Not have people download all 800 OXPs and seriously expect everything to just work. Not have people download two OXPs that do exactly the opposite thing, then come on here and demand, "Make your crap compatible with that other crap."
1) Most people will be realistic, no? Especially when they realise that all the OXPs are written by different people. And if they have come across other games with an ocean of modifications. There will always be a handful with great expectations, but I've not noticed many complaints over the past 5 years about incompatibilities.
2) And is this not the very thing that the Manifest.plist is supposed to help with? Stranger, for example, lists known incompatibilities where his OXPs conflict with a similar (Traffic Lights <> Neo-Docklights / Hard Way <> TorusToSun & FuelCollector)
So I see this as secondary to helping new players navigate our burgeoning swamp of OXPs (bringing them in rather than scaring them off!).
You've several times mentioned this, and I'm intrigued. How can any two sane people have any disagreement over fictional organizations? Was there an assertion of insufficient fictitiousness? Or, insufficient organization? Or was it a demarcation dispute, the Union of Space-farers versus the League of Space Traders trying to do the same thing?
Reval is/was not sane and that disagreement happened because he put his chunk in wrong categories on the wiki, therefore confusing users.
Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going.
Right, well that's cleared that up. While you're here, any thoughts on improving the expansions manager?
Difficult, let's start with something simple like weapons, you got mainly energy weapons or missiles. Now some packages include both. For more confusion new weapons are also included in some mission- and ship-OXZ's. Next simple example, ships, you could separate them from simple miners to ueber-ships, the problem is, some OXZ's include all of them. As you mentioned in the past some packages are not combinable. It is possible to exclude them or, if possible, adapt them. Sometimes it took more time to research which other OXZ's will be affected by your new work than to actually code it.
Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going.
This proves one OXP can serve multiple purposes or categories at the same time. I'd rather adapt the categorization system than rip an OXP apart.
@montama05 what kind of incompatibilities did you spot? I'd like to assess if some situations might be autodetected.
Well, I didn't look in codes for a while so Cholmondely would know more about the resent issues. However, one package I remember is Strangers World, which, while excellent, interferes with numerous other OXZ's.
Scars remind us where we've been. They don't have to dictate where we're going.
I had more hoped to hear about collisions on script variable names or id strings. Something you could teach a computer to scan for.
Just scanning all the known OXZs for duplicated filenames in folders other than Config would be useful. Either it would reveal a few, which could be rectified, or would verify that there definitely are none, which would be nice and re-assuring.
Then, scanning the config files, particularly descriptions.plist, missiontext.plist & planetinfo.plist, for popular keys that several OXPs hope to set, would be helpful.
I had more hoped to hear about collisions on script variable names or id strings. Something you could teach a computer to scan for.
Just scanning all the known OXZs for duplicated filenames in folders other than Config would be useful. Either it would reveal a few, which could be rectified, or would verify that there definitely are none, which would be nice and re-assuring.
Then, scanning the config files, particularly descriptions.plist, missiontext.plist & planetinfo.plist, for popular keys that several OXPs hope to set, would be helpful.
Great idea!
Scanning the expansions for name collisions actually is not too far-fetched. Such a feature request could be logged as issue in https://github.com/OoliteProject/Oolite ... ner/issues
Also let's refine on that so we know what 'popular keys' to look for and how findings can be reported.
