Using Harmony Mods with Carbon installed.

[Black Drake]

I recently installed Carbon on my test server to see what I needed to do to get it up and running.  I have been unable to get the purchased Harmony plugins to load.  Any help on this is appreciated. 

Thanks

[Death]

6 hours ago, Cannon Fodder said:

You are correct.  I don't understand the reasons to why certain plugins that require DLL files aren't seamlessly working.  I can't do what you do, I know that.  I also have great respect for your ability.

But I can say as an end user of your product, I am finding more and more frustrations with it, to the point where I am seriously rethinking my decision to use Carbon, and am investigating the process to remove it while causing as little server disruption as possible.

It isn't just the harmony mods issue.  It is the other issues I mentioned in my post as well.

Most of all, it is the attitude I have seen from the carbon team when something doesn't work with Carbon.  Far too often it is a combative and antagonistic stance, instead of working to find a solution for the end users.

This is the biggest thing putting me off to Carbon right now.

To be clear, I have respect for you, the team, and what you are able to do.  I want Carbon.  I chose Carbon even knowing of the limitations.  But the attitude and direction of the team when things don't work in Carbon that work fine elsewhere, is very off-putting.  

I wish the team would consider the needs and desires of the end users more than need need for "rightness".

Harmony patches with Carbon are redundant and can pose issues with users using carbon in parallel with random harmony patches. The assumption is that users doing this would understand the risk, but that's unrealistic. Most people wouldn't understand, nor would they care.

Carbon is built on Harmony and offers easy implementation of custom hooks without needing Harmony patches. If you're using Carbon, you don't need these patches. If there's a particular patch you want to use on Carbon, ask the developer to either ship it as a plugin or utilize Carbon's built-in custom hook feature to implement the desired hooks.

Harmony is useless without a framework. That's where Carbon comes in. Carbon is an upgrade over Harmony, so using both is pretty redundant. This isn't a matter of "restricting freedoms" but ensuring users cannot poorly implement it into our framework.

I hope this clears things up!

[Raul-Sorin Sorban]

18 minutes ago, Hypernova said:

"Heavily advised". Does this mean "Required to run any type of Harmony logic"? I'm an author of Harmony mods, precisely for the reason that I do not want to be dependant on a framework and be usable in a vanilla install. If Carbon does disallow the execution of Harmony mods, it'd be a giant middle finger to Harmony devs. And to Facepunch for that matter, who implemented Harmony. It's not up to you to decide for the end user.

Please implement an option to allow Harmony mods. Your own damn marketplace sells them, the least you can do is allow people the freedom to use them.

You seem to have answered your own question when you've mentioned "I do not want to be dependant on a framework" in the same frame when you say that Carbon disallowing unmanaged code to create instability in the framework which could deteriorate and break hooks of managed plugins, extensions and modules Carbon supports is a "giant middle finger to Harmony devs".

The Harmony support Facepunch added isn't meant to be used the way plugins out in the market are used, just a bundle of patches that change the server code, and if you want to run Carbon or Oxide, you might be out of luck to have a managed and secure environment (speaking of memory modifications of the server). The platform they added is dedicated for frameworks to be built around them, they even have quick start tools on their GitHub where you can create mod loaders using the Harmony system.

All in all, porting it to a Carbon module or a regular plugin will work just fine, just requires a little bit of extra work. Also, we only support Harmony v2 as it's the most performant and most up to date.

[Raul-Sorin Sorban]

3 minutes ago, Cannon Fodder said:

With respect to the developers and their hard work, I am wondering if I made the right choice switching to Carbon. 

There are things that I really like about it.  Sadly, it is also extremely limiting, and there seems to be too much ego, and not enough consideration of the end user.

Want to use Chaos mods.  Nope, not in Carbon.  I understood and was prepared for that, though there are mods only available on Chaos that I really want on my server.

Now I purchase a Harmony mod, and learn that Carbon blanket restricts me from using any of those as well.

I want to use a common Admin Radar mod, which works fine on umod, and used to work on Carbon.  The buttons are gone.  I go to the Carbon discord and see comments from the Carbon team that the Admin Radar dev needs to basically "git gud" at programming, instead of addressing the issue.  Disheartening and very off-putting. 

So disappointing.  An otherwise great product, but I think I am realizing it is way to restricting of what I can do with my own server.  I am rethinking whether it is worth the compromise.

I don't think you understand the reasons to why certain plugins that require DLL files aren't seamlessly working; it's because they're built using Oxide.*.dll files, which Carbon does not ship or have. We are not Oxide, and aren't supposed to ship those for Oxide compatibility. The developers are able to seamlessly generate another DLL version that is dedicated and ready to go for Carbon without anything crazy going on or much additional work.

Modifying references and/or code of pre-compiled DLLs of licensed products is not a legal risk we're willing to take neither. To the awkward AdminRadar bug - only plugin with that bug may I add, I'll be fixing that in no time when I have a look at it, and it'll be done.

Regardless, this is a framework, and not an unmanaged playground. Harmony mods sold without the basis of a framework are only supposed to run on vanilla, framework-less servers.

[Raul-Sorin Sorban]

1 hour ago, Black Drake said:

I recently installed Carbon on my test server to see what I needed to do to get it up and running.  I have been unable to get the purchased Harmony plugins to load.  Any help on this is appreciated. 

Thanks

Harmony mods are unmanaged pieces of compiled code that are designed to work without a framework, there are various reasons to why they're not supported the way you know it, but one of the main things is the lack of control and security when executing patches found in harmony mods, that can and probably will interfere directly with Carbon's hook/patch system.

It's heavily advised to developers to develop their harmony patches within cs plugins.

[Black Drake]

Thanks for the response and the explanation.   I was using a Harmony Plugin titled World Modifier.  It helped me make the smaller maps look good.  Too bad it will not run in Carbon.

 

[Cannon Fodder]

You are correct.  I don't understand the reasons to why certain plugins that require DLL files aren't seamlessly working.  I can't do what you do, I know that.  I also have great respect for your ability.

But I can say as an end user of your product, I am finding more and more frustrations with it, to the point where I am seriously rethinking my decision to use Carbon, and am investigating the process to remove it while causing as little server disruption as possible.

It isn't just the harmony mods issue.  It is the other issues I mentioned in my post as well.

Most of all, it is the attitude I have seen from the carbon team when something doesn't work with Carbon.  Far too often it is a combative and antagonistic stance, instead of working to find a solution for the end users.

This is the biggest thing putting me off to Carbon right now.

To be clear, I have respect for you, the team, and what you are able to do.  I want Carbon.  I chose Carbon even knowing of the limitations.  But the attitude and direction of the team when things don't work in Carbon that work fine elsewhere, is very off-putting.  

I wish the team would consider the needs and desires of the end users more than need need for "rightness".

[Cannon Fodder]

17 minutes ago, Death said:

Harmony patches with Carbon are redundant and can pose issues with users using carbon in parallel with random harmony patches. The assumption is that users doing this would understand the risk, but that's unrealistic. Most people wouldn't understand, nor would they care.

Carbon is built on Harmony and offers easy implementation of custom hooks without needing Harmony patches. If you're using Carbon, you don't need these patches. If there's a particular patch you want to use on Carbon, ask the developer to either ship it as a plugin or utilize Carbon's built-in custom hook feature to implement the desired hooks.

Harmony is useless without a framework. That's where Carbon comes in. Carbon is an upgrade over Harmony, so using both is pretty redundant. This isn't a matter of "restricting freedoms" but ensuring users cannot poorly implement it into our framework.

I hope this clears things up!

I wouldn't quite say clear, but it does help to provide a better understanding.  Thanks.

[Hypernova]

2 minutes ago, Raul-Sorin Sorban said:

You seem to have answered your own question when you've mentioned "I do not want to be dependant on a framework" in the same frame when you say that Carbon disallowing unmanaged code to create instability in the framework which could deteriorate and break hooks of managed plugins, extensions and modules Carbon supports is a "giant middle finger to Harmony devs".

The Harmony support Facepunch added isn't meant to be used the way plugins out in the market are used, just a bundle of patches that change the server code, and if you want to run Carbon or Oxide, you might be out of luck to have a managed and secure environment (speaking of memory modifications of the server). The platform they added is dedicated for frameworks to be built around them, they even have quick start tools on their GitHub where you can create mod loaders using the Harmony system.

All in all, porting it to a Carbon module or a regular plugin will work just fine, just requires a little bit of extra work. Also, we only support Harmony v2 as it's the most performant and most up to date.

Again, not up to you. Please make an option to allow normal execution of Harmony mods. Let the enduser decide. Heck, you can even put up a big disclaimer "YOU ARE USING UNMANAGED HARMONY MODS. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK." or whatever. But just flatout not allowing mods outside of your ecosystem is exceptionally toxic. Don't be Apple. Be Android.

[Hypernova]

On 5/18/2023 at 12:46 PM, Raul-Sorin Sorban said:

Harmony mods are unmanaged pieces of compiled code that are designed to work without a framework, there are various reasons to why they're not supported the way you know it, but one of the main things is the lack of control and security when executing patches found in harmony mods, that can and probably will interfere directly with Carbon's hook/patch system.

It's heavily advised to developers to develop their harmony patches within cs plugins.

"Heavily advised". Does this mean "Required to run any type of Harmony logic"? I'm an author of Harmony mods, precisely for the reason that I do not want to be dependant on a framework and be usable in a vanilla install. If Carbon does disallow the execution of Harmony mods, it'd be a giant middle finger to Harmony devs. And to Facepunch for that matter, who implemented Harmony. It's not up to you to decide for the end user.

Please implement an option to allow Harmony mods. Your own damn marketplace sells them, the least you can do is allow people the freedom to use them.

[Cannon Fodder]

With respect to the developers and their hard work, I am wondering if I made the right choice switching to Carbon. 

There are things that I really like about it.  Sadly, it is also extremely limiting, and there seems to be too much ego, and not enough consideration of the end user.

Want to use Chaos mods.  Nope, not in Carbon.  I understood and was prepared for that, though there are mods only available on Chaos that I really want on my server.

Now I purchase a Harmony mod, and learn that Carbon blanket restricts me from using any of those as well.

I want to use a common Admin Radar mod, which works fine on umod, and used to work on Carbon.  The buttons are gone.  I go to the Carbon discord and see comments from the Carbon team that the Admin Radar dev needs to basically "git gud" at programming, instead of addressing the issue.  Disheartening and very off-putting. 

So disappointing.  An otherwise great product, but I think I am realizing it is way to restricting of what I can do with my own server.  I am rethinking whether it is worth the compromise.

Edited May 27, 2023 by Cannon Fodder