Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: EatThePath on October 04, 2021, 07:33:47 pm

Title: Modder's Digest Quasi-Weekly (Latest 22-01-08)
Post by: EatThePath on October 04, 2021, 07:33:47 pm
Late last year I assembled a list of all the FSO changes I thought modders should know about, present in the most accessible way I could. At the time it was my intent to do updates to that list, but it turned out not to be a practical ambition, as it took a lot of manually combing through the changelog and such to get everything together. I think I've got a system in place that lets me avoid all that, so I'm doing it again. My intention is to do one of these every week where there's notable changes, posting at the bottom of the thread, and updating the list in this first post with the cumulative changes since the last major release.

The list is going to be broken down into categories, but those categories will get finer as the list gets longer. Each item has a number, this is a reference number for development in case you think that change might be causing problems and need to look up more info.

So lets get to it. Changes in nighties since 21.4 released, up to January 8th.
Changes
Mission making
POF Models
Lua Scripting
#Tables
AI Profiles
Animation
Gamesettings/-mod
Hud gauges
Lighting Profiles
Nebula
Particles
Ships
Weapons
Tools
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: Nyctaeus on October 05, 2021, 04:21:23 pm
Huh, I guess I missed about 70-80% of new features because they are not listed anywhere. FSWiki used to be the basically only, reliable source of new features for me but wiki maintainers are not always up to date with new stuff.

If you want to maintain such a devblog, I greatly appreciate that :yes:
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: Asteroth on October 05, 2021, 07:12:36 pm
Quote from: Nyctaeus on October 05, 2021, 04:21:23 pm
FSWiki used to be the basically only, reliable source of new features for me but wiki maintainers are not always up to date with new stuff.
Are you saying this just in general, or was there something specific that wasn't documented? Even when it is, though, without stuff like this, there's no real way to 'advertise' new features, I feel like. This is a good way to let people know that things have changed and there's new stuff available; no one is religiously checking all the table articles for changes.
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: Nightmare on October 05, 2021, 07:31:17 pm
IIRC there was something that prevents subsystem flags from being overwritten by other tbms, don't think they were ever added to the wiki
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: Kiloku on October 05, 2021, 07:34:05 pm
Yeah, the changelogs can get a bit technical and the more interesting stuff for certain parts of the community ends up hard to find. Something curated like this is awesome. Thanks ETP!
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: Nyctaeus on October 06, 2021, 04:26:58 pm
Quote from: Asteroth on October 05, 2021, 07:12:36 pm
Quote from: Nyctaeus on October 05, 2021, 04:21:23 pm
FSWiki used to be the basically only, reliable source of new features for me but wiki maintainers are not always up to date with new stuff.
Are you saying this just in general, or was there something specific that wasn't documented? Even when it is, though, without stuff like this, there's no real way to 'advertise' new features, I feel like. This is a good way to let people know that things have changed and there's new stuff available; no one is religiously checking all the table articles for changes.
The former.

In short, I learned about majority of new features from pillaging modpacks like JAD or BP, because teams of such mods usually consists of people of high technical skills [like Axem] or SCP members directly [like The E]. Sometimes FSWiki, sometimes me chatting directly with SCP devs, but still I frequently encounter new features in people's work I had no idea about.

Nightly builds pop-up one after another like crazy. There is no way to go through the all logs looking for the hot stuff. I have a feeling that many modders just miss the new features, because they have no idea that they even exist.

For example: Before I played Warmachine, I wasn't aware that multi-locking missiles are finally a thing. I remember it being discussed couple years ago.

There is no anykind of obvious bulletin for potential modmakers, that enlists new, fancy, available features. I have a feeling that most people simply copy stuff from BP or BtA for their own works... And many remain in the dark for a long time. Including myself.
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: EatThePath on October 07, 2021, 06:15:35 am
More than once I've wowed people by using features that have been in the game, and even documented in the wiki, for years, but nobody really used. Beam bombs being the example most clear in my memory. Multilock doesn't really count because it wasn't in the main engine when we started using it, and it was at least in part due to my pushing that it finally got merged.

But even so... When I'm in the swing of modding I haunt the discord #scp and #github-updates channels perhaps more than I should, and I even check the wiki recent changes page once or twice a week, but there's always surprises for me when I go to make these, especially in scripting and fredding areas. Which is a big art of why I'm motivated to make them! That, and I think it helps make the work the dev team is doing on the engine a bit more visible  :)
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-02)
Post by: EatThePath on October 11, 2021, 03:07:08 pm
Two weeks in a row, personal best! The process has some wrinkles to smooth out yet but it's definitely helping.
The changes!
Mission making
Lua Scripting
#Tables

And the first post will be updated with the cumulative changes, of course.
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-08)
Post by: wookieejedi on October 11, 2021, 07:02:39 pm
Excellent update, as always! I'll also add this as a table option that technically made it in the same nightly as the other wingmen gauge options:

'$Wingmen Gauge Dot Override:' within ships.tbl. This allows modders to set wingmen status dots on a per-ship class basis. If no animation is specified then the default dot animation specified in the HUD table wingmen gauge is used. Wiki link here: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Ships.tbl#.24Wingmen_Gauge_Dot_Override:
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-08)
Post by: EatThePath on October 11, 2021, 07:51:16 pm
Sadly, getting a nice clean, sensible cutoff line in the logs is one problem I've not sorted out yet. Basing it off of when nightlies get built is actually a really good and in hindsight kind of obvious idea that hadn't occurred to me yet, I'll see if I can make that happen in the future
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-08)
Post by: EatThePath on October 17, 2021, 05:51:16 pm
This week the notes should cover up to and including the 20211016 nightly. I've also made the PR# a link to the github page for that PR in all cases, to save time.
Advisories
Mission making
Lua Scripting
#Tables

AI Profiles
Mod Settings
Particles
Ships
Tools
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-16)
Post by: Kiloku on October 17, 2021, 07:18:33 pm
The $Custom Data stuff is now also documented in the Wiki.
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-16)
Post by: EatThePath on October 23, 2021, 01:06:56 pm
Just a heads up, I'm heading out on a vacation today and this has a good chance of disrupting this and/or next weeks' posting. They should still happen, just maybe a bit late.
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Weekly (Latest 21-10-16)
Post by: EatThePath on November 23, 2021, 10:59:23 pm
Well, the above turned out to be pretty wrong.

Nightlies not going up properly gave me a very appealing excuse to keep putting the next digest off, but since they've kicked back on, here we are. This should match up with the 20211121 nightly

Advisories
Changes
Mission making
POF Models
Lua Scripting
#Tables
Tools
Title: Re: Modder's Digest Irregular (Latest 22-01-08)
Post by: EatThePath on January 24, 2022, 09:37:32 pm
Whoof. I could make all kinds of excuses, but I've let this slide too long. even that being the case, this post only catches us up to about the 8th. I'll do what I can to follow up faster than two months.
Advisories
Changes
Mission making

Lua Scripting
#Tables
New Tables
Game Settings
Weapons