Kiln 0.2.0-dev.24

Kiln 0.2.0-dev.24

Most of this release comes from players' reports on Nexus and GitHub: a launcher that shows all of your mods in one list, mods of other loaders that really run, and nothing of yours deleted along the way.

The launcher

• One list of all your mods. The main screen lists every mod you added, for whatever loader, and the mods you put into the game folder by hand. Each has an on/off switch where Kiln can switch it. "Mods" now means all of them: the count covers every kind, and the line "N of M mods load on this client" is gone. A row's menu (the three dots, or a right click) has the mod's settings, its versions, its folder and Remove. "Load order" shows every mod in the order a start brings them up.
• No profile to set up. Kiln keeps your mods in one profile, "My mods", by itself. Profiles are in Settings, for people who want several sets of mods: save the current set under a name, load another. The Library's storage (size on disk, clean up) is there too.
• Removing a mod is one click. Typing the mod's name is off unless you turn it on in Settings ("Type a mod's name to remove it"). Uninstalling Kiln, deleting a profile or a server and restoring a backup still ask for the word.
• Play works when Steam is closed (Linux AppImage). The launcher started Steam with settings meant only for the AppImage. Every game start from that Steam then ended within seconds, with no window and nothing in Kiln's logs, until Steam was restarted.
• Adding mods on a Steam Deck works again. With ShroudForge installed under Proton, the launcher read ShroudForge's mods folder as //?/S:/steamapps/common/Enshrouded/mods and every mod added failed with "Read-only file system". ShroudForge stores that folder as a Windows path on a drive of the Proton prefix (S: on a Deck); the launcher now finds it through the game folder.
• Nothing you changed is deleted. Files a mod wrote into its folder in the game (settings, logs, saved values) are carried to the new version at an update and kept in kiln/kept-mod-files when the mod is switched off or Kiln is uninstalled. A folder you changed yourself stays where it is; the launcher says so, and whether that mod may still run.
• An update of a mod that comes as a DLL (dinput8.dll and the like) replaces the old version instead of becoming a second entry, and the same DLL is no longer loaded twice.
• A game without a window still counts as running. If the game's window thread ends while the rest of the process goes on (it still hosts and saves the world), the launcher took the game for stopped and wrote into the folder of a running game. Stop it in Steam before you start it again.
• Enshwick packs import. A data pack written like Enshwick's own examples (authors = ["You"], exports = [...], [[setting]], [[point]] in pack.toml) was refused as "its pack.toml is invalid".
• shroudlink mods have one name. A single mod's zip was imported as chestsort.dll, the same mod from the bundle as chestsort. Both are chestsort now; an entry made by an earlier version keeps its name and still works. The shroudlink card says where its mods run: in your own game when you play alone or host, and on a dedicated server.

Mods of other loaders

• ShroudForge mods inside the game. Kiln's Mods menu has a page for each ShroudForge mod with its switch, its settings and its buttons.
• Shortcuts of ShroudForge mods work with the ShroudForge that Kiln brings along; you no longer need ShroudForge installed for them. This is what broke steering with W and S on the glider with ShroudForge's Unlimited Flight.
• Kiln's "Mods" entry is back in the main menu when ShroudForge mods are on. ShroudForge wraps the game's menu entries, and Kiln's own were lost behind it.
• EML mods run when a ShroudForge mod is in your mods too. ShroudForge then patches the game's data, and it runs an EML mod only when its own switch for that mod is on. Kiln's copies had no such switch: nobody applied them, and Kiln said they ran. Kiln now sets the switch, also on Linux when EML's own dbghelp.dll is still in the game folder. For a mod ShroudForge does not run, the launcher and the in-game menu say why (switched off, made for the other side, or a file ShroudForge refuses) and suggest a switch only where a switch helps.
• Going back to ShroudForge alone no longer needs a reinstall. Kiln's EML part put the game's data files back from a backup although ShroudForge had patched them.
• EML data mods: game files Kiln cannot prove it wrote are never overwritten or deleted. Leftovers of older versions are moved to kiln/eml/displaced in the game folder, and the launcher names them.
• Values you set in ShroudForge for an EML mod are kept when the mod is switched off, removed or Kiln is uninstalled.
• Flame mods (Creative Mode) run from the game's mods folder, where they read their own files. When Creative Mode has no data for the current game build, Kiln's own /creative stays available and says why.
• Greeneye mods (The Worst Map Mod and others) run from their own folder in the game, where they keep their settings.
• XHL mods: their companion folders and settings go where they belong, and XHL-Core keeps the files it came with.
• SET (Shrouded Engine Tweaks) 0.2 mods: rules, saved settings and the tools windows. Under Proton the check for a second SET runtime could fail and leave SET's tools out.
• shroudlink: its client addon always loads before Kiln hooks the game. That was one reason for the missing MODS tab.
• The in-game Mods page is no longer empty next to ReShade or another overlay. When another program hooks the game's graphics functions right after Kiln, Kiln could miss the game's graphics device and draw nothing. It now takes the device over when the game makes its swapchain, if the PC has one graphics device; when it cannot, kiln.log says why.
• A ShroudForge mod that does all its work at startup shows "applied" instead of "Waiting".

Creative mode

• A steered glider. In creative mode S raises the glider's nose (up to 85 degrees) and W lowers it, and the glide boost pushes along the nose. An analog stick steers in proportion. A player whose Kiln is older, or whose controls use the game's other pitch mode, glides as before.
• Server owners: the rule is glideSteer in rules/creative.json (the file's header says how to switch it off); "allowGlideSteer": false in rules.json switches it off for every player. /creative tells a player when their game cannot steer.

Mod authors

• A PNG icon named in a blocks data file is found in the mod's own folder; an icon that cannot be used keeps the block with its base icon.
• kiln.rules: the per-player rule GlideSteer (KilnRulesPlayer.glide_steer_limit, status glide_steered). kiln.ui 5: subscribe_window_input. kiln.flame 1.1.0: symbols(). KilnBootInfo 3.

Checked, not changed

• Enshwick 1.0.0-alpha.14 (bundled since dev.23) starts under Kiln's host tests with its real loader. Its new rule is read from the source only: Enshwick no longer hooks a function another program hooked first. On the client Kiln is first, so a feature of Enshwick that needs such a function may be off, and its log then names a Kiln DLL. This was not measured in a game.

Known limits

• Seen in a real game (Linux, Proton, one client): Kiln's entries in the main menu with ShroudForge mods on, W and S steering with ShroudForge's Unlimited Flight, and SET's tools. Everything else here was tested on Linux hosts, under Wine without a display and on dedicated test servers. Nothing ran on native Windows or on a Steam Deck; the Deck fixes follow one player's support report.
• The launcher's new main screen was tested in a browser against a stand-in for the launcher's backend, not in the installed app.
• On Linux, Steam can show the game as running for about a minute after you quit. Steam's own networking library crashes while the game shuts down, and the system then writes a crash dump of several gigabytes. No Kiln or mod code is on either side of that crash; whether it also happens without Kiln is not known yet.
• shroudlink's MODS tab has not been seen in a real game with this build.
• When one EML mod fails inside ShroudForge, ShroudForge drops its whole startup pass and none of its data mods apply that start. The in-game Mods menu shows them as failed; the launcher's engine view can still say they run.
• The steered glider with an analog stick, with the game's other pitch mode, and another player's steered glider seen from a second game are not checked in a game.
• The graphics device takeover needs a second program hooking Vulkan next to Kiln, which no test here has. With more than one graphics device Kiln still cannot draw in that case; kiln.log says so.
• ShroudForge 1.8.0 is not released yet. Kiln brings 1.7.9 and will support 1.8.0 when it is out.