I'm even more puzzled by this, how is it such a problem that Ivan decided to change other things besides the nudity?
Assuming that the mod can be activated and deactivated why is it such a big deal?
Seems like a knee jerk reaction.
It's not really my place to speak, since it's not my mod,
Piratez is not my mod either. Also it's no secret that Sioxine is my buddy in real life and I've worked with him on various projects for at 15 years, which doesn't really put me in a favourable position to speak. But I consider Ivan a good friend too, he's a talented mod tweaker and one of the nicest people around here. So here goes.
The mod's purpose was expressly describes as:
The goal of this mod is to make the game visually a bit less NSFW. Essentially it will try to replace a lot of the nudity in the bootypedia and some of the background images.
Dioxine was supportive of this idea from the start, or in fact neutral (I personally think the idea of being offended by pixelated cartoon breasts is just flat-out
retarded and bordering on
insane, so he's actually way more positive towards the idea than I am). He gave his blessing and all.
But the problem is with those other pictures. Dioxine expressly stated (at least on the Discord channel) that he's perfectly fine with a mod changing the Ufopaedia, or anything else, as everyone is free to mod anything; otherwise
Piratez could never happen either. But he explained that if a mod is stated to only censor some pictures, but in fact changes some other ones into something that
conveys a different message, then it's not right. And I understand why: those pictures, even if sub-par graphically, were there
for a reason, and some of them were changed that Dioxine didn't like on an ideological level - mostly about being rather objectifying towards the women rather than empowering them, as the original art intended. This creates a problem that a potential player expects to play the mod as intended minus the boobs, but in fact receives something that conveys a
different message, and one the original author doesn't support (duh). I'm sure Ivan did not intend it, and probably never though of it, but it still holds.
Has Dioxine overreacted? Maybe he didn't express himself well enough. But it's not about his social skills, it's about the spirit of a creative work, which is kinda justified. Calling it "a knee jerk reaction" is completely ignorant, though understandable from someone who is not a creator.
So I am inclined to agree there are two ways of mending this:
1) Change the mod name to something else, like for example "Ivan's Bootypedia Pictures". Then it would clearly state that the work is not endorsed by the original creator - basically fan fiction - and everyone is happy.
2) Leave the title as is, but stop playing with the original message.
I'm sure Dioxine would support both solutions too. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want conflict, isn't angry with Ivan or anything, they seem (I think) to be on really friendly terms too.. But these sort of things naturally happen with any creative process and must be resolved before devolving into something toxic. It's a perfectly normal process.
