Oolite Bulletins

Maybe again a stupid idea from me, but I can imagine a loader which can download and update OXPs before launch the core game.
Required metadata (version and url at least) can be made for existing OXPs with some work into a public page (I suggest a new column in OXP List with version numbers linked to direct downloads), or possible to make a dedicated harvester software which can get most (but not all) data from current wiki pages (I worked on a word pattern recognition software some years ago).
Another tricky part is to download from box.com due to the real url generated on the fly and expire soon so need extra work but probably not impossible.

Norby wrote:

Maybe again a stupid idea from me, but I can imagine a loader which can download and update OXPs before launch the core game.
Required metadata (version and url at least) can be made for existing OXPs with some work into a public page (I suggest a new column in OXP List with version numbers linked to direct downloads), or possible to make a dedicated harvester software which can get most (but not all) data from current wiki pages (I worked on a word pattern recognition software some years ago).
Another tricky part is to download from box.com due to the real url generated on the fly and expire soon so need extra work but probably not impossible.

The loader idea could be an independent thing like basic_debug.oxp and it would take the links entered in the metadata in the central metadata store (let's call it OXP Browser for now, "central metadata store" is too funky for me)

I think the best place of the version and download url metadata is the OXP List, else authors must update these in a different location which cause more overhead than in the list.

To step forward I can undertake the work to fill up version numbers into OXP List (and I think authors will update these when exists) but before I do anything I need a big acceptance from the community regarding the idea of adding the new version column which is a prerequisite of making an OXP updater.

Norby wrote:

I think the best place of the version and download url metadata is the OXP List, else authors must update these in a different location which cause more overhead than in the list.

To step forward I can undertake the work to fill up version numbers into OXP List (and I think authors will update these when exists) but before I do anything I need a big acceptance from the community regarding the idea of adding the new version column which is a prerequisite of making an OXP updater.

In principle I think it's a good idea to include version numbers to the list. There's one issue, however: the additional column is going to make the list wider, which we try to avoid, because it shouldn't be necessary to scroll it sideways. But perhaps the description column could be made smaller, even if it means shortening some of the descriptions.

The basic idea of the list is that each entry should fit in a single line, while the width of the whole list fits on a typical screen width.

I am not so sure about putting the download url in the list, though. In my opinion this belongs first and foremost on the OXP page, at least that's how I do it for my OXPs. The OXP page is the only place where I put a download url for an OXP. Everything else (OXP list, my user page, OXP threads here on the boards) only has a link to the OXP page, never a download url. This is the easiest way to make sure that there's never a possibility of accidentally having conflicting links to different versions in different places. If only one url ever needs to be updated, nothing can go wrong. And I'm all for keeping the updating process for new OXP versions as simple as possible.

Commander McLane wrote:

In principle I think it's a good idea to include version numbers to the list. There's one issue, however: the additional column is going to make the list wider, which we try to avoid, because it shouldn't be necessary to scroll it sideways. But perhaps the description column could be made smaller, even if it means shortening some of the descriptions.

The date of the release is important too, since OXP version numbers have nothing to do with Oolite version numbers.

Switeck wrote:

The date of the release is important too, since OXP version numbers have nothing to do with Oolite version numbers.

That's probably the reason why the release dates are in the list.

Norby wrote:

The goal of this project is to simplify the installation process of OXPs for new players and collectors. There are more than 500 package currently, many of them worth a check but needed too much repetitive work to getting them.

The previous solution based on ideas in OXPs for new players topic: grouped the most wanted OXPs into large zip files, but the maintenance of these is problematic.

The new plan for the  OXP Collection is to use a client software which can update your AddOns folder (if you want) when a new version available, download changes only and no unzipping needed due to store unpacked .oxp folders.

New players can safely download the Basic.oxp and Lookout.oxp folders. Before others should read the OXP_Collection_readme.txt file in the hosted top folder (namely AddOns).

The  wiki page of OXP Collection contain a possible download howto.

Edit: download currently disabled, need to discuss it below with the authors.

Where do you have these packs? I cant find the download links.
Please upload them again.
They're very useful.

The result of this discussion above is that nobody should upload a collection of oxps due to must ask the authors before, but many of them are unreachable and almost all others want track the individual download numbers. The best what we can done since then is the OXZ list where you can click in the icons in the last column to download what you like. This is exactly the same list what you can see within the game in the expansion manager and most packages are hosted within the oolite wiki where downloads are counted.

There are a few tematic collections within the list like [wiki]Addons for Beginners[/wiki] or Smivs' The Classic Ooniverse Compilation which help to download some related packages in one step, but that is all.