ModSDK doesn't offer a practical solution towards mods with huge amount of noncopyleft assets.

[GraionDilach]

As it stands, if a project decides to use the ModSDK to compile it's own releases, the modder have two choices.

1. Upload all of the assets as part of the mod to the ModSDK repository which will allow a script/CI (Travis assumed) to compile a standalone release.
2. Upload a skeleton mod which will be expanded with the content installer on the fly.

Do note that GitHub's EULA explicitly requires a project to apply an OS license to every file in a repository, which prevents solution 1 being applied to mods intending to go with nonfree assets + GPL codebase. Solution 2 is technically good for these projects, but that means that the project needs to provide a static direct link to the assets (something even ModDB doesn't provide) AND there is also the backside that the content installer places assets to very questionable places in the ecosystem.

[pchote]

3. Customize the package creation script to pull in the non-free assets when building the installers.

This is something that we could reasonably add to the default scripts (via a PACKAGING_EXTERNAL_ASSET_SOURCE setting that defaults to empty).

[GraionDilach]

I would very much accept 3 as a solution to this ticket, actually.

[jrb0001]

3 without static direct link is still quite complex, usually. Also this can result in huge installers with a lot of content shared between releases.

[pchote]

That is what the in-game content installer is for. Any discussion about limitations in that are out of scope for the Mod SDK repository.

[penev92]

3. was my suggestion as well.

With that people can upload a zip with their assets to even something like Google Drive or Dropbox and have things "just work" (same for 2., actually) and still save themselves the "trouble" of having to deal with the ingame installer.

As an added bonus though, I would suggest having an options to create installers both with and without assets, so players that don't care about the asset installer issues and want the benefits that come with it have a choice.

[pchote]

The actual use case for this still isn't clear to me: if a mod relies on the mechanism proposed here, instead of the in-game content installer, then it won't be possible to develop or run the pre-packaging version (launch-game etc). This seems like it would kill the usefulness of the feature and add a large support burden from users who want to run the mod from source. We're going to need a more concrete proposal about how this feature can work if we want to progress this from a WONTFIX to some kind of solution.

I strongly recommend modders set up and use the ingame content installer which was designed specifically to solve the problems mentioned above. Asset packages can be manually uploaded to a GitHub release for distribution. If there are other problems with that feature then please file issues in the OpenRA/OpenRA repository.

[GraionDilach]

Please reread my original post, I thought I have clearly explained what are the issues with both the ingame installer and using GH for asset packages.

I don't plan to license out my voicework within AS into the public and I find it amusing how you claim insufficient details within a week after Red Resurrection's page died out due to the CnCNet5 updater service (which works similar in many, many ways to the content installer) combined with the fact OmegaBolt was forced to push out 5 quickfixes which resulted with him running out of page bandwidth.

[pchote]

Section 5 of the GitHub terms of service states that by uploading assets you grant a license for others to "reproduce Your Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for example, through forking)" only. Sections 3 - 6 plus the licensing a repository article make it clear that "you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work" outside of that license to create an exact copy without modifications.

[pchote]

I find it amusing how you claim insufficient details within a week after Red Resurrection's page died

I don't know about this, and it doesn't change the fact that the proposal as it currently stands will produce incomplete mods that crash when compiled and launched via the make && launch-game workflow. This needs to be solved before the feature can be implemented.

[pchote]

#82 aims to clarify the data licensing points from above.

[abcdefg30]

What is the status here? The options seem:

1. Upload the assets with a suitable license.
2. Make the PACKAGING_EXTERNAL_ASSET_SOURCE work (information needed).
3. Use the content installer and copy the assets to a different place by hand if you are not okay with the default directory.
4. Create the installers locally (i.e. remove the need to upload assets to travis/appveyor). You can set up the Linux subsystem for Windows 10 to create installers there.

[GraionDilach]

Proposal 4 resolves this issue.