Improving Reloaded's Reputation through Improving User Experience

[Sewer56]

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.

• Mod launcher boots on first try.
• Magically detects the game.
• User adds mods.
• Presses 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.

  • e.g. Revamp, Remaster, Overhaul
  • Do not use technical terms e.g. Hook

• Tweet. Social Media exists for a reason.

  • Use custom banner for each individual release (Gamebanana too).
  • YouTube video where appropriate.

• Create custom banners for mods.

  • I was initially lazy but it helps for categorisation. Template banners are really really bad.
  • Many mod submissions need more images.

• User targeted description/readmes.

  • Current ones are targeted for developers which are a no-no.
  • For example: Heroes Controller Hook is very barebones. It's not clear enough for users to use Post Process mod to flip triggers etc.
  • Need more screenshots?

• There exist many important game specific and non-game specific mods.

  • How to we make them discoverable?
  • Universal mods such as Universal File Redirector especially come to mind.

[Argx2121]

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.

1. Develop a formatting style for reloaded mods and indicate to developers that you wish it'd be used.
   As an example:
   GAME | MOD LOADER | TOOL NAME | TOOL TYPE
   Universal | Reloaded 2 | controller hook | inputs
   Or something similar - we just want something that everyone can follow that will make it clearer for the user
2. If you're going to make custom banners for a bunch of mods, does RII already let you have custom banners, do you intend to impliment this, or is this just for game banana?

[Sewer56]

Custom Banner Example:

But another custom one with widescreen for social media/GB releases.

[Argx2121]

Also a default one w

[Sewer56]

Current default one is the Reloaded logo, which is a bit weird honestly:

Probably want some sort of background since there's an outline the banner.
Maybe something similar to my profile avatar (on Steam)

[Argx2121]

There aren't enough clear error descriptions - without wifi if you go into download mods it will throw an unknown error + traceback which shouldn't occur. This should be handled by either adding an error or by just having a pop up that allows the user to be notified but still be able to see the downloads screen.

[Albeoris]

For developing mods for Unity, the most convenient tool now is BepInEx.
Therefore, I consider Reloaded primarily as a tool for working with native code.
There are few such mods, most often - one per game. For such scenarios, I would like to have an out-of-the-box solution for the end user that allows you to build an installer for one specific mod for one specific game. The end user doesn't need to see the UI, be able to configure, enable or disable mods, etc. Only specify the game directory / executable file.

[AlmightyLks]

Feedback regarding improving User Experience:
I've found this project a few minutes ago through the github page at https://reloaded-project.github.io/Reloaded-II/ .
On there I could not, for the death of me, find a guidance on how this project / program is to be used.
I assumed some kind of setup as bepinex - as albeoris mentioned above - but I wasnt sure.
The overview on the left hand side doesnt signal anything like that.
A search for "download" did it, leading to github (besides gamebanana).
On GitHub, the readme is minimalistic, directing to the github page. Fair.
The release however is flooded with 7 different assets. Nowhere does it really tell me what these are and what to choose.
Setup.exe didn't work due to an error (#190 ). So I opted for a manual install via the Release.zip.

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
tells me that the "RELOADEDIIMODS" environment variable is missing. I assume that would come with the normal setup.exe? Idk. Looking through the github page, I cant find anything about any env vars or "RELOADEDIIMODS". Making a search for that on github also doesnt return any known issues.
Turns out the program folder has that mod-folder, and I think I am supposed to use that directory for the system env var

Welp

[Sewer56]

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 Mods folder (which is also possible to move with manual config edit). The idea is that you can clone any project on GitHub and hit 'build' without having to adjust paths etc. and have the mod automatically appear in your mod list.

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.

[AlmightyLks]

You're right!
Interesting, didnt take that into consideration
But there was no way for me to know when it sets that var tbf 😅