Hey guys,
Today I started working on a MAJOR overhaul of the episode manager. Actually, major is an understatement. All the code is being rewritten and in a new language to boot. Not to mention, the functionality is going to be COMPLETELY different. It's going to be focused more on individual episodes and updating them instead of an index of zip files.
I started working on my own semi-custom file type, which I like to call the ".index" file. This will be the big boy in the project as it houses some important things.
- Episode name
Author
Description
Version
List of files
Kinda similar to the old one, but not quite. One of the things you probably noticed is that there's now a version and a files list. These two additions are going to be CRUCIAL in the whole individual updating process of the episodes.
The format for the .index file is pretty much 100% done, and I'm proud to say it's human readable for the most part. It works similar to the NPC codes where it's "param=data". Example:
See? Not so hard. It's not at all encrypted either.
So how do I plan on getting this updating of the episodes working? Well, this is where these versions and file lists come in. And also, you. That's right, this will require a bit of effort on your part. But don't worry: it's not hard at all! It will however, involve a server. You can get free web servers at x10hosting.com if you need to; I use them for the current hosting and it works pretty well.
Okay, so the usual ZIP that you use to download and contains all the episode files will now have the .index file and 4 images in it. These 4 images will be screenshots that you can add so well, users can see. Inside the .index file will be the link to your server, the link to the forum post, and the list of all the files your episode contains. On your server end, all you will have to do is upload a "changes.index" file to the server and in the same directory, add in all the files you want to change/add and the program will read this "changes.index" file and download/replace any files that need to be changed. If it needs to be changed of course, I forgot to mention that the version number will be compared first.
So where do I come in? My index from now is simply going to contain links pointing to your index files on your server. I will upload a video detailing what to do to get your server/episode ready for this format when this is all said and done. Don't worry, it's going to be fairly easy. This new method will make pushing out updates for episodes awesome considering the fact that you will no longer need to redownload every file in the episode.
I will be updating my progress in this thread periodically to let you guys know.
Cheers,
Mike
Other than that I was wondering about literal language support as in will it be in Spanish, Russian, German or anything like that? I mean I know of Spanish speakers, that aren't part of this forum or any other really, that still make SMBX episodes. Oh and that's not mentioning the Portuguese SMBX forums.
