Okay, so I'm seeing a lot of great ideas that would be really nice to have the possibility to play. Many of them would be better as mods, to not waste dev time, to avoid ruining aesthetics or simply so you could have more than one way to play your games. now, I know mods are supported, but it is very important to me that it is supported the right way. Many mod supporting games lets the mods have their own website host, where you have to find the way to get the mod from the website and other things that really makes modding the game difficult and something only few decide to do. Now to my suggestion. When your in the game lobby looking at games you should be able to see the maps and mods required by the game, and there should be a button to simply download and install the mod with one click. And a sort of app-store/google-play like thing in a part of it where you can look at which mods are available. I hope it doesn't sound ridiculous.
Auto-mod downloading will probably break on Vista/Win7 if and only if files are downloaded to Program Files (either one, if you happen to have two). There's a little security feature, which makes some assumptions about how programs typically operate, that prevents malicious code from overwriting or modifying installed programs. The assumptions are pretty sound for most applications, which scarcely are modified or changed. But games, particularly those with mods, don't behave according to those assumptions.
Plenty of applications that reside in Program Files auto-update. Even if it results in an UAC popup I'm sure they could make it work.
Things basically need to be checksummed and signed by Microsoft for authenticity. That's not happening for each mod. Easiest option is to just install mods to Documents instead. Both Sup1/Sup2 did this.
We already have an updater that can elevate to put things in program files if needed. The way we make some of these decisions is going to be based around making multi-platform work as smoothly as possible.
Off topic, but I was reading this and thought "multi-platform? when were consoles..." and then I just smiled as I remembered you were being Awesome and going win/mac/linux. I love it when preconceptions break down. On topic, thinking about this, I really don't know how this works in a mac or linux environment. On windows, saves/mods have been stored either in Program Files, Documents, or in some cases AppData. Where are similar spots located in mac and linux? I believe Linux has a Program Files-ish area, and a Home directory where stuff is stored? No clue where in mac though.
Same for mac. You have a folder where the application goes, and ALL configuration goes separate. The application may NEVER try to write to it's application directory, the only directory it is allowed to write to, is the home directory. For linux: If an application requires an update mechanism other than the package management provided by the distribution, then the application is even forced to completely install itself in the home directory only because thats the only place a linux user could ever write to. Writing to any other directory requires root level rights which are not to be granted lightly.
So from the sounds of it, everything will probably be in the appropriate user folder. Something like ~/.PlanetaryAnnihilation for Linux and OSX, My Documents\Planetary Annihilation for Windows. I would rather it is the Documents folder for Windows, since that makes preserving mods between uninstall, reinstall, or computer transfer a lot easier than if it was in a Program Files.
Yeah, I also dislike mods going in the Program Files folder. I prefer My Documents/My Games, but just My Documents also works.
on linux the home-directory is very good for stuff like this. on windows however it often is problematic, cause while there might be a home-like folder, it has many many subfolders, some even hidden, with no particular rules where to find stuff. That often leads to long searches for specific game-files. So @Uber: please make sure to use just one single folder at the toplevel of the home-directory of the given platform. dont hide files at places like "C:\Users\ColaColin\AppData\Local\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander Forged Alliance\cache". just make it C:\Users\ColaColin\PA just like with linux, where it probably would be ~/PA. No need to hide it either.
I'd say just use My Documents/My Games on windows, which is where lots of games already store stuff. I definitely agree with not using AppData though, SoaSE is annoying for using it, as is Total War Shogun 2. Really annoying to find it.
