General Status Update
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:12 am
Hi all -
Phew. All my classes for the winter are finally over, and I'm a couple days into my job for the spring and summer. Still getting the hang of things of course but feeling good. Anyway, now that I don't have to deal with homework, I should finally have more time for the mod! Mainly on weekends but also a bit in the evenings. Some foundation-level things on my mind lately:
I'm seriously considering the possibility of splitting the mod into a core mod and multiple part mods. Mainly for the sake of data, as it is now I can't make much progress because half of the features I want need more graphics, and I only have a few megabytes spare in the current version before the mod portal doesn't like it. Not a problem for recipes and such, but images, and I don't really see enough functions to construct all my sprites from base assets via the code. Masking and color tinting can do some things, of course, but I can't do anything with, for example, brightness and contrast. I can't convert color to grayscale, I can't add noise, there are a whole mess of very useful functions that I have in Paint.NET but not the Lua code. If (and it's looking more like when) I convert to multiple parts, the current "xander-mod_X.Y.Z" will be used as the core or header, and will require all the individual parts. By themselves, these parts may end up adding stuff, doing nothing, or even failing to load, because I probably won't have time to write all the alternate recipes, items, substitutions, functions, etc. needed to make them capable of standing alone.
With the new resource set I mentioned a while back, worlds will likely be broken. However since there are the same number after as before, I technically could try to write a migration. I'm wondering if this is worth the effort, though, since all the mines and processing chains will have to be rebuilt anyway due to the changes in ore composition. Evaporites will have an especially bad problem,being converted from mineral water, so there will only be single tiles of it around where mineral water wells used to be. Heck, migrating a fluid to a solid might not even work at all, I don't know. Due to all this I think I'll not migrate resources, and redirect the effort to somewhere more useful.
Lastly, I have to say that I'm impressed beyond all expectation by everyone's determination! This community has shown some incredible grit in hammering through my crazy mod, I mean, 130 MW in coal -> steam, dang! And even without the basic turbine, too, because I messed up the parts and identity! It really encourages me : )
Phew. All my classes for the winter are finally over, and I'm a couple days into my job for the spring and summer. Still getting the hang of things of course but feeling good. Anyway, now that I don't have to deal with homework, I should finally have more time for the mod! Mainly on weekends but also a bit in the evenings. Some foundation-level things on my mind lately:
I'm seriously considering the possibility of splitting the mod into a core mod and multiple part mods. Mainly for the sake of data, as it is now I can't make much progress because half of the features I want need more graphics, and I only have a few megabytes spare in the current version before the mod portal doesn't like it. Not a problem for recipes and such, but images, and I don't really see enough functions to construct all my sprites from base assets via the code. Masking and color tinting can do some things, of course, but I can't do anything with, for example, brightness and contrast. I can't convert color to grayscale, I can't add noise, there are a whole mess of very useful functions that I have in Paint.NET but not the Lua code. If (and it's looking more like when) I convert to multiple parts, the current "xander-mod_X.Y.Z" will be used as the core or header, and will require all the individual parts. By themselves, these parts may end up adding stuff, doing nothing, or even failing to load, because I probably won't have time to write all the alternate recipes, items, substitutions, functions, etc. needed to make them capable of standing alone.
With the new resource set I mentioned a while back, worlds will likely be broken. However since there are the same number after as before, I technically could try to write a migration. I'm wondering if this is worth the effort, though, since all the mines and processing chains will have to be rebuilt anyway due to the changes in ore composition. Evaporites will have an especially bad problem,being converted from mineral water, so there will only be single tiles of it around where mineral water wells used to be. Heck, migrating a fluid to a solid might not even work at all, I don't know. Due to all this I think I'll not migrate resources, and redirect the effort to somewhere more useful.
Lastly, I have to say that I'm impressed beyond all expectation by everyone's determination! This community has shown some incredible grit in hammering through my crazy mod, I mean, 130 MW in coal -> steam, dang! And even without the basic turbine, too, because I messed up the parts and identity! It really encourages me : )