SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

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Johannes
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SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Johannes » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:17 am

Image
SUM Overgrowth Utilities - Overview Post



Hello Overgrowth modding community!

This post has been created to discuss the SUM OG Utilities that are being developed by Anton, Psi, Aaron and I (Johannes)

If you want to download the SUMLauncher component of this project, please
GO HERE!



What is SUM OG Utilities?

SUM OG Utilities stands for 'Settings, Updates, and Mods Overgrowth Utilities'. It is a planned 4-part project designed to be an integral tool for downloading and managing community made content, as well as the go-to place for modders that want to make their mods easily accessible to everyone.

It is based in part on Anton's Main Menu Mod.

While the majority of the project is still a work in progress, we have released part 1, the SUMLauncher.

The rest of the components will be explained in detail here as they progress, but this topic will mostly be a resource for modders.


Part 1: SUMLauncher

The SUMLauncher is a Java program (with both Windows and Mac wrappers) that acts as a launcher, config editor, and alpha updater for Overgrowth.

Image

The program will serve additional purposes once parts 2, 3 and 4 of the project are ready for release.


Part 2: In-Game Mod Manager

We are working on an in-game mod manager that will be integrated in the game’s Main Menu. It will let you not only manage your installed mods, but also browse for mods that have been uploaded on the server (see part 3).

It will be based in-part on this mockup, but will be much more polished:
Image
(Originally from this old topic)

We are still waiting on some javascript functions that David has agreed to add to the engine, which will allow us to asynchronously communicate with the SUMLauncher. In short, when a user chooses to install a mod through the Mod Manager, it will be the SUMlauncher that does the heavy lifting.

Once it's ready, the Mod Manager will be automatically installed by the SUMLauncher when you first run it.


Part 3: Mod Database

We are working on the back-end Database that the other parts of this project will be relying on. It will host all of the mods and their respective metadata such as reviews, comments and screenshots, and will also handle users and user groups (for cooperative projects). The other Parts will access it with PHP Post queries.

Users will be able to upload mods to this database via the website (see step 4).


Part 4: Mod Website

The upload, commenting and rating functionalities will be done through a website. You can find an early mockup of the site here:
Image

We hope to be able to access the Wolfire forums to authenticate users, removing the necessity for additional registration.



What now?

As mentioned above, we are still waiting on some crucial in-game features to be able to fully create part 2 of the mod, but we do have lots of stuff to work on in the mean-time.

We really want the experience of adding mods to be painless and intuitive for any user, regardless of their level of computer expertise. Making sure that everything will work well requires lots of time on planning out the exact systems involved.

We will be adding more information to this topic as we are ready to release it.


If you have any other comments or feedback please leave a comment in the topic below.



Thanks!
~The SUM OG Utilities Team

mphasis
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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by mphasis » Mon Feb 13, 2012 2:55 pm

I've been thinking about writing a quick mod catalogue website for a while now.
Wouldn't it just be easier to write one website for browsing, commenting, voting and downloading(as opposed to having the Mod Manager connect to anything), and then open it inside OG (like Steam does with its store)
And then have a "Currently installed mods" manager (like the Steam Games screen) for when you're offline and you want to manage them?

If you need any help give me a shout ;) (I'm a full-time web app programmer in C#/ASP.NET, but I'd be happy do do some Django/Python/GWA work)

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Aaron » Mon Feb 13, 2012 4:49 pm

mphasis wrote:I've been thinking about writing a quick mod catalogue website for a while now.
Wouldn't it just be easier to write one website for browsing, commenting, voting and downloading(as opposed to having the Mod Manager connect to anything), and then open it inside OG (like Steam does with its store)
And then have a "Currently installed mods" manager (like the Steam Games screen) for when you're offline and you want to manage them?

If you need any help give me a shout ;) (I'm a full-time web app programmer in C#/ASP.NET, but I'd be happy do do some Django/Python/GWA work)
The problem is that it would not be possible to use such a system to download/install the mods. Additionally, having the content load directly from a website would require that you have an internet connection to view your mods and such, which would not be ideal.

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by mphasis » Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:02 am

The problem is that it would not be possible to use such a system to download/install the mods
You can use launch application links, or you could hardcode a download folder and fetch the required files from there. If we're being Awesomium specific, here is a link: http://support.awesomium.com/discussion ... oad-a-file
Additionally, having the content load directly from a website would require that you have an internet connection to view your mods and such, which would not be ideal.
But you said that your in-game mod manager would:
also browse for mods that have been uploaded on the server (see part 3).
I'm saying that your in-game mod browser should be completely offline and use images and descriptions that are downloaded as part of the mods to list the mods currently installed.

This would mean taking the star rating(from the mockup) out(as it is dynamic and would require an internet connection) and putting it in the online mod browser (which is actually just a website, much like Steam's store, which I think uses application links to link to the other parts of the program?).

We agree on almost everything, I'm saying that part 2(in-game mod browser) doesn't connect to part 3(Mod DB) as the relevant details are downloaded with the mod, and part 4(Mod Website) should replace the online component of part 2.

For authentication you could take a hash of a user's beta key.
Wolfire could provide you with the forum name of a user with a certain key, but it would be easier for people just to be able to set their names again.

Awesome work on part 1 btw ;).

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Johannes » Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:11 am

Hey mphasis, thanks for all your input =)

I'll be the guy mostly working in the in-game mod browser, and have done most of the planning of how this whole system will work. I completely agree that it needs to work offline. (unlike steam which arguably doesn't do that very well :P )

I simply meant that you'll also have the option of accessing the online database, finding a mod, and clicking 'install' all from inside the game, without ever having to worry about downloading the files and placing them manually. The point here is that it will be ridiculously easy for the users to use, and not the mess that managing mods is right now.

Effectively you can think of the mod manager being two parts, one to manage your installed/downloaded mods (offline) and one to find and install new mods (online).


Users having to download their mods from a website to manually install them is something I'm considering unacceptable, even if they only drag and drop it into a folder. Again, emphasis on the system being ridiculously easy to use.



I do apologize, my original post wasn't very clear on this. I'll be revising this document more in the future, but for now we are still stuck on having to wait for David to add two proprietary functions for us that will allow the in-game javascript to read and write to arbitrary text files, allowing asynchronous communication with the SUMLauncher.

Basically the in-game UI will be only a UI, and all of the heavy lifting will be done by the SUMLauncher which will be running in the background.

I understand that this may be a bit of a round-about way of handling things, but it's necessary since David really doesn't have the time at this point to build all of this into the engine himself. Eventually he might, but that won't be until the essential engine features that are necessary to complete the game are all mostly done, and we predict that may not be for another year at least.

We just don't want to wait that long, and think the modding community could really use a solid system like this sooner, rather than later.



Also allowing people to log in with their forum username is something that's in the works =)

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by mphasis » Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:25 am

lol, Tell him to give you source access and submit a patch :p.

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Johannes » Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:46 am

mphasis wrote:lol, Tell him to give you source access and submit a patch :p.
Heh, I do have source access actually, but my C++-foo pales in comparison to David's. He's promised he'll do it (reasonably) soon, and In any case it's not like we don't have anything to do: there's a ton of stuff we're still working on with the SUMLauncher. We have a pretty big release planned there hopefully by the end of the week.

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Johannes » Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:56 am

And here's an exciting update: David and I finally implemented the code we were waiting for. It turns out parts of the functions we needed were already in the source code, just not accessible in the main menu yet.

The next OG build will include 3 new javascript functions:

Code: Select all

Client.saveData(filepath,contents)
Client.loadData(filepath)
Client.getFileDateModified(filepath)
I won't go into exact details since their implementations are still subject to change, but these functions will allow the in-game UI to communicate with the SUMLauncher, as well as do some other neat stuff.

We're going to start working on a simple but (hopefully) robust communication protocol based on these functions now that our mod manager will use to talk to the launcher.

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by mphasis » Thu Feb 16, 2012 6:35 am

Yaaaahhhhh

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Johannes » Fri Feb 17, 2012 2:36 am

For anyone curious, here's a preliminary example of how a communication between the Launcher and the in-game component (which we're calling SUMCom) will play out: GoogleDocs Spreadsheet.

(Please keep in mind that this system probably won't be ready for a few weeks.)

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by adwuga » Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:50 pm

Johannes wrote:
mphasis wrote:lol, Tell him to give you source access and submit a patch :p.
Heh, I do have source access actually, but my C++-foo pales in comparison to David's. He's promised he'll do it (reasonably) soon, and In any case it's not like we don't have anything to do: there's a ton of stuff we're still working on with the SUMLauncher. We have a pretty big release planned there hopefully by the end of the week.
You have source access? That's pretty awesome! And I think everyone ever's C++-foo pales in comparison to David's.

I'm glad to see this is coming together.
Johannes wrote:The point here is that it will be ridiculously easy for the users to use, and not the mess that managing mods is right now.
Part of the mess of mod managing is that the really cool mods have to change game scripts, making them incompatible with each other, have to be updated every week, and you have to back up files and such, meaning no easy on off switch if the mod doesn't have one. Is there any plan to tell the game to automatically load any scripts in, for example, a "Scripts" folder? I barely know anything about this, but would it be possible for these scripts to call up stuff in the main game scripts so that it could tell the game to use

Code: Select all

Mod code here
instead of

Code: Select all

Specific Main Game code here
and

Code: Select all

"Specific Main Game code here"
"Mod code placed after Specific Main game code here"
? This would allow something like Last's blood mod to add in and replace everything it needs to, without having to modify any game files, making it easier for modders and users. If two mods replace the same code, to reduce incompatibilities, you could do something like the Nexus Mod Manager and allow users to say which mod should be loaded first.

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by AAorris » Mon Apr 02, 2012 10:19 am

Personally, I've prepared a setup that uses a main mod script which communicates with each modder's mod scripts; a Data/Mods folder.

Inside, it holds all of my objects, levels, and scripts (in Data/Mods/AAorris), and is used by a script in the main folder to communicate with the game code.

With this setup, I need to do very little editing of the game code to implement multiple mods. It's not automatic, but it's sure nicer to use for me.

I'll polish it up for this alpha and release it today. If you guys at SUM like it, maybe we can work together to jump start SUM's mod browser. :)

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by fienx » Mon Apr 09, 2012 2:04 am

I don't understand all this code stuff, but just from the perspective of a content creator I want to make a note/suggestion; I'll use Far Cry 2 as an example, since it is at fault for what I want to discuss.

I like to make maps a LOT. I'm in the process of finding a college for game design, and I want my main focus to be map design, so my concern here comes from the point of view of a map maker. With Far Cry 2, the online community for map creation is fairly limited. What I mean is that when you go to find new content, the maps that are highly rated consume the front page and knock down new content from users who are actively creating fresh content. In some ways, with far cry being a multiplayer shooter, it is good that everyone has the same map downloaded (aside only to the fact that you can download it while logging into each server) but this kind of system makes it difficult for the newcomers to try and promote their material.

I read above that there would be some kind of rating system for maps (1-5 stars, etc) . My concern is that certain maps will be ranked extremely high, and others will just be left in the dust without an audience. I know already there are quite a few custom maps for Overgrowth, which I've been trying out, and some are really good, where others are fairly lame, but they're all worth trying in my opinion. My main point I guess is that I want to stress the importance of community content, and that as someone who takes a lot of time and effort in creating new content, that there be a system set up for people like me who can get their content (in my opinion, art) recognized by the public.

This creation system is one of the best I've seen for map creation (I'm sort of new to the PC map builders being raised on consoles, and so if this is standard I don't really know), with being able to change object size, color, shape, etc. right in the editor, and I'm extremely excited to see all the things people can create. I just wanted to bring this up before anything was set in stone so maybe some brainstorming could be done to help implement a style of menu, organization or whatever people could think of to help keep new content flowing in, but also having a section designated for truly genius work.

I mean honestly with this much creative potential, this game could live on forever (I know I will never stop playing it, I haven't been able to since I pre-ordered). Especially with implementation of online multiplayer, which I have a feeling is in progress, this game is destined for greatness, and custom maps with friends is something I look forward to with great enthusiasm.

sorry for the tl;dr post btw, I tend to spend a little too much time on these.

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by Anton » Mon Apr 09, 2012 8:37 am

fienx wrote:
[+] snip
I don't understand all this code stuff, but just from the perspective of a content creator I want to make a note/suggestion; I'll use Far Cry 2 as an example, since it is at fault for what I want to discuss.
I like to make maps a LOT. I'm in the process of finding a college for game design, and I want my main focus to be map design, so my concern here comes from the point of view of a map maker. With Far Cry 2, the online community for map creation is fairly limited. What I mean is that when you go to find new content, the maps that are highly rated consume the front page and knock down new content from users who are actively creating fresh content. In some ways, with far cry being a multiplayer shooter, it is good that everyone has the same map downloaded (aside only to the fact that you can download it while logging into each server) but this kind of system makes it difficult for the newcomers to try and promote their material.

I read above that there would be some kind of rating system for maps (1-5 stars, etc) . My concern is that certain maps will be ranked extremely high, and others will just be left in the dust without an audience. I know already there are quite a few custom maps for Overgrowth, which I've been trying out, and some are really good, where others are fairly lame, but they're all worth trying in my opinion. My main point I guess is that I want to stress the importance of community content, and that as someone who takes a lot of time and effort in creating new content, that there be a system set up for people like me who can get their content (in my opinion, art) recognized by the public.

This creation system is one of the best I've seen for map creation (I'm sort of new to the PC map builders being raised on consoles, and so if this is standard I don't really know), with being able to change object size, color, shape, etc. right in the editor, and I'm extremely excited to see all the things people can create. I just wanted to bring this up before anything was set in stone so maybe some brainstorming could be done to help implement a style of menu, organization or whatever people could think of to help keep new content flowing in, but also having a section designated for truly genius work.
[+] snip
I mean honestly with this much creative potential, this game could live on forever (I know I will never stop playing it, I haven't been able to since I pre-ordered). Especially with implementation of online multiplayer, which I have a feeling is in progress, this game is destined for greatness, and custom maps with friends is something I look forward to with great enthusiasm.

sorry for the tl;dr post btw, I tend to spend a little too much time on these.
Hi Flenx, thanks for the thought out post, as we completely agree with the sentiment that new content needs to always be available.

We have already been working hard to make new content like maps available through the SUMLauncher and the Main Menu mod, and certainly are going to continue with that goal. Some of the options that became very important to me was both to be able to find new content, as well as content that is rated well, and so we have been working on ways to sort through maps. Currently (and sadly) in the menu mod, the content was first available in alphabetical order, because I had to add 40 new maps all at once. Ever since then, the newest maps are always placed at the head of the list. We now have over 85 maps in that mod, and it has definitely been easy to only focus on the new maps only... We added a random button for that, which helps, but when we release the full version of this mod, you should be able to sort by newest additions, highest rated, user created, number of times downloaded. (and maybe we should add most/least downloaded in the last week, as a way of saying "here's what people are playing")

Anyway, my hope is to have content as easy to get and use as possible, and keep that new content coming! I'm now very excited to see your maps, and it will be fun to play through them!

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Re: SUM OG Utilities - Overview Post

Post by learn_more » Thu May 10, 2012 12:43 pm

maybe it would be an option to have a 'hook' system in the scripting engine, (optionally just some markers inserted by sumlauncher)
that allows modders to registers to callbacks for when a certain function is called, and optionally skip the original imlementation and so.
pseudocode example:

Code: Select all

void DoSomething()
{
	if( !hooks::Pre("DoSomething") ) return;	//code inserted by sum launcher?
	//do something here (original og function)
	hooks::Post( "DoSomething" );				//code inserted by sum launcher?
}
i can also see a solution where a wrapper sits between overgrowth and the angelscript interface (like my dumper ^^) but that would be fairly platform specific, and someone needs to maintain platform specific (and fairly complicated / lowlevel) shit.

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