Just a set of thoughts on the downloader and ideas about guidelines we should probably follow for changing it.
The downloader is a bit of a grey area, so we probably should exercise the same choices made by wolflair. Low load downloads, using temporary storage for the downloaded files, &c.
What I would like to see changed to the downloader.
- Store the id number ( and possibly type ) in a field for all the things. So Wizard would store the id 9.
- Store the time the thing was last updated in a field in either a standardized forum or as seconds since the epoc.
- The ability to merge information downloaded with previously generated ddi_*.dat files as well as the templates.
- Fix handling prices for consumables.
- Handle power attack changes at different tiers.
- Description into scripts generation. TSR uses very specific wording for things, so it should be possible to pick up some key sentences and automatically use them to create scripts.
- Handling linked/nested powers and full discipline powers better.
- Partial download modes. Allow various partial download modes.
- Everything - Download everything.
- Add new mode - Just the indices, and then any item whose id is not already in the ddi_*.dat files. If the dat files do not yet exists this is identical to everything.
- Spot check mode - Pick a few things at random from the current ddi_*.dat files with a slight preference to things with oldest update time. If changes are detected offer to download the rest of things.
- Profile download - Give an por file or character builder exported character, only download and update the things used by the character.
- Update old mode - Update things that are have not be updated over a month and download them.
- Default - Combination of add new mode and spot check mode.
Daphne,
That sounds awesome. though I think we need more devs here before that could happen, unless you're up for it.
My coding is rusty, and I mostly struggle my way through HL scripts.
I don't mind doing the grunt work on themes... but if the next plan is to replace the downloader with our own that handles the themes, that would be great, except for the headache from when Wolflair updates HL4e in the future and causes us to be badly forked.
Note that Lone Wolf has a repository with the source code under the GPL v2 at: http://code.google.com/p/ddidownloader/ (http://code.google.com/p/ddidownloader/).
My actually thought back when I was playing in 4E games was to write a brand new from scratch downloader and then just make sure that it's output works with the game definition files.
I've actually been running forked for a while, I have a few additional tweaks besides the theme ones that I apply to game files and use a post processor on output of the full discipline powers to get them to appear correctly.
Well the point of this repository is to handle any of that you wish to share.
The themes is the thing that is primary for the site, but if you have any other mods that you want to share, feel free to upload them.
I think in the meanwhile it is much more than only the Themes. There are many bugs/missing implementations for Feats and Magic Items in the original stuff.