Messages

v0.6 is available !
With it comes the possibilties to send colonist. The feature isn't totaly complete yet; not all data is transmitted. At the moment, only the skills and the traits are copied to the sent colonist.
On top of that, a lot of small changes have been made to the UI, specially the menu for sending items to other colonies.

The full changelog is available here.

The mod is now available on the Steam Workshop.

Could this be set up to work on a Lan server like hamachi for a group of friends?

I haven't tried myself, but normally, you shouldn't run into any problem.

New version, namely v0.5 !
It is mainly bug fixes for the current features. The only new feature is the checkbox in the main menu to prevent players from sending you items.

CCL is now required to run Phi.
Download and patch notes is available here

so is it easier to make a server now ? ^^

It fixed a bug that was in the previous version.
Normally, you should just execute the .exe on the server. If you or your friends can't connect to your server, check firewall and ports.

New version, namely v0.5 !
It is mainly bug fixes for the current features. The only new feature is the checkbox in the main menu to prevent players from sending you items.

CCL is now required to run Phi.
Download and patch notes is available here

Your "PhiServer" just says. Launching server for 0.0.0.0 on port 16180. Is there a config file I'm missing for this?

There's nothing to configure at the moment. If it says that, then you just need to connect to the IP of your server (localhost if it is on your server). You may need to configure your firewall or the ports of your router to let other players connect to your server.

Could you put this on steam? i don't mod so i did not read the workshop terms of service, so i really don't know if you can

I'll try to make a new version tonight, I'll try to set it up on Steam if it is not too difficult.

@Longwelwind
Ahhh I never even thought about players enabling the Dev Command. Do you think you could add a way to disable it? Or a way to restrict parts of the dev mode so players can't cheat?

I don't think you can disable it.
Maybe your Mod need to monitor this, and set a "cheat" flag to the current colony of that user.
But when a user realy want to cheat with the Dev mode he just need to disable the mod before, add the items, and reenable the mod.

Honestly dont bother trying to stop cheating in a mod, you will lose, if someone really wants to cheat there is not much you can do to stop them. You might be able to block some ways, but I doubt you can get them all.

Even if you block  Dev Command, which you might be able to do using CCL detours, there are mods that can make it easier to get items, you could easily make a mod that gives you however many you want at the touch of a button, You might be able to use a WhiteList of mods, but that will get annoying to update, and some one could rename their cheat mod to one on the white list.

After you send resources is there anything stooping me from loading a previous saved game and sending the same resources again, over and over?

While we are at it all the saved games are in unencrypted XML, so it is not hard to edit in whatever I want. That is before even looking at memory editing.

You could limit the items that you can send through, to so many every hour to cut down on trolling ability. But stopping people from cheating is a lost cause.

Pretty much this.
I can't stop players from cheating since everything is client-side.

I just want to send the corpses of my enemies to my friends.

This is gonna become a Rimworld thing.....i know it....

Personally im sending you all organs.....lots and lots of organs.

Some men just want to watch Rimworld burns.

Sending colonists is the next feature I'd like to implement, but I will first try to improve error logging and the stability of the server.

This mod will be mostly unbalanced though am I right? Since players start at different times. Meaning A player could of spent 10 hours on a server. Have over 5000 plasteel charge rifles and power armor, and then a new player joins and that first player can send the second player say 2500 plasteel 3 charge rifles and 3 power armor sets and they have an easy ride through the game. Maybe there should be some limits as to how much you can send and a time limit where it has to recharge?

EDIT: Also, I assume this mod will not work with any mods, as all players need the core game to play without problems with other players on the server? And can the server work if all players have the same mods on that server?

It is up to the players to choose what they want to do with the mod.
Any player can give himself a lot of items with the Debug Mode, anyway, so the player will need to agree to the rules between themselves.

It highly depends on the mods. Technically, a mod wouldn't work with Phi if it has state that isn't transmitted over the wire when a player sends an item of the mod. For "basic" mods that adds item & such, it should work perfectly. For other mods, it could work, but it'd need to be tested.

[The mod doesn't and will never offer "real-time" multiplayer, i.e. 2 players playing the same colony at the same time. While it would be really cool, it would require way too much work. No need to ask for it, Phi will not implement it.]

Hi !

Phi is a mod that allows players to interact between each other. You can connect to the global default server or host your own to play with your friends.

The mod doesn't and will never offer "real-time" multiplayer, i.e. 2 players playing the same colony at the same time. While it would be really cool, it would require way too much work. No need to ask for it, Phi will not implement it.

The mod isn't full-fledged for the moment, but features & improvements are done in each update.


Features:

• Chat: Chat with the connected players
• Send ship pod: Send items to other connected players (click on their nicknames)
• [EXPERIMENTAL] Send colonist: : Send you colonist to the colony of an other player.

How to install:
Simply put the archive in the Mods folder like any other mod.

PhiClient | Github repository | Steam Workshop

It doesn't require you to make a new game. Though, please do a backup of your saved game before attempting to use Phi.


Setting up your server
You can download the archive and put it anywhere on your computer.

PhiServer

Launch PhiServer.exe using a shell (so you get the server logs in case of an error).
The server can also be hosted on a Linux server (longwelwind.net is hosted on a Ubuntu Server machine) using mono.

Are there people in the Slack ?
Who should I contact to get an invite ?

Are there people in the Slack ?
Who should I contact to get an invite ?

I feel some work could be done to provide a reliable architecture to the modders.
From a technical point of view, it would consists of a "MyMod" class (written by the modder) that inherits a "BaseMod" class (written by the devs). The BaseMod class would contains hook methods for initialization such as OnLoad, OnGameLaunch, OnGameCreate, OnGuiCreate, ... that can be overwritten by the "MyMod" class.
The game would find the address of this class in the About.xml.

This "manifest" file could also contains the dependance of the mod, then the code that handles code loading should ensures that these are loaded before calling the OnLoad method of the "MyMod" class.

Essentially, the idea is to add a layer between the game and the mods so that they don't directly access the core of the game, but an interface that the devs specify.

I've done mods & plugins for some games (Minecraft, Cities Skylines, ...), and I launched a small modding API for Planetbase, and I think this is a clean architecture that allows mods to work side-by-side without stepping on each others' toes. If the API is properly made and complete, the modders don't have to deal with hacky workarounds (Manipulating Unity's GameObject or C#'s reflection API) to introduces new mechanics to the game, though they would still be able to do it if the API doesn't provide what they're looking for (but it would be an undefined behaviour from the dev's point of view).