This mod has a setting called "Reregister MTG Decorations" (technical name "rereg_mtg_decors") enabled by default that makes biomes from other biome mods not spawn trees, grass, or bushes! The only reason the mod has this enabled by default is so it can make 1 node spawn in default biomes, instead of spawning in ebiomes biomes only. Is this really worth the incompatibility!? Terrain only generates once!
I made an issue on the mod author's github repository ( https://github.com/CowboyLva/ebiomes/issues/7 ). And the mod author maturely handled the issue. They said they would not fix it, called someone else who noticed the issue my "accomplice", and stopped me from replying. If you know that a setting you have by default causes your mod to be incompatible with other mods, but decide to leave it on by default anyway, you are purposefully making your mod incompatible with other mods. Imagine if you had to read a manual for every mod just to make them compatible with any other unrelated mod. That would be a nightmare! Mods should work out of the box. This mod should be more user friendly by having the setting off by default.
I forked the ebiomes mod for use on our server. But if you don't want to do that, here is how you make it work with other biome mods:
Main Menu Screen -> Settings (gear icon on minetest 5.8.0+) -> Content: Mods - > Extra Biomes
Uncheck the "Reregister MTG Decorations" box.
(Only if you want to reload your world's terrain) Go to your world directory, delete the map.sqlite file that stores all the map data (will delete every node).
Restart minetest
Join your world, reload all the terrain again.
If you want to use this mod with other biome mods, you'll have to do the steps above first before you load any terrain. If you feel that this is too much effort, there are other biome mods that are compatible with each other BY DEFAULT.
1) Grassland and snowy grassland are not connected anymore therefore it makes no sense to have snowy blueberries, because they are seperated by a steppe biome. Blueberries don't grow on the Eurasian steppe which I modeled it after, so them suddenly appearing disconnected on snowy grassland is an immersion breaker.
2) The only way to fix thet before the API gets updated with a suitable feature for that is unregistering and reregistering decorations.
3) A biome mod is usually designed to run alone or with other simmilar biome mods. Because of point number one I have the setting on by default. There is no other intention for this than that.
4) Readme I may touch up to be more like the ContentDB description, but I like how it is currently.
Having other biomes have nothing at all in them is also a huge immersion breaker, even more so than noticing that blueberries don't spawn somewhere.
Or, you could keep the fix for it, but have it off by default. So if someone really cares enough about the blueberry spawning for some reason they can turn it on if they wish, and have their other biomes intact.
Its a bad design priniciple. Mods are supposed to be modular. They should work by themselves and not affect any other mods. And deciding not to fix something because its going to be fixed in a future version is also a bad design principle. Fix it now and then you can make a better fix in the new version. Also, a lot of your settings could be made automatic, like the bamboo toggle.
You shouldn't have to go through a mods readme or full description to stop it from breaking your whole experience. The minetest client is not even designed for you to read the whole description! The ebiomes mod in the content tab makes no mention of this very broken setting. Imagine the average person installing a lot of biome mods, then they load their world and the mapblocks are permanently broken!? Then they somehow figure out that ebiomes is broken and has a broken setting on by default for seemingly no reason?? This is a horrible user experience. This is what I mean when I say the mod should be more user friendly.
Again, you did a poor job of handling our issues, especially mine. Anything that loads terrain permanently should be very careful because the loaded terrain can never be fixed. The easiest fix for this is disabling the feature by default, but you could also check if the user has another biome mod installed, which is the second best solution.
Modding is not a "Consumer Experience" and so my expectations are such that people will spend effort tweaking things. Because modding is like putting parts together and unless you want a broken mess you will check things, even if mods work perfectly together out of the box.
As usual you are still acting agressive whilst toning it down and masking your dissatisfaction with sprinkles of suggestion.
If a mention of a Readme offends you to such lenghts that you make lenghty charged responses, you should go and install a game instead of putting mods together without the most basic of efforts.
Modding is a consumer experience! Not everyone is a hardcore programmer. Some people just want to play the game with mods they think are cool. I don't understand why you're deciding to die on this hill? Its such a simple and insignificant change to the mod that makes it work so much better with other mods. Are you being paid by Big Blueberry? Reading this mod's comments, a lot of people are having issues with the rereg_mtg_decors setting. I honestly think most people would prefer compatibility over blueberries not spawning in a certain place.
If you want to tweak things, sure, go ahead. But if you just want to play the game how the mod author intented (default settings) then just play the game. There's a difference between being incompatible with mods, and outright destroying all other mods features. That's what your mod does by default. This isn't a simple "oh, this mod has an item that's also in this mod", its "oh, this mod completely breaks other mods and the only way to fix it is to find it in the obscure settings page and untoggle something on by default. Time to delete my world now that its fixed! But at least the blueberries were spawning in another biome :)"
Imagine you're a programmer for a server. It's frustrating having biomes that generate completely barren in a server and you having to spend hours debugging and figuring out why its doing that. Then you find out that it's not a bug, it's a feature that the ebiomes has on by default. Now all of those biome mapblocks are permanently broken because someone decided to leave a broken "feature" on by default. Maybe thats why I'm frustrated with your mod.
"Modding is a consumer experience! Not everyone is a hardcore programmer. Some people just want to play the game with mods they think are cool."
"I want to be play as a beautiful lady in Skyrim today. Imma install mods oh look a body mod, cool. Wow a landscrape mod. Oooh that's a nice ENB."
Loads
"Wooow I'm so beautiful, oh that waterfall! Oooh my anime follower, looks just like her."
Meanwhile it's a mess of oversaturated colors, eyesore hourglass body that would mortify a doctor, a character gait that would scare anyone in a ten mile radius and a follower thats some horrible abomination. Two hours in. Character falls through map. Game crashes. Corrupted saves because the consoomer didn't check that.
" How dare they! I spent an hour creating myself! NOOOOOOO! "
In other words.
Think, test, play.
And don't forget to read!
I uuuh, may have gone a little overboard with the mockery. :D
Anyway the issue is now fixed.
P.S.
Mod developers are people too.
Next time don't accuse mod devs of malice just because they have a cool(as in cold) character and a nasty mod issue.
I was the angriest person of all about this. And If it wasn't for TenPlus1's efforts in Ethereal around this issue I would have not fixed it.
That said the API thing I'm waiting for is still an urgent issue. In fact It should be standard in the API for every 'making' to be an 'unmaking'.
The only problem more important than this is the abysmal handling of entities by the engine. A boat jumping back when going fast as well as mobs shifting back is what keeps minetest below the proprietary options.
I wasn't trying to accuse you of malice. Sorry if it sounded like that. I don't know why you would maliciously target other biome mods lol. I was just trying to tell you that it's careless to know that a feature is broken and to leave it on by default. I do like your mod, we have it on our server. The biomes are very fitting with default, nothing looks out of place. But, criticism will never feel good. I've been criticized for my code before and it sucks, but it's necessary to improve. You might get some frustrated critics, like me, but you should still listen if the concerns are valid. I'm only frustrated because I have to figure out how to fix the broken biomes on our server now. I'll try to be less harsh next time. Thank you for developing this mod and for fixing the issue :)
PS:
Could you let me reply and make issues/merge requests on the repo? I found a few bugs and fixed some.
This mod has a setting called "Reregister MTG Decorations" (technical name "rereg_mtg_decors") enabled by default that makes biomes from other biome mods not spawn trees, grass, or bushes! The only reason the mod has this enabled by default is so it can make 1 node spawn in default biomes, instead of spawning in ebiomes biomes only. Is this really worth the incompatibility!? Terrain only generates once!
I made an issue on the mod author's github repository ( https://github.com/CowboyLva/ebiomes/issues/7 ). And the mod author maturely handled the issue. They said they would not fix it, called someone else who noticed the issue my "accomplice", and stopped me from replying. If you know that a setting you have by default causes your mod to be incompatible with other mods, but decide to leave it on by default anyway, you are purposefully making your mod incompatible with other mods. Imagine if you had to read a manual for every mod just to make them compatible with any other unrelated mod. That would be a nightmare! Mods should work out of the box. This mod should be more user friendly by having the setting off by default.
I forked the ebiomes mod for use on our server. But if you don't want to do that, here is how you make it work with other biome mods:
map.sqlite
file that stores all the map data (will delete every node).If you want to use this mod with other biome mods, you'll have to do the steps above first before you load any terrain. If you feel that this is too much effort, there are other biome mods that are compatible with each other BY DEFAULT.
1) Grassland and snowy grassland are not connected anymore therefore it makes no sense to have snowy blueberries, because they are seperated by a steppe biome. Blueberries don't grow on the Eurasian steppe which I modeled it after, so them suddenly appearing disconnected on snowy grassland is an immersion breaker.
2) The only way to fix thet before the API gets updated with a suitable feature for that is unregistering and reregistering decorations.
3) A biome mod is usually designed to run alone or with other simmilar biome mods. Because of point number one I have the setting on by default. There is no other intention for this than that.
4) Readme I may touch up to be more like the ContentDB description, but I like how it is currently.
5) Links for the curious:
https://github.com/CowboyLva/ebiomes/issues/6
https://github.com/CowboyLva/ebiomes/issues/7
Having other biomes have nothing at all in them is also a huge immersion breaker, even more so than noticing that blueberries don't spawn somewhere.
Or, you could keep the fix for it, but have it off by default. So if someone really cares enough about the blueberry spawning for some reason they can turn it on if they wish, and have their other biomes intact.
Its a bad design priniciple. Mods are supposed to be modular. They should work by themselves and not affect any other mods. And deciding not to fix something because its going to be fixed in a future version is also a bad design principle. Fix it now and then you can make a better fix in the new version. Also, a lot of your settings could be made automatic, like the bamboo toggle.
You shouldn't have to go through a mods readme or full description to stop it from breaking your whole experience. The minetest client is not even designed for you to read the whole description! The ebiomes mod in the content tab makes no mention of this very broken setting. Imagine the average person installing a lot of biome mods, then they load their world and the mapblocks are permanently broken!? Then they somehow figure out that ebiomes is broken and has a broken setting on by default for seemingly no reason?? This is a horrible user experience. This is what I mean when I say the mod should be more user friendly.
Again, you did a poor job of handling our issues, especially mine. Anything that loads terrain permanently should be very careful because the loaded terrain can never be fixed. The easiest fix for this is disabling the feature by default, but you could also check if the user has another biome mod installed, which is the second best solution.
Modding is not a "Consumer Experience" and so my expectations are such that people will spend effort tweaking things. Because modding is like putting parts together and unless you want a broken mess you will check things, even if mods work perfectly together out of the box.
As usual you are still acting agressive whilst toning it down and masking your dissatisfaction with sprinkles of suggestion. If a mention of a Readme offends you to such lenghts that you make lenghty charged responses, you should go and install a game instead of putting mods together without the most basic of efforts.
Modding is a consumer experience! Not everyone is a hardcore programmer. Some people just want to play the game with mods they think are cool. I don't understand why you're deciding to die on this hill? Its such a simple and insignificant change to the mod that makes it work so much better with other mods. Are you being paid by Big Blueberry? Reading this mod's comments, a lot of people are having issues with the
rereg_mtg_decors
setting. I honestly think most people would prefer compatibility over blueberries not spawning in a certain place.If you want to tweak things, sure, go ahead. But if you just want to play the game how the mod author intented (default settings) then just play the game. There's a difference between being incompatible with mods, and outright destroying all other mods features. That's what your mod does by default. This isn't a simple "oh, this mod has an item that's also in this mod", its "oh, this mod completely breaks other mods and the only way to fix it is to find it in the obscure settings page and untoggle something on by default. Time to delete my world now that its fixed! But at least the blueberries were spawning in another biome :)"
Imagine you're a programmer for a server. It's frustrating having biomes that generate completely barren in a server and you having to spend hours debugging and figuring out why its doing that. Then you find out that it's not a bug, it's a feature that the ebiomes has on by default. Now all of those biome mapblocks are permanently broken because someone decided to leave a broken "feature" on by default. Maybe thats why I'm frustrated with your mod.
"Modding is a consumer experience! Not everyone is a hardcore programmer. Some people just want to play the game with mods they think are cool."
"I want to be play as a beautiful lady in Skyrim today. Imma install mods oh look a body mod, cool. Wow a landscrape mod. Oooh that's a nice ENB."
Loads
"Wooow I'm so beautiful, oh that waterfall! Oooh my anime follower, looks just like her."
Meanwhile it's a mess of oversaturated colors, eyesore hourglass body that would mortify a doctor, a character gait that would scare anyone in a ten mile radius and a follower thats some horrible abomination. Two hours in. Character falls through map. Game crashes. Corrupted saves because the consoomer didn't check that.
" How dare they! I spent an hour creating myself! NOOOOOOO! "
In other words. Think, test, play. And don't forget to read!
Thank you!
I uuuh, may have gone a little overboard with the mockery. :D Anyway the issue is now fixed.
P.S.
Mod developers are people too. Next time don't accuse mod devs of malice just because they have a cool(as in cold) character and a nasty mod issue. I was the angriest person of all about this. And If it wasn't for TenPlus1's efforts in Ethereal around this issue I would have not fixed it.
That said the API thing I'm waiting for is still an urgent issue. In fact It should be standard in the API for every 'making' to be an 'unmaking'. The only problem more important than this is the abysmal handling of entities by the engine. A boat jumping back when going fast as well as mobs shifting back is what keeps minetest below the proprietary options.
I wasn't trying to accuse you of malice. Sorry if it sounded like that. I don't know why you would maliciously target other biome mods lol. I was just trying to tell you that it's careless to know that a feature is broken and to leave it on by default. I do like your mod, we have it on our server. The biomes are very fitting with default, nothing looks out of place. But, criticism will never feel good. I've been criticized for my code before and it sucks, but it's necessary to improve. You might get some frustrated critics, like me, but you should still listen if the concerns are valid. I'm only frustrated because I have to figure out how to fix the broken biomes on our server now. I'll try to be less harsh next time. Thank you for developing this mod and for fixing the issue :)
PS: Could you let me reply and make issues/merge requests on the repo? I found a few bugs and fixed some.
converted review into a thread
Your behaviour left no doubt, even if you say otherwise. Therefore I can't let you participate.
comment deleted by livphi