Creating new plugin system

Suppose you want to create a new feature or tectonic unit in your world besides the available features, i.e., subducting plate, fault, mantle layer etc. You can do this by creating a new plugin system that includes the possible distributions of composition, grains, and temperature within that feature. This is quite an advanced change to GWB, and it would be useful to first contact the developers to discuss the implementation before doing it yourself.

Below are the following broad steps you would need to follow to implement a new plugin system:

1. Write a class of your feature, say myfeature, that is derived from the interface class of the GWB features. You can do this by first copying the source (.cc) and the header (.h) files of an existing feature. Then, rename all the instances of the class to myfeature, modify the name of the feature in the constructor, add the feature in WB_REGISTER_FEATURE, and modify the header guards.

2. Create a folder of your feature inside source/world_builder/features. Next, add the subfolders for all the properties available in GWB, i.e., composition, grains, and temperature within myfeature.

3. Add interface class for each of the properties into the file interface.cc within their separate subfolders. You can copy the existing interface.cc in the available tectonic features. Do the same for the header files, interface.h in include/world_builder/features.

4. Change the namespace and header guard in the interface class to reflect myfeature.

5. Write a class that describes for all the properties how you want their respective distribution. Make sure that this class is derived from the interface class. You can either copy the available implementations of these properties in the existing features or write your own following the steps in Creating new plugins.