feat: MAD progress post (#12)

Adds a new blog post describing the progess on mod-auto-download (MAD).

_posts/2024-08-09-mad-update.md

@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+---
+title: "State of progress: MAD"
+header:
+  image: /assets/images/posts/mad-progress/missing-mod.png
+  og_image: /assets/images/posts/mad-progress/missing-mod.png
+tags:
+  - MAD
+author: Alystrasz
+last_modified_at: 2024-08-09T17:43:00-01:00
+---
+
+Hey, Alystrasz here, to give you some information about the feature I'm currently developing, MAD!
+
+### What is MAD?
+
+MAD is an acronym that stands for *mod auto-downloading*; the idea of the feature is for your game to download
+mods required by the server as you join it.
+Some games are known to integrate this feature, like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress.
+
+On Northstar, currently, when joining a server requiring client-side mods, you will be displayed this message:
+
+<img src="{{ 'assets/images/posts/mad-progress/missing-mod.png' | relative_url }}" alt="Screenshot of the missing mod interface when joining a server" />
+
+This breaks your user experience since it forces you to go download the mod by yourself on the Internet (in practice,
+you won't look for the missing mod, and just join another server).
+
+---
+
+I've been working on this feature for two years (first commit on [Aug. 30th, 2022](https://github.com/R2Northstar/NorthstarLauncher/pull/262/commits/114653052972383f9b154d96c581a2b90c483c87)), and progress is slow since there is much to be taken into
+consideration here: according to `git-hours`, I invested at least 258 hours in the launcher part and 197 hours in the
+scripting part.
+Progress is nonetheless being made: you might have noticed that we did some *production testing*
+of the feature earlier this year through the [Parkour tournament](/blog/parkour-tournament) we organised.
+
+Let's now check where we are on the development of MAD.
+
+### What is done?
+
+#### Verification system
+
+Don't worry, Northstar is *not* going to download malware stuff to your computer! We have a verification system
+to avoid doing that.
+
+Basically, your game can only download mods that went through a verification process described here:
+[https://github.com/R2Northstar/VerifiedMods](https://github.com/R2Northstar/VerifiedMods);
+this process includes mod source code being public and release upload be automatic (by the way, if you want your
+gamemode to be auto-downloadable, don't hesitate to submit a request in the aforementioned repository!)
+
+Even though it can always be improved, this verification system is functional and currently supports 5 mods for
+auto-downloading.
+
+#### Downloading mods
+
+The implementation of this mod auto-downloading feature within Northstar was done in the two Northstar core components:
+
+* the [**NorthstarLauncher**](https://github.com/R2Northstar/NorthstarLauncher) native code (C++) is responsible for low-level calls: think file system access, mod archive fetching etc.
+* the [**NorthstarMods**](https://github.com/R2Northstar/NorthstarMods) script part (Squirrel VM) invokes native methods and updates UI accordingly.
+
+Here are the basic steps of the downloading process, when joining a server requiring mods you don't locally have:
+1. Retrieve the list of verified mods from GitHub;
+2. Ensure missing mod can be downloaded;
+3. Download missing mod archive file;
+4. Ensure archive is not corrupted;
+5. Extract mod archive to current player profile;
+6. Reload mods to add downloaded mod to local mods collection;
+7. Server can be joined.
+
+As you can see on the video below, mod downloading actually works™.
+
+<video controls style="max-width: 100%">
+    <source src="{{ 'assets/video/posts/mad/autodl-parkour-example.webm' | relative_url }}"
+            type="video/webm"
+    >
+    Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos.
+</video>
+
+Ok, I admit things go fast! Here's another example with a bigger mod (a custom map reusing assets of a single
+player level):
+
+<video controls style="max-width: 100%">
+    <source src="{{ 'assets/video/posts/mad/autodl-s2s-example.webm' | relative_url }}"
+            type="video/webm"
+    >
+    Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded videos.
+</video>
+
+### What's left to be done?
+
+So, why isn't MAD public yet?
+
+Actually, it is deployed, but shielded behind a configuration variable (you have to type `allow_mod_auto_download 1`
+in your console to enable it) because we feel like some stuff is missing:
+
+#### Assets reloading (mad only working for gamemodes and basic maps)
+
+Currently, the game is not able to reload assets (sounds for instance) without restarting, it means that if
+you download a mod including sound assets through MAD, your game will just crash.
+
+#### Mod versions
+
+If you join a server requiring `v1.1.0` of a given mod but you already have `v1.0.0` installed, the game should
+disable your `v1.0.0` version, and install `v1.1.0` through MAD; the problem is that the game is currently not
+able to distinguish between multiple versions of a same mod: mod handling code has to be rewritten to take mod
+versions into account.
+
+###### Example
+
+Currently, to enable the `Parkour` mod, you would have to call the following function:
+```javascript
+NSSetModEnabled("Parkour", true)
+```
+
+But this won't work if you have several versions of the `Parkour` mod installed.
+To fix that, the idea is to add a "version" parameter to the game interface, as such:
+```javascript
+NSSetModEnabled("Parkour", "1.1.0", true)
+```
+
+---
+
+MAD development is tracked on this [GitHub issue](https://github.com/R2Northstar/Northstar/issues/674), don't
+hesitate to comment it, or to reach me on Discord!