Endoperez:
Yes, I suppose it would, but it is (or should be) actually easier to hard code the enable/disable and increase/decrease flags into the spell/item objects and do a simple interface (checkbox)where you set those flags to the appropriate values than to code a procedure that first runs a checklist of mods and the properties of each mod, then contacts a server or otehr client, downloads stuff and puts it in some folder (possibly overwriting something if different versions of same mod have same names and no internal versioning), then checks that and discards if the check comes up with some shortage, at which point the whole ridiculous thing has to run through again.
Do you understand the concepts of design? Any design in general, not just software design? If you need something done and you can do it two different ways to achieve the exact same effect, the simpler implementation is always better, because it requires less resources and is less error prone and less likely to break other things. Never mind being less work to do.
In this case, your idea of doing it via a mod download system has the following drawbacks:
- Requires a lot of routines that do not contribute anything toward the end goal itself (all the network resolution stuff)
- Is overly complex
- Greatly increases probability of errors being compounded and these compounded errors being propagated (in addition to the possibility of code bugs, the system relies on user-provided components that may or may not have been error-checked, and it propagates these, possibly overwriting other data).
- Requires more active agents in the setup phase, instead of just the host setting up the game and defining the parameters (this is another place where errors and compound errors can appear)
- May cause version conflicts (software versions, mod versions)
That's just off the top of my head, and I can barely code a program that calculates the distance from grid zero to a given point. I'm quite certain the professional software developers on the forum can easily come up with half a dozen more reasons for why the enable/disable or increase/decrease cost implementations via mod download are a bad idea.
Edi