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agsModuleList

A list of AGS modules with search - still a sketch

Build Status

AgsGet Releases | AgsGet Help Manual | AGS Forum Post

Information

👷IN CONSTRUCTION👷

You can query by typing in the box or url.

Ex:

https://ericoporto.github.io/agsModuleList/?q=author:eri0o
https://ericoporto.github.io/agsModuleList/?q=speech

The list right now is a single file: index/package_index.json

This is a simplified package system for Adventure Game Studio, inspired by early versions of the C++ package manager vcpkg. For now it only support script modules.

The way it works, is it provides a website to browse for packages, pkgs can be added directly or through pull requests from the package developer, a command line tool (agsget) is provided too for browsing and downloading packages. An Editor Plug-in is planned too.

How to include a package

Create a directory under pkgs/ with the package name using only lowercase alphanumeric characters, no spaces or other characters. A package name can't start with numbers. This will also be the package id. Inside the directory, place only the minimum files required to ship your package. For now, only script modules with .scm extension are allowed.

After placing the package there, write down the package.json file for that package. The following fields are possible, only include the ones needed. At a minimum, a package needs an id, a name, a text with the package description, it's version, it's author and the forum page where it was released.

Updating the index for website and tools

After including or modifying a package, you need to update the website and tools to include the new packages, this requires having node JS installed, and scripts are provided to help with this task.

Go to the scripts directory, and run on cmd.exe or bash:

node pkgDirectoriesToIndex.js
node buildSearchableIndex.js

This will update the index json under. Copy the contents of this file and change the agsmodules.js under __js to be in sync.

Commit this changes and reload the website or update the index if using the command line tool.

Mass edit of package.json

When developing and experimenting, one may decide to modify the fields available in package.json, for now this can be accomplished by modifying the index directly after having it updated.

Edit index/package_index.json with your preferred json editor (I use Oxygen XML Editor, despite it's name, it provides a capable json editor). Make sure the index is in sync with the packages json before editing.

After you are done editing, use the script indexToPkgsDirectories.js to update the individual package.json files.

Root Files and directory description

__css/      // webpage style
__js/       // webpage js->lunr, pk index
agsget/     // tool and plugin to get pkg
index/      // the package index       
pkgs        // all packages we have
scripts     // utility scripts
.gitignore  // 
.nojekyll   // required for GitHub Pages
LICENSE     // our license
README.md   // this readme
azure-pipelines.yml  // the ci for agsget
index.html  // website home page

AgsGet Editor Plug-in and how it works

For information on how to install, see the AGS Manual on how to install plug-ins.

AgsGet may create the following files in your game directory.

├── ags_packages_cache/
│   ├── package_index
│   ├── pkg1/
│   │   └── pkg1.scm
│   └── pkg2/
│       └── pkg2.scm
│   ...
│
├── agsget-lock.json
├── agsget-lock.json.removal
└── agsget-manifest.json

Let's see the steps involved in installing a package:

  1. At first, when loading AgsGet, if no package_index is found, it will create the ags_packages_cache directory, and place it inside the package_index file, which is obtained directly from here: https://ericoporto.github.io/agsModuleList/index/package_index.json .
  2. Whenever you install a package, AgsGet reads the agsget-manifest.json to figure out which packages are already installed and recreates it including the new package.
  3. If there's any agsget-lock.json.removal, it's deleted, and if there's any agsget-lock.json, it's renamed to agsget-lock.json.removal.
  4. Then, it reads this generated agsget-manifest.json and the package_index to figure out if the packages have any dependencies, and order them correctly, using topological sorting, writing the resulting list in agsget-lock.json.
  5. It then removes and deletes any script and headers in the project with the same name as a package in the agsget-lock.json.
  6. It then will download from https://ericoporto.github.io/agsModuleList any package not on cache that it's listed in the agsget-lock.json.
  7. Finally, all packages listed in agsget-lock.json gets imported in the Game.agf project and shows in the editor.

Troubleshooting

I downloaded the plugin but AGS Crashed when loading.

First, make sure the plugin is unblocked, right click on it, and select Unblock, like in the picture above, then click OK.

challenges and notes

Here are some challenges I am a bit unsure how to fix:

  • agsget needs AGS.Types to be able to insert packages, remove and modify the Game.agf project file, in a consistent maner, but it unfortunately depends of the graphical and Windows exclusive parts of the AGS Editor.

  • an agsget Editor plug-in could be made to enable the feature above, for now agsget has been reasonably decoupled from it's command line interface, and a core part. The implementation is naive.

  • the editor plug-in has one non-trivial part, loading plugins in the Editor requires the Editor being closed. If we want to also support downloading packages that include/are plug-ins (Engine or Editor ones), we need to write into AGS Editor installation directory, which may be tricky in Windows, needing for instance to unload and reload plug-ins that are in use by the Editor.