Because then there was no point to go to the effort of making the modules so complicated and interchangeable so that your box can be only exactly what you want it to be and that you, can consciously, decide on what you actually want in there; and the installer even only actually inserts what you use, instead of just throwing in the whole thing every time.
Like any other UI element, not paying careful attention to how it blocks off the map from being usable is why there’s not a small number of people who just turn off the unit panel in preference of burst mode. There’s a lot of too-big boxes that have information that isn’t super relevant for the game that people actually design.
I hold the possibly weird view that if someone’s using something, they should use it the way the person who made it intended. And in the case of this hack, that’d be… by actually designing one’s own, thinking through “what things do I need here”, and then making the box be that way.
Which, in turn, means I think the FEB implementation is bad, because it takes a huge part of the point and misses it since you can’t make your own box with it, and is therefore not actually modular at all.
An easy example of why I think this matters would be whether or not the box has full inventory, equipped item, or nothing displayed - as whether that’s important or not is not merely very differently important based on the design of the game, but is even co-dependent on other hacks that are present. If enemies never have more than 2 items, and only one of them is ever a weapon, then you basically never need to see their inventory, and if you have drop-or-steal displays on the map sprites, then you actually don’t have a need to see a reminder of the fact every time you hover them.
To me it’s synonymous with spending a hundred hours making the whole alphabet but then you watch people use ABFLOU and say buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo instead of something that would be comprehensible to people that are not familiar with obscure – homonyms? homophones? was it both? – weird linguistic ideas or concepts.
Which is a huge loss when you could say “This bison is an animal that lives in Buffalo and is bullied by other animals of its kind that also live in Buffalo that themselves bully others.” It’s a better more useful sentence for everyone involved.
And thus, it is a huge loss: Zane’s work is not used to its potential and instead people are doing things without thinking.
For a comparison, this is the same level of issue as how people would install some version of the fe8u skill system and then proceed to not change anything, which shockingly enough, wasn’t very good, because unsurprisingly, it wasn’t really made to be used that way.
On a personal level, that’s basically synonymous with “I didn’t care about my game” - And if you the creator didn’t, why should I?
I am incapable of making the following remarks sound as un-pithy as I desire, it’s not my intention to be blithe here, I just edit it and it sounds not like what I mean and then I edit it and it sounds not cogent but mean, then I edit it and it becomes word-vomit and etc etc; so I apologize for how these come off - I am primarily trying to not write thrice what I need.
Then your hack isn’t actually modular? I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s just not what the word means: “Easy to edit” is not the same as “a complex structure made up from independent smaller units”, and in this case those units being interchangeable ones (“atk label” vs “speed label” for easy examples), with the necessary work for those being hidden under the hood such that you don’t need to know how the modules work or read them at all because they’re so self-contained and well explained.
It is extremely easy to do, which is the whole reason why this hack is named the way it is?
There’s plenty of documentation. It’s right there and very well explained. That’s exactly what I’m saying is such a huge loss. It should be normal to learn swapping the components so that you can make your box fit your game’s important elements, because that’s how the hack is built and what it’s designed to let you do even if you don’t know what’s up with the back-end assembly.
Unless you meant writing custom ones in which case I’ll readily agree it’s not the easiest, but most of the time it can be just copy-pasted and Zane’s put so many good comments into this.
The UX of a game is so incredibly vitally important that in multiple scenarios I’d argue it’s as important as the actual core gameplay loop. If you want to change it at all, it should be given the time and respect that such an important thing deserves.
They’re extremely specific-game dependent, however. Many designs are fairly ill-suited for certain design of game – FE2, for example, would make displaying five items a bit silly; as would FE4 with attack speed due to their design decisions.
And that’s still “7743 released FEB which is one tool that is not how Zane built this engine hack to be used”, ergo, not something Zane should have to deal with? I’m fairly puzzled as to how this leap of logic works.
It comes off like “Zane made a hack and should be super knowledgeable about things that happened even after he switched over to SNES hacking and also should be responsible for updating how some other user is doing things that involve his work” to me, which seems absurd and incredibly callous at best.
It’s not Zane’s duty to make FEB’s MMB implementation good and your posts here come off like you think it should be something he considers, or something worse that can’t be what you mean.
Sorry for taking a week.
In overly-brief summary, Zane said, explicitly, “I don’t want users to [not edit the box].” (Post 55) This has been the opinion he’s stated since the way back draft of this hack (Dec 2016). People should respect this? Just using prebundled boxes plug-and-play style is explicitly against the author’s wishes and intent – and “Just take the win” is completely tone-deaf to the heartache and desires that have been presented in the plainest language imaginable.
I hope we can all agree that there’s a problem and definite loss, when as a community we’ve managed to stop following a creator’s wishes. We hold drawings to that standard for a reason.
