pyanodon wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 12:59 pm
Lets say i have a life, and i dont get paid to make these mods. Knowing that, i work in my free time and when i want, so if you want that mod to be released faster, you can model these sprites for me.
Kitty thought for your advice for days long..
Speaking of technial skills, Kitty play 3dsMax since middle school, and was in charge of GUI design 5 years ago when Kitty started a software business.. Of course computing is the Kitty's favourite field, however, Kitty's main division of labour is more.. interacting with people..
As one of the very founders of Chinese Pyanodonian Community, Kitty also had a choice in the beginning, whether techniques or paperwork.. But finally, Kitty chose to do and will keep doing what Kitty have done in this one and half year: propaganda, translation, question-solving, and detail-collecting..
Let Kitty show you what had achieved: even in this unfinished month, there's at least 100 more new Factorian chose to play with pymod in our Chinese Community, and the number is rising a lot fast than before..
There are certain reason why Kitty choose to do such secretarial work than what Kitty might more prefer to do and might gain much more fun, which takes three independent factors:
The first and most important factor, and to be the largest barrier between new Chinese pymod player and the mod itself, is
language..
In the most part of China, now using the text book what we called, the '
People's Education' version, include English studying since Grade 1 of the primary schools, along to all higher education from bechlor to PhD.. It seems that English learning is accompanied with the students all their professional life, however, the purpose of English learning, is not.
Most of the students have only set English as a subject, which means, it's not a language to them, but a exam score they must gain, and a burden they cannot shake off.. So for most of them, a good English communicating ability is useless on exam papers, and when we don't even use English in our daily life, their true English knowledge become really shallow..
Even single words like wood, plastic, glass, fiber, what they have learnt in high school, when these appear in games, they will say, 'It looks like the words know me but I don't know them'.. Well we can forgive someone who don't want to check for a dictionary when he/she is building a factory, but the point is, Chinese players don't even want to think about it, don't even want to take a second for remembering those words what them spent so much years and hardworking on..
The point is, they hate English itself..
In our Commnuity's chatroom, we mainly use QQ, a chatting software,and our daily FAQ is retorting on the players who ask for a Chinese locale.. We would always say, 'Alright, we can tell you the meaning/usage/scenario of FTS Reactor/Jaw Crusher/Basic Oxygen Furnace, however, are these efficiently make your pymod playing difficulty get a wee bit lower..?', well they will reply, 'Of course not, the mod is still that hard, but we still want a Chiese locale, and.. can Kitty please help us to translate the latest update log..?'
You can see, even pymod's texture is fascinating, the mechenism is challenging, the content is ravishing, but we still cannot solve the main problem.. more than 95% of Chinese Factorian cannot understand English (at all), about 2% of them can only translate single words, and less than 0.1% has basic English conversation ability.. and players who can feedback in English, such as Kitty, let Kitty count, last month, the main Community reached 20 thousand Factorian, but there's no more than 20 individuals have such ability..
We are REALLY have insufficient manpower in English-Chinese translation works..
To the second place, a minor factor is, there's a
Wall between China's Internet and the world's Internet..
Due to certain policy, Chinese cannot get access to the whole world's Internet, and if we want to know what's happening out there, the Wall will intercept most of web traffic so the Chinese requestor can't receive certain content.. And you can laugh at this unfxxkable policy, when we do updating the pymods, cause by its large file size, there's 99.6% chances that the update will result in connection failure..
In our Community, we can seperate the players into three division: the core, the main, and the common..
Core Pyanodonian means they played or pay close attention to pymods since 0.15; main players are somebody who produced chemical science packs in which they passed novice period; the common are those new players who choose to play pymods and no more than 2 months..
Under the Wall, we will use a software named as VPN, to flip the Wall and download mods directly from mods.factorio.com (cause in-game connection often failed), and upload to our Community server for players to download and update.. BUT, there's always a but: since Christmas of last year, all VPN using for personal interests, are
illegal in mainland China, if you get caught, you may face at least a fine up to 3000 US dollar (currency exchanged), or worse, taking serious life sentence for 5-10 years in jail..
As above, if someone wants to update pymods successfully, first he/she needs a better English abilty, and second, he/she can risks to break the law.. so they can only be our Core players..
Last but not the least, is the heart.. Just like you, Pyanodon, Kitty recieve no money in spreading pymods in our community, all active are voluntary: Kitty pack mods into one zip and update for every single day, and answer all translation and playthrough question what the commons would always ask about.. Kitty needs to spend at least 6 hours in the chatting room, so that we can maintain a processive growing of the total number of Chinese Pyanodonian..
You said, you live a life.. well, who doesn't..? Kitty is still receiving no more than 6000 RMB (800 USD) as salary per month, and shoulder a loan of house reaches 4500 RMB (600 USD) every damn 30 days.. But Kitty will not be overwhelmed by the life stress, so this last main reason is that pymod gave and gives Kitty a whole lot of joy and hapiness, a motivation to face the new challenge next day.. Kitty love pymod so much..! That's why Kitty can devote all the spare time on spreading it..!
As a conclusion, Kitty would say, sorry, can't help you about modding issues, but Kitty can and will help pymod in every way Kitty can, to make it better, to make more Factorian choose to embrace it, to make more Chinese players to love it..
That's all what Kitty can do..
Meow..!