Online Plugin Support

[RetroBoy]

Description of the Feature:

An online archive of "universal" plugins (similar to those released by Yanfly) which routinely updates and can be searched from within the builder. This should allow users to scroll (or basic word search) for "official" plugins that can be downloaded directly into the game.

Code for Implementation:

No idea.

Why is this feature good?

Need a Plugin, you can probably find one that will work for your game right in the builder. No more searching through hundreds and hundreds of fan plugins that could be buggy.

Possible issues with this feature?

Some plugins may not be compatible with some projects. Warnings should be included "Is not compatibable with the following plugins: AB3, CR18, D12, etc.

 

[starcrescendo]

Yes, this would be great. The majority of systems that have "extensions" or "plugins" do this. Think of most browsers, or programs like Joomla and Wordpress. Most have automatic plugin installers and most have automatic updates as well.

For a long time I've really wished they would put the effort into making a real "OFFICIAL" location for resources that isn't spread across fan sites that can come and go by the day or random Japanese blogs with questionable licenses.

I know their team probably doesn't need the hassle or want the hassle of administrating it but they could open it to the community like these forums with trusted moderators.

 

[Andar]

http://mvplugins.com/

 

[bgillisp]

I think this would be good for little things that don't fit into the editor, like say plug-ins which adjust hit rate, or how critical hit is evaluated. More complicated things, probably not so much.

 

[ashikai]

http://mvplugins.com/

That website isn't really helpful. The search isn't very accurate and the pagination is busted. Plugins also don't have any screenshots or images of any kind and then we have to go to an external site to get the goods. Besides that there's no way to be alerted if a plugin has an update ready. Even if you have to update the plugin manually, being alerted when the dev makes a change/update is EXTREMELY helpful especially for those of us who have a lot of plugins from a ton of different devs. It also lacks any kind of categorical filtering (it has tags but not the ability to filter via tag) and the plugin API area is empty.

Website crit aside...

I'd like to see something like an MV tool for this where plugin devs can push their plugins to an external database with version numbers and PROPER categorization, and maybe a tracker (manual is fine) for users to keep track of what plugins they're using in which project. The download links can be from external sites, but the directory (including thumbnails/previews, descriptions, developer info, important documentation, links to a place to report bugs or get support, and proper categorization) should all be in the tool itself.

...or we could just upgrade the site.

 

[RetroBoy]

As I mentioned over in the other thread moments ago, the website is a useful resource but its intimidating and difficult to navigate. You look, see thousands of plugins and just walk away. Its too much and you have no idea what works with what.

 

[Andar]

that would not change by adding its function into the editor.
To make this idea an improvement, someone would have to find a better way of handling it - just adding similiar search functions into the editor will not cause the basic problems to change.

And that goes down to two different basic problems:
1) what to search for
2) how to check for compatibility

And while 1) can and should be improved (I agree that the search isn't optimal), I see no way to handle 2)

Basically there are too many different combination of plugins, no one can really test everything. That is why it has always been the responsibility of the user/game developer to test his/her specific combination of plugins.
Just as an example: even using only yanfly's plugins and nothing else, you can break compatibility by placing them in the wrong order. And that is despite the fact that Yanfly stated on his website that the plugins need to be installed in exactly the order he gives there.


I think the search can be improved by giving exactly the correct key words for sorting and not allowing other keywords - the Ace Master Script list (which is even longer) works that way.

But for compatibility? There is no real way for even storing the data what is compatible with what else (just think about it - every combination of several hundred possible plugins would have to be tested), so the only way to handle that would be some way for the community to store their experience on combining specific scripts. And even that needs to be carefully monitored - a good part of the support questions of this forum go "that plugin has to have a bug because I was unable to use it" instead of considering it might have been a user error since that plugin had been used by hundreds of others without problems. And getting such answers into a community-based compatibility list is not good either.

 

[bgillisp]

Andar is right. It's basic math. If you wanted to test every plug-in with every other plug-in, and there are a 1000 plugins, that is 2^1000 combinations of plug-ins to test (by the multiplication rule). Even if you could do one combination every second that would still take 3.39 * 10^293 years to do, which is longer than our Sun is expected to survive. So, no, can't happen, just because of basic math.