Factorio Forums

So the other day i had a nice idea to test mods for 0.13, to see which will break,
I asked for people to post mods and i would check them,
But i deleted that thread due to a realization i had, and i thought keeping the thread around would lead to an ambiguous message

In my testing i found that 0.13 will break most mods, in particular any mod with a control.lua will need at least a small update to work with 0.13, this is due to defines.lua no longer exiting (its not coded into the game script)
This sort of mods include RSO, FatController, Blueprint string, FARL, Bobs mods, DyTech... basically anything more advanced than additional entities.

This is a good opportunity to describe what the plan is for 0.13.

The new mod portal will now be the recommended and only official source for uploading and hosting mods and their discussions,
The mod forum will be archived in a way, that old threads are available, but there won't be a sub-forum for 0.13 mods,
From now on we would like all mods to be hosted on the mod portal.

Modding discussion and modding help will remain here on the forum, as i feel they will still be useful

So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

I also ask that nobody start uploading old mods for 0.12 onto the mod portal, as this would be incongruent with the direction we would like to take

For anybody that posted in my mod compatibility thread, thank you for making me realize how broken they all are
And i hope we will be moving forward into a golden age of Factorio modding

And what is the plan for developers with broken mods?

Does Wube test each mod after upload before release on the portal?
Get the missing file included again for compatibility?

You just wrote, that instead of the forum, all mods must be uploaded to the portal, what was mentioned partly in the FFF.
I'm missing a solution for your findings, sorry.

Greetings steinio

steinio wrote:And what is the plan for developers with broken mods?

Does Wube test each mod after upload before release on the portal?
Get the missing file included again for compatibility?

You just wrote, that instead of the forum, all mods must be uploaded to the portal, what was mentioned partly in the FFF.
I'm missing a solution for your findings, sorry.

Greetings steinio

If your mod is broken, you will have to update it, it won't be broken in any unrecoverable way, generally it will be a 1 or 2 line fix, unless you have some specific scripting,
The missing file won't be needed, as the values which defines is used for is not accessible without requiring the file, so deleting the require will fix it.

We won't be testing mods as they are uploaded, but if people report that a mod doesn't work, we reserve the right to hide it or remove it until there is a 0.13 compatible version developed

Ok, thank you.

Your offer to test mods was really honorable, but i guess you didn't expect this flood of requests .

Maybe version 0.14 or 0.15 offers a automated code review service to check against the current lua documentation.

Greetings steinio

Klonan wrote:The new mod portal will now be the recommended and only official source for uploading and hosting mods and their discussions,
...
From now on we would like all mods to be hosted on the mod portal.
...
So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

I really hope that support will remain for the actual mod zip to be hosted on github. Being able to tag a release on github and not have to re-upload the zip file another place is a nice feature, which I would hate to lose.

sparr wrote:I really hope that support will remain for the actual mod zip to be hosted on github. Being able to tag a release on github and not have to re-upload the zip file another place is a nice feature

i concur, Git (and other places like it) do a good job of making Software Development much less painful and time consuming for those that don't have access to a CDN.

sparr wrote:

Klonan wrote:The new mod portal will now be the recommended and only official source for uploading and hosting mods and their discussions,
...
From now on we would like all mods to be hosted on the mod portal.
...
So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

I really hope that support will remain for the actual mod zip to be hosted on github. Being able to tag a release on github and not have to re-upload the zip file another place is a nice feature, which I would hate to lose.

On initial launch there won't be direct support for deploying via github, but it is on our list of planned/hoped features

Klonan wrote:

sparr wrote:

Klonan wrote:The new mod portal will now be the recommended and only official source for uploading and hosting mods and their discussions,
...
From now on we would like all mods to be hosted on the mod portal.
...
So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

I really hope that support will remain for the actual mod zip to be hosted on github. Being able to tag a release on github and not have to re-upload the zip file another place is a nice feature, which I would hate to lose.

On initial launch there won't be direct support for deploying via github, but it is on our list of planned/hoped features

How will this work? For example, is the mod portal going to create a version for each github release? Or automatically build a zip from release branch on every commit?

Zeblote wrote:

Klonan wrote:

sparr wrote:

Klonan wrote:The new mod portal will now be the recommended and only official source for uploading and hosting mods and their discussions,
...
From now on we would like all mods to be hosted on the mod portal.
...
So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

I really hope that support will remain for the actual mod zip to be hosted on github. Being able to tag a release on github and not have to re-upload the zip file another place is a nice feature, which I would hate to lose.

On initial launch there won't be direct support for deploying via github, but it is on our list of planned/hoped features

How will this work? For example, is the mod portal going to create a version for each github release? Or automatically build a zip from release branch on every commit?

Im not 100% on details, but the mod will only be updated through the mod portal when you choose to, not with every commit or push

Klonan wrote:On initial launch there won't be direct support for deploying via github, but it is on our list of planned/hoped features

Will we simply be able to put a github link as the download link, as we currently can with factoriomods.com?

I see you listed Bobmods.

To clarify, only 2 actually use the control.lua, Clock and Techsave.

I'm sure others will cause issues due to accessing base game items and entities that have changed name (Like logistics mod changing values on the underground belts, the first level changes internal name)

Klonan wrote:So the other day i had a nice idea to test mods for 0.13, to see which will break,
I asked for people to post mods and i would check them,
But i deleted that thread due to a realization i had, and i thought keeping the thread around would lead to an ambiguous message

In my testing i found that 0.13 will break most mods, in particular any mod with a control.lua will need at least a small update to work with 0.13, this is due to defines.lua no longer exiting (its not coded into the game script)
This sort of mods include RSO, FatController, Blueprint string, FARL, Bobs mods, DyTech... basically anything more advanced than additional entities.

This is a good opportunity to describe what the plan is for 0.13.

The new mod portal will now be the recommended and only official source for uploading and hosting mods and their discussions,
The mod forum will be archived in a way, that old threads are available, but there won't be a sub-forum for 0.13 mods,
From now on we would like all mods to be hosted on the mod portal.

Modding discussion and modding help will remain here on the forum, as i feel they will still be useful

So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

I also ask that nobody start uploading old mods for 0.12 onto the mod portal, as this would be incongruent with the direction we would like to take

For anybody that posted in my mod compatibility thread, thank you for making me realize how broken they all are
And i hope we will be moving forward into a golden age of Factorio modding

So these, http://lua-api.factorio.com/0.13.0-preview/defines.html, are going away or just accessed in a different way??

Peppe wrote:So these, http://lua-api.factorio.com/0.13.0-preview/defines.html, are going away or just accessed in a different way??

They will be accessible without requiring the defines.lua

Klonan wrote:

Peppe wrote:So these, http://lua-api.factorio.com/0.13.0-preview/defines.html, are going away or just accessed in a different way??

They will be accessible without requiring the defines.lua

So... We can access them the same way as before (with defines.X or a number), but we don't need "require" defines"?

DedlySpyder wrote:

Klonan wrote:

Peppe wrote:So these, http://lua-api.factorio.com/0.13.0-preview/defines.html, are going away or just accessed in a different way??

They will be accessible without requiring the defines.lua

So... We can access them the same way as before (with defines.X or a number), but we don't need "require" defines"?

Correct. All else being equal, you'll just delete the 'require "defines"` line from your mod.

Why not just keep a defines.lua that doesn't do anything for a few versions?

Klonan wrote: Modding discussion and modding help will remain here on the forum, as i feel they will still be useful

So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

Where will mod feedback/questions/support go? I know most of the activity in mod threads are usually bug reports or questions about how to use a mod. Will the mod portal have it's own built in discussion or...?

Afforess wrote:

Klonan wrote: Modding discussion and modding help will remain here on the forum, as i feel they will still be useful

So with 0.13, I ask that mod creators (myself included) will take this opportunity to become familiar with the mod portal,
And from now on host their mods there.

Where will mod feedback/questions/support go? I know most of the activity in mod threads are usually bug reports or questions about how to use a mod. Will the mod portal have it's own built in discussion or...?

Yep, therewill be discussions and threads on the mod portal

I've heard quite a few times recently of how horrible the forthcoming compatibility break will be, whereas the changes are quite minor actually compared to those of previous breaks.
So I've written python3 script, which performs regex substitutions to plug the breached holes. viewtopic.php?f=137&t=26613
Now I believe certain ide's might have more powerful automated tools for this job, but it's not like I could do anything better with my time.

Could you test it?

It feels to me as though in a way, the mod portal is going to try to reproduce a lot of the functionality of GitHub, the de-facto 'portal' for open source software. This is a significant undertaking.

I'd like devs to consider delivering GitHub API integration asap. GitHub has already got all the features that mod developers need for cooperation, discussion, issue tracking, release management, etc. The minimum the mod portal needs in my opinion is a way of getting the latest release (not commit) version of the mod, if it has changed.

Mod developers are adding value to factorio for 'love', not money. Give us some love back.