First hurdle to get over

[Crook]

Ok, in an expanded big, does HW2 look for new files or not? As I understand it, the folder struction should be:


Data\

ai
animatics
art


etc


is this right? And can someone alter a HW2 file within this and get it to show up in game? Maybe it goes under bin/patches.

this needs figuring out, otherwise any altered files wont show up in game - it'd be bad it we kept having to compile bigs just to test the odd file........

[Mehrunes]

I haven't gotten anything to work using the directory structure you first mentioned. I'm wondering if normal file system access is enabled in the demo.

[SvK]

Iv'e taken directories out of the BIG and put them under data\ Then I did a viariety of silly things to them: altering contents, re-naming, inserting gibberish. Nothing had any effect.

[Mehrunes]

I couldn't get anything to work in the Patch directory either.

[Crook]

Oh dear....... Anyone know how IC did it? It's a similar structure?

You could try -bgsim as a switch for the exe. I found that looking in the exe. I can't try it as HW doesnt work for me :(

[mecha]

I'm pretty sure it's disabled in the demo

[Mehrunes]

*cries*

EDIT: Wait, -bgsim enables reading new files from the data directory. Unfortuneately, the files in the .big archives take precedence.

[Pavonis]

MAybe I misunderstand, but couldn't you simply extract everything and then move the .bigs to where the .exe won't try to use them and let it have at the files you've extracted?

[Mehrunes]

Originally posted by Pavonis
MAybe I misunderstand, but couldn't you simply extract everything and then move the .bigs to where the .exe won't try to use them and let it have at the files you've extracted?

The game won't start if the .big files aren't there.

[Captain Pierce]

Originally posted by mecha
I'm pretty sure it's disabled in the demo

Well, that takes all the fun out of it... :D

However, can we take that to mean that the full game will continue the HW/HWC tradition of looking outside the .big first? ;)

[nickersonm]

I think something simmilar is also present in the HW demo. Otherwise, the bigs from the full game could be distributed to people with the demo to create the full game.

- nickersonm

[Crook]

Ahh right. Cheers Mecha. Makes sense now. Well, At least we get to play with the files a little before full release.


A thought has occurred. I think I'll ask Delphy how hard it would be to make an SGA compiler. We could replace the files to make a new demo bigfile, and replace the demo big with that. A lot of hassle just to check a few files, but if it's just a few lines of code it may be worthwhile.......

This is dependant on the exe not looking up an internal crc checksum of the bigfile or whatever.......

[Delphy]

How hard is it? Well it's pretty easy IF you dont want to add files to the archive (this would affect the directory TOC so would screw things up becuase I dont know how to generate it yet)

If you're just replacing though, it's fairly easy....

[Crook]

Well, I'm just looking to replace files at the moment. In fact, the files I'm looking to replace are the same byte length. Would it be different with replacing a larger/smaller file with the same name file?

But this is all a bit too much I think JUST to get some files work with the short lived demo. :) But on the other hand, I'd like to test my new fonts :D