Mod Merger

1st Official Post

    Would you like a mod merger? 21

    1. No (14) 67%
    2. Yes (4) 19%
    3. With some changes (2) 10%
    4. Maybe (1) 5%

    I think you already know what I am going to say. But here I go anyway. My three favorite mods are Buildcraft, IC, and RedPower. Coincidentally , they work in perfect harmony. Now, however, they are starting to overlap, which causes redundancy and wasted coding time. I suggest that Eloraam, SpaceToad, and Alblaka combine their mods into a single tech mod. This would accelerate the development of all three, as it would cut updating time by 2/3 at the same time as it prevented redundancy and copying. They could continue to work on their respective parts of the super-mod, but it would reduce update time, dev time, and installing time for people like me. Thanks for reading this, let me know what you think.

    I wonder how many cells I can put into my reactor before it ex... BOOOM!
    :Uranium Ingot: + MinecraftCreeper dust+ my friends base= fun

    • Official Post
    Quote from Offboss

    I think you already know what I am going to say. But here I go anyway. My three favorite mods are Buildcraft, IC, and RedPower. Coincidentally , they work in perfect harmony. Now, however, they are starting to overlap, which causes redundancy and wasted coding time. I suggest that Eloraam, SpaceToad, and Alblaka combine their mods into a single tech mod. This would accelerate the development of all three, as it would cut updating time by 2/3 at the same time as it prevented redundancy and copying. They could continue to work on their respective parts of the super-mod, but it would reduce update time, dev time, and installing time for people like me. Thanks for reading this, let me know what you think.


    I would not like to see IC2, BC2 and RP2 combined into a single tech mod (I voted no). It's not that I don't use all three of the "tech mods" (I do use all three of them), it's more of the fact that I feel that it would cause more problems that it's worth. I can see where you're starting to think that they're starting to overlap, but Eloraam can't do some of the things that she wants to do (i.e. machines) without adding more resources to diversify the requirements to construct such things. I mean sure, she could hard code in IC ores, but that'd make her mod Depend on IC. Quite Frankly, I don't want to force IC upon those who don't want to use it because they find it overwhelming.


    I mean, it's not like it's hard to install the mods once you get the base requirement (ML, MLMP, Forge), just download them and drop them into the mods folder....

    Personally what I'd like to see is not a merger but instead another prerquisite that adds all of the standard ores you can possibly think of, For example: copper, tin, zinc, tungsten, gems, uranium, etc. That way all of the mods can have theirs require it and do whatever they want with the ores so that then you don't have multiples of tin and such. I know Eloraam is working on an ore dictionary thing for Forge but this way just seems easier to me.

    Quote from daedroug

    Personally what I'd like to see is not a merger but instead another prerquisite that adds all of the standard ores you can possibly think of, For example: copper, tin, zinc, tungsten, gems, uranium, etc. That way all of the mods can have theirs require it and do whatever they want with the ores so that then you don't have multiples of tin and such. I know Eloraam is working on an ore dictionary thing for Forge but this way just seems easier to me.

    This, or the "Ore dictionary"
    we don't want to force mods on people who only want to play with the one (many people consider mod combos as "OP")
    However the mods should still be fully compatible with no duplicate ores and not just these three mods but also other mods such as the still theoretical "Futurecraft"
    which will include a good many of the standard ores.

    Even if Alblaka wanted to merge IndustrialCraft with the other 2 tech mods, there would be no point. They don't want their mods to be co-dependent.


    Each of them understands that many people who use their mod also use additional mods. That's why they cooperate on some level by using Forge. They aren't interfering with each other, which is a good start.

    Quote from daedroug

    Personally what I'd like to see is not a merger but instead another prerquisite that adds all of the standard ores you can possibly think of, For example: copper, tin, zinc, tungsten, gems, uranium, etc. That way all of the mods can have theirs require it and do whatever they want with the ores so that then you don't have multiples of tin and such. I know Eloraam is working on an ore dictionary thing for Forge but this way just seems easier to me.


    This.


    I think starting a "technic library" of sorts mod that is used for a basis for IC, BC, and RP (and possibly MF) would be amazing. Could include the general Wrench, various ores, and such. Then other mods could build off that system to implement various bits if they want to be compatible with them in an easier method.


    I can honestly say I wish the modding system was more compatible within itself as is, there are things I wish BC/IC would integrate and do well but I realize without a separate mod to link them both its not really doable. And a merger isn't really possible (three authors all claiming their own ownership factors over it, messing and tweaking the code would be a mess).

    Quote from Alblaka

    Still remember the convo ending with "No, stop bugging me, cables transmitting energy are totally not possible! Use the batterys."

    Quote from Alblaka

    There will be indirect and optional interaction between the three tech mods, expspecially IC/BC, but everyone already agreed on not merging this mods for whatever reason. It's easier to keep things running in smaller modules.


    Well with RP2 starting to pick up new features that overlap with IC2, are you guys going to actually discuss running off the same basis in some regards? A central core?


    As it stands if we run RP2 with IC2 we end up with two kinds of copper, tin, bronze, wrenches, all kinds of stuff.

    Quote from Alblaka

    Still remember the convo ending with "No, stop bugging me, cables transmitting energy are totally not possible! Use the batterys."

    Hmm, part of me thinks this would be great, as these mods seem to work extremely well together, and I agree the overlap is really annoying.


    At the very least, like some have said, I do wish they would if not completely merge their mods, then at least take the basic items that they share and don't have any mod dependent code like the ores, and make a seperate mod plugin. They all need forge at the moment, so requiring another mod that only contains the ores they share and whose behavior is identical would be a good thing, also it should be extremely easy to update the ores alone between versions, so having them as a dependency is not a big issue. Since the only use of the ores is to craft things out of them, and since adding new crafting recipes does not require modifying the code of the items it is made out of. This would be a simple and helpful measure.


    Still, I do wish that they were more compatible with each other and you could use the power from one to power machines/engines in the other, and maybe use the piping system to pump lava directly into the geothermal generator, or water into the water generator.

    Quote from MindCaged

    Hmm, part of me thinks this would be great, as these mods seem to work extremely well together, and I agree the overlap is really annoying.


    At the very least, like some have said, I do wish they would if not completely merge their mods, then at least take the basic items that they share and don't have any mod dependent code like the ores, and make a seperate mod plugin. They all need forge at the moment, so requiring another mod that only contains the ores they share and whose behavior is identical would be a good thing, also it should be extremely easy to update the ores alone between versions, so having them as a dependency is not a big issue. Since the only use of the ores is to craft things out of them, and since adding new crafting recipes does not require modifying the code of the items it is made out of. This would be a simple and helpful measure.


    Still, I do wish that they were more compatible with each other and you could use the power from one to power machines/engines in the other, and maybe use the piping system to pump lava directly into the geothermal generator, or water into the water generator.

    \


    The thing is, such a shared mod could prove to be a nice library for other technic-esque mods to work with. If it included basics like "how to use power generation from BC/IC/Whatever" in the code you could easily allow people to use this one library to make it compatible with the other mods entirely, build off their resources, and just in general create a whole genre/base for mods to work with, like a whole Modforge dedicated to industrial mods.

    Quote from Alblaka

    Still remember the convo ending with "No, stop bugging me, cables transmitting energy are totally not possible! Use the batterys."

    All I want is to be able to hide my cabling behind stone panels. Other than that, once the ore problem is fixed to where I only have 64 blocks of ONE type of copper (I can never find enough tin though....always pisses me off) in my chest I'll be perfectly fine ....maybe a way to compress stone into marble but lets leave out the details :D

    I'm against a merger, and from what I can tell this "Forge Ore Dictionary" will be finished soon, or may already be complete. Eloraam says that RP2pr3 will use it, so we won't need to worry about the duplicate ores anymore, and the ingots will likely no longer be an issue.


    However, I would very much like some way of reducing the number of wrenches hardcore forge fanatics can wind up with.