Mod Manager allowing easy, small-scale modding

[Mithril]

The big, commercial single-player crpgs often allow easy, small-scale modding. For example, there are thousands of mods for Oblivion including such things as as new or changed items, monsters, quests, classes, skills, graphics, audio, difficulty level, or interface. How could something similar be encouraged for TOME?

Part of the reason for the success for mods for Oblivion is the existence of mod managers. They can solve several problem.

1. Mods must be easy to install. Most people are afraid to touch code. With a mod manager you can just download a mod file and then open it with the mod manager in order to install.

2. Some basic mod conflict detection and prevention. Like, if a new mod overwrites something a previously installed mod has changed/added then a warning should be given.

3. Mods should be easy to uninstall. The mod manager should be able to reverse the changes done by a mod. Other mods installed later should not be affected. That is, if a mod is uninstalled, then other mods are reinstalled in the correct order they were installed previously.

4. Mods should be easy to disable temporarily. Like 3 but temporarily, for example with a button you can toggle on and off.

An image of the Oblivion Mod Manager:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/image ... 203903.jpg

[yufra]

That would be nice. There is already the framework for a module manager, but something that lets you modify a few files in a module would be quite interesting.

[getter77]

Very much agreed, as would it help with any larger expansions/mods/etc that would come about not introducing needless headaches versus legacy stuff.

[Final Master]

I apparently don't understand what is being discussed. Anyone care to elaborate?

[yufra]

T-Engine already has the capability for multiple modules built-in, for example ToME, Angband, and the two example modules that get shipped with ToME. The OP's suggestion is that there also be the capability for adding modifications (mods) to each of these modules that change in small to large ways the behavior of the base module. The difference between a mod and a module is the scope: a module is written from scratch and involves a large number of files, whereas a mod will consist of many fewer files and potentially only modify existing files. One example of a mod would be if someone released a home-brewed class before it gets incorporated into ToME proper. Another example would be to create challenge mods, where the challenge rules are enforced by code modification (shops turned off, ego and artifact weapon removed or rarity greatly increased, etc). These could be created by someone copying the original module, modifying it and then releasing it as an entire module but that is a) inefficient and b) requires the modder to keep updating the modified module as changes are made to the original. If mods are maintained as a collection of patches then they can easily be turned on and off, and have at least a chance of working as changes are made to the original module.

[Altefcat]

And that would be very useful -at least to me - for tweaking with tiles on the main module! Any idea if this feature would be complicated to add?