very least respon to suggestions he's shooting down (locking).
  For this position, you must have a good understanding of IC itself (duh) and as well have the patience to stay polite even on the 42th Lightningrod suggestion.
• Smallstuff Moderator
  Engineering, Screenshots, IC²-Servers, TexturePacks and Videos.
  These sections are, compared to the other few, pretty much 'desolate'. Not saying they're empty, but I don't see the need to appoint one moderator for every 20 active threads here.
  This position will be responsible for monitoring and cleaning up these less populates sections. F.e. by moving Engineering threads into the right subjection, managing server-threads who run out of hand and similar.
  This position is more leant back in terms of time consumed, but given you're meant to mess with the Engineers of IC, you are required to have a thorough understanding of IC and it's mechanics. Additional knowledge about server-hosting could come in handy.

Addon Section will NOT get a moderator, since his only job would be 'approving Addons', a right I would like to keep for myself as of now.

Next to the bolded requirements for the specific sections, there are a few generic ones you will probably know from every other forum:

• You must be capable of speaking English to a sufficient degree, including punctuation and grammar. Take my writing as an example: My written English is moderately-bad, but at least understandable. That's the degree I would exspect from any moderator as well.
• Obviously, you must have a more or less polite and mature attitude. I think this is sort of self-explanatory.
• Activity is a not-irrelevant factor. Please do not apply if you intend to do this job just for a few days or don't have the time to do it.
• In regards to applications, people who have been around this forum for a longer period of time and are known for their attributes will be favored.

To apply, C&P the form below, fill it out and post it in this thread. I dislike being spammed with PMs, don't even try that.
Whilst trying to write up the form, I realized that it consists of only one question, thus it barely needs a real form.
I can read your name right next to your post, your age doesn't matter at all and I really don't care if you have hosted 22 other forums or never ever moderator'd before.
For what position do you want to apply? (applying for multiple positions is explicitely allowed, though of course you will only get one in the end)
Eventually add a few lines of why you think you're good for the position you apply for, but assuming you're one of the people who are active at the forums anyways, that won't be necessary.

PS: I will not make any decision before 24 hours passed, giving anyone with adequate forum activity (checking in regulary) a chance to apply.
As well I will probably delete all applications for position X once that position is filled, to keep the thread clean.

Quote from SpwnX

Only complaint i have is about suggestions which is not well replied by devs, leaving suggestions in a void state like : Denied or not?..

If noone answers to a Suggestion, it's 95% likely that no dev bothered with the topic of the suggestion (because either it's repeated or 'bad').
I can remember 2-3 instances where a plausible suggestion was actually dropped by oversight and brought back by bumping. Compared to at least hundred suggestions which were ignored for a reason.
Eventually this isn't the most polite way, but it takes up less time, a thing which is of essence (well, for me).
(I hope this doesn't sound rude or ignorant, but I really can't and don't want to answer people who repeat a suggestion for the 5th time.)

Quote from CrafterOfMines57

Well aside from a few people, this seems to be a pretty civil debate going on here

Jep, and whilst there were two slight derails, it's refreshing and reassuring to see this level of conversation.
Be advised I'm taking my time and reading every single of the posts here.

Quote from Mariner

If they want to have a clause in the license that says users can only play IndustrialCraft on Thursdays and only if you have an attractive redhead on your lap, then they have the right to release under that license.

Can I add a clause to make a redhead sit on my lab in general? o.o

Jokes aside, this discussion provides a nice diversity of different offered solutions for this problems.
My current idea consists of a public jenkins (aka, everyone can download any build at any time), whilst linking the actual 'reacommended' build in the main threads. Of course this will cause some mischief to server owners whose users can't differentiate version 1.103 from version 1.1.03 and stuff like that... But I don't think I can implement a system to prevent stup... slight lacks of common foresight.
Additionally, the idea of creating a semi-public source hub, permitting 'trusted' (aka invited) persons to submit code changes (which then need approval) sounds reasonable to me. In best case, this will cause the bugfixing rate to reach new highs, whilst giving us devs more time to work on actual new content.
My current 3 issues are:
-I've got no clue of the technical implementation of the two things mentioned above.
-I could neither reach Player nor Richard so far.
-Actually I'm supposed to be learning instead of typing this ^^'

Quantum Chestplate extinguish's fire and reduces the damage taken before even going into the armor calculation (by 33%).

I admit, I already saw that design flaw, but couldn't bother myself to resolving it ^^'
I knew this would come back once an addon dev would go into coding stuff like this...

Quote from RockRaiderZulu

I have been on normal servers, and they can get pretty entertaining, so I would imagine that an IC Squared sever could generate enough data for a story.

I've seen people trying to write games into stories a few times.
Usually I respectfully averted my eyes and did not destroy their hopes by telling them the stories were utter... you can guess what word goes here.

Eventually it's possible to write Minecraft-content into stories... but since Minecraft is focussed around mining, processing and then constructing stuff, less about actual action/ adventure...

I think I've got a clue of what IC's 'actual issue' is:

What started as a fun java exercise has turned into a public project of unexspected size.
IC was never intended to be more then just some coding of mine. Given I can't draw a straight line across two pxl, I quickly decided to add Feanturi as a spriter, though still doing all of the coding.
At some point, namely when SMP got more and more popular, the Enet of IC simply wasn't up to the task anymore... A guy called Player contacted me and after some hesitation of mine and a timeframe of about six WEEKS I finally agreed to provide him with the source code and start the re-work of IC. A few weeks later, his new E-Net was base-functional and IC² came to live.
Since then, the project as whole has grown.

We moved from a few blocks and a battery-item to a new ERA of minecraft content.
We moved from a single thread in an overcrowded forum to an own website, containing blog, wiki and forum for a single mod (and afaik the content of the website is still surpassing any compareable website of other single mods).
We moved from a single guy writing some java code (and somebody helping out with drawing straight lines) to a full team of multiple coders, dedicated spriters, PR-managers, sound artists, animation specialists and even a group of beta-testers.
We moved from IC to IC².

However
we, specifically; I did probably not change my attitude regarding how to handle IC. It's not much different from how I was considering 'my mod' in the beginning phase... though it's at an entirely different level by now.

Afaik, I can see two solutions to this issue:
Either I change back to the person throwing around with content 24/7/365... A thing that's simply not possible for me, as of now.
Or we change the way IC is developed.

I still have strong prejuidice against the idea of making IC Open Source. Though it pretty much IS already, given everybody smart enough to make a use of IC's source should as well have the smarts to simply drop it into MCP. There is barely any reason not to make it open source. Well, except for my emotion-driven objection, probably.
I've read an interesting argument in this thread:

Quote from Mariner

However, I believe that is a strong argument for moving to an open source model. That way, when the whim isn't catching anyone, or the right combination of people simultaneously, or if interest starts to wane altogether, other developers can pick up the slack and drive the project forward.

and it would be foolish not to agree to the reasoning of this argument.

I'm currently tinkering with this idea and the situation as whole. However, as IC is probably one of the sparely few things I've ever 'accomplished' in my life, I'm not going to make a rash decision and probably screw it up. As well, I will probably discuss this with the other dev's (namely Player, given he's, for a reason, IC's co-head-developer), too.
I sincerely hope specific youtube'ing people won't try to claim this to be another try to avert comminucating by delaying.

At this point it's probably obvious I took severe offense by the way Kane adressed the issue and as well I doubt many people will object about there being more 'suitable ways' to do things like this.
But as well I've to admit it was probably a hit necessary to pull me from my generic lethargy I'm often occupied with. Let's hope this will be one of the rare times where over-dramatized ranting actually leads to a positive effect.

As a last note: Thanks to everyone, especially the 'long-time-lurker-first-post' people, and your oppinions. If people, who are not known for their obvious oppinions, speak up, it's always a good criticsm.

Quote from Kane Hart

But you know what Alblaka. This thread was not about you it was actually about IC.

Ow, my bad. I usually associate myself with IC by habit.
Well, let's see how IC answers this thread

edit: Oh, and I linked this thread and accordingly your speech on my blog, I assume that's the publicity you wanted for this in first place.

Quote

I think we can agree that writing a one-line explaining what will happen or not is within your available time

I suppose I really need to be more obvious with my 'We're working on it' statements.

Quote from Neopython

If you need a story, I got one that you can write from your point of view
I'm not much of a writer and I never finished the story.
This was in my high school years.
The imagination was there but I didnt had the motivation to write.

I have the plot, characters, race's, world, religion, magic style.
Its a 3 part story like lord of the rings.

If you are interested I can give/help you with it.
Maybe you can give a nice twist to it and it can become a good story.

Btw I'm a big fan of TDC. Love the story.

Display More

I'm not sure whether completing a foreign pre-defined story would work out well...
A friend of mine already tried to push me into writing a dual-story (two authors writing chapters individually), but we didn't make it past the first few pages...

I stopped watching at 1:20, taking severe offense to the statement you made there.

I could go for pages over pages explaining my situation, but that does neither belong into this forum, nor the internet at all. To make it simple: IC is a hobby. Writing storys is a hobby. Gaming is a hobby. Developing pointless java programms is a hobby. I'm the type of person who feels himself drawn to random things at random times, I don't try to force myself into doing X, because it never ends well, but leads to the creation of crappy code, novels and frustration. Yes, I myself barely was active coding IC across the past ~2 months. I've somewhen wanted to come back into coding, but it was barely enough to create a new reactor concept.
Feel free to hate me for the way I am, you wouldn't be the first one.

Afaik player had mentioned some personal affairs currently eating up most of his time.
Richard is still hot on the heels and fixing quite a few bugs. That's why we (before this video popped up, to mention it), or rather he, suggested to do it similar to Computercraft, publishing untested beta-hotfixes on a public base. I'm still not very fond of the idea, because I exspect countless people to clutter the forum because of new bugs and similar issues. But hey, you guys asked for it, and who are we, who we spend plenty time on this for no real reason, to argue...

Lastly, it's impossible to kill IC by now. You can kil games by preventing people from repairing it's fixes and then screwing up the gameplay itself.
However, while I could possibly do latter on, former is impossible. Even if we were to stop developement of IC, people already have access to most of the source code and could continue/revive the mod.
As well, the same way you saw it with MeC, I will continue the policy of publishing the source code of 'abandoned' projects. Do you see IC²'s source around here? No? Guess why

PS: Moved to the appropriate section. General Discussion really is exclusively related to anything regarding the website or the forum as such.
PSPS: Whether you ask for a release date (of a hotfix) in written or verbal way, doesn't matter... though in the 80 seconds I watched he never did that explicitely. If somebody finds a line doing that, feel free to poke me at it.

Quote from Alblaka

Probably going to pick this up later on, maybe not. Since I've got loads of words already, I will lock the thread until I come to actually use some of them.

As I said.
I write what comes to my mind, if people throw REALLY difficult junk at me and my creativity doesn't speak to me, I can hardly do anything

Link to story

I'm quite sure you got questions after reading that story Feel free to ask, though I won't guarantue for an answer

Some background - POSSIBLE SPOILER:
The story was floating around in my head for quite some time (mainly focussed around what is now part 2. of the story).
It's intended to show up the severe morale conflict of a few Draken ordered to execute a dragon, effectively being the opposite of what they were once teached to do. Not to be confused with worshipping, dragon's are considered entity's of highst virtue and respect to Draken. And being meant to kill one...
Well, you read it for yourselves.

5 pages.
Contains gore/blood, though only in minor amounts. Nonetheless to be mentioned.

The end justifys the means...
But is that really true?
A story about a story being told...

Part X
Hell awaits
the queen to be slain
for revenge to be taken.

Quote from Barumann

Try sciencefiction/realistic hybridisation? eg genetic experiments gone wrong? Where the hero(ine) discovers a truth long lost since hidden by the govs xD

That would pretty much hit 'Deus Ex Electrica'. An old story I designed a few years ago, but never found a good consistent storyline ^^'

TDC is pretty much finished, only a few more chapters to write. I can already confirm there will be no 4th chapter or a direct 'sequel', given TDC itself is the prequel of the whole Daina-background (sort of).

Currently I'm trying to figure out what to write next (as a more developed story, not counting all the minor 10page sidejabs). And given you people are actually supposed to read what I write, why not gather a few ideas?

What genre? Scifi? Fantasy? Something realistic for once?
Where does the store take place? Daina? Future? Serpia? Present?
Themes to be included? Dragons? Vampires? Mechas? Zombies? Alines? Psychotic rabbits trying to build a tower to the moon?

Throw me some bones (aka ideas), maybe my mind picks up an idea and produces a storyline from it

Part IX
Last words,
two gifts,
an uncertain path.