No offense was intended. This was about the history of modding which you always made an available part of Unreal World. Many suggestions and possible updates exist for any game. When an update is developed and others not there will always be some different views on which one to do next or how it was done.
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On the ancestral mods...
To phrase differently players making axes, bows, lamellar armor was added by mods for years. Rain's ironworking is an example. Since Rain wrote that mod various game updates have made his code not work or miss key changes like the introduction of cord lengths. Keeping Rain's going has been part of the BAC by updating those recipes to the current mod language.
As an example when the blacksmithing update was added the vanilla game now allowed ordering axes form villages. Vanilla players wanting to a specific axe could now get one likely through more hunting & hidework to get the value. Modded players were already making their own choice of axe, exploring the wilderness for sources of iron, crafting tools for getting ore, making charcoal and so on.
I am overall pleased to see more aspects being added to Unreal world and hope to one day see a vanilla player blacksmithing their own axe far away from a village.
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On the number of users
For the amount of community interest the BAC 3.82 version shows 524 downloads in post #1 of :https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=7176.0
Each time the game went through major updates so did BAC with a new thread to the new game version. So the total number of downloads is hard to know. Many BAC users would have downloaded the next version so the figure above is can be viewed as the active users.
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BAC was sized to have lots yet keeping a couple letters free specifically to allow any additions a particular player might want.
The mod community also has a few career mods like bee keeping which some might want and others not.
Some mods introduce being able to train your combat skills through various token systems. While likely of interest to many players it takes a few menu letters to achieve this so wasn't in the BAC. It could potentially be chosen by a player from the free spaces left by the BAC.
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A suggestion was to add separate craft menu for mods to use. Right? Let's make sure I understand the proposed suggestion correctly and then brainstorm as necessary.
So, let's say we'll make a letter O to open a blank make menu, which you can then fill with modded stuff like the current Make menu. And this would be menu that is reserved for mods only. The game craftings would appear in the exisiting Make menu, like currently. Now, if you would then fill this one modders make menu (O) with one big mod it would be..well..full. If there was a few smaller mods that you would like to put there, with custom menu entries or keys even, they would get messed up and tangled together.
If implemented like this it doesn't sound like a plausible long-term solution, or am I not understanding the suggestion?
Correct. That is the current request.
Modders over the year had requested make menu tiers, that is you open make and open a letter than another letter then the 25 recipes for 15,625 possible craft items. Memory recalls an impression on the complexity being an issue on implementing.
The current make menu has ~25x25 = 625 possible entries. By combining many of the popular mods (Rain etc) yes BAC is running close to that. Certain things have been done to save on space like "iron nails" and "iron rivets" being one recipe as the production is very similiar.
There are some mod swap, letter swap methods that are out there as mentioned by Galgana though I've personally never used them.
The modder's crafting single letter was put forward as a lower coding request. It would mean 625 that a modder can use without the "mod collision" that happens when new features are added to vanilla.
"Mod collision" happens when the vanilla game adds crafting to what the modding already had there is some in game disruptions and confusion. An example is the hafting vs BAC's existing mod code. Yes eventually the BAC would be adapted to the new vanilla standard. Until then here are some things that happen:
- BAC included making an axe thus has both an "axe head" and "axe haft"
- BAC "axe heads" don't work with the new vanilla axe fixing. Players get confused.
- BAC "axe haft" doesnt work with new vanilla axe haft so can't fix a broken axe. Players get confused.
- BAC included a chance of a bad axe mounting and recovering a BAC "axe head"
If the vanilla items and mod items are separate then for the above example what is a "BAC axe head" is kept clearly from "Vanilla axe head" and so on.
Further some item creations involve many steps. BAC has "iron nails" that are double used as rivets do save on menu space. Should at some point Saami add nails or rivets the vanilla/mod make split would avoid confusion between whose rivets are needed in recipes. This is intended as a support not a reducing of the vanilla updates.
In time the mods could update assuming the modder is still around in the community.
As another example. [Bowyer] has been added a skill. I actually think that is great. At the time of the last BAC update there was no such skill so the recipes for bow making it has couldn't use it. In time the mod could be changed over to it. I also wouldn't be surprised if there a players confused on which bow string to use as some will be vanilla bow strings and some BAC bow strings.
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