Goodmorning all,
From what i understand, Stardoc wants to set multiplayer up as Dopplex was stateing. A central repository where you click to activate the mod's you want to play with. and then everybody who joins, sees the list, accepts playing with that list, and when they hit go, the game will autodownload any bits they are missing.
This got me thinking though, How do you search this databace? and what about mods that change the underlieing mechanics? or incompatible mods?
by way of examples;
a standard mod is a bug fix mod, most good modding communities end up finding bugs in the game and fixing them.
a balance mod, where game elements are re-ballanced by the community.
a total mod, which would be incompatible with the two above mods. such as the CIV 4 mod which changes the game to Master of Orion. or Sid Myers Alpha Century.
and then you have questions about what to do about mods that work together, but really don't belong together, Tom's Death knights, Sallies Death (k)Nights, and John's dEATH kNights. Each mod may all be fun and entertaining, but having all three would be a headache.
so i was thinking that Stardoc would do well to have a system where mods can be or are automatically grouped into packages. What i'm evisioning is two lists, one of mods, each and every mod, and then one of packages, and when you click on a package to inspect it the mods that are included in the package are displayed, and those that are incompatible with the package are displayed. if you select the mod package, all the mods on the first list that are included whould be highlighted, or ticked, those that are incompatible become crossed out, and then you can choose a second mod pac, or click individual mods you want to add.
Now as people use the mods if two mods almost always get used together, a mod pack would be generated by the algorithm, or by users, and put into the second list, if two or more mod packs are almost always used together a third mod pac would be made that has all the bits of the other two. If a mod pack stops being used or is not used, it would be deleated (not the mods, just the option to pick them all at once) to keep the mod pack list from becoming too populated [thus causing the same problem we're attempting to avoid too many options to pick from no way to search them all]. Of course each pack and each mod would also have a indicator of it's popularity, and what stage it is in (new, etablished, changing, nearly discarded).
Does anybody with more artictic talent then i think this could be doable, how it might look and would want to draw up a draft? for this or any other solution?
Take care all
Robbie
