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Improving Reloaded's Reputation through Improving User Experience #47
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Better Mod Marketability is the only topic I can really comment on. Asking the user if they're ok with downloading the dependencies or closing should be fairly clear. In terms of this though, I have some thoughts.
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Also a default one w |
For developing mods for Unity, the most convenient tool now is BepInEx. |
Feedback regarding improving User Experience: Now I've tried setting up a Proof-Of-Concept Mod to try out this project, and trying to build the bare-metal mod template in VS Welp |
While I'm not really sure what happened in the first case (that DLL is part of the .NET runtime, it shouldn't be missing), I can speak for the second one. This environment variable is set by the launcher every time it boots as part of the boot procedure, and points to your own I'm guessing what happened is you had an IDE opened before opening the launcher for the first time and thus the environment variable didn't register for the IDE. Rebooting IDE should fix it. |
You're right! |
Background
I have always felt as if Reloaded has always had a bad reputation among mod loaders due to users' inability to set it up properly (even though it is not difficult!). I often witness various threads for mods and guides showered with identical copycat questions as opposed to positive comments, which in my opinion is a great deterrent from the eyes of a potential new user.
Normally, end users take things to work out of the box for granted; i.e.
Play
and it runs.For technical reasons, this is a bit difficult due to Reloaded's situation of being a universal loader.
You can't possibly know what the end user will use the loader with, and because it runs on .NET Core (which does not ship with Windows), users are required to download Core manually. Very often they forget to do this and later complain in places where they might sometimes not get help, which litters both guides, community servers and release pages for Reloaded.
Download/Install issues mostly stem from illiterate or impatient users not willing to read, as the requirements are very clearly outlined (sometimes in the same guides people complain in!), however you must also consider users without a good level of English literacy.
Another popular misconception among new users is believing that they only require x64 version of Core. While the Github version outlines this, this isn't as easy to outline on GameBanana (and some users just skim the text), hence there are also often duplicate complaints when
Kernel32AddressDumper
fails (BasicDllInjector failure).For many users, mod discoverability is also an issue. This is unfortunately due to the fact that I have not always bothered to look at things from a PR perspective despite creating this loader (I should be setting a good example). For me, it was always about making good things, and not taking time out to market them; however, what is the point if nobody knows about the good stuff?
There are plenty of miscellaneous changes that should be made towards improving mod marketability, many which are outlined below.
Measures
✔ Indicates Complete and Available in Current Development Version
❓ Indicates ToDo or to be Finalized.
❌ Indicates Not Yet Available
✔ Automatic Mod Loader Dependency Checking
People are bad at reading.
See issue #43 for extra details.
✔ Automatic Mod Dependency Downloads
Already implemented.
✔ More Descriptive Error Messages
There are certain error messages which are triggered by common user errors or loader bugs which perhaps may be better represented. For example...
When .NET Core x86 is Missing (DLL Injector Failure):
When Loader Config gets Corrupted due to Unknown Cause ([More Info Needed] Loader Config Corruption #34)
These exceptions should probably state the most likely user error and how to fix it.
❌ User Focused Documentation
Try to target user facing documentation more towards end users in wording as opposed to power users.
e.g. Injection Methods should probably have a better name and use more simple wording.
It might also be useful to add information about using Reloaded with e.g. Steam into the documentation.
❓ Better Mod Marketability
Here are some areas to work on, with regards to making mods (at least my own) more marketable.
Use more
Epic
keywords in more major mods.Tweet. Social Media exists for a reason.
Create custom banners for mods.
User targeted description/readmes.
There exist many important game specific and non-game specific mods.
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