[Idea] A mod repo JSON file?

[All4n]

Hey Guys and girls!

I have this idea for a central repo souce of all the mods, it is pretty simple and should work like the Sublime Text 2 Package Control. You can look and read a lot more about it on their site here http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control. It is Open Source btw.

All Mod Managers could use this infomation to list all mods, and download and install them with ease, heck it will even support different files for multriple platforms if you are modding something insane/serioius.

A example would be like this, here there only is one mod but there could be a lot of them - and you can support diffend repo's too, you could be hosted by FTLgame.com or github or anything!

Code: Select all

"mods": [
      {
         "name": "Example",
         "description": "This is a Example mod, it does notthing.",
"picture": "http://example.com/thiscouldbeapicture.jpg",
         "author": "Example",
         "homepage": "http://example.com",
         "last_modified": "2012-12-12 12:12:12",
         "platforms": {
            "*": [
               {
                  "version": "1.0",
                  "url": "http://github.com/author/modsmods/ftlmod.ftl"
               }
            ]
         }
      }
   ]


I think it would be wonderful for the enduser of the mods, they never have to think about finding the right file, and the right update, the Mod Manager and the repo JSON data will all help to do this for them.

Grognak's Mod Manager would be awesome with this IMO

[marksteele]

interesting idea. Personally I will always be a fan of using the forums for development and discussion however once we get a lot of mods a system like this would be great for distribution.

[Grognak]

Xenolith seems to be a good system for keeping all the mods at one location and being up to date.

[marksteele]

ya but Grognak I think the point of this, if I understand correctly, is we can integrate it with mod managers and allow for people to view and download mods right inside the manager itself.

[All4n]

ya but Grognak I think the point of this, if I understand correctly, is we can integrate it with mod managers and allow for people to view and download mods right inside the manager itself.

This is correct!

You don't have to browse a website to find the mods, you can do this within any Mod Manager, or... website because the data is all in one central place. That said if we can agree on a format you could have mods from many repo's, just add a repo link, and you will get all the mods from that link. See it as a AppStore where you can load in different stores.

The cool thing here is that all Mod Managers can use the same repo's, and heck you could even mod the game so that it would be the Mod Manager, and it could still get the data from the same place.

If I find the time I'll make a Mod Manager myself, where I include this as a feature.

I think it could be a nice way to browse the mods, and install them. But I can see that a forum and a website can be good too, I just thing some people would prefer it to be more easy.