I like your plan, CR.
Welcome to the "friendliest boards this side of Riedquat".
Thank you.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to find one of those annoying Hatchlings to check if my freshly aft mounted Military Laser is as effective as I remember...
As a relatively non-tecchie player of Oolite I'd like to see OXPS at a glance with their download size, whether they need additional OXPs to run and have some sort of user-rating. That's my two credits worth anyhoo
"You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water!"
Since work sometimes keeps me offline for weeks at a time, I can already foresee that I'll be doing quite a bit of the catching up from time to time. (Even in the few days I've been around, PlanetFall went from 1.21 to 1.23)
What I would very much like to see is a basic list of "what's new".
Yes, I did miss that function very much when I was gone for a few months and came back. It was a horror to go through my oxp list and having to compare it to the individual wiki oxp pages as the main list did not even have the most recent version number...a list with all the changed oxp's by time would have simplified this very much.
What was much worse is that I actually missed 4 updates by doing this annoyingly slow check, as their Wiki pages did claim that I was using the latest version and only had their download link (which thus required to be followed) point to a newer version.
My wish at that time was a thread with such a list on the board itself, where each oxp author which does make an update simply writes that (and either links to the individual oxp thread and/or it's wiki page). A thread where only that sort of information would have to be entered. Well...maybe it's easier if that's kept to the wiki.
I don't really know what would help the authors to ensure that everything is done properly (not only updating links, but also update version numberings and probably some overview list), but it's really necessary for users to have a simple way of noticing the changes. Currently it's a real horror to stay up-to-date.
I don't really know what would help the authors to ensure that everything is done properly (not only updating links, but also update version numberings and probably some overview list), but it's really necessary for users to have a simple way of noticing the changes. Currently it's a real horror to stay up-to-date.
How you can help authors to ensure that things are done properly, is to appeal to their self-interest.
We can create a template that can be placed at the top left, or on the RHS of the page.
When a mod author updates their mod, they are encouraged to update the "Last Updated" date.
We can then wrap a category field around that date, and use it to sort a category page.
At the very least though, providing a consistent display of when an oxp is last updated will be of enormous help.
A trumble a day keeps the doctor away, and the tax man;
even the Grim Reaper keeps his distance.
-- Paul Wilkins
