June 25 – Changing JSON Merging

Per some suggestions from our Starbound Modding channel. I’ve been exploring options to make how we do JSON merging better. And I would like comments from current modders on this.

As you’re no doubt aware, currently, the system in place has a big limitation, in that it doesn’t have the ability to address any point conceptually below a list. This has been discussed a bunch, and one interesting result of that discussion has been a JSON patching RFC being brought to my attention. I’ve spoken with the modding channel on freenode and they were more or less welcoming of this change, even though it would invalidate all files which use “__merge”.

I really don’t want two different JSON patching systems running at the same time for reasons of complexity and weirdness. So I’d like to take a vote. If you are currently a modder, and you’re currently using our __merge system, would you rather have __merge eliminated and use the new system, or would you rather I go back to the drawing board and figure out a way to fix the __merge system, which may or may not actually be possible?