Contacting Module authors for permission to upload to steam workshop

Neverwinter Nights 1 Custom Content
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I have a lot of modules that i have loved playing and would like to share them with all the new nwn players brought in by the enhanced editions release, but i don’t have a way to contact them and i was wondering if anybody who’s been around nwn for a while could get me in contact with,

Tolitz Rosel-Lord of terror module
Gestalt-Good Vs. Evil I-III
Baldecaran- Prophet series I-III, The Cave Of Songs, And Honor Among Thieves

I have found emails but they are either inactive or from websites that aren’t up anymore so I could really use some help because I think other people who don’t know how to mod or don’t even know about the vault should still be able to enjoy these classics.

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So make a thread over there telling them about all the good stuff on here. It’s not as though NwN is the only game that has more stuff that is not on steam than is on it. For example you’ll find more stuff for the Bethesda Fallout games on the nexus than there is on steam.

TR

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True but fallout doesn’t support the workshop currently, and nexus has created a mod manager also which is its answer to the steam workshop it merely requires a click to download and a click to install any mod supported by the launcher. What I’m saying is these mods were big in the past and could be almost as big now. we just need to get in contact with the authors. Not only will this bring more people to the game it might make people want to become modders which leads to even more amazing mods (i mean no disrespect to your point im sorry if it seems that way)

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I’ve not a clue how to reach any of those three, but I’d suggest asking the question in the Discord channel too, if you haven’t already, to increase the chances of reaching somebody who might know.

https://neverwintervault.org/chat

Wonder what Steam policy would say about adding empty uploads - just adding a Workshop entry without files that links to the project page on the Vault, named for the matching project, with preview pictures and a copy of the description or something, so the modules are advertised on Steam and people who are browsing the Workshop know where to find them, without the content itself actually having been migrated.

I’ve seen that work for commercial products, too; actually went around contacting people asking for permission to use their product pictures for that exact purpose. Most people were happy for the free advertising without having to put in extra effort themselves and agreed; many wanted to make sure that what I was asking wasn’t whether I could migrate the content itself.

But, these were also folks who were earning their living with their stuff, so anything that drove traffick to their site was good for them, whereas anything that’d take traffic away from their site would have been bad for them. 's not so much the case for us. Here, you’d mostly want to protect the migrators, since the Steam ToS are super not on their side if the returning authors get pissed at seeing their work migrated without permission. It’d suck if anybody’s Steam account was at risk over this kind of stuff, especially considering that the core sentiment is a very flattering and well-intentioned one.

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Generally I would advise and direct the players to this site in their own interest.

These old community made modules have very diverse requirements reagarding patches and haks. Even those which are built with CEP are built for different versions of CEP.

Here on the NWN vault the modules mostly provide links to the haks needed and in the comment section of the modules one can often find additional information to get the module running.

All that infrastructure can not be provided in the workshop and in the end any player running into troubles with a module will most likely end up here for advice anyway.

And any “lost” module that turns up and is not already on the vault should by all means be uploaded here, because of the above.

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Was there ever any talk about the Vault hosting one-click installs for modules? It might solve this problem once and for all? All the content can remain on the site without going anywhere. Should’t be hard to implement technically.

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yes i agree this plus a modding guide would solve the problem but the problem is getting people to want to learn how to mod. there is the argument that if someone really wanted to play or download a mod they would put in the work but if they’ve never played a module and want to try one they aren’t going to realize it’s even worth the work to mod in(which isn’t very much once you get the hang of it)

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I just want to get these classics to as many people as possible, and make it as streamlined as possible, but it is also important to get permission from authors many of which aren’t active anymore. After reading the ideas on this discussion i do agree it would be way easier(in terms of intellectual rights) to link the website so i’ll just personally try to get permission and not bother the people trying to make an easier way. It’s just so frustrating trying so many different ways to find an email or blog only for the domain to be gone or the blog abandoned, these people made such great mods and it bothers me their work can’t be easily streamlined due to a lack of communication. (obviously after a decade the authors would be inactive and do other things with their life and it bothers me there is nothing i can do.)

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@pscythe
There’s been a lot of talk about improving the site search, for sure. Problem is that AFAIK Niv’s currently the only one here who knows how to mess with the site, and he’s super busy IRL. If we’ve got any people lurking in the background who know how to implement this stuff and want to do it to boot… I’d do a little jig of joy to see work done on the site. They should go talk to Niv, stat.

One-click upvoting/liking/recommending projects would be nice, too. :thinking:

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With all due respect, I have to disagree that coming to the vault is the “harder way”.

During the last months I have worked through all 70+ pages of modules and downloaded 100+ for research for my own module and I can assure you that very few play straight out of the box and these are usually not the interesting ones.

The point should not be to get the knowledge of playworthy modules to as many people as possible but to enable as many people as possible to actually play & enjoy these modules.

I’ve dabbled in modding for a lot of games and I have learned, that nothing turns players away faster from modded games, than modules they can’t get to work properly.

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im not sure which modules require files that can’t just be put into the mod folder when you upload. im just saying i would like to see one so i can get a better understanding, I mean no disrespect.

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@grantdr246

There’s a good lot of modules with other dependencies, such as hak paks, which would need to be migrated as well so that the module can work via the Workshop one-click installation method. Without the haks, the modules that require them wouldn’t be playable. So people on Steam would be downloading the migrated module, try to play it, and have it fail because the haks are missing. That’s what @TheStoryTeller01 is talking about.

Therein’s the problem; a shitton of NWN content is interwoven with a shitton of other NWN content, with a shitton of different people involved, any of which are authorized to lodge an official complaint against a migrator to Steam, and the Steam ToS (as with any sane hosting platform) explicitly state that uploading content of which one is not the author/owner is prohibited, so Steam is extremely unlikely to rule in favor of the migrator in case of complaint. :-/

It’d be nice to be able to trust general human goodwill towards one another to prevail, but… from what I’ve seen of the world, it’d be madness to gamble on that.

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Have you tried the Neverwinter Nights Mod Installer Tool - NIT by Surazal? Once set-up I believe it is supposed to streamline the installation of modules.

TR

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I believe There is an argument for hakpaks because they were made to be used in conjunction with other mods. It seems similar to changing the locks on a door and having to pay extra for a key.

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Far as similes go, I’d say that’s closer to arguing that, when taking a pie from an open windowsill while the owner isn’t watching, it is acceptable to also take the neighbour’s cutlery and a plate (which were coincidentally currently in the pie-owner’s house, probably because they’re on good terms with one another and maybe having a party or something) along with it, because those were made to be used with edible things. :grin: … although, naturally, the “The original is not gone if I take it”-nature of digital content changes the situation a little.

It’s overall pretty easy to piss people off, even the most easygoing ones. I wouldn’t bet a Steam account that has money in it on that potential pissed-off authors will accept “Your work was made to be used” as a valid argument and refrain from causing trouble for the migrator. Honestly, I think that’s likely to make things worse; if someone feels that you’ve done them wrong and disrespected them, and you field that one, they’ll probably hear “I was fully within my rights to do what I did, and I am wholly unapologetic, and you are in the wrong for complaining!”. Something like “(Author Name), I love your work, I tried to contact you but I couldn’t figure out how to reach you. Here, can I pass this thing back to you? :smiley: It’s so great that you’re back!” would probably work better.

But that’s neither here nor there far as the way the hosting platforms need to react to protect themselves in accordance with real-world laws goes. :-/ If the legal owner complains, the migrator is considered at fault. What anybody else here thinks about content being migrated doesn’t really matter far as that goes; we are not legally authorized to speak on behalf of anyone’s work other than our own. Point being, if somebody gets pissed, we can’t protect the migrator. :-/

And some of us have made pretty bad prior experiences with people just taking their stuff, too. It’s not super unlikely that at least some folks hereabouts would take unauthorized migrations of their (or somebody else’s) work poorly, and want to smack migrators down on principle. :x And yet some others are financially invested in their intellectual property, and thus take infringement on it very seriously.

It’s pretty annoying when you just want to play games and promote stuff you love, I know. :-/ Imagine what the legal situation would be like for persecuting intentional, not-at-all-well-intentioned IP theft that actually hurts people financially if it was otherwise, though. Situation overall kinda sucks. Personally, I blame evolution. :expressionless: ^^

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I understand why this seems to be cumbersome but while being a HUGE fan of NWN1 I find it actually IS pretty complex to get a module with a lot of haks to run, especially those decade old abandoned mods that never have been updated.

Regarding packing the hak files into the module upload won’t work because of CEP. There have been a dozen patches for CEP since it became kind of a “standard” compilation hak and older modules wont work with newer patches. So one would have to check the CEP version the module uses and then pack the whole bunch of relevant CEP haks into the upload. Not a very viable option.

To play that huge amount of modules (or just open them in the toolset) I have downloaded, I needed to have different versions of CEP installed and in some cases I even had to swap out hak files to be able to play a single module - only to swap them back afterwards for the next module. Cumbersome it is indeed - although for me it’s worth it.

I might also add that I have downloaded a ton of mods for various games from the NEXUS and uploaded some NWN2 stuff myself…and literally NOBODY packs any other modders stuff into their own upload. On the Nexus it’s always like

“This mod weas created using the following mods you will need to install ->download links”

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You should only need 2 versions of CEP - CEP 1 Complete and CEP 2.65 in order to play the vast majority of modules that use the CEP. The reason why there are 2 versions is because the people looking after CEP at the time that CEP 2 was released decided the change the way that it actually worked.

The Neverwinter Nights Mod Installer Tool - NIT by Surazal handles that for you, according to the project page.

TR

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The license of most modules allows for mods. What would happen if someone made the modules their own by modding it then uploading it to Steam?

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Without permission that is still plagiarism and I suspect that the person doing so would fall foul of steams terms as they would not be the original author. To some extent you could regard that as akin to taking an established novel, adding a chapter and then claiming the whole work as your own. Of course if you were to take the original story and create a whole new module using just that, there is a chance you could get away with it. An example of this latter approach in book form would be National Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings”.

TR

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One cannot make anothers work “their own”. One can add to or alter anothers work but it’s still the work of the original creator.

Take “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” for example. That is what wikipedia has:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a 2009 parody novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. It is a mashup[1] combining Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) with elements of modern zombie fiction, crediting Austen as co-author.

Not only does the late Jane Austen (naturally) retain her rights as the author of “Pride and Prejudice”, she also earned co-author status. If Jane was still alive and the copyright for her own work hadn’t already expired then Seth would even have to pay her royalties.

Another example are the cover versions by Weird Al Yankovic. Not only do the original songwriters retain all their rights and collet royalties, Al also needed their permission for his parodies in the first place.

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