PBW now supporting SE5.

[geoschmo]

Ed Kolis said:
The downside of this is, you're right, you can't change the mod being used in a savegame without actually modifying the contents of the mod data folder. This means that in order to upgrade a game to a newer version of a mod, the newer version must overwrite the older version, forcing everyone on PBW to upgrade their copy of the mod.

I'm still a little fuzzy on how this works. If the mod data is included in the savegame file, why would changing the contents of the mod data folders have any effect on a game at all once it's started? And if changing the data in the mod folders does have some effect, that tells me the game is touching the data folders during host processing, which means we will have to have the mod data folders on the server for the mods to work. Perhaps the only thing the savegame file actually contains regarding the mod is a pointer to which data folders it is using, not the actual data itself?

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Hey wait! *smacks head* I so stoopid. When you load a saved game it doesn't even take you to the screen where you select a version. I kept thinking it did, but you only see the version select screen when you create a new game. So probably I was correct when I said the savegame contains a pointer of some kind to the mod folder. So the mods would have to be on the server, but we mayhaps wouldn't need command line options.

Though this has the potential to be way ugly. It would mean that the mod folder would have to be named the same on the PBW server as it is on everyone's pc's. With SE4 I could call the mod folder whatever I wanted and just point to the correct folder with the command line option.

And as you say Ed new versions of mods would need different folder names or all games using the mod would have to upgrade at the same time. Yuck!

You know the built in mod selector for SE5 seemed like a great feature at first, but I'm thinking now maybe not so much. By locking it into the game itself, it kind of limits our flexibility in this area.

Here's a question. What happens if you try to run the host turn for a mod savegame and don't have the mod folders on the host machine. Will the game run at all?

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

If the mod folder isn't named exactly the same, SEV shrugs, then loads stock instead.

This can have rather..odd..results.

So it looks like the savegame just has a pointer that says "look at this mod folder".

[Ed Kolis]

No, actually new versions of mods should NOT have new folder names; otherwise they will be automatically savegame-incompatible because the folder name (which is SE5's key to the mod) is different. The only time new versions of mods should have new folder names is when they are going to break savegames already. Captain Kwok knows about this; he designed the Balance Mod so that it always goes into the Balance Mod directory, not Balance Mod v0.98 or whatever, because then no one could upgrade their games. (Well, they'd have to manually rename the folder. ) I suppose once Kwok releases a version of the mod that is not compatible with old savegames, he'll rename the folder to something like Balance Mod v1.x, and keep that until he reaches v2.0 or something.
The alternative would be to have a separate directory for every mod version on PBW, and force players to go around renaming their folders or making shortcuts in their GameTypes directory for backward compatibility with old savegames... Dunno about you but I prefer the forced upgrading between compatible versions personally

[se5a]

maybe we should twist aaron's arm to add a line in the Mod_Definition file for it too look for.

[Fyron]

If it did use the data stored in the savegame file though I think that would mean there would be no way to change mods once a game started, so that would be a bad idea.

There is no way to change mod folder names, since you can not specify a mod to play the savegame with from within the game interface either. It is indeed a bad idea.

[Will]

Here's an idea: create dynamic links to mod folders. In Windows-speak, that would be a Shortcut. Then, PBW would create a unique shortcut for each game, which would be mirrored on all the players' machines. So, if there is a game called "The Best SEV Game Ever", it would be created with a "mod folder" called "The Best SEV Game Ever Mod", which would then point to the mod folder being used. To upgrade one game to a new version of the mod, simply redirect the shortcut to the new "Mod v.x.xx" folder, which prevents PBW-wide game upgrades. I could probably write a short little dialog program that will search for the SEV folder(s), list out all the mod folder(s), and then generate a specifically-named shortcut to the proper place, if it turns out this works. But next week. Too much school work to finish this week

I leave it to someone else to try out the shortcut idea for now....

[geoschmo]

Yeah, that would work Will if I understand what you mean. It would be kind of a pain in the butt for the PBW admins currently as we would in effect be setting up a separate mod for every game. Even in cases where they are using the same mod.

It's kind of along the lines of an idea I have had for a future version of PBW which would allow the game owner to setup their own mods. You'd basically upload a zip file to the game page and PBW would extract this each time the turn was processed. Then changing the mod would be as easy as the game owner uploading a different zip file. We currently don't have it coded to work that way though.

Geoschmo

[Will]

Not quite, Geo... Instead of making a new mod folder for every game, you would make a new mod SHORTCUT for every game. So if there are five games on PBW using Mod_XYZ, you would have one Mod_XYZ folder, and five shortcuts to the Mod_XYZ folder, each shortcut named after the game. So, upon game creation, all that is needed is a script that will generate a shortcut for the game. As long as SEV is set up to resolve shortcuts when used as a folder... which I don't know if it can.

If not, then Kwok's method would probably be the best way, barring Aaron making changes to how mods are kept in savegames and loaded.

[geoschmo]

Will said:
As long as SEV is set up to resolve shortcuts when used as a folder... which I don't know if it can.

Oh, I see. It should be easy enough to test whether SE5 will handle a shortcut instead of a folder. You can put a shortcut in your SE5 folder and see if SE5 recognizes it as a mod when you create a new game.

Even if it works for SE5, it doesn't eliminate the main stumbling block to your idea from a PBW perspective. I'd still have to manually setup a mod version for every game. It would save me from having to have actual separate copies of the mod for each game, but that's only a matter of disk space which is really a minor concern. You can always throw another hard drive or two in the server.

However, if I could recode PBW to do what you are suggesting that could work pretty well I think. But that's, as they say, the rub.