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[Uomoz]

Yeah, my only real concern is having to maintain yet another thing, so I'm also fine with it. Curious to see where it goes and how it develops.

O well with this thing you don't have to do absolutely anything.

Looks amazing!  Any thoughts on categorization / tags?  My instinct is you should request that modders add some JSON file that contains meta-data that you look for.  Even if it's rather spartan now, you'll probably want it eventually.

For tags I was thinking about a system based on users thumbs-upping tags they think are related to the mod in the app itself.
For general categories I need to think about them, suggestions? (I'd say Total Conversions/Mods/Utilities, any others?)

How about JSON embedded in a spoiler tag in the forum post?  That way you don't have to download every zip/7z/rar and pull it apart and guess which one is latest.

As for the JSON content, just off the top of my head:

• Img URL
• Download URL
• compatible version (if it can't be figured out from the post title)
• Mod Version (again if it can't be determined)

I found a way to hide stuff in a forum post without it showing mostly and just using this bbc code in the post. In between this line and the code displayed below there's a hidden configuration

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcdfwh7smxa7p2k/AABBW-aI6HFXFtGKAhMzl3YKa
TotalConversion
false

Code

[color=transparent][size=1pt][anchor=repo_link]https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcdfwh7smxa7p2k/AABBW-aI6HFXFtGKAhMzl3YKa[/anchor][anchor=repo_category]TotalConversion[/anchor][anchor=repo_crawl]false[/anchor][/size][/color]

[BringerofBabies]

For standard mods, I'd say that major categories are Ship Packs (just adds ships); Factions; Portrait Packs; difficulty changes like Ruthless Sector, Second Wave Options, etc; sector generation changes like Unknown Skies, Adjusted Sector, etc; and then you have a variety of mods that add more things to do like Secrets of the Frontier, terraforming, station building, gate building/reactivation, new industries. The mod index classifies Nexerelin and Varya's Sector as Megamods because they do so many things - I'd like a category name that gives a more specific description than that, but I can't think of one.

[Uomoz]

For standard mods, I'd say that major categories are Ship Packs (just adds ships); Factions; Portrait Packs; difficulty changes like Ruthless Sector, Second Wave Options, etc; sector generation changes like Unknown Skies, Adjusted Sector, etc; and then you have a variety of mods that add more things to do like Secrets of the Frontier, terraforming, station building, gate building/reactivation, new industries. The mod index classifies Nexerelin and Varya's Sector as Megamods because they do so many things - I'd like a category name that gives a more specific description than that, but I can't think of one.

Hello! Thanks for the feedback y'all!

Re: Aren't those tags more then categories?

If a mod adds ships and skills for example it could have both those tags.

I'd say a category should be something a mod can only be 1 of without questions. Multiple mods may fill more then one of these categories you describe.

[BringerofBabies]

They certainly could be tags. In that case the general categories would solely be those three you mentioned, as they are the mod flags supported by Starsector, and the categories wouldn't be very useful for sorting/searching by users but just as a warning/info tidbit displayed with the mod info.

[Nick XR]

I found a way to hide stuff in a forum post without it showing mostly and just using this bbc code in the post. In between this line and the code displayed below there's a hidden configuration
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcdfwh7smxa7p2k/AABBW-aI6HFXFtGKAhMzl3YKaTotalConversionfalse

Code

[color=transparent][size=1pt][anchor=repo_link]https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcdfwh7smxa7p2k/AABBW-aI6HFXFtGKAhMzl3YKa[/anchor][anchor=repo_category]TotalConversion[/anchor][anchor=repo_crawl]false[/anchor][/size][/color]

CleverGirl.jpg

I think author defined tags (and tags generally) are the way to go, not personally a big fan of anything crowd sourced.  For tags, you could use a comma separated list like:

Code

[anchor=repo_tags]Faction,Ships[/anchor]

Where the values in tags have to be from an approved set.

When you get a structure/format just PM me and I'll add it to my mods if you want to test!

[Uomoz]

I found a way to hide stuff in a forum post without it showing mostly and just using this bbc code in the post. In between this line and the code displayed below there's a hidden configuration
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcdfwh7smxa7p2k/AABBW-aI6HFXFtGKAhMzl3YKaTotalConversionfalse

Code

[color=transparent][size=1pt][anchor=repo_link]https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tcdfwh7smxa7p2k/AABBW-aI6HFXFtGKAhMzl3YKa[/anchor][anchor=repo_category]TotalConversion[/anchor][anchor=repo_crawl]false[/anchor][/size][/color]

CleverGirl.jpg

I think author defined tags (and tags generally) are the way to go, not personally a big fan of anything crowd sourced.  For tags, you could use a comma separated list like:

Code

[anchor=repo_tags]Faction,Ships[/anchor]

Where the values in tags have to be from an approved set.

When you get a structure/format just PM me and I'll add it to my mods if you want to test!

Thank you so much!

The idea of crow-sourced tags is so even if I can't change the code some time from now the thing keeps on growing and changing by itself. So if a new "type" of tag pops up from a SS patch it's added by the community alone in the system.

That said, I could definitely start from something defined by the author like you mentioned.

I need to think about all the possible parameters I could use to have a faster/easier crawl and post it in the first post.

Thank you so much for the collaboration, if the whole thing crashes and burn and the mod community hates it, it will have been for science and learning

[Sundog]

I was thinking of tags that would apply to Starsector mods a few days back at work and this is what I came up with:

General: graphics, configurable, humorous, vanilla friendly, missions, library, utility, total conversion, dev tool
Camptaign: campaign mechanics, secrets, factions, quests, industry, planets, star systems
Combat:  combat mechanics, ships, weapons, hullmods, ship systems

Might be useful? Not sure what you have planned.

[Nick XR]

I was thinking of tags that would apply to Starsector mods a few days back at work and this is what I came up with:

General: graphics, configurable, humorous, vanilla friendly, missions, library, utility, total conversion, dev tool
Camptaign: campaign mechanics, secrets, factions, quests, industry, planets, star systems
Combat:  combat mechanics, ships, weapons, hullmods, ship systems

Might be useful? Not sure what you have planned.

And the Anime tag too. Along with the ability to do a logical NOT filter.  Those two are completely unrelated, I swear.

[Uomoz]

Hey y'all.

I thought about the configs and here's a first draft:

Code

[color=transparent][size=1pt]
[anchor=repo_crawl]true[/anchor] Choose if Starsector Repo should crawl this page or not. [Default]: false. [Optional]: NO
[anchor=repo_category]mod[/anchor] Choose one between totalconversion, mod or utility. [Default]: Mod. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_tags]exampletag1,exampletag2[/anchor] Mod tags separated by a comma. for the full list of possible Tags see http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=17654.0. [Default]: N/A. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_title]Title[/anchor] Overrides the title/name found in the mod_json/version files. [Default]: Parsed from version or mod_json file. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_abstract]Lorem ipsum dolor sit.[/anchor] Overrides the description found in the mod_json file. [Default]: Parsed from the mod_json file. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_image]https://www.example.com/image.gif[/anchor] The main mod image (I like a gif here). [Default]: Parses the page for cool images. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_config]data/exampleModConfig.json[/anchor] Specify the config file location of the mod in the main mod folder so it can be edited before downloading it from the repository. [Default]: N/A. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_changelog]Lorem ipsum dolor sit.[/anchor] Specifies the changelog for the latest version. [Default]: N/A. [Optional]: YES
[anchor=repo_link]https://www.example.com/link-dl.zip[/anchor] The current version download link (must be direct). [Default]: Parses the page for probable download links. [Optional]: YES
[/size][/color]

What do you guys think about it? Am I missing something crucial? Consider that once I have a download link I have full access to version/mod_jon file so the information in there is not necessary.

If anyone wants to try configuring this in the mod post so i can test it on a real case, let me know

[tomatopaste]

I really like the idea of a modern tile-based graphical interface for mods, would really enhance the whole scene. That said, like a lot of the other people in the thread I'm concerned about the effort required to maintain multiple forum/nexus/uomozRepo postings (although I don't intend to ever use nexus myself). If your website offers an efficient solution to work with all them I'm all for it 

edit: To add to that, It would be a good idea to have modders contact you (or moderators if that ever happens) to be whitelisted as users that can submit their own packages.

[Uomoz]

I really like the idea of a modern tile-based graphical interface for mods, would really enhance the whole scene. That said, like a lot of the other people in the thread I'm concerned about the effort required to maintain multiple forum/nexus/uomozRepo postings (although I don't intend to ever use nexus myself). If your website offers an efficient solution to work with all them I'm all for it 

edit: To add to that, It would be a good idea to have modders contact you (or moderators if that ever happens) to be whitelisted as users that can submit their own packages.

Thanks for the feedback!

The tile graphic was a must have imho

The cool thing of the system is that you basically have just to allow the crawler to go through your mod automatically. I you want you can just skip the whole configuration and just allow the crawler to go through the files. It will automatically detect new versions/changes in the forum post, changes in the images etc. It's a 0 effort thing really. And for those who want they can make so the crawler is smarter about what it finds, but again, is not required!

To submit a package just post a mod in the forum (and add the repo_crawl = true anchor bbcode in the post somewhere) and you are done!

[tomatopaste]

I really like the idea of a modern tile-based graphical interface for mods, would really enhance the whole scene. That said, like a lot of the other people in the thread I'm concerned about the effort required to maintain multiple forum/nexus/uomozRepo postings (although I don't intend to ever use nexus myself). If your website offers an efficient solution to work with all them I'm all for it 

edit: To add to that, It would be a good idea to have modders contact you (or moderators if that ever happens) to be whitelisted as users that can submit their own packages.

Thanks for the feedback!

The tile graphic was a must have imho

The cool thing of the system is that you basically have just to allow the crawler to go through your mod automatically. I you want you can just skip the whole configuration and just allow the crawler to go through the files. It will automatically detect new versions/changes in the forum post, changes in the images etc. It's a 0 effort thing really. And for those who want they can make so the crawler is smarter about what it finds, but again, is not required!

To submit a package just post a mod in the forum (and add the repo_crawl = true anchor bbcode in the post somewhere) and you are done!

Ah, right, I missed the whole automation thing. That said, the automation process is going to fail at some point, and some way to mitigate that would be nice.

[Uomoz]

It does fail already, plenty.
Quite a few mods have very poorly formatted jsons, or hrad to download links etc...

But I covered most of the failure cases already.

[Sundog]

By default your mod WON'T be included in the repo. You need to add the repo_crawl = true configuration to allow the repo to interact with your mod.

In this case, I think opt-out is a better choice than opt-in. Inclusion of as many mods as possible is one of the most important aspects of something like this, and I expect many mod authors wouldn't opt in simply because they're unaware or can't be bothered to. On one hand, having to opt out might annoy one or two mod authors, but on the other no one will actually browse for mods on a site that's missing most of them.

If anyone wants to try configuring this in the mod post so i can test it on a real case, let me know

New Beginnings now has this metadata:

Code

[color=transparent][size=1pt]
[anchor=repo_crawl]true[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_category]utility[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_tags]configurable,vanillafriendly,campaignfeatures[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_title]New Beginnings[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_abstract]New Beginnings abstract override[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_image]https://i.imgur.com/xET3jP1.png[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_config]NEW_BEGINNINGS_OPTIONS.ini[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_changelog]
1.1.1
Added a few extra crew to respawn fleets to compensate for hulmods being added that increase minimum crew requirements
Incremented game compatibility version to 0.9.1a
[/anchor]
[anchor=repo_link]https://bitbucket.org/Nate_NBJ/new-beginnings/downloads/New%20Beginnings%201.1.1.zip[/anchor]
[/size][/color]

And Starship legends now has this:

Code

[color=transparent][size=1pt]
[anchor=repo_crawl]true[/anchor]
[/size][/color]

And the Anime tag too. Along with the ability to do a logical NOT filter.  Those two are completely unrelated, I swear.

Heh, but then you'd miss out on BRDY! It's not too hard to remove portraits from faction mods...

[Uomoz]

By default your mod WON'T be included in the repo. You need to add the repo_crawl = true configuration to allow the repo to interact with your mod.

In this case, I think opt-out is a better choice than opt-in. Inclusion of as many mods as possible is one of the most important aspects of something like this, and I expect many mod authors wouldn't opt in simply because they're unaware or can't be bothered to. On one hand, having to opt out might annoy one or two mod authors, but on the other no one will actually browse for mods on a site that's missing most of them.

That's how I think about it as well. If I had a mod I'd love to have more exposure for it for free (obviously complete credit goes to the modder on the repo; there's absolutely no reference to me as Uomoz or anything anywhere).
But I already received opposed feedback. Should I make a poll? Obviously opt-in is the safer option.