Plug and Play Mods

posted on March 14th, 2010, 1:18 am

hi i was thinking would it be possible to give the ships/stations/weapons odfs the ability to hold the info about its build button, wireframes, tech requirements and build locations (some of the ideas originate from the borg module features.

possible codes could be:

techtreeXrequirementX = "name.odf"

were techtreeX were X is a number could be the techtree the requirement belongs to (gmae choice of freetech or tech 1 were free tech could be techtree0 and tech1 could be techtree1

requirementX were X is the number of a list so if the ship needs more than one tech then u wud add more in the list

makeobsoleteaftertechX = "name.odf" // wen all obsolete tech is present ship is no longer buildable

could be dne via fleetcaps but incorporated into the odf

buildicon = "button.tga" // name of button texture
buttonlocation = 0 0 64 64 // location of button in texture

systemicon = "system.tga" // name of system image (single ship select) texture
systemlocation = 0 0 48 48 // loaction of system image in texture

shipicon = "ship.tga" // name of ship icon (multi select) texture
shiplocation = 0 0 48 48 // location of shipicon in texture

yardbuildableX = "yard.odf" // odf file of yard the ship is buildable from X is the number in the list so ships can be assigned to more than one yard

posted on March 14th, 2010, 2:01 am

it definitely sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure what it would help with.

posted on March 14th, 2010, 2:47 am

I think this certainly could help with things like the Borg Modules, since they currently are not effected by the techtree. I guess it just gives modders the option of avoiding making a separate techtree file in preference to adding tech requirements directly in a ship's odf.

posted on March 14th, 2010, 2:58 am

thats what I thought

posted on March 14th, 2010, 3:21 am

most of that is already possible, the stuff is just located in other files. i don't see a large benefit in investing time in something thats already there.

When deciding a way to implementing features, we do not consider usability much. Performance issues come first, and thats something thats often forgot by modders. techtrees per odf (or even dynamic techtrees) would require many recursive evals, a static list is much more efficent and till now it always served its purpose

posted on March 14th, 2010, 6:37 am

That's what you get for making a mod so good that other people want to mod it.

posted on March 14th, 2010, 9:01 am

the iea came from when looking at new ships/stations and how a fair amount of people have difficulty as they do not know how to add new ships/stations to the game. this method would allow people to add/remove ships and stations quickly without leaving any unneeded coding in the sprite/techtree or even yards

posted on March 14th, 2010, 10:59 am

yep but sadly its technically not possible