Welcome Sullla - Tournament Organizer

[Sullla]

Now that we have another organizer, might there be some of the stalled mods approved? I'm, personally, most interested in seeing Blue Marble and a patch for the whipping bug. I'm honestly just curious; "probably not" is a fine answer, given that I'm sure you both have other responsibilities to attend to and that the events, obviously, come first .

A graphics mod like Blue Marble is probably more likely to gain approval than gameplay changes. If we were going to adopt a gameplay mod, like a patch for the whipping bug (which I confess, I still don't know a great deal about) then EVERYONE would need to run it to ensure a level playing field. Since that would greatly increase my workload, at the moment I'm going to have to say that developing an official RB mod is unlikely. Perhaps someday, but not right now.

I hate to make people do work over again, but if there is a strong desire to legalize Blue Marble for our games, someone (or someones) is going to have to take it upon themselves to fulfill the criteria that Sirian posted way back when. I really don't care much about purely graphical mods, so if it can be clearly demonstrated that Blue Marble conveys no gameplay advantages, I'd be willing to accept it. But your starting point should be going back to the requirements provided by Sirian and working from there. I'm afraid I just don't have the time or energy to get involved at anything beyond the final approval step.

[sooooo]

I think Ruff_Hi wrote like a 20,000 word thesis on why the blue marble mod should be accepted for RB events.

[Clovis]

Does Ruff Hi use blue marble? I've noticed in some of his SG screenshots his interface looks a little different.

[Ruff_Hi]

I did put together a long document that takes the blue marble mod apart. See this thread here for the PDF that covers blue marble. There is also a thread here that started to review Blue Marble piece meal until we realized that it is sooooo very involved. So, I went back to square one and examined the underlying graphics files (see first thread).

I think that I always use blue marble now. My interface looks a little different because of the approved theme mod.

[Sullla]

OK, thanks for the links to those threads. I knew that a lot of work had been done already with Blue Marble. I'll take a look at them later and evaluate what's been presented. I don't think there's any reason not to allow Blue Marble, but it's important that we follow the official procedure to set a precedent for future cases.

Interface mods are a lot less likely to be approved, however.

[Sullla]

I've gone through Ruff's lengthy report on the Blue Marble graphics mod, and I cannot see any reason why it should not be approved. IMO, it should have been approved months ago... but I think this just fell through the cracks. If anything, Blue Marble makes it MORE difficult to spot resources, not less - it certainly doesn't provide a gameplay edge. Everyone should give Ruff a round of applause for going beyond the call of duty in preparing such a thorough report on the issue. (Ruff, I particularly enjoyed your running commentary throughout the report. About all I can say on some of those things is that ColdFever, the creator of Blue Marble, is kind of a weird guy.)

Blue Marble is hereby approved for all future RBCiv Tournament events. Gris, can you possibly update the RBCiv page with this information? Thanks.

To anyone interested in approving future mods for our events, I can only suggest following the model provided by Ruff for Blue Marble. No, you don't have to create a 53-page .pdf file, but you DO have to answer the questions provided by Sirian and provide screenshot evidence to back up your findings. The more information you can provide, the better your chances of getting a mod approved.

I hope this will make some folks a little happier.

[Ruff_Hi]

woo hoo!

[Griselda]

I got Blue Marble added to the official page here. I wonder if we might want to change the wording of the exploits list now, even if nothing is "officially" off the table at this point?

[Ruff_Hi]

There are other mods that did get approved by Sirian ... T-Hawk has been active but (IIRC), it includes:

- simple clock mod
- theme edits for colour, scale

links ...

Theme editing
clock mod
Editing CIV4DetailManager.txt
graph line thickness

I know that the first two were approved. I don't remember the status of the last two.

[Griselda]

Thanks for the reminder. It looks like the first three were approved, so I added those.