Central website for mods

What would be the difference :open_mouth:

So it’s on Radiant’s servers and doesn’t place undue strain on a private user’s service. I also don’t like the way Kingdom’s download site doesn’t allow tags or other ways to organize the mods (or maybe the service is provided and Kingdom just doesn’t use it yet), and hopefully Radiant could pick a service that does. It could also be policed more easily. Just my two cents.

-Will

When adding a download you can add tags, that has been there for a while, you can also search downloads using the search feature, also, strain is welcome considering Kingdom is run on very powerful servers. (Barely any strain/lag at all). Also, on the left side their are categories, Mods, Maps, Templates and Replicas, I can add more categories if needed/suggested. I have mods policing all Downloads/Forums so foreign content and such is not allowed.

@wminsing Will, you have to understand how determined @Warstories is when it comes to getting his repository and site as ubiquitous as possible as fast as possible. It’s admirable if a little bit grating. (Edit: I forgot to mention that this is so common it has literally become a running joke with regulars.) Radiant has stated that they may open a repository, but think about it this way: by then @Warstories’s site will have been up for almost six months (assuming they release the repo at about the same time as the beta, IF they even release it).

By then the site will have fleshed out its feature set, and taken care of most bugs. No, I don’t like that it has another set of forums, but do I think Stonehearth needs a DFFD even at this early stage? Frack yes I do.

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Forums on the site were always secondary for people who prefer it, my main goal is for it to be a repository :D, I am very determined, :blush:
Edit: Just made it so you don’t need an account to download off of Kingdom’s repository :smile:

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Plug Party? I made a modding post btw. Post. Super-shameless plug over.

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i have no doubt SHK will serve as a great repository… but as with virtually any game that offers mods, there will be a handful of “big sites” from which to choose… whether thats another fan site (likely), or something official (almost guaranteed), time will tell…

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You flatter me :blush:

I’m pretty sure during one of the livestreams Tom said that there would be in-game support for mod management. This implies not relying on a 3rd-party website to host mods.

Also, to be honest, it’s such a core feature, they’d be mad to rely on third parties to support mod discovery and hosting.

When I hear in-game support for mod management I think of Minecraft, where you download the mods off of a third party, but you can enable/disable mods you’ve installed in-game. (Ok maybe not minecraft, but something like Feed the Beast mod management if that makes sense)

The big difference that I see is that Minecraft modding is something people did to it. Modding is an integral part of Stonehearth, fully supported. Hence they’ll need to support it with a first-party system.

Tom’s also indicated that Steam Workshop might be an option now that there’s Greenlight (yay!) but that won’t be the only avenue for mods. Thus I reckon they’ll be looking to support multiple mod hosts. I’m not sure exactly how they’ll do that; it could get hairy :wink:

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Skyrim handled that pretty well. Both the steam and non-steam versions function similarly and allow for internal and external mods.

I really hope the support for mods in Stonehearth is far beyond the “support” they had in Skyrim. Specific things off the top of my head:

  1. I hope that the Stonehearth mods are self-contained rather than all copied into the one directory structure and thus can have filename collisions, and
  2. Have a well-defined system for overriding core implementations of things and a sensible mechanism for handling conflicts when two or more mods try to override the same core functionality.

Amongst other things :slight_smile:

Also, Tom’s mentioned he’s keen to get a “spotlight” kind of functionality into the game, like LBP/LBP2 (except, you know, better :wink:

it looks like they are all contained within their own folder, under the parent /mods/ folder:

/mods/musicPlayer

/mods/musicPlayer/musicPlayer.html

/mods/musicPlayer/musicPlayer.js

/mods/musicPlayer/musicPlayer.css

/mods/musicPlayer/locales/en.json

/mods/musicPlayer/locales/de.json

ITS A TRAP!!!

Really though that folder structure looks mighty suss to me, they’ve said that their mods are functionally identical to ours but that structure sugests that theirs are separated from ours so somethings either weird or lying.

Ah yes! I remember seeing that now. Gives me warm fuzzies :slight_smile:

I truly believe that this game needs an Official site for mods. If you look at the insane world that is Minecraft mods you’ll know what I’m talking about. My kids love Minecraft and have asked me to download some mods for them. I immediately get frustrated having to try and sort through 100’s of sites all hiding mods behind adware links, and just how much of a pain it is. So I tell them, sorry guys your just get to play ordinary Minecraft. I know I could spend a bit of time and find a safe source for the mods, but there are so damn many it’s just too much work.

There are 3 major reasons why Minecraft suffers from these problems:

  1. The insane popularity of Minecraft (which boggles my mind). But I guess Farmville is insanely popular as well.
  2. The ability to easily mod Minecraft.
  3. The most important !!! The fact that Mojang does not have any official site or resource for sharing mods.

The Minecraft forums aren’t technically official as they are hosted by Curse, but they are linked on Mojang’s site. A forum is far from an ideal location for finding mods. Threads get very long and cluttered with un-related posts. Finding mods in there is very clumsy and annoying.

Since modding is one of Stonehearths biggest aspects, I think Radiant needs to take some steps to avoid the disaster that has occurred with Minecraft mods. Fortunately and unfortunately, I don’t think this game will be as popular as Minecraft. I don’t think any game that a true gamer plays will ever be as popular as games like Minecraft, Farmville, Bejeweled, etc. So that will alleviate some of the problems. A link In game to a mod index
will take the sails out of the spyware peddlers trying to make money off of a popular modding community.

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I agree with @2_Zons that this is something Radiant should manage on-site, and also have robust in-game support for managing mods. No outside site could provide the same level of support in this regard as a Radiant managed site.

-Will

or a Radiant supported site?

Also, our new Downloads area may change your mind about other sites, Stonehearth Kingdom is here to stay so the chances of it going away are very very low. http://www.stonehearthkingdom.com/forum/index.php?/files/

I agree that there needs to be a centralized area for mods. It keeps everything in one place, and it should hopefully alleviate these issues that @2_Zons highlighted, of which I think the biggest is accessibility - I don’t wanna have to travel across a handful of websites just to find the one mod I want.

So yes, I think there needs to be one central platform for mod files, or at least an official platform - I think we can safely assume that as this is something integral to Stonehearth, they won’t approach this lightly.

And @Warstories currently Stonehearth Kingdom is alright - but how many files is it hosting and how many people access it daily? What happens when this number increases to lets say at least the 20.000 + kickstarter backers. I don’t mean stability of the server, I just mean generally will people be able to find everything they want? And is it the right platform for the distribution of mods?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that there are people like you out there that are excited about the game, and have done something like this. But do you merit being recognised as the official mod distribution platform simply on the basis of being the first one to offer it?

What if somebody creates a website that is better than yours for sharing and accessing mods? Surely they would then better serve the purpose and should be recognised? What if somebody else creates one better than them? I mean ultimately this could go on and on.

Not to take away from what you’ve done, but I just think there needs to be the larger picture taken into consideration when a decision is made that effects something that is baked into the core of the game.

Whatever the conclusion is, I’m sure we’ll see something closer to the beta release, and it will be the right one for the community as a whole.

Should Stonehearth Kingdom go away? No, absolutely not., and I’m sure it will carve out it’s own identity at some point as a fan site. Should it be recognized as the official platform for the distribution of mods? I don’t think so. I think there are better options out there.

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