citybound / modstore

A webapp to discover, rate and publish mods for Citybound

Citybound is a city building game with a focus on realism, collaborative planning and simulation of microscopic details. It is independently developed, open source and funded through Patreon.

• Homepage (with screenshots and videos)
• Latest Downloadable Game Builds (for Windows, Mac and Linux)
• Living Design Doc (includes detailed notes, plans, inspirations and references)
• LICENSE (AGPL)
• Contributing & Development (includes instructions for the custom build process)

modstore's Issues

Datastore requirements for mod data and metadata

Modstore Data Requirements

Data Objects / Sources

(Copied from Data Objects / Sources in the README)

A Mod Archive

Manifest

• Name
• Version
• Game Version Compatability
• (Dependencies)

README.md

• Description
• Tags (standardized format?)
• • for example
  • Link to issue tracking if any

CHANGELOG.md

• Tertiary assets (In a special folder?)
  • Screenshots

Database Records

Mod

• Number of downloads
• Ratings (see below)

Mod Rating

• Star Rating? Or just thumbs up/down?
• Rating date
• Rated version of the mod (user has to know?)
• Rating text
• Submitter name (optional)
• Rating Screenshots?

Cross-platform Compilation Service

Cross-platform binary downloadables

Database Solutions

• MongoDB
• PostgreSQL
• Others?

Both Mongo and Postgres offer the same solution, but Postgres affords stronger consistency guarantees. However, if high availability is a concern, then Mongo could be a good choice despite its potential for inconsistency.

Mongo Considerations

Mongo is still "eventually consistent."

This jumps out as a disadvantage to choosing Mongo: "Reads from secondaries can be useful in scenarios where it is acceptable for data to be slightly out of date."

It seems necessary that records for mod dependencies should never be out of date as this could complicate mod downloading/installing. If a request for a group of dependencies for a particular mod yield out of date results, this could impact the performance of the server because it would then have to try again to get a required version of a dependency a second (or more) times.

Postgres Considerations

Is Postgres NoSQL Better Than MongoDB?

TBD

Questions

• How are mod archives stored?
• Do mod archives include its manifest? Tentative yes?
• What (other?) specific data needs to be stored about a mod for the modstore?
• What kind of data consistency guarantees need to be made about mod data and metadata?

Mod Archive Storage

• Will mod archives be stored in something like Amazon's S3 storage?
  Amazon's S3 Consistency Model (S3 is eventually consistent)
• Will the app use GitHub's release archive feature for mods available through GitHub?

High Level Goals and Requirements

(Copied from the README)

The Citybound Modstore

A webapp to discover, rate and publish mods for Citybound.

Goals

• CRUD for Mods
  • Augmented: Submit, publish, unpublish, update, and delete mods
• Browse Mods
• Mod API
• User Management
• Moderation/Curation of Mods
• Security

Others TBD?

Tooling

• Backend
  • node.js? Express?
  • DB? (See #3)
• Frontend:
  • React?

Functional Requirements

CRUD for Mods

CRUD operations performed by users to submit, publish, unpublish, update, and delete mods.

• Only authenticated users may submit mods
• Mod data and metadata

Questions

• What is mod data and metadata? (See #3)
• How are mods submitted?
• How are mods updated?
• What kind of version management should the modstore maintain, if at all?
• Should mods be able to be deleted on a whim?

Browse Mods

• Search for mods by:
  • Name
  • Keywords
  • Author/Creator (Contributors?)
  • Popularity
  • Date
  • Etc?
• Discover mods curated by moderators
• Rate mods

Questions

• What kind of rating system should be maintained? (See #3)

Mod API

An interface to the modstore's Browsing features.

Questions

• How much of the modstore's features will the Game Client make use of?
  • Limited to simply Search, Update, and Install?

User Management

• Registration
• Login/Logout
• Change password/password reset
• Profile?
  • Gravatar photo?
  • Biography?
  • Location?
  • Age?

Questions

• Login integrations with popular services like Google, Facebook, GitHub, etc?

Moderation

• Manual review of submitted mods?
• Curate individual and lists of mods
• Promote featured mods
• Manage and respond to report of abuse and policy violations

Questions

• Different roles for moderators? (e.g Editor/Curator vs. Maintainer/Abuse Mitigation)
• What are the modstore's policies?
  • Terms of Service?
  • Abuse Resolution Policy?

Security

• Mod archive checksums?
• TLS/HTTPS
• Follow OWASP Recommendations

Questions

• Assuming malicious intent, what content should be allowed?

Others TBD

Nonfunctional Requirements

• Reliable availability/uptime
• Terms of Service?
• Privacy Policy?
• Cookie Policy?
• Abuse/Conflict Policy?

Others TBD

Questions

• What are the main goals of the Modstore?
• What kinds of guarantees does the Modstore make for its clients?
• How should the the name be stylized? modstore, Modstore, or ModStore?
• Is the name final? (Should we spawn a new issue?)
• How will the webapp be required to scale?
• Other requirements?