The Mod System - Finally Visited

[Mobious]

One of the main goals that was put in place by the developers of Stellar Frontier was to make hosting a server available to everyone. They particularly pointed out Continuum as NOT the way they wanted to go when it comes to mods and player created content, allowing server hosts to have the maximum amount of flexibility to do what they needed to do while still having some sort of balance across the game engine.

One of the main things that would be good to rewrite is how the server handles mod formats. While this improvement is a few releases down the road, I would envision the mod format changed into an XML based format. This would allow for ease of expansion of features in the future and easier layout of each mod file. This space should be reserved for discussion of things that you hate about making mods as well as things that you think are great and should not be affected.

One issue will be the conversion of the old mods into the new mod format, at some point a program could be used to parse the files to do this automatically so don't concern about having your older mods no longer working. This converter would be published before any new system would go online.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Biggest headache is organization, or lack therof.

All server files are contained in the master folder.  You want to mod a server, you better find the files... and I mean FIND them.  (It's not TOO hard, but it is a headache to be fored to sift through all the files to find one.)

Each mod should be self contained in it's own folder within' the master folder. 

On top of this, mods not using stock materials, those additional stuff (like a modified ship image) should be in a sub-folder within the mod folder itself and acts as an override.

This way, mod materials can be kept all in one place, and you don't have a hundred different mod components lurking all over the place or mixed together... 

[Stud]

Totally agree.

I was thinking that XML would be an awesome way to go.

Makes for a much clearer way of changing things.

[Staker]

Would the XML be similar to how we are used to modding the system's :?

Cause I wouldn't mind re-building WWII Mod XD

[Stud]

Xml wouldn't be anything like the current modding system.

Xml would look something like this:

Code:

<sfmod>
  <races>
    <race>
      <name>My Awesome Race</name>
    </race>
  </races>
  <ships>
    <ship>
      <name>My Fighter</name>
    </ship>
  </ships>
</sfmod>

Side note: The font does not look very good for code tags.

[Sandtrooper]

*Facepalm*

[Stud]

Why the *facepalm*?

[Sandtrooper]

Gunna take me at least 2 weeks to learn all that stuff 

[Stud]

Well lucky for you, there are some XML experts here to help you out.

[NiteHawk]

Honestly, I would split up the XML files.

One big XML would be kind of an hassle to the current system.

Even though its pretty crappy as it is, at least it's simple to find a ship, or a module.

[Stud]

Right I would assume the files would be broken down by ships, races, etc. Kinda like it is now.

[Mobious]

For example, the SFDC encoded the sf files into XML files and had a converter to the .dat format.
The files were broken up into two files total, it was much easier to understand what was going on and how to change things as you wouldn't need to do it in 5 spaces.... I'll post an example here when I find one.