Hi. I’m going to commit second part of submods support tomorrow that will bring support of submods to launcher.
Now VCMI will read mods not only from /Mods directory but also from all Mods directory of each mod. So each mod may have following structure:
<modname>/
mod.json
Content.zip
Mods/
submod1/
<mod structure>
submod2/
<mod structure>Notes:
- Submods can use archives simiar to normal mods (e.g. Content.zip) but submods themselves (e.g. submod directory or mod.json) can not be in archive.
- Submods are handled recursively so it is possible to have submods in submod and so on.
- for places where VCMI needs mod ID submods can be referred to as .
- submods will be loaded only if parent mod is present and enabled
Known issues:
- If parent mod is disabled launcher may display submods as enabled.
- [FIXED] Launcher can’t handle submods in repository yet.
- [FIXED] Launcher ignores submods of inactive mods.
- There is weird update delay in toggling submods on and off. Bug is only visual - launcher applies changes in settings immediately. (for some reason model does not sends correct signals to view)
- [FIXED] (unrelated note to myself) Launcher still prefers using data from repo to local data. Reported in Tarnum mod thread.
Changes that I’d like to make with current mods in repository:
- Localizations (mostly Russian so far): will be turned in submods.
- VCMI “mod”: should get language-specific submods as easy way to indicate desired translations.
- Cove: will be reorganized into set of submods with parent mod named “HotA”.
- High resolutions pack: I’d like to split it from the rest of package. If needed, it may remain part of release package but I’d like to get rid of current “core.zip” package and keep all files which are necessary for vcmi in repository
- True type fonts: I’m considering merging this mod into repository and turning it into disabled by default config option. Reasoning: current bitmap fonts don’t work well with unicode since they provide only language-specific character set.
Of course, only changes that do not break 0.95 compatibility will get into repo for now so this is more-less my plans for next release.
Planned changes in mod format:
- boolean field “keepDisabled” that wil control whether (sub-)mod will be enabled on install. I prefer such wording to something like “keepEnabled” is that in this way we’ll keep current auto-enabling behavior (default value for bool is false).
- field “license” - indicates license of mod. Exact format of this field is either:
-
- string that indicates license (recommended CC-BY-SA 4.0).
-
- struct that consists from 2 items: “name” (e.g. “CC-BY-SA-4.0”) and “url” that will point to license (either link to file in repo or to some other location of license)
- object field “changelog” - object that consists from entries “version” : “list of changes”
- list field “screenshots” that will contain list of screenshots for this mod. Screenshots should be uploaded to vcmi.eu instead of hosting them externally to avoid dead links.
Example of changes:
"keepDisabled" : false,
"license" : "CC-BY-SA-4.0",
"changelog" : {
"1.0" : " a lot of stuff",
"1.0.1" : " a lot of stuff",
"1.1" : " a lot of stuff",
"1.2" : " a lot of stuff"
},
"screenshots" : "http://example.com/img1.png", "http://example.com/img2.png" ]Note on mod licenses:
I think that we should decide on license that will be used for all mods that do NOT contain H3 data. CC-BY-SA looks like a good choice since this is closest one to GPL which we use for code. URL: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
I’m going to contact mod authors if they’re OK with this license but I don’t expect any problems since these are more-less terms that were used by most of HoMM community for quite a while.
This also includes assets that are required for VCMI to run properly - stuff like creature window and quest window should be replaced with “free” assets and uploaded to trunk (I want to finally get rid of issues that come from missing data package)
