X2EventManager as an Enterprise Service Bus?

[TeamDragonpunk]

I'll post this here because I want to help keep the LWS Toolbox thread clean and for technical questions. This response is to issues mentioned here.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4072310-comprehensive-stealthguerilla-warfare-mod/?p=37275320

 

I think we all realized there would be some "growing pains" when a unified mod framework or "One Ring" Mod is introduced. Mods would have to be rewritten to conform to a single standard. Honestly, better for it to happen now, then later as mods get more complex and require more effort to rewrite.

 

My concern, and it sounds like many people share it, is maintaining the "One Ring" Mod. LWS is doing a fantastic job (and has been for years), but given that they have announced they might do a Kickstarter campaign for their own game, it's no insult to ask the question, "What happens if LWS ever stops maintaining the "One Ring" mod for whatever reason?"

 

Typically, in larger projects like this, the Maintainer would host this on a public repo on Github. 90% of modders won't care, but those that need to add additional hooks would fork the master, add the code and then submit a pull request. The Key Stakeholders would test the branch and merge it to the Master repo if no conflicts were found. Should the Maintainer ever leave (for their own game's Kickstarter), one of the Key Stakeholders becomes the new Maintainer.

 

Ideally, Firaxis would review the additional hooks periodically and add them to the base code on occasion to further minimize the dependence on a single Maintainer.

 

Going forward, as the community decides on the a single standard (be it MCM or Toolbox), I suggest we take this into consideration and ask them to make the code publicly available on GitHub. Again, it's no insult to LWS; it's just proper design to ensure there is redundancy and no single point of failure.

[davidlallen]

I feel this issue is important enough to put onto the LWS toolbox thread which Amineri has created. To me, there are pluses and minuses of github. IMHO the minus is a big one and the plus is a tiny one.

 

The plus is that other users can easily access the *modbuddy* file. By definition, all the source code is already present in the workshop distribution. In case LWS goes unresponsive due to their paid work, somebody can pickup the files from the distribution and one time, create a modbuddy file which would take a few minutes. I suppose there is a disaster scenario (more than 15 icons cough spiderman cough cough choke) where LWS *removes* the mod from workshop, but that seems unlikely.

 

The minus is that presence on github encourages random people to make random submits and/or branches. So this may lead to a proliferation of dialects of the mod, none of which would be compatible with each other.

[johnnylump]

Crossposting that I've uploaded our a zip of our development files to the Nexus as an optional file under the Toolbox mod.

[abeclancy]

By definition, all the source code is already present in the workshop distribution.

 

 

Note, this isn't entirely true. You can remove your source code from the distribution just by deleting the files before publishing on Steam (and obviously on Nexus). Uncooked UPK packages also by default contain the source code for the package, but if you cook the packages then the source code is removed from the packages. So it's entirely possible to distribute without any source.

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the information, but I doubt any modder would go back and delete the source code from their distribution. Anyway now we have one copy of the full source, which should be sufficient.

[TeamDragonpunk]

Thanks for the information, but I doubt any modder would go back and delete the source code from their distribution. Anyway now we have one copy of the full source, which should be sufficient.

 

Once I find a link to the Nexus Toolbox mod, I'll make a back-up of the zip for my own peace of mind. That's sufficient enough for me (until the code base changes so drastically it's worth backing up again)

[johnnylump]

http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom2/mods/559/?

[TeamDragonpunk]

http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom2/mods/559/?

 

Just bookmarked and downloaded! Thank you for indulging my paranoia ;) Btw, certainly happy to donate to a LWS Patreon account until the Kickstarter campaign!