Allow authors to provide their var filename to help find dependencies

[Acid Bubbles]

I think encouraging resources to be hosted on Hub makes sense, however it's not always the case (paid or not). A suggestion to help finding dependencies: allow creators to provide a "var name" (regex /^[^.]+\.[^.]+(\.[0-9]+)?(\.var)?$/) in their resource, and in the Dependencies tab if no actual .var is available, fallback to this variable to link to the Hub resource page.

Worst case, you could also allow users to specify their var prefix in their profile, so if something says "User123.MyScene.3.var", and nothing matches, you could at least link to the "User123" profile.

I think that would greatly reduce the amount of searching.

 

[meshedvr]

Yeah we have considered that, but the priority was to get Hub-Hosted VARs working first and encourage most people to use that as much as possible as it is the simplest path to getting content for users.

Copying @CitizenX

 

[Acid Bubbles]

Var-hosted files are greatly preferable, but as long as paid content is behind Patreon or similar alternatives, there will be "hidden" dependencies that require scouring Hub search with wild guesses.

I'm guessing authors of free resources that still send you to their Patreon want people to "take notice" of their existence. If VaM just downloads magically all files, they lose an opportunity to make the user aware of their existence. I can understand that motivation. I still think that it would be preferable to avoid having users figuring out where to get those dependencies, otherwise it's the scene author who's "punished", not really the original asset/plugin/look author.

Maybe the dependencies link could have a special iconography (a dollar sign, an "external link" icon, etc.) or even a message saying "this resource is not hosted in Hub". As long as this is allowed, I don't see a clean way around this.

 

[MacGruber]

Isn't the link already stored in the VAR? I mean the link that appears in the depend.txt and also is clickable within VaM.

(Of course there is a bit chick & egg problem with that, you can't make a Patreon or Hub post without having the VAR, you can't add the link to the VAR without posting first)

 

[meshedvr]

We don't want to rely on using the depend.txt here. We are definitely considering adding the ability for externally hosted resources to have another field that can specify the var file name that is hosted at the external link. We do want to encourage all free resource owners to post their resources directly on the Hub (instead of on mega or even Patreon passthrough page). Paid resources obviously have to be external and this is where this should be used.

 

[Acid Bubbles]

And for your suggestion @MacGruber indeed the link could be in the var itself, but by using the Hub instead we can know if there's a new version, rate the resource, etc. and make it clear when you're leaving Hub, which is important when using untrusted hosts like personal sites. It's also simpler that using var packaging fields since var seem to still confuse some people. When creating the Hub resource, specifying the "var filename" should hopefully be simpler than providing, as you said, the download url before having created the page/post.