however as regards them not wanting their work released in any pack wasn't it mainly due to its "beta" and unfinished format?
This is the recent reason given (when we asked them last week if we could use their maps)
The original reason given, when the first big Tainan Pack was released, was that we were not allowed integration because we (SAS and UP) changed stock FM's.
I remember this very clearly, because I launched a witch hunt on our buttons that took weeks to complete. Even Monguse helped me with it. In the end we found, that there were in fact 1 or 2 fm's that had alterations, but, that these were simple referencing errors, and that the errors were inherited from old UI versions, and did in fact even appear in HSFX as well. We all fixed that.
It was about this time that we met Japancat, who, like most modders, believed in developing mods in an open and free way for the whole community. He wanted to help with the 109 series, and make these mods available freely to all. It was for this attitude that Tainan booted him, and then proceeded to vilify him in the Japanese modding community. Hence the bad feelings from JC about this all.
About the beta testing, my opinion is that, if you want something Beta out there (and aren't all mods basically always Beta?), to the extent that you release it in a pack, that is the worst thing you can do. It makes much more sence to seperate it out, and make it available easily and to many people , who will use it in many setups, and uncover many more bugs. In the pack, 90% of the bugs I have personally found so far, has nothing to do with the mods themselves, just with poor packing. For example, just on the surface, the UP JSGME section of the Tainan 120 pack is missing more than 150 FligntModel and EngineModel files. The HSFX part misses more than 40.
So, the Beta excuse does exist, but it is not a realy good one, and if it was, you would have seen Tainan post many smaller mod packages to aid in development. So that excuse returns a Null error for me.
In any event, if the Beta reason is a good one, what the hell are they doing taking someone else's Beta and working on it? Sounds a bit underhanded I think.
Be that as it may though, we respected their reasons anyway. Pity the gesture was not returned.
But dont worry guys, there will be no spat or fight here. We are all old men, and as you may know, old men will never fight you, since they are too old to fight. They will simply kill you and be done with it