[WIP] System Sharing

Thanks! I'll look into that after I work on the unit name theme integration.

so, I tried to install it, and Look at that! I screwed it up! I really should look before I leap...

Anyway, can someone give me instructions for installation? Because random guesswork isn't working for me at the moment.

Well, what went wrong? I haven't tested it very much because this is still just here for testing and development, but I do think it should work. Are you getting errors? Do you have any other mods installed that could conflict?

Keep in mind that this isn't an actual release. The client code seems pretty good by now but the server is just thrown together. Also, the oldest version I posted is definitely broken.

I just made a folder in the PA mods folder labelled: "cShareSystems" and stuck all the files that were inside that zip file into that folder. I didn't see any errors at all, the thing just doesn't even appear.

Be sure to use the one I posted an hour ago, not the one from Friday. The mod goes in the mods folder that is in %AppData%\Uber Entertainments mods, or something (not on windows right now so I can't verify that). Not the mods folder in program files (which really shouldn't exist).

Just remember that I posted the code as a resource for anyone trying to help with the server, a demo for people following development, and for testing so you can report bugs. This isn't meant for actual system sharing yet.

We all have so much modding to do! Need more modders...

Yes, that is where I put it, and I did use the right one. However, all my other mods are in their own individual folders inside the mods folder, but yours didn't come with one, so I made one myself. Probably screwed something up doing that.

The zip is named cSystemSharing_v0.3.0.zip, which is a PAMM naming convention. The folder should be just cSystemSharing, and the first level of that should have a folder and a modinfo.json file. You might need to run PAMM once for it to show up though. I'm debugging from a tablet right now, so I can't actually look into this. It is entirely possible that I made a mistake.

Ah! now it works! Just had to run PAMM once. Thanks!

Great! Please give feedback on it. I also recommend running it with my enhanced system preview mod.

Oh I already see an error on the server. Those systems you added don't have a name indexed, so searching by name won't work until I can fix that. The good news is the bug is on the server and the client won't need an update.

I already am!

I tried it out, and I think there should be a way to share systems from the system overview menu, not just from the system editor screen.

Also, some more "wishful thinking" suggestions:

-A rating system for maps
-A tie-in with PA matchmaking that uses random maps from the list, with a bias towards highly-rated maps, or only using highly-rated maps.

Integration with PA Stats is likely coming, but there is no decision on what exactly that will be. I am worried about basing matchmaking on votes or popularity because this would be easy to hack and ruin for everyone.

System rating is a good idea. If only I had more time!

Sharing directly from the My Systems tab is a possibility if enough people want it. My worry is that systems would get spammed too much. I kind of like making it a little slower to share them but very easy to browse and search.

you could implement a specific sorting system for different kinds of systems.

That gets a little harder. What kinds of systems do you have in mind? Unfortunately everything related to orbits is computed by the engine. I don't know what planets are orbiting others. If someone could reverse engineer this or if the devs released their math for calculating orbits, this might become possible.

You could sort by number of planets as a start, then planet sizes.

Sort by number of planets is already in. There is a sort field in the filter area at the top of the page. Sort by planet size is something I'm less clear on. Do you mean just sort by starting planet size?

Starting planets, than next largest, and next largest, etc.

True that!

I'm adding modding support to this so that mods can easily add servers and users can quickly switch between them. A mod can add a server like this;

Code:

cShareSystems.addServer({
    "name" : "Clan Server",
    "save_url" : "http://example.com/save",
    "search_url" : "http://example.com/search"
});

The mod will probably be distributed with PA Stats as the only server, but the game will show a select drop-down if there is more than one server available.

@LavaSnake if you do make that gApps server for this, I'm pretty sure the eSports league being organized will use it. All they have to do is run the server and then add a mod to PAMM with the addServer() call.