106 réponses à ce sujet

[Tarot Redhand]

PHOD, you are jesting right? Of course there is interest in anything you release to the ravening horde (used to be hordes but there's less of us now). So yes please.

 

TR

[Verilazic]

PHOD, you are jesting right? Of course there is interest in anything you release to the ravening horde (used to be hordes but there's less of us now). So yes please.

 

TR

 

Agreed.

[kamal_]

Official restaurant of P.H.O.D.?

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Aaaahhh!!!

Excellent work, Agent Kamal. Now we know where the Spleens go to feed. We can thus pick up game trails coming and going from the site, dig deep pits, cover them with branches and thus trap the filthy recidivist baboons!

 

And to return to the less important but more relevant (alleged, so-called) point of the thread...

The resurrected PHoD has not entirely forgotten about the fabled Doctor Who Modules but, naturally, has found All New Delays in the form of converting all sorts of interesting environments from KotOR to NWN as Tilesets... and Placeables. For example, I've found several new spacecraft in KotOR which didn't exist as Placeables but were fixed parts of the world geometry. I've cut them out along the dotted lines and made them into NWN Placeables. Note one in the background here...

Note also the third and (probably) last attempt to do a Time Lord ceremonial headdress collar thing... SEEMED a simple enough idea three years ago but you wouldn't believe the trouble I had getting the wretched things to look even vaguely accurate. Still not perfect and the robes are just standard Bioware but I doubt I'll spend any more time (no pun intended) on them for now. The TARDIS only actually arrives on Gallifrey in one of the stories after all. More to the point than messing around with dodgy attire for pompous Time Lords would be to actually get the damned Modules finally polished, checked and placed on the Vault in a distressingly vast pile of shockingly proportioned Haks.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Whilst I'm crushing trimesh to a paste all over the place trying to convert KotOR environments into NWN Tilesets, I couldn't not post an image of what happens when you put one underwater...

I've more or less got the Firaxan Sharks - or whatever they were called - from Manaan's oceans to behave more or less properly as Creature models. (I did both types, but I turned the colossal orange one into a normally-proportioned blue one that matches the other better). Here, by the dubious miracle of having more than one version of the model with differing z axis heights, you can see a shoal of them swimming about outside the viewports of a rubbish PHoD undersea base (made by nailing bits of the Perargus mining colony together and dropping it in the sea.

The "ocean" is just a bit of extra walkable Tileset which the characters inside the base cannot reach but where NPC sea creatures can lurk about and the tile light nodes can be set to "blue" a lot... Only problem so far is that if combat occurs inside the base, all the big weird fish come piling up to the nearest window and hover there trying to join in. This can MOSTLY be avoided by making them an utterly neutral Fish faction who have no particular interest in any other faction one way or another... unless they go mad.

I do, however, appear to have solved the problem of the Sharks (or whatever other swimming articles you put outside the windows) all fading to semi-visibility as they did to begin with. They now appear resplendently solid.

Especially when they forget they're neutral and put their damned noses through the damned windows like a seething pile of nasal intrusions.

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Of course, not all the "new technology" in these Modules is blisteringly futuristic...

 

Tanzania, 1925 - Despite the small matter of a crashed Cyberman spaceship and some very mysterious and unpleasant events out on the savannah, the instant the Doctor spots a biplane he just has to mess about with it, mistakenly concludes that he's Biggles and loses the plot completely.

Velpa remains unimpressed, in her element in the wilds and far more interested in hunting the so-called ManEater of Njombe, a predator that kills but doesn't eat its prey... which is 'cause it turns out to be a Cyberlion, which is very nasty indeed and makes the fluffy berks at Tsavo look completely useless, being as it's wholly resistant to spears and rifle fire... er... anyone got a good Plan B?

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Still hitting these Modules with bricks between other projects.

Though now changed fairly considerably from the original list of twenty stories in places, they're all now finished in the essentials save where I'm feverishly still trying to replace some Areas with new Tilesets made by giving KotOR's world geometry a damn good kicking. There are still some details to address, etc, etc, but I believe, wrongly or rightly, that they're close now to the point where any remaining glitches won't significantly affect players from figuring everything out. Such little bugs will doubtless be reported after release and can be exterminated...

Pause for mandatory gratuitous screenshot to make the post look a bit more interesting than it is...

So, what's the latest feeble excuse for these Modules still not yet being available to you, the five people even remotely interested in them anyway?

 

Aside from a couple of squitty little adventures I did for the ABC in ten seconds flat - (and Henesua dealt with actually posting them anyway) - I have never, despite having created over two hundred Modules, some of them VERY LARGE, for Demoness Tales and my other weird worlds, I have never before actually posted any anywhere. Thus I have more or less no idea what I'm doing in that respect... (not that having no idea what I'm doing has ever stopped me doing things...)

 

It has thus been decided at a full assembly of the entire High Supreme Council of Shabby Hyenas (which consists of me and Fifi) that there is a ninety percent probability of me making a spectacular mess out of trying to release these Modules. It has therefore further been unanimously decided (by Fifi) that instead of trying to do something I've never done before (however pathetically simple it may actually turn out to be) with a series of twenty fairly substantial Modules with over nine trillion tonnes of compulsory custom content each and thus catastrophically messing it all up like a complete rubbishist, it might be an idea to experiment lightly by releasing a single relatively simple Module first and get used to the process.

So now I've just got to figure out what my test Module will be (other than nothing to do with Doctor Who).

 

Wheels are turning... just not very fast or to any significantly purposeful direction as yet... but they are turning...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

This post comes after a very great deal of thought, practical consideration and vaguely emotional perturbations of the sort generally practised by small animals stuck in quicksand...

 

Having just glanced over the previous post, I note I already stated that, due to never having released a Module before, save those very silly ABC things, I was intending to "test the water" by doing some other, straightforward Module release prior to tackling the ridiculously immense Doctor Who series (which, as I think I also mentioned, is now, essentially, finished).

(Whilst "glancing about", I stumbled across this old, but previously unused, screenshot of the 1967 "Evil of the Daleks" Emperor Dalek I made - it was still a WIP at this point; been improved and finished since then, but I thought I'd stick it here to make this post look prettier than big blocks of text tend to otherwise be).

The proposed "Test Module" was initially to be "open" for players to create whatever character they liked, but I soon abandoned that since I felt trying to have all the conversation options for assorted different character types was making all the dialogue terribly generic and stilted, clogged every interaction up with ten to twenty possible player responses and prevented me from really fusing characters and storylines in the way I like to do... So, having given up on that, I decided instead to dig up those old ABC Modulettes, including the third one that I never got round to finishing, and give them a radical overhaul and allow Starbright and Aurelia's stories a lot more depth...

 

It was whilst I was messing about with Starbright again with a view to putting my old ABC Trilogy up as proper Modules, that Proleric posted his "Proposal to Amend the Vault Guidelines" thread. This I tripped over and thus read by mistake. (I don't generally take any notice of stuff with titles like that since I feel utterly unqualified to pronounce upon such things - I just build Spleen Monsters and hit things with bricks).

Anyway, it may sound ludicrous, but at no time on this New Vault or throughout my years of throwing Undead Animals at everyone on the Old Vault, had it ever occurred to me that there might actually BE such things as "guidelines". This puzzling concept (somewhat alien to the debased mind of a Shabby Hyena Type) confused me to the point that I thought I'd better go and examine the forum thread in question so as to know what it was about.

Despite it being pathetically obvious that more or less anything must, by definition, have an underlying infrastructure of some sort, I had simply never thought about it in relation to NWN. Suddenly now there was talk of rules, regulations, tenets, laws, dogma and blood sacrifice... or whatever... Suddenly I was actually thinking about where it said "free and open if project hasn't gone mouldy" or whatever it sort of gives you by default at the bottom of your Vault subs. Could it be that these words actually held meaning?

 

To cut a not very long story exceedingly short, the entire concept distressed me at a molecular level. Commencing to foam rabidly and put my hackles up, which is my default response to more or less everything, my reaction was to instantly distance myself from the whole thing as far as possible, dig traps, lock the door and post guards. Which, roughly translated, means abandon the NWN Community entirely and never post any CC anywhere ever again lest some dire whassname happen or a crocuticidal guideline come at me with a pointed stick.

The core reason for this is, having formerly worked in the film industry I am naturally now a pathological wreck racked with bitter suspicions and paranoid to a degree normally reserved for Greenland Right Whales. Having stories, designs and ideas carefully worked on over months or even years ripped off by a cabal of freakishly talentless Spleens for their insultingly generic and derivative films does that to you.

Not that I consider the NWN Community to be a Cabal of Spleens, my paranoia has been subconsciously manifest since my earliest CC efforts in that there have always been some things (including several of my best things) that I've never released or even shown screenshots of due to not wanting them to get ripped off. (You never know who might see stuff OTHER than those you actually made the stuff available to - and some of those others could be Spleens... That was the problem before. Remote and insignificant as the NWN corner of the internet is, it's still part of the whole Spleen-infested web and search engines being what they are... Same reason I abandoned plans to put a lot of my artwork up on DeviantArt a few years back.)

 

Anyway, brief entanglement with Proleric's "Guidelines" thread made my paranoia entirely conscious with regards NWN for the first time and I was very, very close to never releasing any CC ever again. Had I been a newcomer, I would certainly have just turned and fled into the cover of dense bushes and not emerged again. But since there's already piles of PHoD Rubbish littering the Vault, there didn't seem much point in stopping, though I'll likely be even more careful in what I actually release from now on.

 

Then I thought again of Modules.

Modules involving complex storylines, carefully-honed dialogue, detailed characters...

 

If these Modules were just Doctor Who, it wouldn't really matter, since Doctor Who was thirty year's worth of many different writers' efforts to which I'd just be adding my own blobs.

But these Modules are considerably more than just rehashing old ideas, slavishly using all the approved lore of the series' past and throwing Daleks at everything in sight. There are hundreds of completely new creatures and characters as well as several old ones I've worked hard to do new things with. I'm very pleased with the dialogue between assorted characters (notably the Doctor and Velpa) and a lot of other elements - elements which I could very easily rewrite slightly and use for any number of my own projects wholly unrelated to Doctor Who. Projects which may one day see publication when desperation and an enforced need for money drives me back to the grim whassnames that are publishers and literary agents.

Thus, the idea of putting all this material out in the wilderness before a largely faceless and unknown quantity was suddenly standing before me in a way I'd simply not thought about before. The foam increased and the hackles went higher.

 

Though when I calmed down, as mentioned, I concluded I might as well continue to emit assorted CC I didn't regard as "classified", my paranoia was still having seething, fang-baring, El Freako Wombat fits with regards Modules. Any Modules. Not just Doctor Who, but Starbright and Aurelia's trilogy as well. And any other Module I might at some future point have pushed toward the Vault. (I was very vaguely thinking about maybe putting the Maldrapur Chronicles out since Kali and most of my Indian CC is/will be on the Vault).

 

But my embittered, rabid paranoia won, as usual.

Having considered this for a couple of months now, I have concluded that I will not be releasing any Modules of any kind. Ever. Or at least, not unless I suddenly suffer some bizarre paradigm shift of instinct and nature. (Which is unlikely).

 

It only therefore remains for me to say two things in conclusion.

 

Firstly:- In NO WAY is Proleric to blame for this; his thread was intended entirely positively and no blame whatever can be attached to him for the not at all debilitating horror of not having deranged PHoD Modules. That is entirely down to my warped paranoia and certain deep scars left by incidents of the past (which had nothing to do with NWN or anyone involved with it).

 

Secondly:- Sorry.

Fortunately I don't think more than ten people had any real interest in the Doctor Who Modules anyway, but in a way that's worse because I know that the few who did and have waited very patiently to be able to play them, really were looking forward to them and it does actually hurt me to disappoint them so resoundingly and terminally.

I do apologize, profusely, especially to Tarot and Rolo who have been so enthusiastic about the project. There's nothing I can do about my own nature however, nor anything more to do than say "sorry" again about the rubbish let down... I really must stop reading ominous, official sounding threads...

I'll gather all the Doctor Who specific CC I've done and all the Monsters (there's quite a bit of it) and seal them in a Big Box and add them to the list of things I ought to get round to dumping on the Vault some time...

 

Apologies again... but somebody reminded me that the Vault is essentially a Gate, bringing the fantasy we create within NWN into contact with humanity.

I don't do contact with humanity. Not properly. Not if it can be avoided.

[Proleric]

Very sad to read this, as I have the greatest respect for your stuff.

 

Just to be clear, I have never endorsed ripping off content. The recently-revised guidelines, which I didn't write, certainly don't. I do encourage content sharing for those who choose to do so.

 

A very simple remedy - when you publish your stuff, just tell us what we're allowed to do with it.

[werelynx]

When you submit module you can chose licensing options - if you wish to make them "play only, don't rip apart or die by means of suicide by spleens" then go ahead.

On the other hand I feel ye, most of my interactions with RL humans ain't pleasant ones.

[Proleric]

[Saga Norén] Interactions...yes..

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

Proleric:- I hope I made it clear that you are blameless and that I never considered that you were in any way endorsing "ripping off" or anything else dodgy...

It's not a question of Vault 'licensing' and telling the Community what they may or may not do with stuff.

There are those outside the Community who could, feasibly, stumble across it...

As I think I stated on that Guidelines thread, my concern was not with the guidelines themselves but the fact that, whatever guidelines there are do not constitute any form of legal protection or recognized copyright and thus do not actually prevent a Spleen from doing any Spleen thing they damn well please.

[Proleric]

True, I've seen cases outside the NWN community where an author has brazenly stolen someone else's work and rebadged it as their own.

However, these days, legitimate sites will normally take down such works on simple request, and will accept prior publication (e.g. on the vault) as evidence of ownership. I've seen it happen often enough.

Saying "All rights reserved" or allowing certain things under a license such as Creative Commons makes the position even clearer, if you want.

Of course, there are still pirate sites which haven't been shut down and commercial organisations with spleen lawyers, but personally I'm more worried about being killed by a bee. [Saga Norén] Yes, statistics show... [Beekeeper] Nothing to see here folks...

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

I'm not really worried about game modders and such on internet sites; that's just silly stuff, annoying as it can be. If that was the only concern I wouldn't take the slightest notice.

I'm more worried about novelists who happen to be gobshites and trawl for ideas anywhere they can and reeking film-makers with multi-billion dollar legal departments behind them.

Trust me, film companies (and several novel writers I'm aware of - and doubtless many that I'm not) make regular forays round fan sites and web forums where people discuss their ideas and they take anything that sounds good, change a name or two and include it in their next blockbuster. Industry standard. Happens constantly.

 

That's the precedent; As I mentioned, I've already been stung (though never by a bee) by Spleens allied to huge studios who can essentially do as they please because even if you have clear evidence that they've thieved your stuff, you haven't a hope of not going bankrupt whilst their vast legal resources keep the nonsense going in a court month after month after month...

Who the hell's going to bother losing months or even years of their lives to heartbreaking hassle and rubbish, spending every last little coin they can find jammed down the back of the armchair and getting precisely nowhere? Especially in a legal system geared to keeping cases going as long as possible since the legal people make more money out of them that way.

Nobody, that's who... And the Lumpy Spleen Execs know it. They know you're not going to bother.

 

That's a shadow of my past and, Lycanthropic Misanthrope that I am, I don't ever forget it.

If I ever DO want to use some of the stories, dialogue and characters in these Modules in some future novel or whatever (in order to actually be paid and survive in this debased society that you can't opt out of, no matter how much you try) then I don't need to find some SPLEEN Studio has chundered it out as their own two years earlier 'cause they found it sitting on the NW Vault in plain view...

 

Seethingly Vengeful and Embittered Hyena T-shirts, mugs and key-fobs now available from all disreputable stockists...

[werelynx]

Seethingly Vengeful and Embittered Hyena T-shirts, mugs and key-fobs now available from all disreputable stockists...

Now I want such a mug ;_;

 

As a side note you forced me to reconsider everything I have submitted to the webz. (In quite a paranoid manner that is)

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

We should be paranoid.

 

The internet is an "ecosystem" of sorts, albeit a rubbish and artificial one, and like any ecosystem it has its predators.

Some of them prey upon the gullible, the desperate and the stupid...

And some of them prey upon other people's creativity.

 

There's only one defence; stay out of their reach - offline...

The question we all have to ask ourselves is simply where do we draw the line? On the one hand, the fun that can come of interacting with other creative, imaginative people so that all our creations come out a little richer. On the other, the lingering shadows of being hit with a brick by faceless and untouchable Spleens who will profit by our work.

 

It's unfair and unjust. It's human society.

[Malagant]

This all seems vaguely familiar...

[SomethingSpicy]

Yeah I understand what you mean about big companies fishing around for ideas, they constantly complain about pirates and thieves but are the biggest thieves in the universe. Guess everything is legal when you're rich and are the one doing it. Real shame about your module,  I had something I have been working on for years and wondered if I should bother releasing.. Now I'm starting to re-consider.

 

But, what will you do with it? I can say from experience the most frustrating thing I've been through as a creator is spending ages on a work and getting absolutely no fans or people to look at it besides me. Can't even tell you how many things I've wound up getting rid of because it sat in a folder using up space.

[Tarot Redhand]

OK, two things. While I understand the reasoning behind the withdrawal of material I think there is a question that you need to ask yourself. Are you prepared to put all the work in that you have and then to treat it like Starlite (I am assuming that it wasn't a hoax). If it isn't a hoax then the world is most definitely a poorer place because of its creator's decisions. 

 

If control of your material is your primary concern there is an alternative to releasing it on the vault. You could always share it privately with your friends on here. I have realised a way that you could identify each persons individual copy. PM me if you are interested.

 

Now something more positive. By a circuitous route I found a video on facebook. Realising that not everyone either has or wants to join that (I am only on there for family reasons, otherwise I have no use for it normally), I searched for and found the same video on YouTube. I would have embedded it in this message but it seems they have changed how that works. So go to this YouTube page.

 

Interesting to say the least.

 

TR

 

 

[kamal_]

OK, two things. While I understand the reasoning behind the withdrawal of material I think there is a question that you need to ask yourself. Are you prepared to put all the work in that you have and then to treat it like Starlite (I am assuming that it wasn't a hoax).

Starlight sounds like some type of aerogel, which is definitely not a hoax.

[KlatchainCoffee]

Just stumbled upon this thread now.  Sad to hear your concerns might prevent you from sharing potentially very cool stuff. I seem to have an overabundance of ideas in general, way more than I can ever hope to have time in fleshing out properly, so I tend to be very free with sharing in case they may be useful to someone. An internal glitch that tells me that anything I create is probably automatically rubbish - and thus cheap and disposable - may also have something to do with that (and the fact that I hesitate to take any of them seriously at all).

 

However, if I did have a bunch of stuff I liked enough to potentially take somewhere, I would probably have a much more guarded attitude to it, so I can see where you're coming from.

 

You may find it worth considering building a module or two specifically for the purpose of releasing it: making sure it doesn't contain anything you would object to being stolen by Evil Spleens, but which still gives a good showcase of your work and style. Aside from a handful of people on the Vault potentially enjoying it, it may be a useful future tool for getting your other stuff published without having to actually show it to any/too many people. Just a thought.

 

To be honest, PHoD I see a very simple solution to your predicament: pen it all down and e-publish it.  I should hope this should superglue the ownership of the said ideas to your name, etc. If you are lucky, and have another human specimen you trust enough to do this - have them proofread/edit it for you to make it more streamlined etc. Writing may have similarities to other creative processes, like art or even mod building: you splurge and then refine into the shape you're happy with. And have fun while you're at it.

[Zwerkules]

you splurge and then refine into the shape you're happy with.

I bet this involves bricks!

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

SomethingSpicy:- I never feel frustration at the thought of spending months, or even years, creating something and then having nobody see it. I create because that's my nature; ideas, concepts, characters, worlds - these things grow and multiply in my mind at a rate I cannot hope to keep up with. I HAVE to get some of them out as drawings, sculptures, digital art, novels, NWN stuff, whatever, just to clear some of the chaos out of my mind lest it otherwise rupture itself like a turgid camel.

I create for my own benefit; as an artist I don't really have much interest in "speaking to others through my art" or whatever. I produce stuff I myself like to look at, listen to, read, etc. Whether anyone else likes it or ever even sees it doesn't bother me in the least.

 

Yes, it's nice when you've put time and effort into something and somebody sees it and says "Oh, that's good", but that's not why I do stuff. If I sought adulation, given the moderate response to most of the NWN stuff I've ever done, the fact that none of the few things I've done more recently (as distinct from the older rubbish) that might even vaguely merit such have never gone to "Hall of Fame" or anything and certainly won't now since there's not many people left in the Community and more or less nobody bothers voting on stuff on the Vault, then, had adulation and praise been my goal, I'd have left the Community many years ago.

The NWN stuff I've released I've put out essentially just as a vague return gesture for all the stuff I've had from other artists in the Community who've been kind enough to share their stuff over the years... For example, without Ryuujin's double-jointed leg model that I adapted for Lucirath wwaaaayy back before I knew what gmax was, I couldn't have even attempted to start a NWN version of Demoness Tales and so probably would never have done much with NWN in the first place).

Truth be told, though I'm now firmly nailed to NWN having put far too much effort into it to stop, I'm constantly on the edge of leaving the Community and just keeping to myself, since a release of "stuff" takes A LOT of additional work in checking Haks cobbled together solely for the Community out of my own chaotic, bloated, stupidly immense Haks, being ludicrously concerned with getting nice screenshots done, etc, etc. Takes a surprising amount of time, just for the sake of the Community - and then a mere fifty people or less ever download it and maybe two or three actually vote on it at all if you're lucky.

Nobody sane would do that amount of work for that kind of "reward".

So I keep saying to myself, "forget it - I'm packing this in - I'm only creating these Creatures and Placeables and things for Demoness Tales anyway, so..." But then, some silly, enjoyable interaction occurs or there actually is a noticeable reaction, such as to the first selection of Maldrapur Chronicles stuff I put out, and those few stalwart lunatics individuals who keep being enthusiastic about my rubbish still fly the banners of appreciation and so I carry on here for another few months...

I'm sure I'm not the only one here to have similar feelings.

 

Tarot:- The above more or less covers what you said too. Given that I create, essentially, for my own benefit, simply because I have to 'cause it's who I am, I really don't care how much work I do - and the Doctor Who project entailed a great deal - that is never seen (beyond Fifi and myself). I don't create art for others and I don't give a damn if the world "loses" by never seeing it. I don't lose anything by not sharing all the stuff I do. I mean, I've got something like 25 novels completed, 6 plays, 140-odd graphic novels, I don't know how many paintings, drawings, etc, piles of weird sculptures, figurines, maquettes of some seriously bizarre Spleen monsters, my musical compositions, not to mention all those gigantic, life-size Creatures all crammed into this rubbish house. The passionate work of a lifetime. Ninety percent of it has never been seen by anybody but Fifi and I plus a very few close friends and very likely never will. This bothers me not in the slightest.

And it's only that the malignant cesspit that is human so-called civilization forces one to have to have money, that I've ever sold a few paintings, shared a bit of writing, etc, over the years. And, having been ripped off by the reeking film industry, more than once, big-time, such efforts generally just make me even more insular, embittered and rabid than I was to begin with.

 

And money's such a farcical thing anyway. It isn't real... It was just cobbled together one afternoon 'cause the barter system was getting impractical as people learnt how to traverse greater distances. Damned hard to carry a few camels jammed in your pocket or lug forty oxen everwhere you went or drag the tools of your trade with you at all times on the offchance you needed to build a shed for someone in return for sixteen goats and a stack of clay vases... It probably seemed a good idea at the time. "Yes, I know, let's have some worthless little, easily-carried tokens that REPRESENT goats and camels and pots and stuff, then we don't have to cram live cows in our pockets any more...

Yet within a few very brief centuries, these worthless, representative tokens has ceased to be a handy convenience and were now THE purpose and motivation of the entire human species. Armies waged wars for it. Tyrants starved and bled their own people dry for it - were tyrants precisely through their insane lust for it. And worst of all, it didn't even represent anything any more. Now it was just fought and clawed for simply for itself. It became power, luxury, a psychological imperative of the first order. It altered the gross behavioural structure of a species, enslaved them without awareness. It destroyed mankind.

And today, most humans live their lives with the accumulation of money as the primary goal, a fixed necessity, and they don't even stop for a single second to ask why, to wonder what the stuff really even is or why it exists. And worst of all, those of us who do think, those of us who still belong to that hated and resented tiny minority - individuals - must also strive for money, whether we want it or not, because without money, one cannot purchase basic necessities such as paints, fibreglass, epoxy resin, inks, paper, etc and thus create monsters... oh, and there's rubbish like food and shelter too, I s'pose...

 

Anyway, with regards sharing the Doctor Who stuff privately, I have thought of that, be assured. However, with twenty fairly large Modules and a billion tons of completely mandatory CC, it's not something that I could just quietly e-mail to someone and I have no other means (beyond a Vault sub) of sharing that vast amount of stuff online. As I think everyone's aware, I have no internet access of my own and have to come over here to my mother's lair and use hers and she is paranoid (family trait, I guess) about "registering" "signing up", that kind of thing. It was a long and bloody battle just to get her to agree to my adhering myself to Photobucket so's I could plaster pictures of rubbery Spleen Creatures and things on these forums. The Dropbox Wars, the Mozilla Fiasco and the Firefox Incident went nowhere and aren't likely to. Short of psychic transmission, it would mean recourse to sending discs through untrustworthy international postal systems. Hm... But let's not say that I'm utterly against the general idea. I said nothing about it, even in that PM to you, regarding "private viewings" 'cause I didn't want to raise your hopes only to then squash them again when I found no practical means of doing it...

 

(As to the latter, I assume that's for other people's attention, since you know my views on the so-called "new series" of Doctor Who and can't imagine what difference a bit of crap directing by a director as hopelessly amateurish as Peter Jackson would make...)

 

Klatchain of the Tribe of Coffee:- As I think I mentioned above in one of my interminably long and rabid posts, I messed around with the idea of just a small Module or two purely done for Vault release.

My problem there is that by the time I get something to the point that it's good enough that I think, "Hm, this is worthwhile", I don't want to post it for all the above rabidly-foamed, paranoiac reasons in the provious posts. And if it's NOT up to a standard I'm concerned about, I want to post it EVEN LESS 'cause it's completely rubbish and pathetic and I don't want people thinking that's the level of my work.

Catch 22.

As to e-publishing, since I'm more or less wholly unfamiliar with the internet, I'm not even REALLY sure what e-publishing even is, beyond the blisteringly obvious. Doubtless there are shades and degrees and different copyright applications within the framework. It's something I keep telling myself I'll look into some time... probably for about five years or so now...

 

As to art being a process you splurge and then refine to shape... Of course, absolutely. How could it be otherwise? I can often keep refining over several years. The trick is to eventually be able to say "OK, I'm going to call this finished and leave it alone now" at an efficacious point. Difficult... And, Zwerkules, of course, it involves bricks. Naturally it involves bricks. OBVIOUSLY it involves bricks.

Never attempt anything without sufficient Big Bricks!

[PLUSH HYENA of DOOM]

PS:- I WILL win the "Most Irritatingly Long Posts on the Site Award", I will win, I will win...

[Zwerkules]

Truth be told, though I'm now firmly nailed to NWN having put far too much effort into it to stop, I'm constantly on the edge of leaving the Community and just keeping to myself, since a release of "stuff" takes A LOT of additional work in checking Haks cobbled together solely for the Community out of my own chaotic, bloated, stupidly immense Haks, being ludicrously concerned with getting nice screenshots done, etc, etc. Takes a surprising amount of time, just for the sake of the Community - and then a mere fifty people or less ever download it and maybe two or three actually vote on it at all if you're lucky.
Nobody sane would do that amount of work for that kind of "reward".

And, Zwerkules, of course, it involves bricks. Naturally it involves bricks. OBVIOUSLY it involves bricks.
Never attempt anything without sufficient Big Bricks!

I know how it feels when you make something new and then only 14 people download it. I've made a tileset that was nominated for a golden dragon award and it was only downloaded 16 times during the whole time it's been at the new vault.

Mostly I don't do stuff for the commmunity, but because I need it myself. I have however done a whole tileset for someone once who never used it and never even said why. A completely new tileset, not a simple reskin with a few extra rooms. These things take time to do, my free time I spent building something I didn't need when I could have worked on tilesets or creatures I can use myself. A simple 'Thank you!' would have been nice, it might even have been enough to make having built a new tileset worthwile, but when that tileset isn't used and you don't even get a thank you, it makes you wonder what kind of community this is. I too have thought of giving up on the NWN community, but there are enough people here who are more or less okay or more than okay (even if they don't vote).

Another thing is that sometimes you can even be unaware of some praise your work got. I've seen several nice comments about some tilesets I made on PW forums which I only saw because of some screenshots on Facebook or in other forum threads. None of those people left a comment on the vault page of those tilesets, let alone voted on them. It would be nice if more people did that so custom content authors would be more aware that what they made is used and liked.

Now I'm going to stock up on bricks in case I might need them!

Edit: You also said "Nobody sane would do that amount of work...". That's very true. I've tried sanity once, but it didn't agree with me.

PS:- I WILL win the "Most Irritatingly Long Posts on the Site Award", I will win, I will win...

Your post might even be longer than one of The Barbarian's posts at the vault forum.