Posted by: Almateria
« on: July 31, 2017, 02:16:01 AM »Yay, a compromise after all the bickering! <3
Inconveniencing the Infinity Engine since 2001.
News:
Quest Pack released! Download from http://www.pocketplane.net/quest!
Posted by: Wisp
« on: July 28, 2017, 01:07:40 PM »Yes, I can add SUPPORT as an alias for AUTHOR.
Posted by: AL|EN
« on: July 28, 2017, 09:05:13 AM »GeN1e, it seems that the "AUTHOR" keyword should be "SUPPORT" in the first place. Well, let me quickly go to my garage and fireup my time machine 
So how about an alias to AUTHOR as SUPPORT? Old mods will be fine, maintainers of the old mods could rename AUTHOR to SUPPORT and achieve peace of the mind?
So how about an alias to AUTHOR as SUPPORT? Old mods will be fine, maintainers of the old mods could rename AUTHOR to SUPPORT and achieve peace of the mind? Posted by: GeN1e
« on: July 28, 2017, 06:02:57 AM »Honestly, I don't see a reason why AUTHOR should not be treated as MAINTAINER, which it really is - this string is only ever displayed when WeiDU tells the user to contact support. If it's a matter of "copyright"... good god, there's readme for that kind of information, while tp2 exists for the purpose of installing the thing correctly.
Posted by: AL|EN
« on: July 28, 2017, 04:46:03 AM »Well, it seems that something like MAINTAINER is still valid issue:
Quote from Roxanne:
I hope that this proves my point so my new proposition is SUPPORT keyword.
Quote from Roxanne:
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Currently the only way to indicate that a mod is now maintained by another person is by some free text with //in the tp2 or in the readme. Players do not necessarily open these files to search such information.
If people encounter problems e.g with EE journal or other conversion problems, it is little help to point them to a long gone (or not interested) AUTHOR instead of giving feedback to the MAINTAINER.
The issue becomes even bigger over time as more and more mods are maintained by others than the AUTHOR.
In addition, a nlot of new players communicate and find mods via new bean dogs forum rather than Spellhold or G3. They are mostly unaware about the history of the older mods. All they see in case of error is the old *report problem to (long gone person). This is useless.
Call the stuff MAINTAINER or CONTACT or whatever. AUTHOR may not have been very useful in the past, but today with a whole new generation of mod players, it would be very helpful to give them a *real* point of contact.
PS - it would also avoid that trouble reports end up in the more general threads like *Mega Mod Help* or *BWS* because nobody knows where else to report them. And if something is done at all, it then ends up in fixpack instead of being fixed in the mods as it should be.
I hope that this proves my point so my new proposition is SUPPORT keyword.
Posted by: AL|EN
« on: July 24, 2017, 07:41:45 PM »New keyword:
DOWNLOAD - direct link to always up to date latest stable release of the mod, possible for GitHub,G3,SHS and even for BWL. PPG website links can't be used for now.
Mod authors can put there anything but there is nothing which we can do about it. Again, weidu can't use such data now ( but clever tp2 code can! ) but external system will use it.
DOWNLOAD - direct link to always up to date latest stable release of the mod, possible for GitHub,G3,SHS and even for BWL. PPG website links can't be used for now.
Mod authors can put there anything but there is nothing which we can do about it. Again, weidu can't use such data now ( but clever tp2 code can! ) but external system will use it.
Posted by: AL|EN
« on: July 24, 2017, 06:50:02 PM »INSTALL_ORDER/INSTALL_SEQUENCE is a good idea because even if weidu can't use this data for future mod/components, external systems can. But since it is a data for component, it should not be inside IE mod manifest but inside --list-components-JSON.
Meanwhile:
under the assumption that mod authors can forget to edit tp2 keywords the same way as they can forget to edit JSON, let's take look at the simple example of additional file which will serve as IE mod manifest and provide necessary data:
7c#foebane.iemod - the .iemod filename is the same as .tp2 filename
The advantage of additional IE mod manifest file:
- it can be added/modified without touching tp2 file
- it can be read without executing weidu
- it is using standard JSON format so it can be modified using standard data modification protocols
I think that IE mod manifest file is the way to go.
Meanwhile:
under the assumption that mod authors can forget to edit tp2 keywords the same way as they can forget to edit JSON, let's take look at the simple example of additional file which will serve as IE mod manifest and provide necessary data:
7c#foebane.iemod - the .iemod filename is the same as .tp2 filename
Quote
{
"mod":
{
"name": "Foebane +3 and +5 improvement"
"description": "Correct Foebane's damage against extra planar creatures",
"semanticversion": "1.2.0.0"
"author": "elminster at forums.beamdog.com",
"homepage": "https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/779516",
"download": "http://lynxlynx.info/ie/modhub.php?CrevsDaak/7c#foebane"
}
}
The advantage of additional IE mod manifest file:
- it can be added/modified without touching tp2 file
- it can be read without executing weidu
- it is using standard JSON format so it can be modified using standard data modification protocols
I think that IE mod manifest file is the way to go.
Posted by: ikki
« on: July 21, 2017, 11:31:31 AM »Quote
What do you do about mods like Item Revisions, that require some components to be installed early and others be installed late
This is just something that may be examined.
If Zeitgeist could, when reading the TP2 sort the mod in a correct order, it would make the install more easy.
Now, look at what EET in doing : it has a component that must be installed first, and a second at the end. It handle that by using 2 separate .tp2.
Posted by: AstroBryGuy
« on: July 21, 2017, 09:39:36 AM »@ikki - What do you do about mods like Item Revisions, that require some components to be installed early and others be installed late? (e.g., IRs main component overwrites .ITM files so it should be installed early, but the later components need to be installed after other mods that add or replace items).
Posted by: ikki
« on: July 21, 2017, 03:39:37 AM »Quote
Would this be sufficiently fine-grained to be of use? If two mods are to be installed at the end, which is installed last?Having a basic install order, donne by the modder themself, would be very handy.
That's a concrete way of doing it, but this is improvable
Add a INSTALL_ORDER metadata, that require a number betwenn 0 and 1000 (or 0 and 10000)
give some threshold (that are not restrictive) for the modder to chose an install number
- 0-100 : mod that require to be installed first( like the BG2fixpack)
- 100-200 : big quest mod
- 200-300 : quest mod
- 300-500 : NPC mod
- 500-600 : tweak/kit mod
- 600-700 : AI mod
- 700-800 : tweak/kit mod
- 900-1000 : mod that need to be installed very late (EET-end, worldmap)
in case of indentical number, have weidu/zeitgeist use the modname to sort them
Posted by: Wisp
« on: July 20, 2017, 07:12:29 PM »Would it be possible to add some metadata for a basic install order, that would allow some sort of autosorting of the mods.Would this be sufficiently fine-grained to be of use? If two mods are to be installed at the end, which is installed last?
What i'm thinking is very basic : should a mod be installed first, or later, or at the end
And maybe a metadata with the Games that are supported
Posted by: ikki
« on: July 18, 2017, 08:58:37 AM »Quote
Please add few extra keywords for providing information
Would it be possible to add some metadata for a basic install order, that would allow some sort of autosorting of the mods.
What i'm thinking is very basic : should a mod be installed first, or later, or at the end
And maybe a metadata with the Games that are supported
Posted by: Wisp
« on: July 14, 2017, 12:54:00 PM »Package format it is. I'll revisit when the day comes.
Posted by: AL|EN
« on: July 11, 2017, 03:54:19 PM »Quote
As for BWS having to maintain such information themselves, I'm an author of... however many mods list me as author, I don't know. I can count the number of times BWS solicited me for information (or offered me a tool where I could have done so myself) on zero fingers.Because there wasn't any easy way for mod authors to provide such information, until I've made my weidu Auto-Parser which can provide 90% of mod except ACTION_READLN ( weidu limitation ). But there are also mod dependence and conflicts and it would be too much burden to maintain for someone who don't know BWS internals. Fixpack and Tweakpack are mandatory mods so the updates were provided almost instantly.
You along with few other modders are kindly enough to provide updates and I'm grateful. Others are careless but I don't blame them - dabus and the rest of BWS maintainers did all the work for them. We have no idea how much works it will be until it was too late and we burn out. The good thing is that I'm at least aware about those issues and I'm trying to solve them.
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The mod graveyard remains substantial, with little suggesting a substantial change in the offing. Making something mandatory simply means we add unnecessary exclusions from ZG or add a lot of make-work. My objection is not to metainformation, or really even to your specific suggestions, it's to the mandatory part.
The solution, upon which we agree, is to provide a way for authors to easily provide this information. Most (probably all) of the mods that won't or can't provide this info can get by with old, static information since they're either EOL or abandoned.
Quote
Again, though, no one's going to be publishing new versions of Shards of Ice or Fonick because of missing meta.
We definitely agree at the "easy way to provide metainformation". I'm requesting those as mandatory is only for mods which will be adapted to new wiedu next generation. Old, unmaintained mods will use old weidu and if somebody will care enough to have them added to BWS successor/central mod database, he will do the job. And we already have big metadata database which we will use for old, unmaintained mods. If there will be any update to such old mod, the missing metadata would be taken from outside source which already exist - BWS ini files. The maintainer will take existing metadata and adapt the mod to wiedu next generation. I don't see any problems for old mods.
If you talking about 50 old, non-EE, kit/one day NPC/overpowered items mods then nobody needs to update them. They would use latest version of old WeiDU without breaking changes. New WeiDU 1.0.0.0 (yep, semantic versioning) would not be touched by old version/it won't touch old weidu executable so those mods can be installed without any problems.
Besides you don't know which mods will be updated. Nobody knew that RoT will be updated to EE/EET until it has been updated. Same for CtB, Aurora, NTotSC and others. It shows that the "mod graveyard" could be much smaller in the future.
Posted by: CamDawg
« on: July 10, 2017, 05:24:43 PM »Oh, and I should probably add: I would not object, and in fact would likely support, making at least some of this metainformation mandatory going forward. If you're publishing updates or new mods in 2017, yes, you should adhere to the standards of the time. Again, though, no one's going to be publishing new versions of Shards of Ice or Fonick because of missing meta.