Today I want to address why our Public Test Server (PTS) has not been released and why we have yet to respond to your questions regarding our Mod Submission System. I also want to address our plans for the future regarding our website, because not enough has been explained for our goals regarding our community website.
On the 4th of March, we hit four thousand registered community members and we're now on track to reach five thousand in just a few weeks; that's amazing! But to keep up this acceleration, we need to continue to up our community's features and take the time to do it correctly.
Public Test Server information
Our Public Test Server was scheduled to launch this week, however we're now pulling back on the release date. We will tell you when we have a release date announced.Features coming to the new Test Server:
- New profiles, with tons of new features including post history.
- New live editor, allowing users to edit their profiles without ever leaving the profile.
- New search, allowing users to search topic names, members, anything you've submitted through the content system and even more.
- New loading method, allowing the site's pages to load extremely quickly after the initial load. (I am personally in love with this)
- And a few new features we can't wait to show you.
We're currently also investigating the issue where you're unable to use your browser's spellchecker. We'll be addressing this in a new update as soon as we can. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Donut Team Mod Store/Mod Submission System Questions
Today we began developing the latest iteration of the Mod Submission System, also known as the Mod Store (we're still working on the naming of it all). I'd like to answer your questions now, while I feel a video would be wonderful, you deserve answers to your questions now. Because of this, here is all of the answers to those questions.Is the mod store going to be an approval sort of place where you upload and wait or can anyone upload a mod instantly?
Answer: The mod store is going to be heavily moderated to make sure that all submissions are both appropriate, working and are not abused. All submissions must be approved by one of our staff members or a community managers. This includes updates to previous versions and changes to your page.Is Mod Store's gonna be moderated? And how people will upload mods to it? Like, "Upload and wait for approval", or something else?
Once you upload, you choose when you want it to be released. You can set a date for it to be released on, choose to release it as soon as we approve or once it's approved release it when you decide to.
Answer: It will be online based, however we'd like to integrate it into the mod launcher or another program we've discussed developing, which is under the code name "Bakery", which some users have seen or heard about.Will the mod store be online based or a standalone program? Will the mod store have the mod launcher inside of it if it's standalone?
How will the Mod Store interact with the upcoming launcher update Bakery?
Answer: If we decide to integrate it into our launcher, we'd like to have auto-updating, more in-depth play history and statistic linking. These details aren't finalised and we'll look into it more when we get closer to developing these systems.Is there any plans for the mod store to have any functionality with the mod loader, like the store being in the mod loader, kinda like how the steam workshop works
Answer: Most likely not. Our current release schedule is:Will this be on a public test server before release, like the new website was?
- Public Test Server (PTS) in March relating to new profiles and new loading method
- A release in June for the Mod site
- A Public Test Server (PTS) at the end of the year including several new features.
Answer: The mod store will feature categories, yes. However, we feel the categories inputted into your mod's Meta.ini isn't the best way to handle it. We want to have a list of categories you select from, not one that you can input. This is actually something we've been discussing regarding the launcher itself.Are the mods going to have some sort of category tags? If that is planned, would it use the mods categories as inputted in the meta.ini to sort them or would it be a manual thing when uploading?
Answer: We've been using the upvote/downvote system added to our forum to review how the community responds to certain posts. We feel upvote/downvote is good method, but also requiring text reviews to explain their reasoning to prevent fake voting.If people could rate mods there, would they rate them on a scale (from 1 to let's say 5) or just give them a thumbs up or down?
Answer: Yes! We plan to expand the recently played section to have sections for created mods, favourite mods and even more.Is there going to be a section in the profile area which shows which mods the member has made?
Answer: We're currently re-inventing our mod store. We created several iterations of it and we felt that it was missing something. We're now ready to take it to the next level and finish the job. This is why it's taken so long.Why wasn't this done sooner?
Answer: Updates will require you to specify an urgency so we can properly moderate mods; if your mod crashes and you need to specify that to us so we can get your update out as soon as possible.If we update a mod, can we choose whether or not we want it to be publicly announced? Or even better: Classify our updates based on how significant they are? (Bug fixes = minor; New level = major; A couple of new missions = somewhere in the middle)
When it comes to new updates, this is all on you to explain in your update log. You do not need to publicly specify any changes if you choose not to. However, you will be able to publicly state any and all changes if you want and explain to your players what they're getting in the newest download.
I hope this entire thread explains what we're up to currently, it's super exciting for us to work on this and get it out to you; we can't wait to show you more.
Sincerely,
Jake Andreøli
Co-Founder of Donut Team