engine vs game installers [split from springfiles thread]

[smoth]

please exclude gundam from any such effort.

please don't force everyone download the engine to install ba&dsd k thx bye.

Also next version I plan on gundam's widget directory being under /games/gundam/widgets

because you knuckleheads keep writing stuff that breaks other games and your players think it is all going to work well. Don't like it? too bad, I could have blacklisted/whitelisted. I feel projects should store their files in isolated dirs like this. "but but i have to copy over my widgets" if the widget is good enough and I test it for compatibility I will add it to gundam after consulting with the author. Otherwise you know where to put it.

ps. iceui doesn't work with gundam anyway, you guys would have to write a custom iceui.

[FLOZi]

please exclude gundam from any such effort.

please don't force everyone download the engine to install ba&dsd k thx bye.

Also next version I plan on gundam's widget directory being under /games/gundam/widgets

because you knuckleheads keep writing stuff that breaks other games and your players think it is all going to work well. Don't like it? too bad, I could have blacklisted/whitelisted. I feel projects should store their files in isolated dirs like this. "but but i have to copy over my widgets" if the widget is good enough and I test it for compatibility I will add it to gundam after consulting with the author. Otherwise you know where to put it.

ps. iceui doesn't work with gundam anyway, you guys would have to write a custom iceui.

+1

[knorke]

incompatible widgets is not really an issue (anymore) because by now everyone knows about black/white listing.

The "new problem" would be gundam reading the springsettings from evoRTS and doubleclick on a S44 replay starting the Spring.exe from KP, which will not have the needed files.
Also stuff like archivemover when multiple games are installed.
Or joining a KP battleroom with evolobby (players too lazy to change lobbies) and thus "spoiling" the evo mappool with a autodownloaded KP map.
Lets see how well 0.83 isolation mode will actually work out.
(names obviously random)

[smoth]

because you knuckleheads keep writing stuff that breaks other games and your players think it is all going to work well. Don't like it? too bad, I could have blacklisted/whitelisted. I feel projects should store their files in isolated dirs like this.

incompatible widgets is not really an issue (anymore) because by now everyone knows about black/white listing.

I am not doing any black/white listing. I am not going to bother with that crap.

The "new problem" would be gundam reading the springsettings from evoRTS and doubleclick on a S44 replay starting the Spring.exe from KP, which will not have the needed files.

but gundam doesn't use custom settings

[AF]

Good idea with the gundam dedicated widget directory

[Google_Frog]

I don't think ZK would work when included in a large installer pack. Maintaining another installer would be more work and it is likely that new users would not have the correct default settings. Such an endeavour just looks aimed at the 'Spring community' and would be treated like a modpack.

[KDR_11k]

People installing the engine will persist until there's a proper BA+engine installer because currently that's the most popular game. People want to play BA and currently they have to jump through hoops to get there.

[Licho]

I can create pack based on ZKL - portable zip file auto updated to include latest mods from rapid, maps and engine

[Forboding Angel]

The "new problem" would be gundam reading the springsettings from evoRTS and doubleclick on a S44 replay starting the Spring.exe from KP, which will not have the needed files.
Lets see how well 0.83 isolation mode will actually work out.
(names obviously random)

Evo uses isolation mode, so this would never happen. Also, archive mover isn't needed as players receive the maps they are meant to receive when installing the game and the lobby will download any maps that come up that they do not have. Pressing further, Evo writes no registry entries. Evo, as I mentioned, is contained completely and totally within it's own directory.

[koshi]

The replay file type getting registered with the potentially wrong data/binary would still be an issue though if there's a non-evo spring install made via the bare bones engine installer for example.

[abma]

The replay file type getting registered with the potentially wrong data/binary would still be an issue though if there's a non-evo spring install made via the bare bones engine installer for example.

shall i remove the creating of the registry entry in the spring installer? ( https://github.com/spring/spring/blob/m ... in.nsh#L17 )from lobbies replays can be started, too... multiple spring installations seems to be a problem on win32...

[hoijui]

yeah, i guess that makes sense for a short- till mid-term workaround.
for the long run, could we possibly use multi layered demo file endings?
something like {time-stamp}_{map}.{game}.{engine-devsion}.sdf?
can such long file-endings be registered in windows/linux/mac, and are there other problems with such an approach?

[knorke]

something like {time-stamp}_{map}.{game}.{engine-devsion}.sdf?

that would be nice.
Such filenames should work on (all?) windows, at least do on 32 win xp. Maybe filename length is a problem on fat32? (must be shorter than 256 including path?)

Another thing is archive mover - your game might not use it but maybe another install does. So by doubleclicking on files the user can accidently have files "stolen" from his game install.
That happens whenever I install a test version and actually just wanted to open something with 7zip.

Players clicking on .sd7/.sdz files is more likely than one might think, especially since the files will have a spring logo as icon. They might expect a preview of the map or something.

[abma]

Such filenames should work on (all?) windows, at least do on 32 win xp. Maybe filename length is a problem on fat32? (must be shorter than 256 including path?)

hoijui talked about associating something like "{game}.{engine-devsion}.sdf" to spring.exe... the filename itself should be no problem, as demos already have such a name.

The archivemover can't be changed in such a way, it has to ask, where to move the file... weird, or it keeps moving to %HOMEDIR%\my games\spring\maps ...

[hoijui]

i think for the archive-mover, no custom game installer should have nay use for it anyway (forb showed with the evo example), and for the engine installer, we might just have to get rid of it.
it is meant as a very simple thing.. if we have to start adding GUI to it, an let the user select where to move stuff to, it is better to remove it altogether. how would a noob know what to choose anyway, as we could only give locations to installed engines, at best.
alternatively, we would have to keep a global list of data-dirs (eg, in registry ), so archive-mover would only move stuff if it is not in one of them already. again ugly.
our best bet is to go on improving downloader stuff, so manual downloads are less and less likely to be required/done by noobs.

.. a third idea (adaptation of the second one):
instead of keeping a global list of data-dirs, we could place a marker file in each data-dir, for example .DATA_DIR (hidden file in windows). if ArchiveMover is invoked to move a file, for example C:/Program Files/EvoRTS/maps/mapX.sd7, we would check if ../.DATA_DIR to that path exists, and if it does, we do not move the file.
... could the same method be viable for activating isolation mode?
for example with .ISOLATION_MODE in the primary data-dir.
pros/contras?

[abma]

imo it makes more sense to remove the ArchiveMover and better spent the time in improving the downloading systems.

https://github.com/abma/pr-downloader works, but its not ready to use as a lib.

[FLOZi]

ArchiveMover could be bound to another action than open and made the non default action, for pro users.

[smoth]

or it could just read springconfig and go by the directory there. Honestly I hate userland and the spring files being split up. It is part of the reason I refuse to install the standard zk package.

[TheFatController]

I always forget to uncheck archive mover and it removes my file associations with 7zip, so for that reason seeing it default off would be awesome

[knorke]

slightly related pro tip:
add springfiles.com search to browser
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26601
+
add spring\maps to that quick select thing in the "save as" dialog
http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/07/28/ho ... ialog-box/
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profit