OXPs by popularity

An area for discussing new ideas and additions to Oolite.

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gsagostinho
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OXPs by popularity

Post by gsagostinho »

Hi all,

Given that we currently have over 500 OXPs available, it could be very nice to be able to list them not only alphabetically by category in the in-game expansion manager but also by popularity (number of downloads). This could be particularly helpful to newcomers, as I heard from a couple of people getting into the game that they felt quite overwhelmed by the size of the OXP list. The wiki keeps track of the number of downloads of each `.oxz` file so would it be possible to use this information in the game somehow?
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Re: OXPs by popularity

Post by Smivs »

The only problem with that is that the download number is reset to zero if a new version is uploaded with a new identifier.
Also, worth stating that just because something is popular doesn't mean it is any good!
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gsagostinho
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Re: OXPs by popularity

Post by gsagostinho »

Smivs wrote:
The only problem with that is that the download number is reset to zero if a new version is uploaded with a new identifier.
Aye, there's the rub. Forgot about that since I always keep the same identifiers. That basically nullifies the idea.
Also, worth stating that just because something is popular doesn't mean it is any good!
Sure, I agree with you, but I still think that popularity is a kind of measure regardless of quality. It might have been interesting for newcomers to see what OXPs most people are using and that's a metric that's quite often used for this type of thing (think of plugins and extensions not only for games but also for software in general. Atom is a good example). But the identifier thing basically kills this discussion :(
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Re: OXPs by popularity

Post by Cody »

gsagostinho wrote: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:30 pm
The wiki keeps track of the number of downloads of each `.oxz` file...
Is this working again? Good news if it is!
Also, worth stating that just because something is popular doesn't mean it is any good!
<nods> I'll refrain from giving examples!
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gsagostinho
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Re: OXPs by popularity

Post by gsagostinho »

Cody wrote: Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:26 pm
gsagostinho wrote: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:30 pm
The wiki keeps track of the number of downloads of each `.oxz` file...
Is this working again? Good news if it is!
I never realized if they were ever broken, but those numbers seem quite reliable to me.
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Re: OXPs by popularity

Post by phkb »

Cody wrote:
Is this working again? Good news if it is!
Sorry, the counters are still not working. :(
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Re: OXPs by popularity

Post by Astrobe »

You don't want to download the most popular OXZs; you want to download a set of OXZs that work well together.

Minetest - the game I'm currently playing with - has the concept of "subgames". Minetest has tons of mods like Oolite and you can download'em'all if you want. But what you'd rather do is to download a subgame, a set of mods possibly edited so that the whole thing offers a consistent gameplay, difficulty or theme.

With both Minetest and Oolite you can do whatever you want and that's a good thing of course, but there's a downside: you can be spoilt for choice.

So I'd suggest in turn to directly address the issue. One could for instance make it easy to create a pure dependency OXZ from your list of installed OXZs, so that you can share more easily your version of the Oolite game.
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