Since we have this Addons At Ease forum here and it doesn't get 100% attention I thought I'd post this here for BIS eyes:


We have a lot of people playing a lot of missions or trying to, where they get missing addon warnings and error messages. This is followed by them not knowing where to get the addon and which version it might be etc.

Auto Addon Server resolves this slightly, honestly not much more than that. And AAE has too many requirements to scoop up the lazy addon makers, such as myself.

Now, here is my idea; if we could have a central addon database, maintained at a single site like BIS or OFPInfo or elsewhere, where each addon, each variation of an addon, and each mod, has a unique numeric serial number or index assigned to it.

The serial number would function like a MAC address does for NIC's, no duplicates allowed ever, everyone must sign up for it at the same place.

Now, in the cfg patches section of a config, people could type in that serial number at the end of the name of the addon, so that people can write this number down, type it in to the OFPEC addon cross reference, find it, click on the link and DL the addon from a server.

This is how I think each row for each addon may look like:
<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">
&#60;index/serial&#62;, &#60;name&#62;, &#60;version&#62;, &#60;maker/team&#62; , &#60;date&#62;, &#60;released&#62;,&#60;relaced by index&#62;,&#60;DL locations&#62;
unique integer, string, string, string, date, boolean, unique integer, string&#40;s&#41;

0000001, &#34;Bn Tracers&#34;, &#34;1.24&#34;, &#34;bn880&#34;, 08/09/2005, true, 0000000, &#34;http&#58;&#92;&#92;blah blah&#34;
[/QUOTE]

^ this is all a rough draft and idea. Now, if each addon and mod has a seperate and unique serial, we can fairly easily decentralize the download locations to dozens or hundreds of servers. SQL queries can easily be run on the entries to search for addons.

I do not have any of the web server for this written, nor do I plan to work on this personally. However I think it is a valuable thing to consider, to have ONE central place to find every addon ALL the time.

The addon makers could apply for their addon serial number before they publish the addon, so that they have time to insert the serial in the cfgPatches section. Each entry in the DB would need to be administered by someone, as with most other submissions. An admin could take in a request for a serial, create the entry, and send back to the addon maker the number.

This can extend to Armed Assault, and probably as far as Game2... :-* Thoughts? Actuallty remember, when ArmA comes up a lot of addons will be repacked for the new updated engine, a great time to serialize them.



The main thing I am concerned with is that this be kept without any requirements for registration besides: author or valid team member submits their addon/mod, it is not an exact duplicate

This is not about requiring things of addon makers, for approval, this is to give them a tool to identify their addon globally, to make it easier for lazy users such as ourselves.