I just joined sponge and I’m happy to finally be a part of this new community, I’ve recently heared of!
Since I’m currently not on my computer, I’ve to keep this as short as possible, sorry.
I think you all know that there are various modpacks for MC are out there (e.g. FTB, …), which are packages of often preconfigured mods, which work together to provide an entirely new ingame ecperience. And hopefully the Sponge project’s plugin ecosystem will grow fast and will get as and even more feature-rich as the now dropping bukkitdev once was. So, why don’t we bring together these both concepts? Wouldn’t the ability to create bundles of preconfigured sponge plugins, which can be downloaded on the same page as the normal plugins on their own category and which are updating their containing plugin modules and the dependencies of those automatically, when a new version is released, be cool to have? I think it would! Imagine, you have thrown together a bunch of (not yet) existing rpg plugins, which you’ve configured to perfectly work with each other, and you can just package them to a plugin bundle (maybe through an online interface), name it, add your configs and simply hit “publish”. Boom, and you have brought your unique rpg-bundle to the community!
I think it would be a cool feature for the upcomming sponge-plugin platform.
I really like this idea actually. If this could be implemented similar to the way Curses uses addon packs for World of Warcraft that would be amazing.It would allow people to make servers quickly, and really make small servers a big part of Minecraft again.
It’s an idea that could work, but don’t forget the individual plugin devs. How would they feel about it? Granted I’m sure some won’t mind, but what about those that don’t? There could be an option to have them be included in a “plugin pack” when they publish their plugin, if tweaking your idea in that way works.
That’s true… Maybe that could be solved through some kind of checkbox, so you can allow/disallow the inclusion into such a bundle. Someone had the idea of an auto updaten… Maybe this could someone be combined with that.
There are also talks about a central plugin repository, what we could combine with this idea. Every dev can contribute their work to the central repository and decide, whether usage in packs is allowed or not.
Using this repository any user can create a bundle of the plugins and share it with other people. At the end a bundle is just a relation between the plugins and doesn’t waste memory by distributing a zipped file.
That is a very good idea! Maybe a bundle then would only be a Single json formatted file, that contains the name, “publisher” and a List of plugin ins (or some other additional information like a description or something like that).
FTB already did something similar to this…I think it was a private pack.
You have to get a list of the mods, get permission from their respective devs, and shoot an email off to the FTB team with the mods. They then give you a code or something to download the mod pack. I’ve never done it, but I’ve always wanted to.
But yes, I think something like this would be great!!
It could be an opt-out type feature. When they upload a plugin they could choose ‘Do not allow my plugin to be packaged/bundled’ or several options like ‘Do not add my plugin to a package/bundle without my permission’ to go along with it.
Again this has been done by FTB, I have been through this process. (a royal pain, but very rewarding). I however do not see why someone wouldn’t want to have their plugin included in a pack such as this.
However there are some restrictions that should be had. I know for feed the beast as a mod author there was a thread created that allowed them to give public okay which is also kept up to date by the third party pack team lead by watchful, and the entries are then collected into an xml spreadsheet.
If I am not mistaken watchful has also created a program that checks for permissions of currently added public permissions contained there in all he has to check is the ones that are not on the list that are included in the pack.
However I do not believe that plugin authors would mind much but I am sure they would want some credit.
Let’s say some random person makes a bundle of plugins, you update your plugin, and now it’s not compatible with the rest of the bundle or ruins an aspect of the rest of it. Now your plugin looks bad, gets bad rep, and gets removed from a bundle you never wanted to be apart of. Not saying it will always go down that way or will ever, but it could happen.
@Cal, @Dunge, @Gir357
I think it would always be better to ultimately let the authors choose, how they want their plugin to be treated if someone would like to include it in a bundle. Denying the usage in such a pack doesn’t always mean the author doesn’t like bundles, but for example an experimental plugin or one, that is known to change dramatically whenever a new release is uploaded, could cause issues when included in a pack. So the author(s) would like to “protect” the author of the bundle from the unnecessary pain of reconfiguring the plugin with each new release. And in case the plugin is diacontinued, it could cause problems, if it is included in a bundle for a newer, maybe unsupported version.
This is totally understandable and didnt think of it that way but yes, that would be a nightmare for sure. I guess from that I can understand why someone wouldn’t want to be a major part of it. My reply though was mainly to point out the process has already been done by FTB but it could in turn be used in the same manner. I would like to see that it be stated with each plugin listed as to either opt in or out of said situation. Maybe even the third option of contact could be added to the list and have those responses collected in an xml to be used in an automated form to help staff check the qualification of each bundled plugin.
I believe that this would definately be beneficial not only to the plugin devs but to the community as well. due to the massive numbers of public server owners out there including the ones that run the server I play on. However not too many experienced server admins want their bundles publicized due to security risks that publicly announcing all their server side configs would endure.
I do believe that many server admins out there could do generic configs that wouldnt conflict with each other which would require some interchanging ideas back and forth between said admins which wouldnt conflict with their actual setup. I would suggest something along these lines IMHO.
Personally I am not a fan of this idea. This will end up fostering “cookie cutter” servers popping up left and right. It basically allows for people to not have any plan or idea when creating a server, they can just grab a plugin pack and make Big Server Copy #42583.
So, where is the problem? The main reason creating a minecraft server is to play on it and have fun. Searching for different plugin and trying them isn’t for anyone kind of fun.
Plugin bundle have the possibility (if they are easy to handle and community rated to insure a good qualitiy) to keep the maintaining process of minecraft / sponge server simple.
@Meldanor And what is fun about playing on Faction/Towny/Permissions/Economy/BatMode/Pancakes/Hookers server #41257 out of 589,257.
And what is the problem with having a unique and creative idea for a server and putting in the work implementing it, not just copying what someone else did who actually had creativity.
I personally wouldn’t want any plugins I am part of to be included in something like this. I also would be extremely unhappy if I made a server, then because of some “plugin bundle” suddenly my server is popping up all over the place with no changes other than a name and staff change.
Not to also mention the slight difficulty in setting up a server acts as a slight filter to prevent people who are not very well suited for running a server or will very quickly lose interest from running one. The bad eggs that caused EULA dramas is an example of this. There’s always realms if someone wants a small server for friends.
Whilst setting up bundles to make packs for clients to download when syncing to the server is a nice idea, running a server takes a lot of time and configuration, which cannot/should not be replaced with a drag and drop system.
After all, learning how to do these configurations and plugin searching can easily relate to a good set of real life skills to have and ultimately makes one a better owner/administrator.
@TheYeti That’s a point, but it’s the decision of the server owner. If he want’s to offer a bundle that contains his plugins, he could go and publish it. In case of those servers which have a special Idea, they don’t have to create a bundle. They of course can’t prevent people from trying to imitate the functionality. Maybe the server uses an own plugin, that isn’t public, which would prevent imitations (not completely, but there are always people around who might be trying to achieve a copy of a certain concept).
@mrfrase3 That’s right and it’s good to have kind of a filter for that. But would there be any difference? Downloading a plugin or a set of plugins is not really a big difference in my opinion. You’d have to set up a server yourself, install the plugins/bundles yourself and host it yourself, but if there would be a tool for automating that (I don’t know if it’s planned), there of course wouldn’t be a selection…
What would be cool is if it worked like the package managers available for Linux platforms. One of the core plugins of Sponge would be some sort of package manager that would allow an administrator to “get” a plugin/bundle and configure it for the local system. Of course it doesn’t need to be a core plugin (i.e. could be written as a normal plugin) but I think if there was some sort of official approach to this it would have better traction.
