New Mod System

[catornot]

---
config:
      theme: redux
---
flowchart TD
        A(["TS Mods"])
        R(["Nexus Mods"])
        T(["Mods"])
        E["User Load Order"]
        A --> B["TS Mods Plugin"]
        T --> C["Some New Mods Plugin"]
        R --> D["Nexus Mods Plugin"]
        B --> F["Northstar Asset Loader"]
        C --> F
        D --> F
        E --> F
        F --> G["Loaded Mods"]
        

Loading

Main points

• plugins to load different mod formats
• northstar loads the assets with custom loaders for exotic assets (like bytecode)
• clear interfaces for the mod system for northstar and the plugins
• mod loader is decided by dependencies then the user
• better dependencies for mods
• imgui or vgui ui for mods

Changes to northstar

northstar no longer loads any mod.json and it only loads assets. Plugins are used to load mods and pass the asset information to northstar. Northstar resolves conflicts by either load order and by rejecting mods. A mod could be reject if it is missing dependencies.

Mod changes

Mods no longer define load orders. Mods should include it's dependencies. Old mods could be highlighted to the user to signal that may be longer work with the new system and suggest to update it.

Ui

Should be rendered on the game window with either imgui or vgui. Possibly rewriting it in rui once it's possible.

Older attemps

#746
R2Northstar/Northstar#618

[ASpoonPlaysGames]

Some more details:

• The different plugins allow different mod sources (i.e TS, nexusmods) to have their own mod format, and translate that format into a mod manifest that NorthstarLauncher understands internally, this is passed to NorthstarLauncher, which handles the user-defined mod load order, etc.
• Providing the plugins the ability to handle the loading of assets was also considered, with an example being a plugin that loads squirrel bytecode or something instead of just providing a file path.
• It was also mentioned that any file conflicts between mods should just be a hard error. No attempt should be made to handle the file conflict by Northstar. If plugins want to provide advanced functionality to users to be able to disable sections of mods then they can do so and simply not include those disabled sections in the mod's manifest that is passed to NorthstarLauncher
• The UI for doing mod load order stuff as well as error messages is probably best done in ImGui as mods may cause the UI VM to die.

The key takeaway/benefit of this system would be that NorthstarLauncher wouldn't be tied to any specific mod folder structure, format etc. and any new mod manager/hosting platform could easily implement their own structure and plugin to provide NorthstarLauncher with the means of loading such formats.

[ASpoonPlaysGames]

For the ImGui stuff, the idea was proposed to perhaps implement some vgui node that could be used to call into an ImGui window/panel/whatever in a plugin or even potentially with a squirrel callback or similar?

The benefit of doing this would be to be able to provide a more dynamic menu system for mods as vgui is extremely limiting for a lot of use cases.