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Topics - MenschMaschine

#1
If you do not know Socrates, look him up before you freak out and/or feel insulted or attacked.
None of that is intended  :-)

With that out of the way,
I fondly remember the days when you heard about a new game, in a game magazine made of paper
at most a month or two in advance of its release.

Good Times. Easy Times for gamers.

Now there are how many? Let's just say... 7 entirely different newsplatforms with millions of readers,
partici-pants each, rumourizing around, gullible and easily impressed.

It certainly helps small studios getting the word around about something they make.
And it quenches the today's gamers thirst for immediate satisfaction, perceived importance,
and at times even self-entitlement.

A Trend, in my personal view, that arose from the Developers telling the gamers that they matter,
from the very beginning of the planning stages of a game.
Combined with the "early access"-systems that are now in place, Developers kinda shot themselves
into their own foot.

These days, announcing a game easily results in thousands and thousands of posts, tweets, comments.
Small Developers usually do not have the manpower to read, much less process all those suggestions,
wishes, thoughts.

And yet, simply the action of posting often enough makes the gamers -think- that what they write
will be read and thought about, maybe even replied to or implemented into the new shiny gem that in their
mind will (again) be the best game for all time.

Nowadays, Developers of games have a problem. They have ONE vision, 1 dream, A plan.
And millions of gamers who all have their own visions, dreams, plans.
Obviously, Developers want to make games that appeal to many people, so they can sell many copies
of their game. (there -are- other reasons too of course, but... let's be honest)

That can become an act of balance, to get the vision right, coherent and true without alienating or
even losing too many future customers. But then again, gamers these days have a short-lived memory.
They may complain and whine and even file lawsuits, but a few weeks, or even days into the future,
the next buzz, hype, promise is already there, nagging, nagging for their attention.

How do gamers today keep afloat in the ocean of perceived great games, without drowning, losing their
integrity, wasting time and money and more importantly, commitment to The Next Big Thing?

How do Developers cope with their brainchildren being questioned, poked, prodded from all sides
without losing their way, -their- integrity, fans and customers?

Sometimes, i wish i would develop games. SO many ideas...
Sometimes, i am glad that i don't. SO many traps...
#2
Because i thought, the originating thread was a bit misplaced in the MODS section,
i start this thread here...

This is a detailed design for a method where VoidExpanse can load
data from unpacked CPK and/or MPK-files.

Of course the game would be slower running from an actual
filesystem compared to the virtual one that the archives provide,
but the purpose is modding and testing only anyways.

VoidExpanse is, regarding the number and size of the files we have access to,
not so big (yet), but still... to make it easier for the game (later),
i think the best way would be like this:

All CPK files are moved to the main game directory and are read from there.
If later it is decided to add moddable content, like a hypothetical gui.cpk,
this also would make the filestructure more easy to understand.

If then one starts modding, one can unpack any or all of the CPK-files to their own
directory (like it is now with core.cpk, only then there are unpacked files)
and each one that -is- unpacked, -has- to be unpacked completely.

Filehandling, i guess, is easier when the game does not have to gather data
about which file is to be read from the packed CPK and wich one is to be
read from the unpacked CPK. This system also would have no need for a
global registryfile where the user has to declare which files are unpacked.

Additionally, there is a MODS folder in the [username]documents\my games\voidexpanse
structure (this has to be adapted to mac and linux of course), into which one can
copy single files, which have to be in the same folders as they were within the archive.

The loading hierarchy then would be like this:
1. packed CPK
2. unpacked CPK
3. MODs folder with MPK-files
4. MODs folder with unpacked, single files
   (hm, maybe it might be useful if in the modsfolder the CPK -can- be unpacked
   partially, so released mods won't include all the stuff that isn't modded,
   just as it is now)

In other words, the Game first looks, if there is a directory with the same name as one
of the CPK files, reads data from there and overrides the data from the CPK with the same
name, then it looks at the userfolder for any packed MPK-files and overrides the data read
previously and finally it looks for unpacked MPK-files in the MODs-folder and
replaces already read data with the MODs folder data.

I think, this system would provide mod-developers with the biggest amount of flexibility,
while still being not so much work for AT. It also would make modding easier, faster and less
prone to error.

Regarding reloading of CPK and MPK data...
One way to do that would be to go to the options menu and find a button in the game section,
which reads [Reload Gamedata], this would make modding even more easy and comfy,
especially because sometimes the client and server setup at the start of the gameprogram
still seems to be a bit wonky, so reloading the data by restarting the game can get
a bit frustrating.
#3
Modding info / On-Board Messagesystem
April 15, 2015, 03:28:48 AM
Greetings  :)

From inside modulemining.js i want to send a message to the player, but console.print or document.write does not seem to work.

How can i send a notification (including the value of variables from mentioned script) to the screen of the player?