Thanks, @niv. I hadn’t realized that BD had gone on stream-record saying that, and I thoroughly approve.
I mentioned the EULA because the license grant stated in it is the only thing I could think of that would give anyone a plausible basis for re-publishing abandoned mods. If BD has made a decision not to go there – and I personally think that’s the right stance and am very glad that they’ve taken it – then I think that pretty much settles the issue.
As long as you keep in mind that this is not a official, legal response, etc. But I just couldn’t see enforcing the EULA to just forcibly share content to ever go down well with anyone, and it would not stop at the Steam Workshop and the Vault either.
The vault and it’s authors will have to figure out a way to sort this without resorting to that, I think.
Edit: Can’t find the stream notes right now saying that. Maybe I was imagining it. Still, the point stands.
My $0.02 is that any NWN player will be better served here for custom content than on Steam. Better to direct them here than upload there. I mean why recreate the proverbial wheel? The content is ALREADY here and clicking a hyperlink isn’t rocket surgery. Plus they are FAR more likely to find people smart enough to help them here (since, ya know we’ve been doing this since 2002). Just my opinion. Mileage varies.
Precisely. I Dev’d, Admin’d hosted a NWN1 world for 6-7 years back in the day. Before Steam released NWN I decided that I wanted to play it some more (randomly one day), So I busted out my disks and opened my old module. The very next thing I did was google “NWN Custom Content” and that sent me here. No fuss, no muss; one google search and the top link got the job done.
While I am happy that Steam is breathing life back into the game, I do not see Steam as “the clearinghouse” for all things NWN. I guess one could argue that maybe the Steam gang won’t think to google for it and will just rely on Steam, but a stickied post on that forum solves that problem easy enough.
A fundamental misunderstanding here.
No one is proposing Steam as the main site for NWN content.
The Vault needs to continue as the main site, to support
However, as I see it, mirroring some of the content on Steam is a way of drawing in players who are used to that way of doing things.
If the players were in Kansas but we wanted them in Oz, building a portal in Oz would’t help. We have to build a portal in Kansas, otherwise the players have no way in.
People talk about drawing players across from Steam to the Vault - a good thing, and ultimately necessary, because, as it stands, we’ll never be able to put everything on Steam. Pitched right, not knocking Steam, but mentioning the Vault as a useful supplement, there’s plenty of scope to build goodwill.
However, right now, I seem to be virtually the only one on the Steam forums promoting the Vault on a daily basis…
There must be another fundamental misunderstanding here.
Staying within your analogy, I regard Oz being my home but I am fully aware that there are a lot of other people in Kansas. Kansas is ok, the people from Kansas are ok and personally I will always welcome them into Oz.
But I don’t want them to come to Oz just for the sake of it. And my guess is, that the people from Kansas also don’t want to come here just for the sake of it. If they want to come here, then because here in Oz is so much more NWN than in Kansas.
Much more modules, much more tutorials, much more custom content - and above all much more first-hand knowledge and assistance when it comes to all aspects of building modules, playing modules and using custom content.
You are not talking about a portal to bring people from Kansas to Oz, you are talking about bringing the NWN from Oz to Kansas. And the more NWN there is in Kansas, the less people have a reason to come to Oz for it.
And on the contrary of what some people think about me I do not want to keep the people from Kansas away from Oz. I want them to come to Oz. The more the better.
And Google for example does that already, as mentioned above.
I don’t.
I patiently wait for those who’s interest go beyond “beating” just another RPG and are actually interested in NWN PWs, roleplay-heavy/story-rich/challenging modules or even better - building one themselves.
All those will eventually find their way here, one way or another.
And if the Vault site is easily accessible, easy to navigate and the content is well-presented and downloadable without any fuss, they will stay. Which are the things that should be taken care of first and foremost.
EDIT
Just as an example: if I would spend any time working on other’s modules, I would rather make/upload representative ingame-screenshots for the 100ds of mods that have not a single one - instead of making them fit for the Steam Workshop.
For the record, I agree with Proleric here. I’ll try to comment at more length when I have time.
“We should all be trying to recruit” versus “Why bother?”, essentially, huh. 
Some points:
The EE would benefit from availability of as much content as possible on Steam.
The world won’t crash and burn if we don’t actively try to draw people to the Vault (or if it does it probably won’t be because we didn’t drag enough people into NWN modding, anyway).
The EE would benefit from new creators producing new content of all kinds.
People in general would benefit from engaging in creativity+logic hobbies, in a personal-happiness-and-mental-stability kind of way.
Possibly humanity in general would benefit from a lot more people engaging in creativity+logic hobbies. If nothing else, people who are busy doing creativity+logic stuff have things they’d rather be doing than set other people on fire. Also, people who can use logic and collaborate with others are more capable of solving IRL problems, so anything that familiarizes people with constructivity and logic and collaborative mentality is just overall a good thing.
People to whom it would not naturally have occurred to search for the Vault would be more likely to become aware of it if pointed there, including but not limited to by word-of-mouth advertising or “product placement”.
Groups that put time and effort into facilitating growth are likely to grow more than groups that don’t.
More activity on and about the Vault will lead to more work for the moderators.
“Recruiting” and/or cross-posting on other forums takes up time; people who are voluntarily providing free customer support are not spending that time doing something else.
It’d be great to get more people here, and I’d definitely consider it good for people in general to get the opportunity to discover places like this one and for the type of mentality we’ve got hereabouts to sPrEaD ACROsSthE WorLd!!11eleven, but considering that none of us are getting paid to do this (and rather are spending lifetime we’re not gonna be getting back) it’d be pretty stupid if we collectively pushed and guilted one another into working more. This is a free-time activity for all of us. There is no obligation resting on anyone to do anything other than adhere to the code of conduct and the custom content authorship guidelines.
Suggestion:
People in favor of collective action should probably keep in mind that they’re establishing rules on a voluntary basis, together with the people who agree to hold themselves bound by those rules, who are never going to be 100% of all people because different people prioritize different things. But if one takes care to establish rules that are beneficial to the people who adhere to them, then non-adherence is in itself it’s own punishment. One can only shrug in vague confusion as to why someone wouldn’t follow rules that are of benefit to them. “Don’t put your hand in the fireplace”, indeed.
People in favor of individual action should probably keep in mind that it’s also perfectly valid for people to choose to hold themselves bound by rules that the individual actor might personally not have found agreeable, and for them to participate in coordinated efforts to bring about results that the individual actor might not have considered particularly important. If people want to spend time recruiting on the Steam forums or elsewhere, that’s their prerogative according to the very logic of accepting and respecting the choices of individual people.
Note of concern:
The likelihood of Proleric overworking himself and getting frustrated over lack of support looks fairly high here. If the effort to route people from the Steam forums to the Vault to come learn NWN modding and produce content is successful, the moderation workload here is likely to grow along with that. Ergo, the more effort he puts into recruiting people there, the more work is likely to grow for him here. Getting a “Well, why’d you send all these people here? We told you not to do it” hereabouts in response would just suck.
Far as establishing a Portal to the Magical Land of Modding goes, there might be some very low-effort ways of doing that. If it’s a-ok moderation-wise over there, putting a monthly-updated invitation to the CCC into the Workshop Discussion subforum, perhaps showing off the contributions from the last month, would make for a lovely portal, for instance.
Both the Beamdog forum and the Steam EE forum are OK with invitations to the Vault. Builders are more likely to hang out at Beamdog.
The more general Steam forums (not EE-specific) are troll-infested, but no need to go there.
didn’t read it because it doesn’t concern me in any way
however, if there was anyone who would want to re-publish my work on steam, i thereby grant my permission, I am not going to re-publish anything on steam
I had a very nice comment posted today (see here and here) on the Sanctum thread on Beamdog’s EE forums. I’m mentioning it here (and at risk of re-raising this otherwise dormant thread) because I think it’s relevant to one of the points that was discussed earlier.
"Downloading the module from Vault! I must say for the last 2 months I was just checking steam workshop for updated modules and missed your updates! …
"I think you need to make modules available on the STEAM workshop. Although I was used for 10+ years to use nwvault and manual install, I welcomed STEAM workshop option. I think lot of people that are coming now to the NWN world check only steam workshop.
You can ask @Savant1974 about setting it up. I think his Aileund saga got a lot of traction through the steam workshop."
I don’t know how typical aarionn’s self-description is for other players. But I was taken aback by the near-crickets reaction when I released the EE version/update to my mods in early June. If what he says about most players only checking Steam for new releases is accurate, then I think that’s at least relevant to the discussion here about how to regard Steam vis-a-vis the Vault as a venue for releasing mods.
Not for nothing…people are inherently lazy. Its to the point now to where clicking more than once for what they are looking for is a burden. I see it all the time with our application(s) at work. “Why do I have to click 3 times to get what I want, can’t you make it 1 click?”. Steam has catered to that mentality and then some and its been embraced fully and then some. While I loath the intrusive application in all its bug the crap out of me splendor its something a lot of people are willing to deal with for the convenience and catering to their I want it now and I want it with minimal effort mentality.
That being said, the vault (while I do love the fact that the content was migrated over and took part in that) is cumbersome. It was ok before the format change, not ideal but ok. Since the format change the search functionality is not very “fuzzy” or user friendly. For example: A search for “Shayan” should have brought up Shayan’s Subrace system in about 5 different iterations, Shayan’s Artifact/Treasure system and a few other Shayan specific entries that did migrate over. The current search brings up Shayan’s Subrace Engine for 1.69 and 10 other entries that mention Shayan. This is but one example. Searching for my own content, books that I know migrated was a 15 minute ordeal because “Book” and “Books” gave me nothing.
Getting people here is one thing, making the content easily discoverable will be what keeps them here.
Please don’t take this as a shot or slight, I’ve been an avid NWN player, DM, creator since day one I love this game and come back to it always. It’s nice to know that suggestions and critiques are met with acceptance and not shot down as a negative which it is not meant to be.
@birdman076, you’re absolutely right - the search is very inefficient on the Vault. Even knowing the author or name of the project does not guarantee success. I think that should be priority to fix, if we want to entice new folk here. Otherwise, frustration can drive away any but the most ardent of newcomers. Steam content is but a fraction of great works stored on the Vault. It would be a pity to have it unused due to this search ineffectiveness.
About the lazy setup - I wonder, if people like that will even bother to put comments on module they’ve played, or CC they’ve used. Is it really worthy it to have them here? But maybe I’m too skeptical…
@DrA and @birdman076
Please consider that some, like myself, are simply… off? My brain is frenetic. I go from asking a question, to downloading a mod, playing it, maybe enjoying it, probably finishing it… To another question. All in one breath.
I am not lazy. I will help you remodel your house if you’re close. My brain simply does not process things similarly to/the same as others might. I probably miss/lack many of the same (online) social cues you might use. I sporadically “like” comments, and try not to dilute (even defend the sanctity of) my Star ratings (5 is average… average is good!). I’ve never walked out of a movie and given it a rating on social media. And I will likely never (more like not often) play a mod and go back and give a rating. I DO work by word of mouth (or keyboard) though. And people I come in contact are likely to get my opinion.
I am not a fan of Steam (or even the Beamdog Client). I wish things were easier, but I’m willing to do quite a bit to enable my own fun.
All that being said, I love the Vault. I find it useful, the people helpful, and the content enjoyable. Keep a picture of me in mind when pondering who might be drawn over from Steam (preferably a clothed picture, as I have not authorized those nudes…).
So you’re the one they told me to imagine when I felt shy about posting a comment!
TR
It took me about 5 seconds as long as we are talking about the Faerun Book Collection. I simply copy/pasted your username into the front page search box. Clicking on your username on the project page takes me to another page with a number of other links, one of which says “projects”. Clicking that link brings up a list of all the projects that you have posted not including any contributions you have made to the ccc.
On the other hand the tag based search you get via the projects link absolutely sucks but we have been saying so since day one.
TR
You can’t really expect that some random visitor pointed here from steam will figure this out…