[The E]

Then there's the issue of going through all directories that could potentially be mods, looking for campaign files, building a list of settings that would need to be applied, parsing all appropriate mod.inis..... It just sounds to me like a lot of potential overhead for little gain.

[chief1983]

I think that with some of the other framework changes we're already planning to make, it might become a bit more feasible than it currently is.  If you can at least assume that all users should have their mods in folders with identical names, you would only need to fire up the same -mod command as the host.  If/when we eliminate most manual mod installation, this should be ok to assume for the most part.  Anyone without standard mods installed with the right path names would just be blocked by the host, unless the host has turned off the check for proper mod setup.

[Nuke]

i wouldn't mind having the mod selection code built into the engine so that were not dependent on a launcher or command line to set mod. sorta have a screen before pilot selection that lets you choose your mod, then bring up the pilots list. this would pretty much run before anything is actually loaded (loading everything then unloading what you dont need is insane, my fs2 dir is huge, and i dont even have any major mods installed). mod.ini would be replaced by mod.tbl, many of the mod specific command line options would be set by that table. the game would scan for those to find mod folders. then use data in that table to create an entry in a list of mods. then of course you would have the whole interface to worry about and some settings would likely need to be made before setting a video mode. if something like that were to happen i think it would best be a popup window sorta like the debug spew. of course i can see how this kind of feature would severely complicate everything.

[The E]

That, I think, is a more workable approach.

[Tomo]

i wouldn't mind having the mod selection code built into the engine so that were not dependent on a launcher or command line to set mod. sorta have a screen before pilot selection that lets you choose your mod, then bring up the pilots list.

One fairly plausible way to do that would be to merge the code for a portable launcher into FSO.
At present the launcher runs FSO, which writes a file (possible settings) and exits, then the launcher writes an options file and calls the FSO executable - if they were actually bundled together then this actually gets easier as it wouldn't need either file but could pass the (possible) options directly back and forth using the existing FSO methods.

That may be worth looking at once wxLauncher is 'feature complete', but probably not before.

[chief1983]

The git system gave me an idea for this recently too.  Basically, we could have something like mod signing.  A mod would simply be released with a list of files it contains, and their signatures.  The compilation of these signatures would also become one signature, the mod's own signature.  Therefore, a particular release of a mod would have one unique number.  So, FSO could scan all mod folders for this signature set, and immediately tell if files were tampered with, at least without re-adjusting all relevant signatures in the file.  You also wouldn't have to worry so much about folder names for mod installs, you'd simply need to find the folder with the right signature.  FSO would be able to tell if any files it has loaded are not part of a signed set.  If it believes the files are valid, the next step to joining a multiplayer match would be to make sure the signatures themselves match what was on the host.  You'd only need to send one signature at first to cut down on handshakes, and if it doesn't match up, the client could ask the host for the full set of signatures and what mods they were tied to.  Then the client could try to see if those signatures were available, in what folders, and reboot with the right mod options loaded.