there was one on the Sins filefront site, don't know if it is compatible with 1.181/1.041 though.

As a user, one who crashes things when he tries to be a power user, I like this idea.

As the creator of a mod myself I'd love to see this come in to play as alot of people have issues installing mods at times due to the folders being "hidden" for security issues.

Quite annoying really but if something like this existed it would really help alot of users out there installing the many many mods there are.

I also think that this could help the novice mod players. the main reason I had not attempted to write such is that I do not have the information on extracting from the various archive formats, also the mod might be for an older version and could crash the game if it is not in the correct version folder and then updated.

harpo

Thanks for all your inputs!  Consensus seems to be: Yes, Bob, I'd like to buy a vowel! 
Consider this application under development.

I think that the open-source 7ZIP library should extract ZIP, RAR, and 7Z (by far the most common archive formats).

The version problem is more challenging.  I was thinking of, at minimum, performing a check to see if recently-added/-removed parameters were present in certain files.  Wouldn't be a foolproof check, but it should prevent crashes.

In the Options, I'd envisioned a drop-down selection box to install the mods to a different version of the game/expansion.  Here, I wouldn't consider it worthwhile to attempt a versioning check... the user should know what they're doing if they go that far, and the number of versions is just too great.

Also, I'll have to do some research, but I imagine it's quite trivial for the application to detect what OS it's running in.

Wow, you mean all this time we could've been telling everyone to look for their mod folder in "%appdata%\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire", rather than those two long, messy, OS-specific paths?  Will definitely take note.  And that makes it all the easier, as my program won't even have to perform an OS check. 
Thanks! 

EDIT: Evidently it's %appdata% instead of %localapps%.

EDIT2: Nevermind.  Turns out it is %localapps%, but this is not a variable in WinXP -- only Windows Vista & newer.

moguta, the vb6 code snipet is working on winxp and later using a function that reads the registy to get the localapps, i found the code on the internet an dthis is the actual function to read the localapps registy entry into vb6

'Registry Function
'Registry types (pass in string as it is below)
'String = REG_SZ, Binary = REG_BINARY, Dword = REG_DWORD, Expand String = REG_EXPAND_SZ
'
Private Function registryAction(sActionToPerform As String, sKey As String, sValue As String, sType As String)
Dim WshShell
    Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
   
    On Error GoTo RegError
    If LCase$(sActionToPerform) = "write" Then WshShell.RegWrite sKey, sValue, sType
    If LCase$(sActionToPerform) = "read" Then registryAction = WshShell.RegRead(sKey)
    If LCase$(sActionToPerform) = "delete" Then WshShell.RegDelete sKey

RegError:
End Function
Private Function getlocalapps() As String
Dim sPath As String
Dim RetVal As Long

' Fill our string buffer
sPath = String(MAX_PATH, 0)

RetVal = SHGetFolderPath(0, CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA Or CSIDL_FLAG_CREATE, 0, SHGFP_TYPE_CURRENT, sPath)

Select Case RetVal
    Case S_OK
        ' We retrieved the folder successfully
       
        ' All C strings are null terminated
        ' So we need to return the string upto the first null character
        sPath = Left(sPath, InStr(1, sPath, Chr(0)) - 1)
        getlocalapps = sPath
    Case S_FALSE
        ' The CSIDL in nFolder is valid, but the folder does not exist.
        ' Use CSIDL_FLAG_CREATE to have it created automatically
        MsgBox "The folder does not exist"
    Case E_INVALIDARG
        ' nFolder is invalid
        MsgBox "An invalid folder ID was specified"
   
End Select
End Function

hope this helps

harpo

%localappdata%

I made a mod installer over a year ago, but never got any feedback: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/302726

It's probably outdated now. But I think it was pretty open ended with how you wanted to configure your mod. But what you're posting seems more of a mod manager, not stand-alone installer.

where is the link ?? please

Sorry, thalatos, no actual program yet.  It's mostly a concept at this point.

Harpo, what I'm looking for is a library that can decompress not only ZIP, but RAR, 7z, and anything else Sins modders tend to pack their mods into.

As far as language, I'm using C++.