Automatic mod support for VS

[Surfdargent]

CVS has been updated with an automatic support for mods.
You still have to specify ./vegastrike -Mmodname.

It works like that :
- the mod must have a directory structure just like data4.x containing
only files that were modified or added compared to VS data files.
- you just have to put the mod directory structure in your
home/.vegastrike/mods/modname or in datadir/mods/modname like this :

surfdargent@ewave:/home/public/vegadev/data4.x/mods/VegaTrek> l
total 92
drwxr-xr-x 11 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:27 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 surfdargent users 4096 Oct 4 13:17 ../
drwxr-xr-x 2 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:21 Sector_001/
drwxr-xr-x 3 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:24 ai/
drwxr-xr-x 9 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:25 animations/
drwxr-xr-x 2 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:21 mission/
drwxr-xr-x 2 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:26 modules/
drwxr-xr-x 2 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:26 sounds/
drwxr-xr-x 4 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:23 textures/
drwxr-xr-x 27 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:22 units/
drwxr-xr-x 2 surfdargent users 4096 Sep 23 20:22 universe/
-rw-r--r-- 1 surfdargent users 39330 Sep 18 21:50 vegastrike.config
-rw-r--r-- 1 surfdargent users 5561 Sep 18 19:34 weapon_list.xml

VS will be able to use all the found mods files in a standard game (no -M option) but will start using the standard config file and weapon_list file.
When specifying -Mmodname on the command line, VS will start and load the mod config file and the mod weapon_list.xml file automatically.

NOTE : sectors should be in a sectors subdir (VegaTrek has sectors in Sector01 but should be in sectors/Sector01).

It works with the VegaTrekMini-0.2.0.zip file that only contains the modified/added files for VegaTrek.

It is available here :
http://ewave.homelinux.org/vegastrike/V ... -0.2.0.zip
and should just be uncompressed in home/.vegastrike/mods/ or in datadir/mods/.
Then you can launch VS with ./vegastrike -MVegaTrek (case sensitive).

[dandandaman]

hmm....this still has the same problem that the old system (if it worked) had :-/

The problem is that for the rpms, we have a situation where the mods will be semi dependent on the normal VS data.....as, without a lot of extra (and I mean a *lot*) work, whenever someone uninstalls the normal data, the mods will have to get deleted too....

mods should *not* have dependencies on the VS data set!

so, say the data dir is /usr/local/games/vegastrike/data

then with your setup the mods dirs would be in /usr/local/games/vegastrike/data/mods

it would be *much* better if it would be in /usr/local/games/vegastrike/mods....

.....or even better (well, I prefer it), the mods just install in /usr/local/games/vegastrike/ seperately...
ie /usr/local/games/vegastrike/vegatrek /usr/local/games/vegastrike/vegalon5 /usr/local/games/vegastrike/black-paralysis

would it be too hard to make this change?

will be great to have a working mod system

Dan.a

[etheral walker]

We can do like vegatrek, a sort of standalone. The biggest things we have are the textures,sound and the meshes. All the other files are text only, so they does not take many place while compressed. I will test with vegatrek

[scheherazade]

dan < you're asking for what he gave.

look closely :

surfdargent@ewave:/home/public/vegadev/data4.x/mods/VegaTrek> l

":/home/public/vegadev" = outer path

"data4.x" = vegastrike (data4.x is the way the project is named, but it IS the vegastrike dir)

"mods" = the mods dir, in this case, data4.x\mods (aka vegastrike\mods)

"VegaTrek" = the mod.


so when you asked for :
"/usr/local/games/vegastrike/mods"

you actually asked for (as named on surdargents computer) :
"/usr/local/games/data4.x/mods"

which is what he has.


as for having the mods loosely floating in the vegastrike folder, i don't agree.
a deeper and more organized tree will make keeping track of things easier.

-scheherazade

[dandandaman]

dan < you're asking for what he gave.

not quite, but I think I've worked out a way to do what I wanted with the current system...just not using it quite as "automatic" as the way it is implemented

I wanted vegastrike to be in /usr/local/games/data4.x/

and the mods to be in /usr/local/games/mods

So that mod installation was not dependent on the main data being installed (well, there is a workaround to that...but it's long and ugly....the workaround I've figured for the mod path is a lot neater )

Dan.a

[Surfdargent]

I could just put a flag for VS command line so that we could specify the mods directory.
This is not possible now in the config file because after reading the default VS config file we would have to read the mod specific one and the current config system does not allow config to be "reloaded" from another file.

I'll work on that soon I guess and then add a real "mod_path" config var in the VS default config to specify mod path.

[scheherazade]

surfdargent <<

are you going to make a rcon console for the vegastrike server? so you can moderate your server from wherever?

or maybe if i make a console for the vegastrike client, can you add rcon support to the server, so then people could do things like moderate through their client... (given they have the correct rcon password of course)

-scheherazade

[dandandaman]

I could just put a flag for VS command line so that we could specify the mods directory.

actually, that's not really nescessary anymore.....when I run a mod, I could just do

vegastrike -d/usr/local/games/vegastrike -mblack-paralysis

and it will look in /usr/local/games/vegastrike/mods/black-paralysis won't it? this has the same effect as the other.....and the only mods that this won't be good for is ones that require the data, in which case installing in data4.x/mods won't be a problem for them

So unless you have a huge excess of time, I don't think we need to worry

Dan.a