Dilan Rona

For the time being, and until we get an official response, how about we let this topic rest. Yes the damage was done, but now we need to wait for the devs to get their side in.

@Mrozak is correct in this instance. We cannot ask that maltiez be fired. But what he did with some of his mods (the fact that he removed the code doesnt change what happened) cannot be ignored either. And cannot be allowed to happen again, especially since he is on the dev team, and is held on a higher standard.

So the sooner the devs get on this, to soothe the matter over, the better. And it cannot be on discord only, it has to be on the forum as well. And if the team maintains a reddit as well, it needs to be there as well.

Does not in the least bit restore the trust that was destroyed in the first place. People lost trust in his mods as a result, and because he is on the dev team, the fallout is reflecting on the rest of the devs (known or not known doesnt matter either way), and as a result affects the trust in the core game itself. This is something that should never have happened in the first place with that mod, and should have been done in a seperate mod, as any sensible person with a modest amount of coding skill should have known. Not shoehorn code that doesnt belong in a trusted mod to do a task said mod was never designed for originally, straying outside of its core function.

Still not fully in the loop myself. I stand to be corrected here, but from what I understand (it was said other places), maltiez wanted anti cheat measures in the client, and it was denied. So he added it in his mods (3 of them), which I add here had no business having that level of code. Its not the mods job, and should have been placed in a seperate, DEDICATED anti cheat mod. Then there would have been 0 flak, 0 fallout. Just a casual search yielded 3 mods for anti cheat. The whole issue stems from maltiez shoe horning anti cheat code into mods that is not meant as anti cheat mods, and was trusted mods to begin with. Mainly meant for making managing config files easier for example. That is the purpose of the mod in question. Anything else is stepping out of its lane.

Thank you for the update. That should have been posted to the forum as well though, from the start. Not everyone is on discord, and people have their reasons.

I still trust the dev team and will continue to play VS. As far as anything mod related made by maltiez, his mods will never be used by me again, and in the unlikely event it does happen again, it will be a very long time. So unlikely.

Imo, asking for a refund is a bit of an overkill, but it is probably the only way to get the attention of the devs when the mods on the vs discord is actively banning people from discussing the problem in the first place. And what happened? It blew up on the forum. Getting the attention from those that are not on the discord as well.

Outright banning people from the vs discord is not the solution. It only draws more attention to the problem itself (Streisand effect). As @Stoney Hawk, and @Vratislav stated. some information can only be obtained on the discord (which is a major problem in itself). It hasnt been solved. Not by a long shot. Yes, the code that caused the drama was removed, doesnt change the fact that he did it, and that he is on the dev team. And you are right there, a proper response will take time. But the sooner the devs get a response out, the better cause the fallout will not stop, but accelerate.

I for one will always play vintage story. But I will from now on be a lot more carefull with installing new mods from the mod db. As for maltiez? Any mod made by him will be nuked from my installs, and will not be installed on my server. Any mods using config lib will be affected as well unfortunately, as I will be looking for alternatives to those mods.

For example, here is an example of an anti cheat mod, done the Right way (Yols Ore Obfuscator (Anti-Xray) - Vintage Story Mod DB). Here is another one (ModIntegrity — allowlist client-only mods - Vintage Story Mod DB).

You got a point there, @MKMoose. I myself are not against obfuscated code (Especially with valid use cases). I am however against the method used by Maltiez. obfuscated the cause of the crash, and using a known and TRUSTED mod to do the dirty work, instead of doing it the proper way by means of a dedicated anti cheat plugin. If server owners dont want players to cheat, then install an anti cheat plugin. End of story. Authors that feel the need to add an anti cheat to a plugin that has absolutely NOTHING to do with detecting obfuscated code, or cheat mods in the first place is clearly crossing the line. And if not for this forum topic, I would have been oblivious to the drama and arguments. Maltiez may have had good intentions with that version, and to highlight a very real concern (cheat mods). He should have done it the right way with an anti cheat mod. Not shoe horn it into a mod intended to make config files easier.

As per the title, and with regards to a specific incident over the past few weeks, there is now a need to be able to search for mods, but having the ability to Exclude mods that uses specific mods by name, version, or even the author name itself. Its no different than having the search filter out mods tagged as AI generated imo. And a lot more important. In essence, I need to be able to search for mods, based on dependancies of other mods, and exclude them from the search result, if the excluded mod is part of the dependancy of the searched for mods.

From what I understand, the code was obfuscated, and undeclared. And was added as an anti cheat measure, on a plugin called configlib. A library that has nothing to do with anticheat in the first place, and is meant to making config changes easier. Any one of these alone (obfuscated code, undeclared code, anticheat code placed in mods where they dont belong) would be bad enough. Put them alltogether, and I see why people would regard that as malware. Especially if it causes the client to crash (which can and will be seen as malicious intent if it wasnt an anticheat plugin to begin with). So starting today, i'll be going through my mod list. And the first mods on the chopping block is Config lib - Vintage Story Mod DB, ImGui - Vintage Story Mod DB, as well as any mod that relies on those mods. Its a real pity that the mods portal doesnt let us search through mods via a dependency search box. And those mods affected will remain removed until a suitable replacement for Config lib, and ImGui is available. This is the second time I am encountering a situation where a mod added functionality that wasnt declared, that affected gameplay. And it was bad enough that when a complaint that I raised was ignored and I was called ignorent, I removed the mod from my list, and refused to install it again. And that was after the author made changes to accommodate the complaint. By then it was too late.

Current server I am on, I never ran into that bug. Did have an annoying problem with my kitchen (that doubles as a cellar). When I added an extra room, I somehow missed an open block in a corner that I didnt see, and it ruined the kitchen/cellar. I thought it was a bug somewhere, and sealed off the upper floor from the kitchen. Wasnt until much later (2 ingame years later), that I realised the upper floor wasnt complete.

Yea, there is above surface temporarily unstable areas. A friend on our server had that problem, and he ended up moving his home to another spot. And no. there was no rifts nearby.

The second vid was basically how to make a skep the traditional way. very little (actually next to none) in terms of history, use, harvesting, etc. The first vid (AI generated thumbnails, clickbait titles, etc not withstanding) gave a very good explanation as to what was used before the modern day box apiaries.

Great suggestion. Hopefully the base game will get that with 1.23 (here's hoping). Or until its added to the base game, someone makes a mod for that (crossing fingers)

I just dont bother with flatpacks. When there is an update, I download the compressed file, and update the version I got.

Nothing slop about the first post, I found the video very informative.

Opposite happened to me. Divided a stack of boards, with 6 copper nail and strips. Shift clicked crafted them, and got 6 chests as expected, planning to finish the 6 iron nails and strips I had. Only the game finished the shift click crafting 2 book cases. Wasting board in the process, with no means to uncraft the book cases.

Only way that I can think of to transport live fish without a mod is by using water channels, and driving the fish towards the channel, which in turn goes to the aquarium. Might give it a shot myself to make one.

great as it is, not an option on a server that i dont control. then again, i was expecting this fix to happen sooner or later, so i planned ahead. 1 dead waterwheel wont matter that much.

I would if i was still a kid. Got to face reality though, unlikely to happen in our case (even if i was still a kid)

Well its definately fixed. Which is a minor hassle, as I need to protect my existing split streams