[Fineus]

Hey all. It occurs to me that as more and more changes get made to the game - there are more and more files to keep track of. This is all good and well if you can keep on top of things, but there comes a time when you don't know what requires what and so on.

How about moving individual missions into their own .VP file (or similar) wherin is contained all the other files required for that mission. Or indeed create references in VP files that shortcut to others (so that entire ships could be kept in one VP file - including their maps, model and table entry), loading FRED or FS2 would load that ships entire VP into the game automatically.

It just seems a way to create slightly more "modular" mods where any mod can be taken and instantly slotted into the game - instead of going through individual files and such.

A good idea?

[Goober5000]

Ugh.  Ships.tbl can't be split this way; it would require too many annoying changes, and the current system works fine.  Ix'nay on the plug-and-play.

[kasperl]

wouldn't this requiere compiling the tables on startup of the game?
i was told that that would need large amount of coding

edit:
the real coder beat me to it, too bad.

[Goober5000]

'Tis okay, kasperl; your original response shows that you've been paying attention.

[KARMA]

maybe it's stupid, but... there are some ships that may require a specific sexps whenever used, for example I may build an xwing with s-foils closed and one open, and then I would need the sexp to change model, well, I was wondering if it would be useful/possible to have the possibility a per ship set of sexps that will be preloaded whenever those ships are present?

[Fineus]

I imagined that this was a 50/50 deal - plug and play mods would be great but it's a hell of a lot of work and most people in the community do have a solid grasp of installing mod files anyhow.

[Kazan]

More VP files = More disk overhead + Longer CFileSystem Initialization + Longer CFileSystem Seek Times = Game Delays on Load and higher disk requirements = unhappy me + users

to simply

More VP Files = Unhappy users


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BTW "Change on the Fly" mods are not possible with Volition's CFileSystem  - and it's such a basic part of the system and the system's design is so unrobust that it's not safe to try and alter the CFileSystem

Changing mods requires restarting the problem

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by KARMA
maybe it's stupid, but... there are some ships that may require a specific sexps whenever used, for example I may build an xwing with s-foils closed and one open, and then I would need the sexp to change model, well, I was wondering if it would be useful/possible to have the possibility a per ship set of sexps that will be preloaded whenever those ships are present?

You could have rotating S-foil submodels here.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
I imagined that this was a 50/50 deal - plug and play mods would be great but it's a hell of a lot of work and most people in the community do have a solid grasp of installing mod files anyhow.

That's essentially it. 'Twould require many, many code changes.

[Fineus]

Well, although the poll doesn't seem to illustrate what people are posting (people say no, the poll says yes) lets forget the idea. No biggy