Packaging Mods

junk2drive · Post by **junk2drive** » Thu Oct 28, 2010 4:06 pm

Just brainstorming here. As more mods are made, how should they be presented?

As I have added to my PTO work, I have been posting a link to the campaign that contains the bits. As they get larger and separate, the older ones don't have the newer stuff. Someone may not want to download a whole campaign and try to figure out what they need for just one thing.

I'm thinking a zip with a folder, named with the designer and contents. In the folder
text#.txt (what range of numbers within the 0-63?)
Squads.csv (with only that unit, again what unit number range? I started using 200+ and now the expansion is 200+)
graphics folders (should they be nested inside the appropriate main folder?)(should the folder be named properly or descriptively?)

For objects, can the txt file be numbered like the text#.txt?
For new sounds, can any sfx number be used?

Post by **pipfromslitherine** » Thu Oct 28, 2010 4:20 pm

I'm not really sure what you mean

? Are you talking about how to get 'components' out there for people to use?

Cheers

Pip

junk2drive · Post by **junk2drive** » Thu Oct 28, 2010 4:24 pm

Yes

For example Tim's jeep or chevy truck. I got his campaign/scenario and took bits out of it for my needs. It would be nce if those bits were in a separate file. Then someone could make a LRDG campaign and just toss in the bits.

I'm trying to make this easier.

Post by **pipfromslitherine** » Thu Oct 28, 2010 4:53 pm

I like the concept. I don't know that there is a clean way to have all this stuff modular, especially if people have special cased scripts etc, which require certain setups and so on. But for assets or self-contained chunks which people can use it's a great idea.

I'd suggest a dir with all the files in - I would suggest that if you are dealing with a small number of files which don't really do anything on their own, they would all just be in a flat structure with a readme, so someone browsing could immediately see what they were getting. Something with more parts could be set up in the appropriate structure to show how it should be used.

It would be fairly easy to add a grab-bag of these kinds of things to updates for people to use. Or have a sticky in the forums - it's not really something which could work ingame I don't think.

Cheers

Pip

junk2drive · Post by **junk2drive** » Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:33 am

The Corsair for instance needs these folders/files
amin - files
cards - cards.txt ?
bonus - .bsf
UI\Textures - dds
UI\Textures\Icons - dds
Sounds - wav
sfx0.txt - ?
text#.txt

The ? marks are the text files that need text added to existing txt files unless I can create a xxx#.txt
I didn't make a new sound but I could have.

A unit needs similar the above and lines added to the csv.

A action needs the bsf plus a line added to default.bsf and a text#.txt plus any graphics.

While a full theatre mod would be nice, an official expansion would be better for large changes.

I'm just trying to stay ahead of this for you. If the game does well, it's going to get messy. You will spend a lot of time trying to fix problems because of mod mixups.

Post by **pipfromslitherine** » Fri Oct 29, 2010 3:37 pm

It's a fair point. Adding new content is pretty complex. I'm not sure there is a way we can fix this at this point - we'd need to entirely retool the game data flow. It's more set up for either just using existing stuff, or doing a complete reskin. Just grabbing (e.g.) the Corsair does require some fair amount of data wrangling.

I'll add trying to make this at least somewhat more flexible to the todo list. Thanks for point it out.

Cheers

Pip