#was about to title the desc section with “Is... Sanity... the Price to Pay... FOR WRITING?” but it would be too confusing at that point

[meadowlade]

🍊 Q1 June Update: A Little Something About My Modding Experience So Far

This isn't something I talk about publicly, but I feel like I finally should: recent attitudes about my mods have really solidified my decision to not provide any tech support whatsoever anywhere outside of their respective mod pages - this includes the official SDV Discord server - and only if my directions in the pinned post are followed.

This is going to be a bit of a ramble post, so I'll keep things under the cut:

🍊 How It Started...

Cozy Rustic Farmhouse is by far the most popular mod I've ever created. I'm happy with that of course; I put in a lot of effort to make a notoriously janky kind of map mod, and it turned out great. Farmhouses are still cursed, even with the mod author-aimed features added in the 1.6 update, Content Patcher's new powers, and the valiant efforts of certain mapmaking framework authors, so this is kind of a huge deal to me.

I'm happy with what I've achieved, and I'm happy that people found joy in using this mod. It certainly boosted my popularity and I have a bigger audience now, and that's great! I'm happy that motivated me to make even more mods. However, I am NOT happy about the increasing amount of user incompetence I'm seeing in my comments and bug reports.

Within 5 days of release, Cozy Rustic Farmhouse gained just about 100 new comments, and that was overwhelming. Quite a lot of those comments are people asking why there's issues with the mods and reporting "bugs" in the comments (liable to be buried and forgotten), which... turned out to be a case of "not reading the mod description".

So I shut down the Posts section, and set up a pinned post that was henceforth copied across all of my mods' Posts section: an instruction on what to do in the event of a bug, and a warning statement that I reserve the right to ignore or delete reports that either don't follow the instructions I listed or can be solved by reading mod descriptions, mine or otherwise a dependency's.

Alas, the problem did not stop despite my efforts.

🍊 To Bug or Not to Bug

Here's the thing: modding is a huge world. Not everything is going to work with each other, and that's okay; as a user, you're allowed to be concerned that something is potentially gamebreaking, and mod authors are allowed to not want to accommodate for incompatibilities, because we do this as a hobby and out of passion.

However, the least you can do as a user is to read the mod description thoroughly. We put in a lot of effort there not just to market the features of what we ship out (as much as I loathe to describe mods as a product or especially the dreaded term 'content', we do need to do a little marketing work here and there), but also for the sake of users. Config options, installation instructions, potential conflicts and compatibility issues, known issues... it's all important info!

When an issue is encountered, I really wish more people followed something like these steps when finding a bug:

Read the mod description again, and check the Compatibility or Known Issues section. Make sure it's actually an issue with the mod you're going to report to, not your mod loadout (e.g. accidental conflicts).

Else, read the description of that mod's dependencies and their Bugs section to see if there's any similar issues.

Else, check the mod's Bugs section to see if someone else has reported a similar issue. On this note, "+1" or "bump" or "me too" does absolutely nothing unless you provide a SMAPI log like the original reporter.

Once you're sure it's an issue with the mod and there's no other similar reports, make your complete report. A SMAPI log is mandatory for a proper diagnosis; even if there are no error messages, a log displays your entire modlist and trace-level logs where mod authors can track what changes are made where by which mods.

Following these steps makes things not only more pleasant for everyone involved, it ensures your issues can be diagnosed and resolved promptly. A SMAPI log is the bare minimum but images of the issue will help as well!

Also, and I can't believe that I had to add this to my pinned posts, if you are having VISUAL issues you need to send VISUAL PROOF of said issue. Mod authors can't see what you're seeing on your screen. We sure as hell can't read your mind either.

🍊 Writing Woes

Writing the mod description is a lot of effort, and a special kind of effort for ESL people like me. As fluent as I am, English still is not my primary language and stuff like implied tone, technical terms, turns of phrases etc. can trip me up sometimes. And as an ESL person I know how frustrating it could get to not be able to comprehend stuff due to language barriers, so I take care to explain things as simply as possible.

I've dabbled in what I do for quite a while. Suffice to say, I know what I am doing, and I can generally immediately pinpoint the cause of a bug (unless it's conflicts caused by a mod I'm not aware of that patches something that mine also patched). If I don't, I will give follow-up questions or instructions to better diagnose/solve your problem.

Because of that, you will notice that I never use the word "please" when giving these instructions. It's because I am not requesting you to follow my instructions, I am telling you to do so because I know that's how we can take one more step towards solving the bug.

Does that make me sound curt? Definitely. Do I care? No, because in the end of the day you (general you) as a user are the one having the problem, I offered my (steps to reach the) solution, but then you don't do as I say, so feel free to have your issue remain unsolved. You may request help from someone else then - maybe in the modding tech support channel in the main Discord server - but good luck getting anything fixed if you don't follow the troubleshooting instructions they give you.

My experience also means I can confidently say that 8 times out of 10 a "bug" is actually a PEBCAK. And I have put a warning about this, so in the event of your concerns being ignored for weeks or even immediately deleted, you can assume that I have read your comment/report but deliberately ignored it because either 1) it's not a real issue, or 2) it's answered in the mod description.

🍊 ... How It's Going

I really like making mods for Stardew Valley. I like seeing people be happy about my mods. I read your comments, all of them. I pretty much check Nexus and this blog daily to see if there's anything.

I may be quiet, but know that I greatly appreciate all the nice comments you guys leave. And those from my fellow author friends, I always appreciate your support and enthusiasm during the working stage.

This also means that I read all the inflammatory and entitled comments I get on occasion.

I've had someone call me an asshole (more or less) because I deleted their "bug" report and publicly declare they won't be using my mods again. The report I deleted because... I warned that I would delete. Because they didn't read the config options. Which, okay, whatever suits you, because not using my mods won't impact my livelihood. This is a hobby, after all.

I've had someone deliberately misinterpret my instructions for an issue they're having, then turn around and say I'm not being clear and I should be clearer "next time", which I took as especially condescending because of the ESL thing and the fact that I spend a LOT of time writing up my descriptions and instructions.

I've had quite a bit of cases where people share/ask around with screenshots of my maps (especially Cozy Rustic Farmhouse) asking why it appears 'broken' or 'messed up' - I do not appreciate that wording because it sounds like I'm being accused of shipping a broken mod, when it's because I know for a fact they did not know a neat little Recolor config option exists for certain mods, which can be solved by... reading the mod description! Again! Why does it all come back to that!

The most recent case is someone DMing me just to say that they've read my replies to "people asking nice questions" - which in practice ranged from "could've been solved by reading" to "your mod does not cater to my specific tastes and you must make an effort to fulfill this" - and conclude that I must be a miserable person. This, I find hilarious because modding is actually going really great for me. In fact, I am presently more miserable about my consistent skill issue as Dante despite nearly 10 years of playing the Devil May Cry games.

All of the many, many, many non-issue "bug reports" I collected had gotten so bad that I genuinely get excited whenever someone reports a real issue. This is a problem but at least I'm getting some entertainment from debugging I guess?

🍊 Some Parting Words

All in all, it's been a ride, and I'm so glad I've had practice in not taking things to heart. Thank you, my thesis supervisor professor in uni (except you're actually incredibly skilled and helpful, just Loud and Harsh in wording). Also, nobody I encounter online will be as scary as my professor going on one of his tirades, I think, so I'm good.

If you made it this far through this (probably my only) rant post, thanks for reading. For the folks on Tumblr, thank you for consistently being nice and encouraging and enthusiastic, you're all very motivational. It's really filled my dark soul with light! (light! light!)

Until next time! 🧡