Loader Question

[potterr]

I am currently writing a new loader for Thief 1-3 (Dark Metal, and T2X mods for T2 and maybe system shock 2 as well seeing as the structure is similar and there is still a following for it), and I would also like to support the dark mod with it as well.

Theloader is called GarrettLoader and should be in beta (for T1-2) in a few weeks time.

 

Trouble is I don't yet know how a Dark Mod FM will be installed... and I also don't have Doom 3 yet...must go and order it now.

 

Anyway does anyone have a tutorial for how to install a Dark Mod FM (I know there are not ready yet but someone must have a rough idea) or is anyone working on one?

[Renzatic]

They'll more than likely work like installing a regular Doom 3 map. You'll organize all your assets in their appropriate folders in a PK4, arrange them like you would if you were dumping them straight into the game.

 

PK4 files are straight up zips, the only difference is that the file extention is renamed. If you want a working example go here and download the map, use winrar to open the PK4 (so you keep the directory structure intact), and check it out.

 

I dunno how necessary a loader would be considering how easy it is to install FM's...all you do is dump em in doom3/base and they're ready to go. Might be cool to be able to launch all the Thief missions from one program though.

[potterr]

Cheers for that, downloaded it and had a look. Just one more question....

The doom3/base folder is presumably empty before unzipping a FM? (not having the game yet I don't know), if not would the files inside need backing up in any way?

[sparhawk]

The files stay in the pk4 file at all times. You can extract them to the disk and use it like this also, but this would not be needed for a FM distribution. In fact performancewise it would be worse to extract it to disk, because disc acess is slower then the small time it takes modern CPUs to decompress the ZIP file.

The major thing a loader would have to do is to backup savegames in our case.

[Renzatic]

Base is where all the stuff Doom 3 needs to run is stored...textures, models, sounds, shaders, engine stuff, that's where it's all at.

 

And no, you don't ever have to back up anything. Everything in there is also stored in PK4 files, so if you were to make a texture and name it something that already exists ingame, like blackhorn1 (or anustube olol) for instance, all it'll do is..I think..default to the original texture.

 

So unless you unpack all the PK4's all you need to worry about is naming conflicts.

[Springheel]

I'm not sure being part of a project called 'Garrett' Loader is appropriate for us anyway. It suggests we're somehow affiliated with that character, when we are not.

[potterr]

sparhawk, savegames should be easy to do.

 

Renzatic, hopefully authors don't use the same names, but then again a quick scan of the PK4 may be in order.

 

Springheel, don't worry about the name, the Loader was originally designed for upcoming Thief 3 FM's, however with a lack of them at the mo I decided to replicate DarkLoader beforehand, and its grown a bit to be a general thief related loader (trouble is ThiefLoader and DarkLoader already exist). If you want I could set it up so you can name the program yourself....

 

Anyway I have enough info to go on for the moment.

[Dram]

I think that'd be really cool. Good luck

[potterr]

I have just released the first beta of GarrettLoader, however it doesn't yet have Full support for The Dark Mod. In order to do this what I would need to know (if anyone wants to help) is:

• The exe name of Doom 3 (I am presuming its doom3.exe and that its what you use to launch FM's an dthat its located in the root of the doom3 folder)
  
• Where save games are actually located normally and what their file extention is (e.g. .sav ?)
  
• If doom3 would complain if a new folder called "allsaves" was added to the root folder so that save games can be backed up there.
  
• Do you guys have a standard readme format that goes with the FM's?
  
• Finally with regards to the PK4 file contents, I am presuming that there should be no exe's,dll's, .com and .bat files in the PK4's? (the reason I ask is that GarrettLoader has some protection for Thief FM's in that it will not unzip any executable files, however as the PK4's don't need to be unzipped the best I can do is warn if there are any in it before hand).
  

Thanks for your help.

 

Also GarrettLoader will be in first beta for about 2 weeks, then a final beta for about 1-2 weeks and then first release after that (by which time I am aiming to have full Dark Mod and Thief 3 support).

[Fingernail]

Well since there are no concrete FMs for Dark Mod, can't give you ALL the answers yet, but you'll want to pass the line "+set fs_game darkmod" to the commandline of doom3.exe so it actually loads the mod. D3 doesn't care about extraenous folders anywhere, it only looks for the ones it knows.

 

Saves seem to carry 3 files: a TGA screenshot, a text document with a description of the save, and a .save file.

 

Once the mod .pk4 is installed, there should be no extra executables in the mission pk4s.

[potterr]

Fingernail - easy enough, however where are the save games located (are they in their own folder?)

 

Once the mod .pk4 is installed, there should be no extra executables in the mission pk4s.

So its probably an idea to scan the PK4 to be on the safe side then.

 

I have added these items to the GarrettLoader enhancements list on the TTLG forums.

 

I'll start on them now.

[Fingernail]

Oh sorry, it's in [doom3folder]/darkmod/savegames

 

I guess it'll be in darkmod since that's the mod name...

[potterr]

Fingernail, a thought just occured to me there, how would the loader know if the dark mod was actually installed?

Is there some defining/essential filename that would be located in the darkmod folder or in the doom2 root. The reason I ask is that I have set GarrettLoader up to record doom3 pathname by the person using it selecting the doom3.exe, however that does not mean that the Dark Mod is installed, it could just be plain Doom3 installed.I would still do this however I would need to do a secondary scan to make sure that the Dark Mod is installed by finding a specific file (rather than a foldername).

 

One other thing slightly off topic (slighty), is that GarrettLoader has a FM scoring system in it (basic at the mo) with an aim to have the ability to download community scores for the FM's and indeed upload your own to a server somewhere. Just wondered if you would a) be intersted in it for The Dark Mod, want to host the scoring pages (by that I mean the pages that would accept the posted score (hidden within GarrettLoader, located on the server), and the pages to return the scores back to GL or simply display via a normal browser).

[Fingernail]

Don't talk to us about future server plans right now; it's too far away to consider.

 

As for the darkmod testing - well, there needs to be a darkmod.pk4 file in the Doom 3 folder.

[Fingernail]

actually, check for a darkmod folder too, and a DevIL.dll in windows/system32/

[Renzatic]

The only thing you really need to do is get any current Doom 3 SP map to load from your frontend. Once you do that you shouldn't have any problems doing the same thing with Darkmod FM's.

 

Well...now that I think about it there is one difference, you'll have to get the engine to use the DM assets. That should be solved by adding +set fs_game darkmod somewhere in your loaders command line...like Fing said.

[sparhawk]

One thing that comes to my mind is. It would be cool if the loader could install TDM. This should be pretty easy, because the only thing you would have to do is to create the darkmod directory in the D3 folder, put the pk4 file(s) in there and copy the DevIL.dll into system32 directory, and create a link on the desktop with appropriate arguments. That would save us the problem of having to write an installer.

[potterr]

sparhawk, easily done, I presume that the DLL will be in the pk4 file? and that it is an activex one? i.e. it needs a regsvr32 on it?

I can do the desktop shortcut, although the loader would add a link within itself:

 

 

its not shown on this image but the Dark Mod appears between the Dark Metal icon (the one below T3) and the T2X icon (the one that looks like a 2 over a T). However its currently just a doom3 icon (do you have a 32x32,24x24 and a 16x16 icon for the Dark Mod? (there are 3 settings for toolbar image sizes, as well as the 16x16 icon appearing in the game column)).

 

One other thing with that is that GL uses a readme.txt file to show information in the FM details bit and the readme itself just above that. I'm doubting that you have though about any of that for FM's yet. However GL has a built in readme maker in it (the 0.301 version is a bit buggy though), which creates a readme in txt format, it will have xml and html (or GLML, a tagged HTML type structure that looks like HTML but with specially greated tags that GL will then convert to HTML (to make it a bit more secure)) support later on.

I am using the format currently used in most of the Thief FM's as it works well and should contain all the info needed for someone to play.

The thought here is that the PK4 wouldn't need it in there but a zip containing the PK4 and the readme would be fine. That way you can store FM's in a seperate folder, and GL can extract the PK4 to Doom3/darkmod folder as well as showing the readme and clean it all up afterwards. The other thing with that is that GL also handles FM logos (100x100 pixel JPG or GIF files that replace teh GarrettLoader image when you click an FM in the list). i am also toying with the idea of a 16x16 version that will display next to the FM name which may make it easier to find you favourite ones in the list.

I am also adding a zip facility for FM authors into the tools system, which will allow them to package up Thief FM's, but with a little tweak it will also allow the zips to be converted to a PK4 file and then zipped up into a distributable zip (along with the readme and logos)....although this will probably not be in the next beta.

 

Sorry about all the questions, just making sure I cover all the bases before hand. (I suppose that way you can also test the install of the Dark Mod before you release it).

[Fingernail]

Shouldn't need a regsvr - it's just a module that's run by doom3.exe at runtime. Doom 3 itself is also just a .dll file that's run by the engine doom3.exe.

[potterr]

Fingernail,

I'm going to start writing the code for this this week (well I've done some background stuff for it at the mo). I though I would start with sparhawk's suggestion of installing TDM. I have currently got it to detect TDM pk4 file in the root of the doom3 folder (i.e. searching for the darkmod folder), if its there a check in system32 to see if the dll is installed, if thats there it will allow you to play any TDM FM's however if its not it will only allow you to play doom3 FM's.

Although if it does not find it I have got it to request where the pk4 file is and then create the folder in the doom3 root, copy the pk4 (didn't want to move it just in case) and then I'm stuck..

I know about the DevIL.dll which I am going to extract from the pk4, however is there any other files that would need to be extracted to install? or will it all simply run from the pk4 file? (if it does my hat off to ID).

 

Also just another though, will TDM only work on the 1.3 patch? (i.e. would I need to check for that in order to allow installation)...and heres the thing....if so how would I tell that the patch is installed?

 

If thats all fairly simple I could well have an experimental version working by next weekend...

[Renzatic]

I know about the DevIL.dll which I am going to extract from the pk4, however is there any other files that would need to be extracted to install? or will it all simply run from the pk4 file? (if it does my hat off to ID).

 

All it needs to do is find the darkmod gamex86.dll file, after that once it executes Doom 3 the engine will identify all pk4 files as installed assets and launch them without any extra tweaking or screwing around.

 

The only thing the loader needs to do is select which map the engine loads. For a quick working example here, if you were to add +map game/alphalabs2 to the shortcut command line, the game would skip loading the menu and would instead instantly start loading up alphalabs2. In theory that's all your loader should have to do as well.

 

And yeah, we're gonna be compiling the mod for 1.3 since it adds alot of cool stuff we wanna play with.

[potterr]

The only thing the loader needs to do is select which map the engine loads

Question there then is how is the name of the FM identified? just by the PK4 name?

 

Sorry about all the questions, just want to make sure I handle everything that needs to be handled.

[Renzatic]

Hmm..that I'm not too sure about. If I were to take a guess I'd say it's probably something done via scripting, becuase D3 will pick up the names of the maps rather than what the pk4 files are called.

 

I'll have to check that out.

[potterr]

Cheers for that Renzatic, another question...simple one, are there difficulty settings in Doom 3 and/or The Dark Mod? if so what are they?

[Napalm]

in .pk4 files you can specify a nameing script, this is how multiplayer maps are listed in the game. I'm not sure how you would implement this in your thing, since I just skimmed the thread so far