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[hermes]

Usual caveats apply, I've searched for this, though not exhaustively.  This thread by Knight Otu touches on the issue, slightly. 

Now I'm looking at modding for the first time, it seems to me that it could be a bit more forgiving and/or structured in, say, an Elder Scrolls kind of way.  What I'd suggest is that the game loads mods from a directory entirely other than the raws directory.  Thus the game might load the raws for a new world in the following manner:

• Load vanilla raws from master dir
• Load mod raws from next mod dir
• If this mod overwrites an existing entry, do so
• Goto step 2

Advantages: Mods are more truly modular, easier to add and remove mods by simply adding or removing directories.  There would be no issues with breaking the game when removing because the master raws would always fill the gaps.  By loading mods in a predictable manner, e.g. alphabetic order, they can be combined predictably at run time without the hassle of having to manually combine them.  If someone wanted to totally replace the master raws they could still do so.  A simple screen could pop up at world-gen if mod folders were detected and let the user toggle mods on or off.  I envisage this would only be applicable at worldgen since changing raws afterwards is extremely tricky.

Disadvantages:  I'm prone to overlooking the obvious and there is probably some reason why this has not been implemented or it has already been considered.  A system like this would possibly need some UI work on Toady's part which could make it into something less than kind-of-trivial to implement.

Thoughts?

[zwei]

Disadvantages:  I'm prone to overlooking the obvious and there is probably some reason why this has not been implemented or it has already been considered.  A system like this would possibly need some UI work on Toady's part which could make it into something less than kind-of-trivial to implement.

Obvious reason is that it never came up during development because Creator does not really use lots of mods - default ones are focus

There could be powerful modding management feature - for example, ui which looks them up on online repository, presents user list of them with descriptions, user ratings and suggested Df version, downloads selected and installs them.

[10ebbor10]

Also, all creatures and such are stored in one raws folder, right? How should the game now what to do with those. Replace it completely(That's the current procedure). Or should it add both, which would add problems since it prevents mods from easily removing creatures.

[Courtesy Arloban]

Also, all creatures and such are stored in one raws folder, right? How should the game now what to do with those. Replace it completely(That's the current procedure). Or should it add both, which would add problems since it prevents mods from easily removing creatures.

Depending on how its coded if the same creature is in a different file in the mod, than in the raws, it could lead to a duplicated creature.

[Charey Wolf]

Before anything like this could happen there needs to be some way for the game to handle duplicate raws without shuffling the creatures around so dwarfs end up as ducks.

[Scelly9]

Before anything like this could happen there needs to be some way for the game to handle duplicate raws without shuffling the creatures around so dwarfs end up as ducks.

That would be very sad.