Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

[Stan`]

Just now, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I always thought it would be fun if specs could read ally chat from teams during a game. Is this something that can be added in the community mod?

I'm not sure that's a good idea. They could answer in the chat giving advice to enemies.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Its already possible to do this, but I think the key difference would be the cases where the answer the spec has to give is very simple answer such as "champions" or even "yes/no" in response to a more pointed question. 

 guess it comes down to a choice: specs accessing global chat and not reading team's chat, or specs being able to read team chat but not write to global chat. I am not sure which is better/ which people would want. I just think the entertainment value of spectating games would be a lot more if specs could see what teams are planning/discussing.

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Another thought I had was about team voice chat. I have recently seen some teams start to use mumble or discord to talk to each other while they play, and it is quite evident how big of an advantage it is over typing in ally chat. I think adding an in-game system for this would be great since it is not ideal to have to find and follow players when you are on a new team.

Edited March 8, 2023 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Stan`]

Given how toxic the chat becomes, I'm pretty sure it would be way worse with vocal chat.

[Yekaterina]

5 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Given how toxic the chat becomes, I'm pretty sure it would be way worse with vocal chat.

Actually all voice chats that I've been to are surprisingly civilised. The reason is, many player's first language isn't English so they feel no shame when they type vulgar stuff. But when it comes to speaking, the experience is more involved and they would think about social interactions. Hence they are more well behaved in voice chats. You have a choice to leave the voice chat if you want. 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Yea I was thinking like push to talk, click to mute others etc. I think a lot of players would use an in-game system if it was there.

[guerringuerrin]

3 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

specs accessing global chat

Sometimes this possibility leads to undesirable situations when specs comment in the global chat about the skills of one of the players. This can be especially overwhelming and demoralising for new players. Some ppl (luckily, just a few ones) with toxic behavior can even reveal what a player is doing and ruin the game. I think it would be better not to allow global chat to viewers unless the host allows it with some in-game command or option in the pre-game. I am not particularly against this possibility currently in operation. But I think it would be better if the host could control this feature to allow or deny it.

3 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Another thought I had was about team voice chat. I have recently seen some teams start to use mumble or discord to talk to each other while they play, and it is quite evident how big of an advantage it is over typing in ally chat. I think adding an in-game system for this would be great since it is not ideal to have to find and follow players when you are on a new team.

+1 to this.

[Stan`]

Other than the obvious issues with behavior, the biggest challenge is technical. There are two aspects to it. The first one is streaming audio in a way that works on all networks, and as you've seen, the game doesn't even have a reliable way to make sure that everyone is still able to join/host because networks are complicated. In the same ways dedicated servers might help, but it has a money cost. Another thing is performance, pretty sure that's gonna cost you some precious milliseconds that would have decided the issue of the match, and choppy sound isn't particularly great to hear.

[Lion.Kanzen]

it would be excellent to be able to make a url link.here...

 

nobody is playing with the mod/patch.

The problem is psychological, a mod is not the same as a patch.

if we call it an optional patch it would be easier for people to accept the change in multiplayer.

 

this would need less opposition.

 

ignore lootboxes thing and concentrate on how tempting it looks to press that golden button.

 

 

Edited March 28, 2023 by Lion.Kanzen

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 08/03/2023 at 11:00 AM, Yekaterina said:

Actually all voice chats that I've been to are surprisingly civilised. The reason is, many player's first language isn't English so they feel no shame when they type vulgar stuff. But when it comes to speaking, the experience is more involved and they would think about social interactions. Hence they are more well behaved in voice chats. You have a choice to leave the voice chat if you want. 

the first thing that can make you xenophobic, or racist or classicist, call it what you will.

It's the accent, the particular way of speaking, I speak strange in my Spanish for example.

I have friends from Argentina and one from Colombia.

[Stan`]

Maybe the lobby message could be a JSON with a link array that would work like the option tabs. I don't know much about the GUI @maroder @rossenburg 

[LetswaveaBook]

On 08/03/2023 at 6:00 PM, Yekaterina said:

Actually all voice chats that I've been to are surprisingly civilised. The reason is, many player's first language isn't English so they feel no shame when they type vulgar stuff.

I think the reason might be different. With voice call you sacrifice the safe space provided by a good keyboard.

I wouldnt be suprised if vulgar language by keyboard warriors is actually partly caused by insecurity and speaking to other people is scary.

[Yekaterina]

23 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I wouldnt be suprised if vulgar language by keyboard warriors is actually partly caused by insecurity and speaking to other people is scary.

I suppose there would be more inter-personal connection when speaking instead of typing. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

Meanwhile the interpersonal connection.

 

34 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

I suppose there would be more inter-personal connection when speaking instead of typing. 

 

[causative]

Right now the community mod includes all the simulation/components/*.js files, but it doesn't actually change any of them. This makes it incompatible with other mods that might change those .js files. Can those .js files be removed from the community mod? I am writing a mod to estimate instantaneous player income, which has to touch a few of those files. My mod needs to touch those files to collect data to show on the GUI, but it doesn't cause any desyncs with vanilla 0ad and is compatible with vanilla 0ad, so it would also be compatible with the community mod if the community mod didn't include those .js files.

Edited April 10, 2023 by causative

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, causative said:

Right now the community mod includes all the simulation/components/*.js files, but it doesn't actually change any of them. This makes it incompatible with other mods that might change those .js files. Can those .js files be removed from the community mod? I am writing a mod to estimate instantaneous player income, which has to touch a few of those files. My mod needs to touch those files to collect data to show on the GUI, but it doesn't cause any desyncs with vanilla 0ad and is compatible with vanilla 0ad, so it would also be compatible with the community mod if the community mod didn't include those .js files.

Well, one of my ideas for future community mod development will involve BuildingAI.js, which is in components.

That being said, either

1. the unused components files could be removed from the community mod.

2. You could try to add this to the community mod for a27 

Are you making the mod for a26 or a27? At this point I would recommend making it a27 compatible, since the release is "coming soon", and since there is unlikely to be another community mod update until after a27.

[causative]

I don't use BuildingAI.js in my mod. Why not just remove any files from the community mod that the mod doesn't touch? The community mod includes all 4610 files under the simulation directory but only touches about 260 of them.

Edited April 10, 2023 by causative

[chrstgtr]

1 hour ago, causative said:

I don't use BuildingAI.js in my mod. Why not just remove any files from the community mod that the mod doesn't touch? The community mod includes all 4610 files under the simulation directory but only touches about 260 of them.

I agree that in the future the community mod should do as you suggest. 

As for immediately doing what you suggest, there are adoption hurdles associated with a changing mods, and I think there is a general desire to not do too many updates unless we have to (because of adoption fatigue issues). Doing as you request would require all players to download a new version of the community mod, which may or may not happen, and would cause confusion within the playing base as to what is new in the new version of the mod. 

A lot of people have a lot of ideas they want to launch in the next iteration of the community mod. Given timing, however, it's probably easier to just wait until "coming soon" comes.

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, causative said:

The community mod includes all 4610 files under the simulation directory but only touches about 260 of them.

Well the idea was to make modding more accessible to everyone, and towards a centralized test environment where balance changes and minor content additions can be play tested on the fly, all in 1 mod.

having them all already in gitlab makes it easier for everyone to try making changes of their own.

Ideally, your gui mod should be fine in a27 if most players are using vanilla 0ad as I expect. Right now, because of a couple of bug fixes for Han, the community mod is much more mainstream than I think it should be.

[causative]

Well, couldn't you have all the files in gitlab, but have a script that only copies over the changed files when it's time to put out a new verified patch version?

Something like (bash, rsync):

# make a directory to put just the community mod files that
# are different from a26
mkdir ~/cm_minimal/
# If ~/cm/ contains the (non-zipped) community mod,
# and ~/0ad/a26 contains a source distribution of 0ad alpha 26,
# this command will gather all the files from the community mod
# that are different from a26 or not present in a26, and put 
# the filenames in files.txt, while excluding cached.xmb files
rsync -ric --dry-run ~/cm/ ~/0ad/a26/binaries/data/mods/public/ | cut -d " " -f 2 | grep -v "cached.xmb" > files.txt
# this command will read the files from the previous step
# and copy them into cm_minimal
rsync -a --files-from=files.txt ~/cm/ ~/cm_minimal/

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by causative

[Stan`]

I think it was for the validation script (entvalidate.py) to be able to run. 

Not sure why @wraitii added the js files though. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 09/04/2023 at 10:30 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

the community mod is much more mainstream than I think it should be

I have not seen it. I don't play much either.

[hyperion]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

I think it was for the validation script (entvalidate.py) to be able to run. 

Not sure why @wraitii added the js files though. 

The advantage of it being a copy of public is easy to review patches and for them to be easily backported to vanilla.

I agree with @causative that a filter when building the mod for mod.io would be reasonable, tho I'd build it around git diff --name-status

[Stan`]

Bit annoying to have to clone the game's entire folder to run the CI...

 

[Player of 0AD]

@real_tabasco_sauce   What about making the default weapon of the immortals the bow, not the spear? The spear is only advantageous against melee cav and structures.