Yet Another BetterEdit Post
Posted by HJfod on 05/07/2024
This is going to be a bit of a rambly post, partly because I am writing it past midnight and can't be assed to proofread it much, and also because I am so tired.
Over the last 3.5 years, I have done a lot of GD modding stuff. I pioneered the age of in-game modding, I was one of the main founders and practically the father of Geode, and I've made many of my own mods alongside that.
The trouble is, I've not made as many of my own mods as I'd like.
I have finite time
At this point, as painful as it is to admit, I have to accept: I do not have the time to both effectively lead Geode and make all the mods I want. Though I have tried many times to prove and convince myself otherwise, this has been true from the very start. As it stands, I have to pick between being the Geode guy or the BetterEdit guy.
Which absolutely sucks, because I want to be heavily involved in Geode - a framework that would not exist at all without me - but I also want to work on BetterEdit, the mod that started all of this.
BetterEdit is the project I have always wanted to work on. There is a reason I have rewritten the whole mod from scratch time and time again to make it even better (heh). I love the GD editor, I think it is easily hands down one of the best video game editors out there, but I also see the many issues it still has and want to try and see if I could improve it.
Fun fact: Geode was started specifically because I wanted other people's mods to work together with BetterEdit (well, that was my motivation, but the other guys had similar goals). Nearly everything I have done for Geode - from designing the mod loader itself, to writing tons of utilities, to giving up many of my own personal mods like Custom Keybinds away to be community projects - has been for the ultimate goal of being able to make BetterEdit even better.
Unfortunately, spending years working on stuff that will eventually some day make BetterEdit better takes away time from actually making BetterEdit better.
I have given up so much
This is probably going to sound a little narcissistic and self-indulged, but I sometimes feel somewhat melancholic about all of the work I have done for free to make GD modding better.
Custom Keybinds was originally a mod I made from scratch for BetterEdit, spending weeks crafting the UI and recreating all of the editor keybindings to support customization. However at some point it, along with Mouse API (another now defunct mod) were handed over to Geode as public projects and are now released under the Geode SDK name, with my name no longer being tied to them at all (aside from being the lead developer of Geode).
DevTools, a mod based on Mat's earlier CocosExplorer, a mod basically every mod developer uses that is immensely helpful and essentially a must-have for modding, was made by me for a now-defunct project called BetterGD. It is now also firmly a Geode SDK mod with no special relation to me.
And then of course there's Geode itself, a project that would've died a few months after being started if it weren't for me first giving up my BetterGD project to focus on it and then spending all of 2022 tirelessly working on it. I am still the top contributor and de-facto leader of the project, given that I have worked on almost every part of the framework and crafted many things like the UI completely by myself.
To be clear, I'm not trying to say I want to have these things back, or that I deserve more credit for them. I gave all of them up willingly and for good reason. I'm actually quite happy I don't have to deal with updating Custom Keybinds anymore.
BetterEdit 5
There is however one project I once gave up which I genuinely regretted so much I eventually reclaimed it: BetterEdit. When I realized I was totally burned out in the Summer of 2023, I enlisted a team to help me work on BetterEdit, which was up to that point embroiled in development difficulties trying to bring the mod over to Geode.
I regretted and hated every moment of it.
This is not to say anything bad about the development team members themselves; they are all amazing people and I deeply respect each one as people and am so grateful to them for helping BE survive while I was recovering from burnout. However, the idea of having given up BetterEdit - the mod I had done everything for - it hurt so much.
I fully understand why RobTop has yet to hire a team to work on GD. Yes, there is a massive fanbase that would definitely appreciate faster and more stable updates, but at the same time sharing a passion project you have poured so much over so many years into with other people just feels... terrible. It feels absolutely terrible.
However, it is also what the users want, and the average user unfortunately does not care about developers. It seems developers apparently don't deserve the luxury of being the owners of their art, when the art in question is a product with hundreds of thousands of users.
BetterEdit for 2.206
I spent 3 months at the start of this year making a new UI for Geode. Then I spent the rest of the time making a new website for Geode. Then when we finally got Geode released for 2.206, what happened wasn't the joyous release of months of stress - instead it was being greeted by hundreds of disappointed messages asking where BetterEdit was.
I try to always exercise empathy and remember that while to me I am seeing "why no BetterEdit" for the 200th time, the person commenting only sees their comment. But god fucking damn was it tiring to see those damn comments being repeated.
I tried my best to explain I had just spent months working on Geode itself and was a bit tired, only to of course be hit with the obligatory "why don't you get a team to help you develope BetterEdit?" comments.
Now, I stress that you reading this should think before you get angry: the people saying this aren't seeing the 200 other comments or the 5 months of work put into Geode. All they see is a popular mod that's not released and ask a fully understandable question.
It's not like I didn't feel terrible about not getting BetterEdit out for Geode 3.0.0 launch. The top mods on Geode currently have nearly 200k downloads. My most downloaded (which is not BetterEdit) has barely broken 20k. Missing out on day one hype has been one of the biggest disasters I could have had.
But when you simply don't have the time, then you can't do it.
It's been so long
The history of BetterEdit is partly a story of incredible success, and partly a story of constant lost opportunities. There are dozens of BE features, big and small, that I have always wanted to make, but that mod developers with fewer Geodes on their to-do lists have managed to make first. My constant biggest fear is that someone with more time on their hands than a 20-something double-bachelor's university student will make a BetterEdit competitor.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? I am 20 years old. I have an active social life and a ton of other hobbies aside from coding. I live on my own. Throughout all this time, I have done all of this for free with a barely-used donation link set up. I have watched other modders secure their financial future, while I have made less than a single month's rent in total.
This is one of the reasons I always keep coming back to the idea of BetterEdit Pro. I would like to one day be able to make a little bit of money from my GD mods. Even if it's just a specialized mod only a few people will buy. Even if it will get me absolutely vilified by people who believe GD mods should be free. Even if it will never, ever, bring back anything close to the proper compensation for all of the work I have done.
And as mentioned, I have other hobbies alongside just GD modding. I have tried and failed for the past 3 years to resurrect my YouTube channel, but modding has always stolen the time. I have many friendships IRL to tend to and a ton of pending books on my to-read list. I am a student trying to finish two degrees at once.
When I retire
During my 2022 run on Geode, my dream was that one day Geode would be finished, and I could get back to focusing on just BetterEdit. I know now just how naïve that was. I will probably never be satisfied with what I have done, because the things I never had the time to do will always haunt me.
There will come a day when I retire from GD modding. Before 2.206, I thought that day might have already come, but I have recently been filled with a driving passion again. One day that flame will burn out though. And if there is one thing I can wish from this community, one thing they could grant me:
Please never ever bring BetterEdit back after I'm gone.
Make a different editor mod? Sure. But I do not want anyone to continue BetterEdit after I decide to call it quits. If there is a GD community left at that time, I want my legacy in it to stay intact. I gave my mod up once. I will never let it happen again.
Sorry for this bit of a downer of a post. New BetterEdit stuff coming soon.
Cya ;)
-HJfod