How to make Build games work with Raze

[NightFright]

Update:
Simplified the process by providing prepared music packs which just need to be unzipped into the blood/data directories. Zipped OGG files already are located in the "music" subdir and are properly named.

[Nash]

Man, I gotta say props to the Raze team for the awesome asset detection code. I threw in the Wanton Destruction GRP into my SW folder (by accident) and was surprised it actually worked. I would've thought to put it in its own folder.

[Graf Zahl]

It works mostly like in GZDoom - scanning all folders in the GameSearch list of the INI for known game files. Aside from Blood you can actually put all other game files into the same folder, there are no overlaps and no conflicts between them.

[NightFright]

BloodGDX even detects Blood if you zip all its content into a zipfile (basically like what Raze can do with Cryptic Passage, just for the base game as well). That would eliminate the need to keep it in its own directory and put it together with all the other groupfiles.
(However, I guess that wouldn't be a must-have feature right now, rather a gimmick for people like me who prefer game data to be stored in a single file instead of a folder with lots of lose files.)

Besides that, Death Wish auto-detection (similar to Cryptic Passage, but maybe as a separate entry in the game launcher) would be on my personal wishlist. It's easily the best community addon ever created for Blood and deserves native support. The mod uses distinctive file names (deathwish.ini, dw*.map for levels), so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something. I dunno if the way Blood works with .ini definitions allows this, though.

[NightFright]

Recent guide updates:
- Duke3D: Added optional DukeDC Music Pack 2.0 (MIDI version) *
- Shadow Warrior: Added alternate groupfile names for addons
- WW2GI: Added "Platoon Leader" addon

* I have deliberately chosen the original MIDIs for filesize purposes, plus I renamed all tracks to the original ep.3 file names to make a drag-n-drop solution possible (no extra defs or cons needed, music will automatically be replaced when you launch the DukeDC episode). If you want to put this into your autoload, it should look something like this, depending on where you placed the file, ofc - in this example, it's in a "mod" subdir within the Raze folder:

Code: Select all

[Duke.DukeDC.Autoload]
Path=mods/dukedc_midi.pk3

[Dzierzan]

I am not sure if adding detection for fan addons is a wise idea. Because it would raise a question, why not this addon? Why not that one as well? IMO only official stuff should be detected like that.

[Rachael]

GZDoom already went down this path before, and it ended with an official IWADINFO reader that could read from custom content that was packaged with a special extension i.e. iwad, ipk3, or ipk7. And I think that's already what is in play, here, since if I am right, I believe that Nightfright's addons use Raze's grpinfo detection somehow.

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, but currently GRPINFO.txt must be external to the GRPs. The feature was just inherited from EDuke32 and not changed much since then, except for the ability to detect files not just by CRC but also by content, which was needed for zipped Route66 and Cryptic Passage variants.

[NightFright]

"mustcontain" for grpinfo would help a lot with the addon compilation where I change files often these days. Maybe I can convince the EDuke32 guys to add it there as well. It's a nice feature, not only in case users have to create groupfiles on their own without any fixed filesize/crc.
What would also be cool: Multiple options for "dependency" so addons work with more versions of the same game, e.g. Plutonium Pak and Atomic Edition (they are almost identical, but different duke3d.grp crcs require different grpinfo entries).

Other than that... yeah, Death Wish isn't official, so I guess it doesn't matter how good it is.

[karry299]

*sigh*
Right. So i had Blood Fresh Supply installed sometime ago. Then i downloaded Raze. Raze picks up Blood but nothing else. I go into Raze ini file and write the paths to my Build games. Then i think - "i dont want to have Fresh Supply installed for the moment, i'll uninstall it", so i do, but first i copy all the relevant files into Raze\Blood dir. Then i uninstall Fresh Supply and...Raze cant see Blood anymore ! I wrote direct path to Raze\Blood dir in the ini - cant see it. I can play Blood with BuldGDX and nBlood, but Raze just cant see it. It sees Shadow Warrior and Duke, but not Blood. Do i HAVE TO have Fresh Supply installed ?

edit: right. So Raze picks up only newer releases of Blood, but it cant see my old DOS version that works perfectly well with BuildGDX and nBlood.

[Graf Zahl]

You do not have to have FS installed. If you copied the data and it cannot be found, it must be in a folder that cannot be automatically detected.
As for the DOS version, can you post what size your Blood.rff file is? It may be one that hasn't yet been set up.

The game detection code needs a rewrite anyway. As it stands it is far too selective about the GRPs/RFFs it considers valid.

[sinisterseed]

edit: right. So Raze picks up only newer releases of Blood, but it cant see my old DOS version that works perfectly well with BuildGDX and nBlood.

It should detect both OUWB and Fresh Supply at least.

What version is your game? It might be an older one causing it to get missed.

[NightFright]

Is there a way to autoload con scripts cumulatively? I know it works for defs if you rename duke3d.def to duke3d-raze.def, but it doesn't seem to work the same way with eduke.con. Is another naming scheme used in such cases or is this option still not available?

[Graf Zahl]

Cons are a lot more tricky. You most certainly cannot load two root cons on top of each other - they'd create conflicts all over the place.

[NightFright]

Well, autoload cons should be designed so they just load the real cons that contain the actual code. Sadly, not everybody is doing it like that...