RELEASED Starloader - mod manager/loader for Starbound

Starloader v1.1.1
A mod manager/loader for Starbound



Starloader is a mod installer, manager and loader for Starbound, which lets you easily and efficiently add, remove and develop mods. The mods can be installed either from .zip archives or added directly from folders. Mod information is loaded from a mod.json file in the mod's root if one exists (more on this below).


Features

• Install mods directly from .zip archives or folders
• Activate, deactive, update and remove mods from the UI
• Player.config merging. If a mod supplied their own player.config, you don't have to edit the original file manually.
• Install any mod, with or without a mod.json
• Change load order by dragging the mods
• Cross-platform (windows/osx/linux)[/SIZE]

Downloads

• Windows
• OS X (Mac version temporarily unavailable due to problems with packaging the app)
• Linux 32bit
• Linux 64bit

• Example mod

Planned features

• Installation by dragging a mod to the mod manager window
• Creating new mods directly from the UI
• Exporting created or installed mods into archives

Developing mods with/for Starloader
To see your mod in Starloader without packaging it, use the "Add from folder" button to add your mod to the manager from any folder on your system. Alternatively, you can create the mod's folder under the set "mods folder" in Starloader and click "Refresh" on the "Mods" page to have the manager detect it (just make sure you have a mod.json file in there before doing the above).


mod.json format

Code:

{
    "internal-name": "author-modname",
    "name": "Pretty mod name",
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "description": "A concise description of what the mod does!",
    "author": "Author name",
    "url": "A url to the mod's or author's homepage"
}

Where "internal-name" is a unique name used to match mods to their previous or already installed versions.
See "Example mod" above under "Downloads".

Source
https://github.com/Dragory/Starloader

Any feedback would be appreciated! I have not yet tested the Mac and Linux versions, so if anyone could test those out, that would be great!

 

Really nice manager you got there! Gonna try it out right now.

Edit: You could try making it load already installed mods, basically mods that got installed before starting to use the Launcher.

 

You can load the previously installed mods by clicking "Refresh" (which makes the manager scan the set mod folder), assuming the mods have the mod.json file. If they don't, you can try adding the above example file and changing the "internal-name" part to something unique for each.

EDIT: I could actually implement adding mods don't have the file. Adding to the planned features!

 

Alright. Gonna try that.

 

This probably will be a stupid question, but do servers with mods affect the users in the server too?

 

Alright, now we have 6 and counting...

 

Yet the 6th understood to take the 'Starloader' name for itself.

Nice app

 

nice loader but we don't need more mod loaders sadly.

 

It's the 6th mod manager that people have created for Starbound.

 

I love you.

 

So pretty. Makes things much easier for modders and consumers.

 

How far off do you think file merges are? I'm liking the functionality that's in place already and look forward to adding support for player.config file merges. I'd like to suggest one change to avoid confusion... When i first installed mods, i tried to put them into the /assets/mods folder but quickly realised that you were editing the bootstrap so the files were being read twice by Starbound. Can you default the mods folder to a 'mods' folder within your Starloader folder please? This would avoid a lot of confusion and all we'd need to include is our game directory.

Bug report

If i change the mods folder, the changes do not apply until i reload the application. Your mods.json file moves to the new folder, but installed mods still get installed in the old folder.

 

Ive come up with a beta version of each of my mods with a file structure that will be able to support manual installation, modloader installation and future proofed for player.config file merging. If we can standardise a file structure for both manual and automatic installation using modloaders soon, then mod creators can create compatible mods from the get go. Allow me to share the beta versions of my mods, with a reformatted file structure and mod support.

• http://www.mediafire.com/download/u1ocau8dxb9n7y0/mattermanipulatorplus.zip
• http://www.mediafire.com/download/pqdf6cau0fg5gvr/techbypass.zip

Please let me know if you have any tweaks or suggestions based on these files. They are just beta versions right now so when ive gotten feedback ill update my nexusmods files.

 

I cant get it to work, keep getting the message that the json file is not in the archive.. while it definately is

Nevermind that, i downloaded one of Xuhybrid's files and see where the problem is. Ill have to adjust the zipfiles to match the right format

edit2: for some reason my mod.json was named mods.json ( or the other way around, im sleepy...)

 

I cant get it to work. Tried your mattermanipulatorplus file. I can add it but the game stops at loading screen. I can add mods that dont change the playerconfig file, it seems i just cannot get mods to work that do. for example the peat fuel and beer mod does work

 

I'm planning on implementing player.json merging this evening.
I'll probably also add a "merge mods" button that merges all config files (.config, .recipe, etc.), but that one happen automatically on every mod install/activation like player.json merging because it can take a long time for bigger mods.

Thanks for the report! I'll fix that for the next release.

Looks good! One problem I see is that some mods might have the asset files directly in the root of the mod while others place them under assets. I should probably make the loader figure out which structure the mod uses before merging.

Did you install it with the mod loader? The game should primarily use the default player.config (and thus not crash with new ones) as the loader is currently placing the default assets last in the load order. However, as far as I know, this also prevents changes to the default files so I'll have to change this once I get player.config merging working.

 

Yeah i did have it like this originally. Your mod doesn't need to support different versions, i guess it just needs to look for player.config recursively. I added the /assets/mods folders so that it could still be installed manually.

 

Indeed, I could look for it recursively. The merging problem I mentioned was more aimed towards other files, however, regarding the "merge mods" feature that would allow mods to extend each other or modify default files.

 

Yeah, that's an interesting idea. It should definitely support player.config and quests.config because those are the two main hooks we need to modify. I wouldn't really worry about merging core items with mods because more often than not, you want all of the content in those files, not a merging of the two. Just food for thought.

 

You're right, core item merging should probably be a fairly low priority feature for now. I'll try to get player.config and quests.config merging working today!