Re v3.3 Alpha/Beta/sevelops release

[Intone]

Clearly 3.3 is playable, Roy has been streaming it (explicitly not testing it) on twitch quite a bit lately, but I guess we are not deemed worthy.

Yeah clearly more communication would be appreciated, and the lack of which invites people to make up and believe their own stories.

But as Roy says in his Discord profile. "I don't care what you think", which is his right.

I'm enjoying my modded 3.2 playthough and I honestly doubt 3.3 will be out before I finish it.

I do know that if I was part of the team that worked on 3.3... well who wants to have your work gatekeeped like this.

[Risewild]

The thing is that the installer is work for one person only. Doesn't matter how many people we have on the team, only one person can work on the installer at a time.
It's also quite complex (only a couple of people know how to do it properly) and extremely time consuming and tedious.

Most installers only have to unpack files and write registry entries and it's done, but here's what the TTW installer has to do (in a very basic and simplified description), it has to unpack TTW files + unpack and copy the entire FO3 and DLCs files + convert those files to work with FNV engine (including encoding all the audio files) + edit converted files with hundreds of thousands of edits + pack the newly edited files into formats the game can read (like .bsa for example). And yes, the installer can only be created once all the files for a new version are ready, it can't be made during development.

All of this has to be included in the installer, now imagine having to code all of those hundreds of thousands edits into the installer.
If anyone reads the Public Dev Log thread, they can get an idea on how long it would take.

Why can't the TTW installer be like most other ones and just include all the files ready to be unpacked and used? Because that would be breaking Zenimax/Bethesda copyright terms, and then they could shut us down. So that's why we have to do it the complicated but legal way.

Not to mention, that while the Installer was being created, the testers found some critical bugs that needed to be fixed before the release of 3.3, which delayed the making of the Installer even more, since the old buggy edits and files had to be removed from the installer, while the new fixes had to be implemented in it.

Since only one person can work on the installer (at a time) and only on their spare time, while life got much more busy and complicated all of a sudden, of course it's work got delayed by a lot.

[Ballsofdoom]

it has to unpack TTW files + unpack and copy the entire FO3 and DLCs files + convert those files to work with FNV engine (including encoding all the audio files) + edit converted files with hundreds of thousands of edits + pack the newly edited files into formats the game can read (like .bsa for example).

Isn't it already done in 3.2 installer? I didn't notice that the 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 update installers were doing these processes all over again. Or are you saying that the 3.3 installer will be a clean start and copy FO3 files to New Vegas again, encode sound files and everything else you wrote about? If that's the whole point, then I guess I can understand such a long delay (although something must have remained from the development of 3.2 installer, doesn't make sense to start it rebuilding from absolutely nothing), but I can't understand why to do it all over again. Should be a lot more easier to update 3.2 to 3.3.

[Risewild]

it has to unpack TTW files + unpack and copy the entire FO3 and DLCs files + convert those files to work with FNV engine (including encoding all the audio files) + edit converted files with hundreds of thousands of edits + pack the newly edited files into formats the game can read (like .bsa for example).

Isn't it already done in 3.2 installer? I didn't notice that the 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 update installers were doing these processes all over again. Or are you saying that the 3.3 installer will be a clean start and copy FO3 files to New Vegas again, encode sound files and everything else you wrote about? If that's the whole point, then I guess I can understand such a long delay (although something must have remained from the development of 3.2 installer, doesn't make sense to start it rebuilding from absolutely nothing), but I can't understand why to do it all over again. Should be a lot more easier to update 3.2 to 3.3.

No, unfortunately it's not done in the 3.2.

The 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 updates are patches, they only need to edit the files that are already in 3.2. They don't need to go through all the unpacking, converting, encoding, doing the hundreds of thousands edits and packing all of those files again.
The updates only edit TTW files that already exist, that is why you have to install the base TTW and then install each update separately on top of it and by the right order, because if you try to install 3.2.2 without 3.2.1, the files needed to be edited are not the right ones (it already needs the 3.2.1 files) and it would just break TTW spectacularly if we allowed it.

Like we always say, 3.3 will be a totally new version, it's a giant rework of the 2 games systems merged to seamlessly feel consistent. Which means that it does, finally, edit a large part of not only Fallout 3, but also Fallout New Vegas.

Until now, we focused on fixing Fallout 3's side of TTW, so that it would work as bug free and stable as possible. This lead to TTW being quite stable in the 3.2x versions. But it was noticeable a huge lack of balance and consistency between both wastelands and there was still hundreds of thousands of bugs (that were fixed on 3.3).

Well, I typed all of that to say that yes, 3.3 will need a full new install of TTW, too much changed in TTW to cover the consistency, balance, bug fixing, inclusion of new features and in preparation for possible features to be used in future updates (we still want to make a proper, usable Big Guns skill at some point, have all the bugs from both games fixed on TTW itself [instead of having a separate bug fixing mod] and make scaled wasteland on FNV side of TTW for example). So much changed that pretty much all aspects of TTW were changed from 3.2.2 to 3.3.

The advance of modding tools over the 3 years since the release of 3.2 was also huge, which allowed us to also make things more efficient, proper and optimized, so even things that were already in 3.2.2 got changed to be better implemented/made over these last few years.
If you're curious about what was worked for 3.3, check out the TTW Dev Log (if you haven't yet).

Unfortunately, the way the installer works means that we can't really use the old installer as a base (and we looked, but can't find a better way of building the installer so it keeps TTW from breaking the copyright laws). And even if we could, I don't think it would work, because pretty much all files from 3.2 were altered/edited one way or another in 3.3, because it was needed to fix TTW or to just make it more efficient/optimized.

In the past, TTW was a massive mod for Fallout New Vegas, but now it's a Total Conversion for FNV. It's not just a mod anymore, it basically needs to edit pretty much everything not only from FO3 but also a large part of FNV systems and content (it's needed to balance both games being played as one).

And that is why TTW needs a lot of time in development, it's a massive amount of work for everyone on the team, and they only do it in their spare time, since they have lives and families to support, so they have to have jobs that pay too.

And just a note: we will release a day 1 patch when 3.3 releases, because more bugs keep being found and fixed, but we didn't want to delay the making of the installer any longer, so it was decided a while ago, to make it a day 1 patch instead of keeping pushing new fixes to be added to the installer.

I hope this answer all your questions.
I just woke up and can't type long posts without derailing and start babbling about unrelated stuff (I won't even tell you how many times I already had to edit this before I will "Submit" it ), so I'm sorry this post got so big despite my attempts to keep it as short and concise as possible .

[Ballsofdoom]

I hope this answer all your questions.
I just woke up and can't type long posts without derailing and start babbling about unrelated stuff (I won't even tell you how many times I already had to edit this before I will "Submit" it ), so I'm sorry this post got so big despite my attempts to keep it as short and concise as possible .

It is. Thank you for your answer, I've no more questions.

[Laclongquan]

Details

Big thanks for your detailed explaination on ttw structure.

[RoyBatty]

The way the files are being packed was also changed to make issues with people creating mods easier, and less ini edits required to make installation easier. Things we learned over the years. We really DO want you ti experience all our hard work, we are not gatekeeping. We want this experience to be as painless as possible, and this will already require testing the installer on a variety of the teams systems and a few testers we have brought on. The 3.2 release is still sour in my mind having broken LOD and lot of things I should have caught before release, but I didn't because I was tired of testing. We don't want that to happen again either.

That said, Risewild laid out how time consuming and incredibly complex making something like is. As much as making a game from scratch at times, because we actually are making a lot of things. There were other delays due to my personal issues with other people in the community which were road blocks to having some assets made, or bugs in the engine fixed. I swallowed my pride and made amends as much as I could without getting into too much details. So there is a lot of things that happen, and are happening that you don't know. Several of us have had deaths in our families, changed jobs, moved long distances, burn out, and other things we don't mention that all create delays. Please remember this is our hobby, not our job and we do not get paid for this out side the donations that are much appreciated from the community to myself and other team members.

We want TTW to be the best it can possibly be, this is not an easy thing to achieve, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.