Ini consolidation

[jodwop]

Ok I have a shit ton, yes read my lips... a ton of ini files. Is there any reason not to consolidate some of these? Server_Toon_name.ini houses a few different plugins, so why not do this for more of them? Like mq2twist up with melee. Mq2clickies, autobuff, mq2timer... All these ones that "have to" make an ini for each toon just clutter. The ones like tracking, tribmanager, map, timercolor, etc... are fine as the are more universal. If we could go to basically just a few ini files specifically for each toon I think it would be more helpful. I know many of these plugins did not originate here, but maybe we can take up the flag and run with it and main MQ2 site might follow lead? Thoughts? Downfalls... I see it as positive so...

 

[DemonH2]

Ok I have a shit ton, yes read my lips... a ton of ini files. Is there any reason not to consolidate some of these? Server_Toon_name.ini houses a few different plugins, so why not do this for more of them? Like mq2twist up with melee. Mq2clickies, autobuff, mq2timer... All these ones that "have to" make an ini for each toon just clutter. The ones like tracking, tribmanager, map, timercolor, etc... are fine as the are more universal. If we could go to basically just a few ini files specifically for each toon I think it would be more helpful. I know many of these plugins did not originate here, but maybe we can take up the flag and run with it and main MQ2 site might follow lead? Thoughts? Downfalls... I see it as positive so...

I think the issue is every time the plugin got updated by the author whoever on our end would have to edit it to read from the standard ini. Which with 100 plugins could become quite a PITA for some poor mmobugs lackey. Would be a lot less of a big deal if it was a one time thing =/. I agree though, the standardization would be nice.

 

[JimJohnson]

Only problem would be the initial change over modifications.

 

[devestator]

I don't see having multiple plugins use the same INI, but one plugin could use one INI for all characters instead of one INI per character. It would just have to name the sections according to the character (example: [Server.Character.Section])

I think the main reason they did seperate INIs for each character, is to make it easier for people to find what they are supposed to be editing. It's easier to find a file with your characters server and name on it, than it is to look through a single file for the correct sections.

 

[Sadge]

For the plugins I made I thought about combining all the .INI files, but the problem becomes the sections that the .INI files use. They have to be very specific (i.e PluginName.CharacterName.ServerName.PluginSection) and the .ini files grow very quickly.

The next problem becomes "sorting" the sections. MQ2 doesn't care what order they are in but if an .INI section gets added to a plugin (or you don't set up all the sections at the same time), you could end up with plugin sections all scrambled in the file (could go plugin1.section1, plugin2.section 1, plugin1.section 2 ... etc.) This makes it a real PITA to have to edit the .INI manually (especially when you're not sure what the PluginSection name is that you're looking for).

In the end, the .INI files don't take up a lot of hard drive space (just clutter space), so it's just easier all around to use separate .INIs where appropriate.

Hope that answers your question.

 

[dewey2461]

I roll my own compile, and took the main plugins that generate per character ini files and modified them to use a ini folder. Hides the worst offenders.