SMAC/X Mod Manager Beta 3

[DrazharLn]

I agree that ACU has utility to modders for resources, just that it's not likely many players actually want to pick from a list of 200 factions.

Might be fun to select some of the best art and randomly combine it, or just to have a mod that randomly selects some factions for you to play.

Anyway, feedback on the mod manager:

1. Manager should prompt user to set SMAC dir rather than silently failing to launch SMAC/apply mods.
2. Need documentation of what apply/versus force do.
3. Need to check it handles dlls, etc correctly.
4. What happens if you modify a file that was copied in from a mod?
5. If you modify a mod and then re-apply, is manager smart enough to copy it again?

More feedback might come as we use it. BUncle, I suggest you start using the mod manager (in software engineering, this is called dogfooding and try to package some of the GoTMs for it. The more complicated ones with lots of new art, etc would be the best for testing. Let me know about any trouble you have with it so we can improve the user experience appropriately.

I'll look into the above 5 points.

Some future wants:
Repository for mods, allowing updates.
Self updater for mod manager
Suggestions?

[Buster's Uncle]

Zookeepers (March? 2012) - two custom factions, custom terrain, custom NL, a number of tech mods Name did creating the scenario - a hell difficulty GotM and almost no one tried it (because I made a bad frontispiece image, or something; thought it was a marketing problem, anyway, 'cause we slaved over the thing).  Check that sucker out.

Is dogfooding pushing your stuff or bundling or what?  I'd have to be using mods to use Mod Manager - I have four or five hopelessly garbled (from playtesting whatever and not always cleaning up) folder/copies of the game instead, none of which I've played in a long time.

[DrazharLn]

Dogfooding is using your own software/getting your team to use your software

Zookeepers sounds like a good shout.

As for copies of the game, I recommend installing a new copy from GOG, then trying the mod manager on that. You can put the Yitzi patches, etc into mod directories, too.

[Buster's Uncle]

Right now, I am a junkie addicted to kittens and not getting my daily routine stuff done, some forum duties, weight lifting - and way behind on getting around to even bathing.  This is the sort of thing that involves no art and I'm hard to talk into normally.  You're asking a lot...

[DrazharLn]

Fair enough, BUncle

Enjoy the kittens!

[Buster's Uncle]

  I really do, believe me.  They. are. SO. cute. 

-It should wrap up within the month, BTW...

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm always a lot easier to talk into something creative, and/or activity on the forum -playtesting anything, scient talked me into briefly years ago, and sisko a year or two before that- and I think that's it for me playtesting anything, even my own custom factions, in many years...

Throw me a little art job, though, and I'm probably your [girldog] right away.

[DrazharLn]

I think half there's a goodly proportion of people on the forum who get more out of modding and messing with the game than actually playing it, these days, maybe always.

Probably more than that who are just here to talk.

Anyway, on topic and as a note to self, I will package the SMAC in SMAX project and Zookeepers and address some of the feedback in my other post.

The aim for me is to make it trivial for people to install recommended patches, and to make it much easier to install and use mods.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's a good aim, and I want to encourage it.

(I had thought the other day about nagging you that you'd said you would finish SMAC in SMAX back in September...)

[DrazharLn]

I'm not a very organised person

[Buster's Uncle]

We all get distracted, no problem - but that's a valuable mod...

[DrazharLn]

Beta 3.

Here's the mod manager packaged so users don't need to install python themselves.

Sample mod attached to this post, contains alternate faction profiles for the Gaians, Peacekeepers, University and Hive, taken from BUncle's Custom Faction page. Two better mods about to be posted in another thread.

Installation instructions:
1. Extract to a convenient location (not to the SMAC folder)
2. Run SMACXLauncher.exe
3. Go to options tab, select location of SMACX folder, allow mod manager to make a backup

Usage:
1. Put mods that you might want to install into mods directory, following instruction in file there
2. Enable them with the launcher by moving them to the right and clicking apply.
3. If multiple mods are enabled, mods further down the list override any files that are also shared by mods earlier in the list.

Uninstall:
1. Launch SMACXLauncher.exe
2. Move all mods to the left.
3. Click apply, then  force.
4. Once finished, you can delete the SMAC Mod Manager directory.

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Development notes:

Source has been changed to set logging level to WARNING rather than debug, because otherwise you get an annoying message every time you quit telling you there were errors and I couldn't be bothered working out how to turn it off.

Build steps (users don't need to do this):

(click to show/hide)

1. Install python 3.4.x https://python.org/downloads (Important, pip version of py2exe doesn't support 3.5 yet)
2. Install MS Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44266
3. python -m pip install py2exe
4. Copy the attached setup.py into the Mod Manager source directory
5. python setup.py py2exe

[DrazharLn]

Plan for future:

Rejig the mod manager a bit more to enable a more repository based mod installing experience, then push that as the new way to install all mods and patches.

The idea being that we just tell people to install a fresh version of SMACX, then download this launcher, and the launcher automatically retrieves a list of mods from us, and users just tick the ones they want. As patches or whatever are updated, the launcher tells the users and prompts them to update.

[mcshame]

Thanks DrazharLn,

I installed it per the instructions and added the yitzi3.4b+pracx1.07 followed by SMAC_in_smax.  Very clean interface kept it simple, I like it.  A couple of questions.

1) I'm not clear what the Force (slow) is for.  Your instruction seem to imply that it needs to be done if I remove a mod? So, for example, if I just want the patches and not SMAC_in_SMAX, I move it to the left, click apply then Force?  What does force do?

2) for the 2 mods that I'm using, I believe they are for SMAX, correct?  What happens if I click on Alpha Centauri instead of Alien Crossfire?  I tried and it ran but will it cause problems? Does it know which game version it's for?

I have another question about SMAC_in_SMAX, but I'll ask it in the other thread.

Alien Crossfire run just as before, seemed to work well.  I use this for my first playthru.

Thx

[DrazharLn]

Things are a bit up in the air still and I'm rewriting the mod manager to be more of a repository based thing (i.e. you get a list of mods available on the internet and can pick ones you want to be downloaded and installed), so things will change soon.

When I wrote the instructions about forcing, I hadn't gone through the code properly yet, so that was more of a cautious thing.

The mod manager basically simulated copying the backup directory onto the main SMAC directory, then the first mod directory onto the SMAC directory, then  the second, and so on, it just has some logic to avoid copying when it doesn't need to.

If you press force, rather than apply, it ignores part of that logic and copies fresh copies of everything in the backup directory and the enabled mod directories.

But there's probably no need to actually ever press force.

As I said, I'm rewriting the thing to be even clearer.

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2: Both mods are indeed for SMAX: they don't do anything to SMAC. If you'd rather use SMAC than SMAX+smac_in_smax for some reason, I've attached a mod to this post you should use.

It's just a copy of Kyrub's latest patch that I've made PRACX compatible by running pracxpatch.exe.