There is one big problem I see with the upcomming new formats and it's the storage of the pack-specific tilesets which are not included by standard in NL.
I am always very concerned about maintainability of packs and strife for a big database of functional packs from all the different authors. Sadly some packs are lacking updates to keep them up-to-date and running on the new NL versions which makes me a little bit sad inside seeing good packs decent into incompability.
As I thought deeply about the new formats I came to a point which can result in chaos: Each pack still has to come with the non-standard tilesets it is using and as these cannot be stored hidden in an nxp anymore, they go directly into the tilesets folder and here is my point --> I highly doubt every pack creator keeps the tilesets bundled with his pack up-to-date!
This can result in total chaos when a tileset creator releases a critical update. Some users use the new version and the pack isn't working anymore. Other users overwrite the new with the pack version and now every other pack has a chance of not working.
So what to do?
I've come up with 2 solutions and a proposal which can help reducing the problem in general:
[Solution 1]
This is not my preferred solution and you will see why.
Letting packs have (again) internal tilesets which have priority over the tileset database within the pack. This ensures the pack is working all the time while still not influencing the other content.
Still we want to go away from hidden files and binary blobs and that's why this is far from optimal.
[Solution 2]
Each pack can have a modification (mod) folder where it stores modded tilesets in the new format. This is similar to SuperLemmini which also has a mod folder for tileset modifications.
Here each pack can (!= must) store it's non-standard tilesets and the author does not need to update the pack when one of the tilesets there gets an update. It's still preferable to update the mods as well, but no different tileset versions will overwrite themselves, causing possible broken content.
This could lead to having tons of versions of the same tilesets and that's why I highly advertise to keep the mods up-to-date as well, resulting only in safety duplicates.
Also now minor modifications to existent tilesets will be possible without overwriting the original maybe made by a different author.
Furthermore trash tilesets don't clutter the already big tileset folder -- like Sega2.dat I use in Reunion. They can now be stored the the tileset's mod folder.
This would be my preferred solution.
[Helpful proposal]
Expanding the by standard included tileset list of NL.
If more tilesets are included by standard, fewer tilesets need to be included with downloading a new pack. Of course these should be tilesets which are relatively stable and high quality ---> not having many major content breaking overhauls anymore.
Why not include the following to the standard list:
-- Gronkling's tilesets (Menace,Beast II,Cyber,Slime and minimal)
-- My Dune tileset, Lemmini conversions of Pieuw's castle and Prince Jamie's City tileset.
-- zanzindorf's glacier and sKiwi tilesets
-- I don't know how many of them are currently stable: GigaLem's freedom planet tilesets.
-- Arty's lego tileset
Raymanni's tilesets are currently still in the development phase, but after that they are also a hot candidate.
I 100%missed some potential candidates, but simply write in here!
With all these included by standard the ammount of nessesary tileset additions to packs will drop dramatically!
This will also lead to the reduction of the safety duplicates if [Solution 2] is chosen.
What do you think about the problem and how should it be adressed after you? Do you also want a bigger standard NL tileset database, or which tilesets did I miss here?
I will also soon update the topic on the upcomming changes to the L2 tilesets, but don't panic no content breaking stuff there. Only removal of some no-trigger objects and the adding of a few tiles, which won't be problematic with the new formats.