This is a repost of text I have recently posted in the general-mod-discussion channel of the Aurora Discord server. There has been an ongoing problem for a while with the extent to which a small minority of modders have been completely ignoring any requests on my part, or from anyone else, regarding the extent to which they want to modify Aurora. I won’t bore you with the details, but you can read them on Discord if you want more background.
I’ve tried to stay out of the debate and let the Discord mods handle it - and they have made great efforts to do so. Unfortunately, it comes down to one person believing that their ‘rights’ are more important than anything or anyone else.
I think many people see Aurora as a commercial game, like Distant Worlds or Stellaris, but it is a hobby and therefore a personal endeavour. I don’t want other people taking the work I have done and profiting from it, or representing it as their own, or creating lots of different Aurora versions, or different clients etc. Themes are fine - its still Aurora if the buttons have different icons and the background is a different colour. I guess ultimately I am uncomfortable with people messing around too much with something that is a personal creation.
I’m giving away a free game in which I have invested tens of thousands of hours and incorporated a huge number of player requests. In return, I request that people limit the function of mods to aesthetics, or to areas that don’t affect function - like naming themes. This isn’t a legal issue, or a set of enforceable rules. It’s just me asking for some consideration of that principle in return for providing Aurora for free. However, a tiny minority of people believe that personal considerations are irrelevant, their perspective is the only correct one and therefore they are entitled to take the source code and do whatever they want with it, simply because they can. If I object, I am being irrational and difficult.
I was prepared to live with AuroraPatch, as I know people use it for theme mods, as long as it wasn’t used for anything too invasive. I don’t want to inconvenience anyone unnecessarily and people using AuroraPatch in good faith will lose out if it is removed, or I interfere with it.
However, as the author of AuroraPatch seems absolutely determined to ignore all perspectives except his own, I will be adding code to v3.0 that means Aurora won’t work correctly if mods are running. With that in mind, I strongly suggest not running mods in case they cause an issue. My intention is to passively prevent key features from working (which would be obviously due to mods), but its possible I could cause some save corruption by accident.
C# and .NET is a very open architecture, so I am sure AuroraPatch will try to get around the various things I can do, so then I will try something more stealthy, etc.. If someone is prepared to expend enough time and effort on an ongoing basis they could temporarily succeed until I change it again. Ultimately though, anyone running mods is never going to know whether something is being corrupted in the background so, given the time investment in a campaign, the safe option becomes not to use them.
To be honest, its a PITA. I want to be adding new features, not having to defend my hobby against people who can’t simply take something for free without demanding more. Plus 99% of people are perfectly reasonable and happy to talk to me about how to implement potential mods, but I have to spend time and effort dealing with a tiny minority and getting annoyed about it (and therefore spending time on other things), when all I want to do is work on developing the game.
I realise this will cause disruption to those creating and using mods in good faith, so I will try to add the mod features directly to the game. I have already added configurable background colours for all windows and fonts for the map windows in v3.0. Please put forward requests on the forum for features that appear in current mods. I know configurable buttons for the title bar is one option - or it might be time to update that for the base game anyway.
I also realise that even if I add the major mod features into the game, some people may not want to play Aurora without being able to mod it. However, unlike a commercial game, I have never been focused on number of players, but rather on than the integrity of the game and the quality of the community.
I’m sorry it has come to this. The Discord mods have made strenuous efforts to avoid it, as you can read in the general-mod-discussion channel, but I’ve finally reached the end of my tether on this subject.
None of the above will affect programs that just read the database file. It will only affect those mods interacting directly with the executable code.
