EDIT: The 'NOTE' section doesn't seem to be shown to the user anywhere.. is that just a legacy 'table flag', bug, or future feature?
Originally, it was a message displayed to the user after installation of that mod had completed. The NOTE entry for the SCP config file tells the user to install OpenAL.
Right now it isn't displayed anywhere, but I think I'll add it to the log of installation results that shows up on the final page. If you want to add a "be aware of this before you install the mod" message, like the 3.6.12 MVP constraint, you could probably put that in the the mod description.
It
should be possible to add support for bold, italic, hyperlink, etc., in the More Info box, but I would want to defer that until after the more critical stuff is fixed.
A standard for packaging mods could be a good idea (it would be about : putting everything at the root of the archives, or putting everything in a folder named like the mod inside the archive ; packaging everything inside VPs and avoiding subfolders ; choosing a single archive format that doesn't suck, hint : RAR is terrible, 7Z is good but not installed by default on linux distros, ZIP is inefficient, BZ2 and LZMA are awesome...).
I ran into this issue while making my installer. Bulletproofing against non standard packaging was harder than bulletproofing against user input.
As I had to rely on Linux unpacking command line tool, i can tell you that "unzip" is perfectly fine, "7z" is not that great, and "unrar" is terrible.
The installer uses a wrapper around 7zip, so anything 7zip can extract, so can the installer -- regardless of whether 7zip is installed on the machine itself. So people can feel free to standardize on .7z if they like.
Now we're getting somewhere! This version seems to be much more consistent and reliable.
Great!
It seems like if the first hash check fails, it refuses to check the other hashes. This is isn't highly necessary, but it could be much more helpful. I had one MD5 wrong for the BtA download, which I fixed, only to suddenly find out the second was wrong too. It'd be handy if it did them all and gave all the warnings at once. (I'm thinking of a scenario where someone has to ask the mod creator to fix the config file once, twice, three times because of untested MD5s.)
Good idea. I'll change this.
Could you do the same scrolling fix to the other sections of the installer (installing... and install review)?
Uh... I could, but that's more tricky, because the Installing section has panels of variable height. (Especially if you expand/collapse a few of them.) It's possible, but it would take some custom implementation.
Still not ending the process properly for on my computer.
Drat. I'll keep looking into this.
I don't suppose "null" is expected behaviour (this is supposed to refer to all the MVPs children).
It's not getting the name for some reason. That's probably an easy fix; I bet it's the same bug that directed certain mod-specific logging into the main logger instead of the mod logger.
1. What's a MediaVP? I'd suggest using the term "graphical upgrades" or "audiovisual upgrades" in the description for the "basic" and "complete" mode of installation options. Certainly any newcomer who doesn't know what MediaVPs means will likely end up downloading them anyway because they're part of the basic option, but explaining it would save them a moment of confusion.
This is probably something that mod authors can clarify using the More Info box. Keep in mind that most config files are maintained by the mod authors themselves. I was only able to change a few of them (SCP, FSPort, Sync/Transcend/Windmills) because I had access to those sites' FTP space.
2. The splash screen says "Freespace SCP", then the title bar says "FreeSpace Open Installer", the header image says "Freespace Installer" and the text talks about "FreeSpace 2 Open". If I'm a complete newcomer who's just been pointed to the installer as a way to an upgraded FreeSpace experience, I'll be somewhat confused as to whether this is a FreeSpace 2 thing only or whether it also has something to do with FS1 (and it does, because FSPort). Sure it requires a FreeSpace 2 install, but even so the 2 appears after "FreeSpace" in one place but not in another. I think "FreeSpace 2 Open" should be used everywhere to prevent confusion as to what this is about.
I suppose I could standardize on this.
3. The window is not resizable. It's annoying when I'm downloading and can't make the window taller so I could keep an eye on all bars at once.
You're not the first person to say so, but I'm going to defer that for now. Making it resizeable has the potential to introduce layout problems.