Crashes due to missing original + expansion assets (discussion)

[drogoganor]

Currently the mod can install the assets from the demo release instead of the full game. The demo has a lot of content but is missing the following assets:

Tilesets:

• Snow

Sprites:

• FGPlanetaryDefense: t0rad1l0
• CivilianHall: t0hal1l0
• CivilianLargeHall: t0lar1l0
• CivilianSmallHall: t0sma1l0
• CivilianDestiny: t0des1l0

Sounds

• ClickSound: gxclkoc1

This is a problem if a player with the full game installed creates a Snow map, or uses any of the listed actors in a map - if another player with only the demo installed attempts to play the map, their game client will crash.

In addition, the Dark Reign Expansion content is currently optional. The expansion content is fairly neatly contained: there are two new factions with new art and the original factions are unchanged. However, the expansion also has an exclusive tileset: Alien. This has the same problem as the Snow tileset: players without the content installed will crash to desktop.

Another problem with the Expansion being optional is that the expansion factions are exposed to the player whether or not they have the content installed:

I had hoped to signal to players that these require the expansion content by putting them under the subheader "Expansion Only", but this is an easy mistake to make. Especially if playing multiplayer, if any user doesn't have the expansion content but picks an expansion faction, they'll be dropped from the game without any obvious message telling them they are missing the expansion content.

These problems are an ongoing frustration for users attempting to play the mod. As one exasperated player put it:

if your mod can't work with only the assets from the demo, why even use the demo as an asset source?

I was hoping that one day OpenRA might support features to "choose a DR flavor" with separate rulesets to restrict factions, actors, sounds, and tilesets depending on what content is installed. But this would be a significant amount of work and is probably unlikely for the forseeable future.

I am considering removing the demo as an asset source and making the expansion content mandatory. This will eliminate any missing asset problems, but is much more inconvenient to install content. Players will need to use the Advanced Install window and the Detect Disc button to detect a GOG install or CD/mounted image(s):

If using mounted disc images, the player will also need to alt+tab to change the disc image between installs which is an additional difficulty.

Not to mention, removing the demo means the player needs a paid copy of the full game and expansion:

I really want to try Dark Reign (since I never played it) but if you make me spend money for it: I don't have the money to do so and [it] will mean you lose out on a player.

Which is a legitimate complaint. So what is the solution? I am leaning towards removing the demo and making the expansion mandatory because it will prevent the game from crashing. It's a higher barrier for entry to get the content installed, but it's probably worth it for a better player experience. And also I can use the snow tileset :)

What do you think?

[neuromancer]

I installed the latest revision of this mod (26fff363df97ea984503c3653634da4659040fb1) but I can't see the demo as an option in the installer. Was it already removed? I hope the demo will be supported, I played it a lot of times when I was a kid.

[GraionDilach]

The third option is to to have three type of mods (one for demo, one for full basegame, one with expansion) which share the asset folder and include each other within the ModSDK, but it would still split the players on MP.

[drogoganor]

The mod now has a full dev test asset package available for download (in develop branch at least).