Oblivion Mod talk:Programmers

Style and Content

Some guidelines for adding content to the article...

General

• Please follow existing layout/style when available.

Projects Section

• Purpose of this section is see work in progress organized by project.
• Experts
  • This should be top 3-4 experts in the area, listed roughly in order of expertise. If unsure, use alphabetical order. This could be contentious, but I think that most of us active folks know who's most expert where.
• Tools
  • To avoid having to double enter (and double update) links, don't put links here -- put them in the progammers "Current Projects" column instead.

Programmers Section

The purpose of this section is to see who's up to what, what the progress is, and why they're credible (i.e., what they've done in the past).

• Programmer
  • Include link to home page.
  • List platform preference, if any.
  • List preferred contact point.
• Current Projects
  • If there are substantial flaw or limitations, or if the project has been abandoned, then add that here in italics. Try (hard) to avoid antagonism.

The link to Ghost Wheels tes4.xml doesn't work anymore

• • Append [WIP] if it's still in beta. Once it's safely usable by intented users, drop the "[WIP]".
  • Please include links to Download and Discuss.
• Past Projects
  • This is what programmer is known for. If you've done a lot, just include the 2-4 highlights.

Linking to Bethsoft

Links to www.bethsoft.com AKA ESF: domain are very unreliable.

• Data generated at bethsoft is not archived.
• Data generated at bethsoft is subject to destruction without notice.
• Please use alternative or redundant references.

--Sativarg 24.217.75.235 15:43, 26 August 2007 (EDT)

The page is somewhat outdated now and probably contains out-of-date links. Agreed that it's generally not a good idea to link to ephemeral BGS topics, but sometimes there's not an alternative. --Wrye 19:02, 27 August 2007 (EDT)

Outdated Tech

GamerDude has a WIP for a new tool, and so added his listing here. After a bit of thought, I deleted that listing. Here's why.

• This is an outdated tech page. It's clearly marked as such at the top and the link that leads to it is also under the outdated tech section on that page.
  • "Outdated Tech" is pretty much what it says it is (as the header on the page says "This list of programmers/projects is from the early months of Oblivion analysis and toolmaking and is now out of date. For current tools see the main Modding page."
  • I set up the "outdated tech" category as a solution to what to do with pages that had... outdated tech info on them. Such pages may still have some useful info on them, but the reader needs to know enough to pick and choose their way through. Some of these pages are also useful from an archival/historical viewpoint. E.g. GhostWheel, famous for his tools and work in Morrowind, very briefly did some useful work for Oblivion, then disapeared again. Likewise Henry Morgan was one of the folks who did some initial work on a mod merging program but was bypassed after a month or two by ScripterRon, whose Tes4Plugin Utility (now Tes4Gecko) is one of the mainstays of modding for Oblivion. That's fairly cool info, and those people deserve kudos for being there first in the trenches. And this page is basically the only place in the world with that info.
• Any new programs should be listed not here, but on Oblivion Mod:Modding#Tools page. However, now that the field is established, the bar has been raised. The minimal requirement is that the tool be released (not just WIP). The preferred rule however is that tool be at least moderately accepted. The reason for this is that the primary purpose of the Oblivion Mod:Modding#Tools is to provide a list that's useful to potential users. By filtering down to just tools that have achieved at least moderate acceptance, we avoid cluttering the page with tools that aren't that useful.

--Wrye 02:23, 19 October 2008 (EDT)