First off, completely, utterly off-topic. Nowhere near what we were discussing.
Indeed. But I've heard this "easy" thing said before (and have confronted it before too) and it just sticks in my throat every time. And it’s in relation to new people as well, I’m not talking about people saying what a good tool FRED is or how easy to use it is when not talking about new people.
SEXPs are a programming language. People who know how to program, or have experience building scripts, have an easier time figuring out how they work. That also means that people who have no aptitude for this have a pretty hard time adapting to it (That is not meant to be a negative assessment. Programming is something that one has to have an aptitude for, while it can be taught, it can only be mastered by those who understand it and its concepts instinctively).
That's an interesting assessment. So the thing is, even if someone has no experience, they might get good if they give it time, everyone has to have started somewhere, surely, even the people on here who make FRED dance to their tune easily. FRED is starting to open up to me now, but it's taken a long time. I'm not going to be able to do what the masters can do, not even close, but maybe I can still make some fun stuff, even if it's not going to blow any minds.
We are not teachers, we are just gamers. Setting up events is easy if you have done something similar before, and utterly arcane if you haven't. There is a learning curve, and it is pretty steep, but that's what the FRED tutorial (both the original and the updated Diaspora one) come in, as well as our FRED board and the old standby trick of looking at retail missions, or missions from mods, to figure it out.
And this is exactly the kind of information which should be the norm imo, not "Oh, FRED is easy." This is reality. Now you've got both sides, an easy tool to operate for the programmers, but possible to eventually fight your way through and understand even if you're inexperienced with such things.
I’m not asking for teachers even though I mentioned the FRED Academy. It’s the thing about what was said in the exam. Think of FRED as the exam, and if people think it’s going to be easy and it’s not, they go in with false expectations and the potential to have their confidence destroyed before they even get started. If they go in expecting a challenge and to need to put many hours into it then they’re not going to run into this.
Well, there is a slight problem here with the way we as a community approach new content. We've been modding this game and exchanging tips for over a decade now, and as a result, we've become pretty ruthless in our assessment of new people's efforts.
The problem with WCS in particular is that those missions that I and others have criticized would have been absolutely fine 10 years ago. But during those ten years, we (as in, the FS modding community) have developed so many more and innovative techniques and approaches to storytelling in FS that WCS looks quite simple and constrained in comparison. If we hold it up to the other big Total Conversion that released the same year, Diaspora, WCS' defects become immediately obvious. Even if we hold WCS' massive campaign in its favour, the shorter, sharper, better written and more technically proficient and advanced Diaspora comes out on top.
WCS, if measured against what the FS modding community has done in the past two years alone, loses massively. We've gotten used to a string of uniformly high quality content here, and that unfortunately has a chilling effect on the people who are just starting out, but we can't just abandon being good at what we do, can we?
I think the problem is bigger than slight. I can see why you would think it slight though, the standard is just getting better and better across the board. Where's the problem, right?
The problem is the shop’s closed. Somehow all the people who are at the top had to get to the top. They went through the gradual process that has been seen over the years to get to where they are today. But can
anyone else get there now? Maybe one or two gifted ones could, but what about the rest? You’re effectively stuck with the people you have now. They’re not going to stick around forever. How are you going to replace them with new talent? How is anyone else going to climb the ladder? I did ultimately get the help I needed, but there’s really no encouragement at all for new people. I’m only carrying on because it’s a personal challenge, and to be fair I have received some positive feedback for my demo campaign, and have used it to make it better and to inspire me. But I can’t imagine it could be anything like what the old hands would have had in their time, learning together and helping each other and then later pushing the boundaries together.
Wing Commander Saga, when I read that post of yours, my
very first thought before anything else was
I hope he doesn’t critique my campaign. And as we’ve moved along in that thread, I’m okay with what you’re doing, I know what point you’re trying to make in there now, and I’m very much interested in what you’re going to do, as I think there’s great potential in what was created for WCS, and I guess you must too if you intend to work on it, but still, I think that first impulse of mine is important for the message it sends. I'm not singling you out, loads of people do similar, you said it yourself:
we've become pretty ruthless in our assessment of new people's efforts.
but that's how it makes me feel. New people shouldn't be worried about what people might say about their efforts, it should be fun for them, the learning and growing process.
So sure, keep on pushing the boundaries of quality and what’s possible, it benefits us all, but spare a thought for new people. Spare a thought for how it was before the Blue Planets and Diasporas, before the bar got raised so high above where it used to be, and how it will be for someone starting out. And wouldn’t you think as time goes by, the number of available new people would shrink? Don’t squeeze them out.
