[Outdated] The Proper Way to Install Mods

Been working on a mod manager for a few days now although this heavily changes several things I've already written. This can greatly simplify the mod install/uninstall process. (I had a system in place using symlinks to the mod directorys)

Do we know yet how the priorities work in the list? what if the same file is listed in several mod directories? I would assume it just uses the last one..

Great find SethKips

 

I haven't tested, but since putting my DiamondPickaxeMod below the regular assets folder used the modified file, I would assume the assets are loaded in order from top to bottom.

 

Thank you for this, I kept breaking my game by adding in new tools, and editing the player.config. Now i don't need steam to overwrite all the mod files to actually play

 

This has somehow inspired me to just try and learn C++ out of nothing xD
It sounds like @flyingmoose knows what he is doing, but it would be interesting for me to see if i can come up with a simular solution of sorts

 

Is there a way to add crafting recipes other than adding them in the player.config file? Or a way to spawn a usable item that yields the recipes?

That would make the modloader much more effective since you wouldn't have to ask users to edit player.config manually or distribute your own copy (which would overwrite their file, very likely causing conflict with other mods they have installed).

 

it seems not, in order for the player to be able to use the new recipes they need to be added to the player.config list.


if you add the lines needed for a mod to a player.config and include it with the mod as such then the player will never have to touch their player.config. also worth noting that player,config actually has no effect on character save files and such.

 

@Sabatieni - the mod helper I'm working on already allows partial changes to files without overwriting the whole thing. So multiple mods will be able to edit the player.config without conflicting.

 

I look forward to seeing your implementation and including support for it flyingmoose.

 

That's good news, since only the last loaded player.config file will be used, I've found.

 

You can also just make a mods folder inside the assets folder and place stuff in it without any extra setup.

 

First of all... Folder loading is recursive. You only need to put /mods/ in the bootloader. ALL folders and subfolders will be loaded.
Second... Any item conflicts will generate an error and the game will not load. You will be stuck on the loading screen forever.
Thirdly, this does not solve the item recipie addition issue. Users will still have to add them to the player config.
Lastly, Instead of editing the bootloader, you can create the Mod folder in Assets as well, and it will still work. This way you do not need to modify the boot loader.

 

Good points, but until a proper manager, the bootloader is still nice to manage multiple mods since you can just remove a line to disable instead of moving/deleting files.

 

Why add lines at all? Just throw in a folder in the "Assets" folder called "MyMods" and thats it.

 

dose anyone know what happens if two mods different make a edit to lets say the player.config file

 

Id assume that unless the mods account for anything, then the last one to edit the file, is the one that takes effect.

 

How would I distribute oredistributions.lvltables?

 

Quite honestly, I've yet to see how this changes anything. This still only changes adding a few lines to the player.config and instead adding them to the bootleg file. You can already have completely standalone mods except for doing that. What most people are actually looking for is a way of incorporating the mods with JUST copying over the mod folder to the assets folder or a usermade mods folder. And that's still impossible without a cheesy fix like furnace recipes.

EDIT: I've somehow missed the second page of this thread where others have stated the same issue. If a modloader would be released making partial changes to the player.config file possible though, that would be awesome.

 

It's being worked on. If for some reason it hasn't been worked out by the time my finals are done, I will throw something together.

[yourmodname].zip/[yourmodname]/biomes/oredistributions.lvltables

 

A program that backs up the player.config file, scans it for certain text (the start and end of the crafting recipes), and either appends lines just before the ending set of brackets (not sure if concatenation works that way naturally) or replaces the ending set of brackets with the new lines and an ending set of brackets (more in line with how concatenation works i think) could do the trick. The issue then would be preventing file bloat and line doubling by making sure that the lines being added don't already exist in the file, and then the ability to remove mods you've installed by removing the associated lines in the player.config (easy to delete since they are wrapped neatly). Too bad I can't program that well at all.

 

And if you do so?
Will include all modes?

Code:

"assetSources" : [
      "../assets",
      "../mods",
],