New Version Checker Mod
- Thread starter trajing
- Start date
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
I guess the first thing would be to agree a specification.
A few good points came up in the earlier discussion;
Ideally posting the agreed specs in the OP or another place that's easy to point to.
A few good points came up in the earlier discussion;
- It would need to convey the information in a way the user [intended audience; not necessarily the player] can't ignore.
- (otherwise it does not fulfill its function and becomes useless bloatware).
- As Chris [and the general communal consensus] suggests, it must be fully disableable for non-intended audiences.
- Must be a user friendly system for the devs and players to use.
- Has the option to flag certain updates as critical.
Not possible without having to write compatibility with every mod that does this.
It should have the capability to announce end of life updates to at the very least server maintainers much like critical updates.
The warnings should be obnoxious and un-ignorable BUT be brief and fade away/ be closable in a reasonable amount of time.
I am going to assume this project was spurred by Reika's scrolling updater message kerfuffle. I personally think Reika got it right the first time, all he needed to do was make it so the message faded after 2-10 mins, making it similar to the chat spam team COFH and Botania (fuck... Imagine if Vaskii had a scrolling updae marquee too... At least it would have some quirky references to geek culture in it).
Ideally it should be disableable but the status quo seems to indicate being able to disable it would obsolesce the mod. As I would guess the mods goal would be to offer a tool that makes Mod support easier by eliminating legacy version bug reports.
I am going to assume this project was spurred by Reika's scrolling updater message kerfuffle. I personally think Reika got it right the first time, all he needed to do was make it so the message faded after 2-10 mins, making it similar to the chat spam team COFH and Botania (fuck... Imagine if Vaskii had a scrolling updae marquee too... At least it would have some quirky references to geek culture in it).
Ideally it should be disableable but the status quo seems to indicate being able to disable it would obsolesce the mod. As I would guess the mods goal would be to offer a tool that makes Mod support easier by eliminating legacy version bug reports.
Rather much, yeah. I'm partial to the grace period approach combined with preferring to not show to users that don't have the authority to update. Show to ops and single player people all the time, and hide from normal server users for weeks or months. Also I'm amazed at the number of people worried about cross-version update checking. Seriously, who in their right mind lets their update checker know about 1.8 versions in 1.6/1.7? Because that's a level of inattentive lack of forethought I almost can't believe.
Here are my ideas
- Each mod update has a level of severity from 'none' to 'critical'
- If the mod update is critical then the update notification will be put in-game and will not be fully disable-able; however, it will be closable by the player
- Mod updates that are not critical flash on screen during the loading process as to not affect the gameplay in any way, fully disable-able
- If on a server all mod updates are shown to the moderators of the server in game
- Be as minimalistic and extensible as possible
Mod update details should not be in chat, resulting in a wall of text/spam. I'd rather see one message of "There are 5 critical mod updates and 2 non-critical mod updates available, check xxx.log for details".
Then I can open up the log file indicated to see all the mods.
Log file only generates for OP players, as they are usually either the server admins, or mod pack makers. The average player won't care about updates to individual mods unless the modpack updates or the server owner updates.
Then I can open up the log file indicated to see all the mods.
Log file only generates for OP players, as they are usually either the server admins, or mod pack makers. The average player won't care about updates to individual mods unless the modpack updates or the server owner updates.
First section - critical updates are critical. They are bugfixes that could save your world. Everything else, yes. It'll be out of game, except for critical updates because we don't want the user to annoy the mod author for their world being destroyed as a result of not updating. Also, it won't be on a log, it'll be on the title screen.
Other thing is inapplicable due to it being dependant on a log.
(Please note that I am by no means the only one who'll be working on this project - we're probably going to discuss most, if not all, the ideas here)
Isn't that what part of the long discussion was about? That it would defeat the point of having an update checker thingy. (Pretty sure on one of those threads this was being discussed)
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
The player joining a server doesn't have any real control over which version s/he uses, so they should not [ideally] be pestered for updates.
On a different note- a few pack updates [a non insignificant number] are not forward compatible, and thus if a player/server wants to maintain a persistent world they are unable to port forward to a later release.
(it is pretty unfair since they can't do anything about it)
However they should see a [singular] notification, so at least they know they're using an out of date version and thus know not pester the mod/pack dev.On a different note- a few pack updates [a non insignificant number] are not forward compatible, and thus if a player/server wants to maintain a persistent world they are unable to port forward to a later release.
I see two potential interpretations of 'update checker'.
In one world the update checker is a useful too for server operators and modpack creators. It tells OPs and admins via a console message that some mods are out of date. And in the logs it lists each out of date mod and its URL.
In the other world. The world of modpack users. The update checker is a piece of borderline malware. It's only purpose is to annoy the user into noticing it, and in noticing it hopefully come to understand that their modpack contains some mods so badly dated they should not ask for support.
Oh, but on this dimension it is. There are players who can control the versions of mods in a pack - be they server admins, or just players with their own single player pack. And there are players who can't.
Those players that can't update, can still poke their admins. I certainly kept better abreast of mod changes than any of the (admittedly few) server admins whose servers I played on. I can also let the pack maintainers for something like an ATL/FTB pack know that there's an update, I know there's an update, and I desire this update. This is not trivial. If you don't provide a user the information, they can't inform the people in charge that it's important to them.
That's why title screen updaters are popular. It doesn't interrupt the game, and you can look at the stuff there.
Version Checker by Dynious is honestly almost exactly the type of implementation I want to see. It just needs better support, and the ability to yell at people for truly critical updates.
That's why title screen updaters are popular. It doesn't interrupt the game, and you can look at the stuff there.
Version Checker by Dynious is honestly almost exactly the type of implementation I want to see. It just needs better support, and the ability to yell at people for truly critical updates.
No, I'm saying that according to you, all there is are extremes - unnoticeable to the point of uselessness, and obnoxious enough to cause a flame war, where there are in fact things in between those two extremes.
Mentlegen, you two know where the other thread is. Please argue there, okay?
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