Adventures as variants

[george moromisato]

I've been thinking about a new use for adventure extensions.

One of the properties of adventure extensions is that the types included in the adventure are only loaded if the player chooses that adventure.

If you have Modules inside the adventure, those are also only loaded if the player chooses the adventure.

Imagine something like WE2 packaged as an adventure extension (or as a module inside an adventure extension).

Now you have an adventure called, "Transcendence + WE2". If the player chooses that adventure at the start of the game, they get WE2 enabled. But if the player chooses the default adventure, they get the vanilla game.

This seems like a nice way to dynamically select a package of extensions.

Maybe you all have already figured this out, but if not, I would love it if someone could try it and see if it works. [And if not, I would love to fix it.]

[digdug]

Imagine something like WE2 packaged as an adventure extension (or as a module inside an adventure extension).

Now you have an adventure called, "Transcendence + WE2". If the player chooses that adventure at the start of the game, they get WE2 enabled. But if the player chooses the default adventure, they get the vanilla game.

This seems like a nice way to dynamically select a package of extensions.

That would truly be awesome

In the next version of WE, I was planning to transform the mod into an adventure extension with modules. That would also fix the problem of declaring and re-declaring UNIDs in every XML of the mod.

I would love it if someone could try it and see if it works.

I haven't tried it yet.
Maybe someone else already tried modules in adventure extensions ?

I noticed some time ago that ships declared into a <TranscendenceAdventure> won't show up in the main screen of the game, which is probably good.

[ThePrivateer]

I must be missing something...how does this differ from how adventures run now?

Are you suggesting that players would be able to use both the adventure AND Transcendence at the same time?

I though the point of Adventures (which I why I used it for Hell's Trinity) is so that they are seperate...adventures...from the main game.

Thanks to anyone who can enlighten me...

[george moromisato]

I must be missing something...how does this differ from how adventures run now?

Imagine that a player has downloaded and installed Hell's Trinity and WE2. Right now, WE2 is an extension (not an adventure).

When you create a new game you will be asked to choose an adventure. You have two choices:

1. Vanilla Transcendence (Stars of the Pilgrim)
2. Hell's Trinity.

But since you've got WE2 installed, WE2 will extend both vanilla Transcendence AND Hell's Trinity. No matter which adventure you choose, you're going to get WE2.

Sometimes that's OK. There are a class of extensions that work with any adventure.

What I'm suggesting, though, is that some extensions get packaged up as adventure extension. In that case, in the example above, you would get the following choices:

1. Vanilla Transcendence
2. Hell's Trinity
3. Transcendence + WE2

Now you have a choice of whether to use WE2 or not, and you don't have to worry about WE2 being compatible with Hell's Trinity.

[ThePrivateer]

I must be missing something...how does this differ from how adventures run now?

....

Ohhhhh.

I get it now! Yeah, that's actually a really, really good idea. I actually want Hell's Trinity to not work with other extensions.

What you're proposing would work perfectly!

Thanks for clearing that up George!

[alterecco]

I actually want Hell's Trinity to not work with other extensions.

I suppose it might be nice to add an attribute to regular extensions and have adventures be able to specify what attributes of extensions are allowed? Something like:

Code: Select all

<TranscendenceExtension
  UNID="&myMod;"
  name="My Mod"
  attributes="vanilla"
  version="1.0">
....

<TranscendenceAdventure
  UNID="&myAdventure;"
  version="1.0"
  extensions="-vanilla">
...

[ThePrivateer]

I actually want Hell's Trinity to not work with other extensions.

I suppose it might be nice to add an attribute to regular extensions and have adventures be able to specify what attributes of extensions are allowed? Something like:

Code: Select all

<TranscendenceExtension
  UNID="&myMod;"
  name="My Mod"
  attributes="vanilla"
  version="1.0">
....

<TranscendenceAdventure
  UNID="&myAdventure;"
  version="1.0"
  extensions="-vanilla">
...

That's a nice idea. I've been using attributes a little more lately, and they are quite powerful for a number of things; extending them to adventures would mean you could allow/disallow certain types of mods.

Of course, that would mean we would need to agree on certain attributes (eg "Vanilla", "GodMod", "Graphics" etc), but I reckon that would work well.