Steam updating mods to A15

[Orion]

I hope this is the right place to put this.

What is the intended way of updating mods to A15 on Steam? Are we supposed to update our existing workshop with an A15 version, or should we upload a fresh version, specifically for A15?

The advantage of updating the existing mods is that players playing A15 will automatically get a working version of the mods already in their list, when it comes out. The downside is that when updating a mod to A15, it becomes useless to A14 players, and also breaks their current game.

So Tynan, what's the idea? Will there eventually come a mechanism to let A14 players continue playing and ALSO automatically update for A15 players?

[Tynan]

There won't be a new mechanism; that's on Valve, really.

I recommend making a totally new version for each alpha.

[Jaxxa]

I am thinking that I will just be updating my existing mods on the Workshop.

It would not be so bad if I had only one or two mods but as I have tried to break my mods up into small packages I have about 20 workshop items. So then by the time the next Alpha rolled around I would have to deal with about 60 different workshop items, adding more difficulty to finding mods and for me to update them.

I think that if people are advanced enough to stay on older versions they can either backup the files of grab the non workshop version from Github.

[Tynan]

Really it's your choice.

I do wish Valve made better support for this, but it's a complex problem.

I'll move this to Mods.

[Orion]

There won't be a new mechanism; that's on Valve, really.

I recommend making a totally new version for each alpha.

I do have an idea that would at least help with continuity: An entry in the mod info xml, that specifies the workshop url for the mod for the next version, and from which version it is.
So RimWorld can check if the current version is equal or above that, and if so, unsubscribe the current version of the mod, and subscribe to the next one.
This way, people don't have to find their favorite mods over and over for every alpha, and don't have to constantly check if the next version is finally out.
And all modders have to do is, once they have uploaded an A15 version, update their A14 version with the url.

If you don't feel like working it out, at least add an optional entry for the next version and the url, and we can make a mod that does the rest.

[mzbear]

Maybe someone could make a mod that alters how the game loads other mods? So we could have A14 and A15 versions in the same mod, with the Defs and Assemblies directories moved to e.g. Versions/A14/Defs and so on. Once it works well enough, convince Tynan to support it officially as well

[Helpful Bot]

Thank you Marvin! Over here scrambling to get everything out for people to use.

[ThiIsMe007]

I would like to thank mod authors here that allow their players to continue using previous versions of their mods (working on previous versions of the game).

I will switch to a15 sooner or later, but for "reasons", I don't want to do it right now. I've enjoyed playing a previous version of the game, for example, because some mods only exist for that version and have been abandoned or never updated since.

Github or equivalent is ideal and sufficient to check these outdated versions out (at least to me).

[skullywag]

if people use github (or other subversioning tools/upload sites available) then people can continue to use steam for the latest versions and older releases can be manual, I see no reason to clutter the WS with old versions.

[LordMunchkin]

There's some mods I won't play without and when they update really dictates when I start playing the new version. So it's helpful when modders at least keep the previous version of their mod available. That way we can keep playing with all our favorite mods.

[Sam_]

Just throwing in my two cents. Pretty much every other game I play with mod support updates their mods to match the current stable version instead of a new workshop post. The consensus with the steam workshop, and in fact most systems like steam and even console dashboards seems like it wont let you play unless you have the stable version, and the effort is always on the gamer to play older versions.

Following that logic I find that my steam only subscribers would be inconvenienced more so by making them subscribe to a separate mod with a newer version rather then update the current. I think if there are players that do not wish to play the latest build they should be using the forums. At least that is how it seems to work these days, even if it's bad for some users.

Seeing as the workshop records every update it would be nice if the subscriber could choose from those updates to download instead of giving the version control to the modders. But I guess that would have considerable overhead.

[ThiIsMe007]

Seeing as the workshop records every update it would be nice if the subscriber could choose from those updates to download instead of giving the version control to the modders. But I guess that would have considerable overhead.

What "considerable" overhead are we talking about here ?

Code Select Expand

Which game version did the player pick/install ?

[a15]
-> allow mods to be installed matching game version [a15]
-> display mod description/changelog matching game version [a15]

[a14]
-> allow mods to be installed matching game version [a14]
-> display mod description/changelog matching game version [a14]

Copy/paste for [a13], [a12], ...

It's straightforward, and it's not that Steam can't do that (even their developpers know what a repository looks like, or how to use it).

They just DON'T want to do it.

Their efforts are on the marketing, pushing their bloated, inefficient and mostly useless client, to sell even more, not on customer satisfaction with what has already been sold.

[kaptain_kavern]

 

[Fluffy (l2032)]

I'm also updating my mods in-place. Having multiple copies around on the workshop is an inconvenience for me, and I agree with Sam_'s logic that it's also an inconvenience for what I suspect is the vast majority of players.

In my view, playing at A14 or earlier already requires user intervention, and is not the 'normal' mode of play. These people can be expected to take some extra efforts to find earlier versions of my mods (which are all available on github, clearly marked with semantic versioning following rimworld's alphas).

Oh one more thing, Tynan, the A14/15 tag is sheer brilliance. Such a simple solution to the potential havoc that could have been. I'd hate for RW's workshop to end up like Cities:Skylines one, where you have to dig every mod's description and comments to find out the version it supports.

[Peppsen]

My mod works with both alphas, the only thing I need to change is the target version. Is it possible to have multiple target versions? That way my mod works with all versions and doesn't give the "target version" error in-game.