4f. Load and Save

Involved development of the OpenMW construction set.
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lgromanowski
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4f. Load and Save

Post by lgromanowski »

Zini wrote: That is a more complex topic. Well, "save" is easy. "Save as" too. The esp file must be saved in the root of the data directory structure. We don't even need to offer a regular "save as" dialogue. This function degenerates to a simple rename.

Later (post 1.0) we can think about some more advanced resources file management (included resources file usage tracking and an option to separate resources trees for TCs). But for now the implementation described above is sufficient.

The problem is the load part. Obviously what the TES-CS does it totally wrong. Its one of the most confusing dialogues the whole CS has to offer. We must do better. I think we should reuse the profile system from the launcher. But that needs more thought and maybe a separate discussion thread too.
Hircine wrote: what about Saving as an ESM rather than an ESP? this could be included under the Save As Dialogue?
Zini wrote: You can't save as ESM. The correct procedure is to merge an ESP into an existing ESM (see the framework thread).
Greendogo wrote: Alright, I have a suggestion for the saving feature that should help eliminate the problems associated with "mod overload". Basically, when people have sit around all day and mess with their chosen mods, they're waisting valuable time they could be playing the game, so here's my solution.

The way Morrowind's editor works if you open up a mod is that you open the mod and it loads the ESP and all it's dependencies and when you save it, you are either saving the changes to the specific ESP that you opened or you are creating a new ESP that has the previous ESPs and it's dependencies as it's own dependencies.

So, I would suggest creating a feature that saves all of the ESPs that are dependencies into just ONE new ESP. This eliminates the hassle of loading order and conflicts associated with ESP overload, and has the added bonus of reducing the number of ESPs you would end up with.

Using this idea, I would suggest not incorporating any ESMs into the paced ESP and leaving those as dependencies since there will probably only ever be 2 and at most 5 or so. This is also so you don't have to deal with incorporating the MW, Tribunal and Bloodmoon ESPs since I'm not sure that's kosher.

I got this idea after reading this thread on the official Beth Forums:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... ing-curve/
Zini wrote: We have the problem of mod management already sorted out (with the launchers profile system). We may consider more improvements later, but that is definitely a post 1.0-feature.
I don't see much benefit in merging plugins. We can probably come up with a smarter solution, once we start to modify the file formats.
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