6 replies to this topic

[discharger12]

Freelancer, a 3D space game, was was what introduced me to modding in general, and eventually to IE modding. The site was Lancer's Reactor and still continues to thrive to this day.

Looking into that site you may notice something called the FLMM, also known as the Freelancer Mod Manager. What this mod manager does is put each mod into a list, and then lets you enable, disable them, and even tells you how much they conflict with eachother.

My question- Is it possible to creator something similar like a BGMM?

[igi]

I believe Baronius, over at BW had something like this (though, only for weidu mods).
I can't seem to find it on the site now, but if you pop over there and mention it, you should get a response.

[CamDawg]

Baronius had planed something like this, but it was never made. It was transformed mid-stream into a fancy-pants WeiDU GUI installer for single mods (Grey Clan was briefly packaged in it) but that was never really fully completed either.

[igi]

Baronius had planed something like this, but it was never made.

I'm sure I had a copy of it, even if it was a beta.
Ah well. It's the perfect excuse for people who don't program, to learn how to program!

[5th_horseman]

I've often though that a mod manager would be very useful, but what would like to see it do is check which files each mod actually will be replaced or altered and highlight these elements, it would greatily help when it comes to installing mods, compatability can be a real bugbear, as there are mods that just replace files as opposed to patching. Knowing which mods are doing what will help to determine order of installation and weither the the mods will be compatable those already installed.

[Baronius]

Okay guys, I got a lot of comments since the project has been halted (such as the "mod manager didn't DO anything").

It did do something, it displayed your installed and uninstalled WeiDU mods with relatively much information such as the AUTHOR, number of components etc. and was able to run the Setup file (and thus INSTALL, UNINSTALL or REINSTALL any of the available mods.) However, some people waited MAGIC from it -- they would have expected the program to be able to install/uninstall components of the same mod: you can't do that if you have no WeiDU switch for it that can be given as a parameter -- and at least that time, there wasn't such switch.

Someone suggested me to ask for a WeiDU switch from Westley, but I stopped the project because I got too low feedback, i.e. no answers to the question of what features I should add, so I thought it would make no sense to invest time and energy if so few people are interested.

As for the demonstration GUI mentioned by CamDawg, it seemed to be more popular than the actual project: Isaya mentioned that for some mod they were developing, they would like to have such a GUI installer, but then he didn't contact me.

Although I've very little free time, I would try making a program if I received a finished concept of the project (about the functions, design etc.) of the mod manager, and with the necessary WeiDU switches provided.

So I'd also welcome such a tool, and encourage everyone familiar with programming to create one if (s)he finds it interesting.

Edited by Baronius, 26 August 2005 - 12:56 PM.