How to make Build games work with Raze

[NightFright]

Grand. I have updated the instructions accordingly.

[mjr4077au]

Grand. I have updated the instructions accordingly.

Much appreciated . We're severely lacking in documentation and its hard to find the time to get everything done

[NightFright]

After copying the WT folder over to your Raze dir, you can also safely delete a few folders and files since they will no longer be needed. Saves about 200 MB disk space or so:

Folders:

---

editor
fonts
locale
UI
videos
xrc

Files:

---

binkw32.dll
BuildInfo.txt
DUKE3D.CFG
duke3d.exe
DukeWorkshopUploader.exe
invite.jpg
licenses.txt
names.h
steam_api.dll
steam_appid.txt

[mjr4077au]

Yup, you definitely don't need all of that shit wasting space

[Nash]

Some observations -

1) Shadow Warrior

For the music folder, at least from my Steam copy (Shadow Warrior original) - the music files don't need to be named "shadow*.ogg" - the files were named "Track*.ogg" for me and it just works.

2) You probably already know this but you can put each game in a separate folder. In this example, I have separate folders for Duke, SW and Blood and it works.

3) For Duke3D, I also copied over DEFS.CON, GAME.CON and USER.CON - I know they're not needed, but there are a lot of beginner tutorials on Duke modding that instructs you to modify these files for easy modding, so I included them.

4) Blood

- At least for my One Whole Unit copy (bought from GOG), the movies folder actually has to be named "movie" - NOT "movies". The latter doesn't work, for some reason.

- LOGO.SMK and GTI.SMK needs to be placed in the root Blood folder for the startup movies to show up. Placing them in "movie" doesn't work.

- I'm not sure if Cryptic Passage follows the above rule, and I haven't played Cryptic enough to know where/when the movies are actually played so I can't really test it, but I placed the CRYPTIC.SMK/WAV into the root folder of the Cryptic ZIP file as well, just in case (in addition to the one already in the "movie" folder). Not sure which one is actually correct...

- For Cryptic Passage, I think the CPSL and Bloodbath maps are also needed?

[NightFright]

In my original instructions I had the games in separate folders, but it's probably easier to have them in as few folders as possible. If you want to keep things separate, you can do that as well. If you put everything together, you will have to do the track renaming as indicated in the tutorial, otherwise you will have soundtracks overwriting each other due to identical filenames.

For my Blood copy, "movies" is the correct folder for cinematics and it works. It may depend on which dir is defined for that purpose in blood.ini. Unfortunately I cannot check since I don't have the GOG version of Blood, just the original DOS release from CD. I will add the info about the two optional intro/logo movies - even though they don't contain anything relevant and just make the game take longer before you get to the menu (unless you press Esc).

[Nash]

It could be that the "movie" directory is only unique to the GOG installation. And yeah, you're right, it all depends on whatever is defined inside the INI files.

[Rachael]

Not to complicate things too much but - if you are a bit of a command-line warrior and don't like copying files, don't want to edit your .ini, and manually installed something big like Duke Nukem World Tour somewhere without Steam, you can make symlinks in Raze's folder to point to critical files. This is especially useful with bigger game installs.

Unlike in Linux, Windows needs a special flag to indicate when a symlink points to a folder instead of a file.

If you want to symlink a file the syntax is simple:
mklink <link> <source> (note that it is reversed from Linux's ln command)

If you want to symlink a folder, just include the /D switch:
mklink /D <link> <source>

An example:
mklink /D C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\Raze\WT "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Duke Nukem 3D Twentieth Anniversary World Tour"

Note that for some reason Microsoft put in a restriction with Windows that you must be an administrator in order to create symlinks this way, so this will require an administrator command prompt in order to be successful. Also, symlinks are only possible on NTFS volumes.

[mjr4077au]

Raze will pick up Steam's Duke 3D WT via registry lookup, there shouldn't be a need to do a symbolic link to the directory

[NightFright]

Maybe it would be a good idea to make this thread sticky.

*Edit*
Thanks a lot, guys!

[Korell]

Just want to check something with this. It seems that Raze doesn't support the OGV movies from the Blood: Fresh Supply re-release, so I'm trying to use the One Unit Whole Blood files from GOG. However, the movies folder contains multiple file types. SMK, AVI and WAV. Is it just the SMK files that are needed?

[NightFright]

For the two intro movies (gti.smk, logo.smk), that's the case. However, any of the ingame cutscenes won't have any sound if you don't copy over the .wav files as well. You can also see that in blood.ini where both smk and wav files are defined.

Any avi files can be safely deleted since those were meant for usage under Win95 systems afaik (I never got it working back then, I can still remember that).

While we are at the topic of Blood again: Still haven't figured out how to actually get native MIDI music going since it's providing more atmosphere than the CD tracks. Right now, it's either CD music or none at all for me.

[Graf Zahl]

What's your setting for CD Music emulation in the menu? If that is already off, is this just a problem with Blood or all the other games as well. If it's for all games, check if all needed files are present.

[Nash]

Hmm, for me, with Raze 1.0.1, to get MIDI music working for Blood, I'd have to quit Raze after turning off CD emulation in the options and then re-running the app. Not even pressing "restart sound system" works to "reload" the music system.

EDIT: for Shadow Warrior, there's no MIDI music at all, which leads me to believe that the files may be missing. Could it be that the music isn't inside Sw.grp?

[NightFright]

Actually I think Blood is the only Build game that lets you choose between MIDI or CD music. Duke3D used MIDI (even though at least EDuke32 allows you to replace all tracks with digitized counterparts without editing user.con if file names are identical), Shadow Warrior only had MIDIs in the shareware version, Redneck Rampage and Exhumed had CD music only and I guess NAM/WW2GI didn't have any music at all.

*EDIT*
Just tested. "CD Emulation" is off by default for Blood (i.e. MIDI is used) and turning it on doesn't seem to do anything right away. After launching the game again, CD playback kicks in. If CD music is playing and you turn off CD support, music keeps playing. This gives the impression the function is broken. Changes only take effect after restart.

If there is no way to make an on-the-fly switch possible, maybe at least a menu hint can be added, indicating that changes require a restart. For now, I will add a hint in the tutorial about this.