Use the In-Game Community Mods - Original PA Mod Manager (PAMM) is Obsolete

So i wonder if this could work. PAMM can have its own mod to shadow the ui_mod_list.js file which for the mean time would load the current ui mods but from the new mods folder.

or just mod it to get rid of the ui_mod_list.js all together and to just load it from a json file instead, because that makes way more logical sense to me.

Good idea

hmm there you have a point loading from servers that won't work with my idea.

damn
we could create a load_from_external.json maybe , but then again we are creating extra files.

when i download the Mod Manager he shows me Version 2.0.0 not 2.0.1 and 2.0.0 will he install too

but your download link shows 2.0.1

Lg.

Actually it does work with your idea just fine, by making a small loader mod that has a global js file that does this:

Code:

loadScript("http://www.nanodesu.info/stuff/pa/mods/live/pastats/pa_stats_loader.js");

The one thing I dont like about your idea is that it has no obvious indicator that certain places shadow while other places hook into the ui-scene-mods-system.
Imho it should be made more obvious, so it is easier to pick up.

After reading into the mod changes thread better. I think we should just try to merge modinfo.json and the current ini system. So features that are needed from the current system just transplant those data fields into the modinfo.json, and mods.json.

Then we create a mod that takes those json files (hopefully the one already loaded in the game) and just completely obsolete the ui_mod_list.js.

At that point you just need to have the scene options within the json file, then modify the loadMods function(its in common.js) to load those files from that.

And the new mod mounting feature in the mods.json would take care of enabling and disabling mods. All the mod manager would need to do it just change that one file.

That's a bit what I suggested use modinfo.json as the current ini system and use folder structure to create ui_mod_list.js

See example : folder structure
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/modinfo.json
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/ui/mods/live_game/live_game.js (no shadow cause in mods)
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/ui/mods/live_game/custom.js (just another file)
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/ui/mods/live_game/custom.css
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/ui/mods/some.jpg
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/ui/mods/settings/settings.js
docnsettings/pa/mods/mymod/ui/alpha/live_game/live_game.js (shadow cause in alpha)
docnsettings/pa/mods/mods.json

You can see it if they are under ui\mods or ui\alpha

Ah anyway the goal should be to remove the ini cause it's practically the same data as in the modinfo.json

It's great that we can discuss this And have 1 good tool

I think it would be better to explicitly define the files loaded within a configuration file. Because lets say your mod has an initialization file that you tell to pa load this. Then there is a lot of other files within that. it would be wasteful to go through and load all files in the folder when your initialization code does that anyways .

They are similar in the fact that we remove the ini system and the ui_mods_list.js.

But my notion is that we move the info currently in them all in the modinfo.json. no weird file structure limits for mods or anything.

The problem i see with the new system coming in, and the old one not changing any. If you want to use current ui mods, and you want to follow the new modding stuff. Its impossible to do without making a mod to load all of your mods.

good for me

I imagine uber intend on merging the functions of ui_mods_list.js and modinfo.json/mods.json, but for now they are separate. I believe at this point we should do as little as possible to get the system working within the new mods folder, I agree with dfanz0r earlier post of just making PAMM output a mod with ui_mods_list.js.

The reason for this is we know it will change, and soon; doing a whole bunch of work seems wasteful until the modding system has settled down a bit.

It wouldn't be all that much work though. at least on the pa side. I think i could get it working within probably an hour or so of the patch release. As long as its exactly how i think it will be.

So it seems like this new modding stuff is all implemented within the game engine. There is no reference to it anywhere in the javascript files. That would be why they don't intersect any.

@raevn as mentioned above the text for the download in the first post is 2.0.1, but the url is for 2.0.0

Just nuked my mods dir and started from scratch. I installed Commander Health Display and it didn't install the requirements or tell me about them. :S
Should be easy to reproduce, just do that ^^

It doesn't automatically install them too; I should add that.

If you try and turn the mod on it will tell you if there are dependencies missing (or enable them too if they are installed).
Disabling a mod will also disable anything that depends on it.

wow Kaspersky blocks every single step of the way, from download to running, had to tell it to shut up ten times.

Small update to fix a priority ordering bug. This would have been an issue as more mods start to have dependencies.

raevn are you already testing on moving PAMM to a seperate directory for then running the mods from the userprofile instead of the pa folder ?

I'll be looking at updating PAMM for the new modding system this weekend.

You're absolutely right that we'll be cleaning up some of these separate systems more soon. I've got a bunch of mod-related support work on my plate coming up starting right at the beginning of the new year (a lot of it internal, but some will be external-facing like this), and getting these different mod systems to play nicely together will be part of that. It just wasn't something I could reasonably do in the time I had available for launcher-related file system work. Not to mention that my javascript fu isn't the best (I'm more of a C++ guy) so I'm ramping up on that more before I go plowing through making wanton UI changes like that.

So hang in there. Right now I'm busy doing some unrelated i18n prep work, plus we're working on getting a stable build up for the Christmas/New Years break, so modding-related changes aren't in the cards for the next couple weeks. But once the new year starts, that's going to be my focus for a while, and I'll see what I can do to make these systems more compatible.

Edit: speeling