Re: [Supertuxkart-devel] Questions about the next release

[Joerg H. <jo...@lu...>]

Hi,

[...]
> Auria and I had a chat on irc some days ago about the future of the 
> blender-mod and decided to release the first blender-mod together 
> with the next STK-release. 
That makes sense :)

> That leads to a problem: 
> We have no idea, how long it will take, till the next release gets 
> tagged
Good question. I'd like to know, too - but it's (in my experience) not
really possible to keep to a schedule in open source development 
(e.g. I know that some things might come up for me which would mean
less time for STK for a while ... but currently I don't know what's
happening, and when).

I hope to finish the LAN version in a month (meaning getting all the
menus synched), and then another month for various bug fixes and
minor improvements. So a RC mid November, and hopefully a release
beginning of December. Of course, if we can finish earlier, we won't
wait. And of course this depends on auria's time as well (to get
at least one special multi-player mode in).


> and what parts of the STK will be modable by then and how.
> Will we have modding of menus, backgrounds, sounds, music, tracks, 
> challenges and karts available, or will something be static?
All my statements here should have a 'unless someone else submits a 
patch' added to it: if we get something earlier, I'll do my best to
put it in asap.

- Menus will not be modable (too much work, wait till irrlicht, to do
  it properly) - meaning the position and looks of the widgets will
  be fixed.
- Background can easily be made modable (do you need a different
  background for each menu for a start, or just one?).
- sounds: I am currently working on the engine sound patch, and I'll
  make all sound effects modable (i.e. the wav files are not 
  hardcoded in STK anymore, they will be read from a data file)
- tracks/karts: additional tracks can be defined in their own group 
  (e.g. a 'blender-mod' group), but all existing tracks/karts would 
  still be available (if you select a certain group STK will try to
  fill up all AI positions with karts from the same group)
  We can add an option to select the default kart and track groups.
- music: each track can already have their own music.
- challenges: each new track/kart can come with their own challenges
  (in a data file) to unlock them. If additional options are needed
  for certain challenges (something we haven't thought of) it should
  be easy to add this.

I'll probably add an option to specify a different configuration file
to be used (where things like background options etc would be
specified). So a mod would actually be a new stk_config.data file,
together with music, tracks, challenges, sfx, ... The only thing
missing: an easy way to select a different mod (stk_config.data file,
or perhaps a new mod-file, stk_config.data contains a lot of data
that will not change from mod to mod. A command line option (which
would then be saved in the user specific data) is easy, so once it is
done it will always be the default. Or perhaps a default.mod file
(which only specifies the stk_config.data file (or whatever) to be
read in) - so you only have to add/overwrite this default.mod file
to make the new mod the default look.
Adding a menu for this would be rather difficult: a lot of 
information is read in at the beginning, so re-doing it would be 
very difficult, so I'd think that with the next release a fresh
start is necessary if you want to change the mod.


> What's actually your concept for mod-support?
> Will it be like a whole different game (so we just clone and change 
> STK's data-folder, put it in a special subdir of STK's datadir and, 
> when activated, the engine uses exclusively the data in there) or 
> will it just change the menu-background and the standard-groups for 
> tracks and karts (so all the stuff from the STK main-package will 
> still be available?)
I think I answered most of this. Long term: I'd like people to be able
to download as many mods as they like it, then they select their 
favourite (for the menu etc look). But all additional tracks etc.
should be available in all mods (this gives the user the most
flexibility, i.e. they don't have to install different STK versions
just to be able to play all tracks). So changing/copying the data
dir should not be necessary.

Is this what you want/prefer/can accept? Or do you prefer any
other way?

Of course, we could publish a blender-mod-only version - i.e. it 
replaces the standard tracks etc with the blender mod only (and people
could download a base-mod to get this data in).

> To me, the Blender-mod is not only a nice showoff to the blender-
> community in hope to attract some artists, but shall also be a 
> demonstration of STK's mod-capabilities, to attract the huge 
> community of modders out there.
> To show the modding-capabilities and the best way to implement a mod, 
> we need as much info as possible ;)
> While I think, support for a total-mod would be way more attractive 
> to the modder-community, I also think, they will always find a way to 
> do that - be it by fully replacing the data-dir. what comes close to 
> a fork.
Of course - it's open source anyway :)

I'll try to put more information in the wiki, but this will be at least
a week before I can get to that. But: have I answered your important
or urgent questions so that you can keep on working? Basically:
the gui/widgets will not be modable, but I think everything else can
be made modable for the 0.6 release. But it will not be possible to
change a mod in game, a new start is (most likely) required.

If you have any concerns about my ideas, please let me know.

Cheers,
   Joerg