.pak files

[spooker]

I've grown sick of constantly juggling my .pak files, renaming them and moving them around depending on what mod I want to play--fvf, ctf, slide, some single player map, etc. What I'm wondering is if it's possible to unpack the .pak files into folders within the ID1 folder. I know you can do this with maps, but can you also do it with progs, gfx, sounds, and other good stuff you find inside .pak files? If so, what are the consequences of doing this? I assume you need a different way to load the mod you want, presumably by using .bat files (?) or using shortcuts and putting commands in the target box....
thanks

[Baker]

there's a war?? oh crap lemme get my spear and shield. see you in the jousting ring at 1300

i still don't like ezinstallers, they muck around with registry and whatnot. can someone point me to a link where i can learn about this schtuff? hay i never heard of netquake team fortress b4

It's about the same as the Quakeworld Team Fortress. +/-

[spooker]

there's a war?? oh crap lemme get my spear and shield. see you in the jousting ring at 1300

i still don't like ezinstallers, they muck around with registry and whatnot. can someone point me to a link where i can learn about this schtuff? hay i never heard of netquake team fortress b4

[Baker]

Those EZ installers I made, while being .exe files, install the stuff and were made perfectly to allow Slide, Rocket Arena, Threewave CTF, FVF and even NetQuake Team Fortress to peacefully co-exist without using -game.

+1 Baker in the Baker vs. Spooker Wars!!!

/jokingly to spooks, welcome to where I was 3 years ago. I'm kidding with you, actually Yellow No. 5 was the genius who came up with the concept and asked me to do it. So +1 Yellow No. 5 actually. Yellow No. 5 came up with tons of great ideas that some people mistakenly give me credit for.

[spooker]

short of programming any new programs or engines (which I'm not capable of), I'd like to find the best short term solution for myself.

thanks for the example montie. let me see if i understand this correct, I would put that code in a .txt file, rename it as a .bat file, and run it? my knowledge of .bat files is slim

can someone explain this "-game" command?

[Mr.Burns]

Thanks for taking the time out to contribute, MH

This to me seems the most logical solution. With the introduction of the recent mods on some servers, such as Polarite's suite of servers, if the engine can be intuitive enough to detect what mod is running on the server you are wishing to connect to and then automatically load up the appropriate gamedir at the point of joining then that IMHO would seem to be the "happy medium". Less hassle playing any mod = happier players = [hopefully] more players

With that in mind how can I ensure that EngineX will work with the existing and [hopefully] new versions of the Quake Deathmatch Plus/Painkeep/A.N.Other mod?

Kind regards

Monty

[MH]

Alternative solution: what about proper game changing in the engine? It is possible and a few of us have done it.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

do you know how annoying it is to have multiple quake shortcuts that run different mods?that all have the same freaking icon? I agree that is definately annoying to be required to setup multiple bat's or shortcut's....


solution : front end loader that asks you what mod you want to play,and loads your quake using the -game variable requested.should be pre-config'd to load all of the current mods that are popular,and the ability to add more user entry's for future uses. This breaks it down into one executable handling multiple mods,at the beginning being where the mod desired is when its picked,after you close quake nothing has changed to command line parameters...
(Baker has made something pretty damn close,if not already accomodating this problem!)

[Mr.Burns]

Being quite keen on a number of mods such as Painkeep, DMP, etc, I tried that previously with slide and it didn't seem to work properly for me, but Spooks your setup may be different and it's certainly worth a try.

[MH]

Sounds to me like you haven't discovered -game yet...

[Mr.Burns]

Hi Spooks,

I'm sure Baker,Rook,MH et al will come up with a more sensible quake based solution but for example when playing slide on Foq's server I have a diifferent batch file to start quake which first copied across the required paks, starts quake, and then deletes the copied paks afterwards. It works everytime for me and the only difference is I click a different icon.

If it helps it goes something like this:

@echo off
Rem Quake Slide script for Spooks
cls
Echo Setting up Quake Slide for you...
Copy "x:\quake\slide\pak2.pak" x:\quake\ID1\
Copy "x:\quake\slide\pak3.pak" x:\quake\ID1\
echo.
echo starting quake..
wqpro399 -game slide -map slide1 -nocdaudio -width 800 -height 600 -bpp 16 -mem 64 -listen 4
cls
echo cleaning up Quake (removing the slide bits)
Del x:\quake\ID1\pak2.pak
Del x:\quake\ID1\pak3.pak
echo Done

Kind regards

Monty