🚀 Major Changes Coming in GLoot v3

[peter-kish]

Dear GLoot Users,

I have been working on GLoot version 3 for some time, and while it remains a work in progress, I have made key decisions regarding significant changes that will impact its functionality and overall design. My goal with these changes is to simplify the codebase, enhance maintainability, and increase the add-on's customizability.

Below are the most relevant changes compared to version 2.x:

Protosets

• Protosets are now represented as JSON resources, eliminating the need for a custom resource class.
• The protoset editor has been removed, with the only method for creating protosets being the direct writing of raw JSON. This should further simplify the codebase and allow for external protoset editors to be implemented, either as plugins or standalone tools.

Inventory Nodes

• Version 3 consolidates multiple inventory node types (e.g., Inventory, InventoryGrid, InventoryStacked) into a single basic inventory node type, Inventory. This node can be customized with various inventory constraint nodes (e.g., GridConstraint, WeightConstraint) added as child nodes.
• All Inventory nodes are now stack-based, meaning each item will have a stack size and a maximum stack size, both defaulting to 1.

Inventory Items

• InventoryItem no longer inherits from Node, which reduces complexity and minimizes potential bugs associated with tracking inventory child nodes which represent items.
• InventoryItem now inherits from RefCounted, which should make usage easier since there is no more need to manually free items in order to avoid memory leaks.

Item Slots

• ItemRefSlot has been removed, since it did not add a lot of functionality to the addon. Its features can easily be replicated by implementing _can__drop_data and _drop_data for any Control node and storing a reference to the dropped item.

UI Control Nodes

• CtrlInventoryGridEx and CtrlItemSlotEx have been removed, while CtrlInventoryGrid and CtrlItemSlot have been made more customizable.

Obviously, these changes are not backwards compatible with version 2.x and some adjustments will be necessary to all projects transitioning to version 3. I will make sure to write a simple upgrade guide before GLoot v3 gets merged to master to make the upgrade from version 2 as seamless as possible.

Cheers,
Peter