[RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

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Dynamo
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[RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by Dynamo »

Hello! With the public release of Raze's alpha versions on the github repo, I figured I'd post this little guide on how to get mods for Raze working.

Please keep in mind that Raze currently is in alpha stage, it is not version 1.0, as a result not all features planned for it are currently implemented.

Currently this only works for Duke Nukem 3D, I haven't tested the other games which I believe have no meaningful mod loading support as of yet. But here is how you do it for Duke. For those unfamiliar with it, most game logic in this game is defined through .CON files, of which there tend to be several of. In order to properly launch a Duke3d mod in Raze, you will need to find the main .CON file which in its parameters loads other .CON files alongside it. Here is an example from an old mod called God of War, the GRP of which has been taken from NightFright's excellent duke3d addon compilation:

Image

As you can see,in this case, the file GODGAME.CON references GS-DEFS.CON and GS-USER.CON (which can be seen on the left side as being part of the same .grp - they are simply not loaded automatically), both of which have data that's necessary in order for the mod to function properly, but because it is GODGAME.CON that references these, it means that it is the primary .CON file and the one you should be loading. Whenever you want to know which the main .CON file is, you should always be on the lookout for the "include" parameters as seen in the screenshot above.

Now this is where it may appear counterintuitive for those familiar with the GZDoom way of loading mods. What you need to do is extract the primary .CON file and place it in the main Raze folder. Then, you're going to want to open the command prompt (or make a .BAT file or whatever method you prefer) and load mods in this way:

Image

The -con parameter has to reference the primary .CON file as I explained above, whereas the -file parameter can take in any .GRP file or .DAT file or folder, so you have a wide variety of options to choose from in this sense. Here I successfully load Complex, an old levelpack, using its GRP, as well as Pray Your Prayers, a classic Duke3D mod with a number of new weapons, graphics and gameplay changes, using a folder. If you feel like trying this out for yourself, here is a link to Pray Your Prayers, simply unzip this into the Raze directory and used the command as posted above to get it to launch. It works flawlessly :D

When it comes to maps, the process is a bit simpler. Simply place the .MAP file you want to play in the Raze directory and launch it using the -map parameter and the filename, and Raze will directly boot into it.

Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions.
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Graf Zahl
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by Graf Zahl »

This is not really the best way to go about it. NightFright's mod collection has been designed to avoid the hassle.
It comes with an index file that, if detected, will list all mods from it in the game launcher, all that's needed is to point the game search path to the directory it's in and the rest will be automatic. This is the same technique as GZDoom uses, i.e. adding a path to the INI file. And this collection is surely the most convenient thing to get started with as it contains a large portion of the Duke mods that are actually worth playing.

For any mod that doesn't need special setup or command line switches in the original game it should be easiest to put it in a zip file and drag&drop it onto the executable - just like with Doom.
Sadly many Build mods are not designed for this so a bit of added setup is needed - more on that later.
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by markanini »

How about blood mods? I tried the old drag and drop .ZIP-method on Death Wish with no luck.
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Dynamo
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by Dynamo »

I could be wrong but I believe mod loading for anything other than Duke3D is currently unsupported. If anyone knows more details feel free to share though.
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wolfmanfp
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by wolfmanfp »

You can load mods in Duke3D with ye olde way, for example:

Code: Select all

raze.exe /g thegate.grp /x gategame.con
And this way you don't have to extract any CON files.
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by wolfmanfp »

It works for Blood too:

Code: Select all

raze.exe /j "Death Wish" -ini dwmus.ini
markanini
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by markanini »

wolfmanfp wrote:It works for Blood too:

Code: Select all

raze.exe /j "Death Wish" -ini dwmus.ini
This is insanely cool!
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Graf Zahl
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by Graf Zahl »

The main problem here is that the engine cannot guess the .con/.ini files. We can thank the original broken file system code for that. Had it been capable of letting a .grp file override the local .con files in the directory, making mods would have been easier. For Raze I changed the load order here, so that loading a directory and loading a .zip with the directory's content work the same.

I still got to add a means to define the scripts to be started within the mod, so that these issues can at least be fixed on the end user side.
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Re: [RAZE] Launching mods in Raze

Post by Muleke_Trairao »

wolfmanfp wrote:It works for Blood too:

Code: Select all

raze.exe /j "Death Wish" -ini dwmus.ini
Thanks! I was able to apply the same logic for installing other Blood mods. :D But I have used "-g" for loading mod .zip files and "-mh" for loading the .def files that are inside them.

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