Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: jr2 on August 05, 2013, 10:26:06 am

Title: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: jr2 on August 05, 2013, 10:26:06 am
Would it be possible to include a text file with mods / asset upgrades that basically tells FSO which files, and their checksums, and their official locations, should be loaded for a mod?

e.g., MVPs, have FSO check the loaded .vp checksums with the list found in the text file.

Any updatest to the .vps (say, a patch) would have their own text file, whcih would be added to the other when calculating.

If files are missing / corrupt / additional files are loaded / correct files are in unsupported locations (mod .vps in FS2 root), a warning message is displayed, telling the user about the problem, whilst stating that warning about additional or removed files are expected if they put in a custom mod that isn't officially supported by the base mod, or have removed files for performance reasons.

An option is given to the user to either "remind me later" or "don't show this again", or "view readme files" where the option to not show this again makes a note at the end of the associated text file that contains whichever mod has the issue detected (MVPs, FSPort, etc, whichever section the file(s) belonged to) that the user has chosen to ignore those certain files, and where "view readme files" opens up (if included) the readme files in each of the affected mod locations, which (hopefully) will have install instuctions.

This way, if anothe file goes missing / corrupt / additional file inserted, the warning will appear again, for the new issue.


Thoughts?  I don't know if this would help or not, but I figured I'd suggest it and find out.  Basically, a way for FSO to send users a raised eyebrow if they just dump a mod into FS2 root, or forget to download a required .vp  .. Hopefully, a message something like "normally, these files go into \FSPort\ and these ones in \media-vps3612\ and these ones in \fsport-mediavps\, you knew that and you were just testing me, riiiiight?

I'm sure that idea is a bit off, but hopefully someone more learned than I can make something more useful out of it.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: The E on August 05, 2013, 10:40:19 am
A better way of checking for completeness and uncorruptedness is something I am going to work on post 3.7.

My current thinking is pretty much parallel to yours, with additional metadata that is supplied with a mod that the engine checks on load.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: Fury on August 05, 2013, 11:18:46 am
Does that include LZMA2 support which was brought up over two years ago? :nervous:
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: The E on August 05, 2013, 12:08:30 pm
It's part of it, yes.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: Fury on August 05, 2013, 12:15:50 pm
Whee
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: MatthTheGeek on August 05, 2013, 12:25:34 pm
**** yeah.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: karajorma on August 05, 2013, 01:13:20 pm
The big problem is having it NOT go crazy just cause you've added a mod. Sometimes those of us who are devs want to just add a file without having to make a mod. Testing the patches for Diaspora is a good example of this.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: mjn.mixael on August 05, 2013, 01:17:03 pm
Yeah, some sort of flag in the checksums (table/file?) or a commandline to skip the check for devs might be a good idea.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: The E on August 05, 2013, 01:24:07 pm
Yeah, there's a bit of complexity there, but I have a plan to deal with it.
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: niffiwan on August 05, 2013, 04:57:34 pm
sounds awesome  :yes:
Title: Re: FSO loaded mod self-test -- possible?
Post by: headdie on August 05, 2013, 06:08:55 pm
excellent stuff, be interesting to see how this develops.