We keep adding new stuff to our beloved BW, and leave the untied ends, well, untied. I wanted to write a post on what can be improved in BW to make the structure more streamlined and simple.
1) Separating 2.0 and 2.1 (we may need DC's help with this one).
Ever noticed that the V21 core is just a little bigger than V2? It leads me to believe that V21 is actually V2 + changes, but despite this we still need V2 in \System for BW to operate at all. If I am correct, 99.9% of the code in V2 is just unused duplicates of what V21 has. A simple solution to this is to get rid of the remaining references to the V2 core and make V21 independent, the way it should have been to begin with.
2) Repackaging and reorganizing BW content.
In this case content means utx, usx, uax, etc. files. Now that BW has reached its final status it is now safe to combine them into single files for each type of content. For example, there are close to 10 files for sounds alone, the proper packaging method is to only have one BallisticSounds.uax file for BW 2.1 (BWBP4 should remain separate, obviously). Doing this for all content types will make the structure far more simple and easier to manage.
On a similar note, I think it would be a good idea to rethink the naming scheme from scratch as well. If we look at the file history of BW, we can see that the developers have changed their naming scheme several times over the years, just look at the filenames for BWBP1 and then BWBP2 to see what I'm talking about.
3) Separate config menus for each BW mutators.
It never made much sense to me why Bloody Hell, Ballistic Weapons, Loadout, etc. all have the exact same config menu. It would be far simpler if we separated them. Like removing Blood options from Ballistic Weapons and making it Bloody Hell's only options. In my opinion each mutator should only have settings and/or tabs relevant to its purpose.
But this idea is still under wraps in my mind. I don't know several things; such as whether two mutators can have two different config menus but still use the same ini file. I'd say look at 3) as a thinking-aloud that needs some support from experienced coders.
That's it for now. I hope you guys see where I'm coming from, at least with 1) and 2). It would make me very happy if BW got this kind of facelift one day, and would probably give less experienced players an easier time managing the files and settings.