How to make Build games work with Raze

[Graf Zahl]

In Raze I mostly unified the entire system - you can define music tracks for any level in any game except Exhumed - these can be in any format supported by the music backend.

Blood is the only game having two soundtracks.
SW does not have any MIDI music whatsoever, aside from the shareware version. The original game had a haphazard music selection logic that was more or less broken if both soundtracks were provided. In Raze you can also use a MIDI soundtrack if you disable CD music emulation.

NAM and WW2GI are based on Duke and have classic MIDI soundtracks.

RR originally had no MIDI support at all, I changed this so that if you define level music through CON or DEF it will override the "8-track player".

Exhumed uses the CD also for non-Music so here things are more tricky.

[Korell]

So, I've been playing with this setup and am wondering a few more things.

1) I have the GOG version of Redneck Rampage (with Route 66 and Rides Again), but it seems that the music is stored within CD tracks that the GOG version has a CD Image for (a .gog and .inst file, which DOSBox reads via -t iso). How do I rip these tracks to OGG format when I can only get to the CD contents within DOSBox?

2) Is it possible to make the Duke Nukem 3D addons work without duke3d.grp, being as the Atomic episodes are all present within World Tour? Only it seems a waste to have to duplicate these four episodes. World Tour does in fact have a duke3d.grp file present, albeit modified (the CRC32 doesn't match).

3) Being as World Tour only adds one new episode, a few new monsters and a weapon, and those commentary bits, can it be compressed to make it smaller? The size difference between duke3d.grp and the World Tour data files is relatively large (World Tour being 20x larger than duke3d.grp), and as above, World Tour already contains a duke3d.grp file.

[Graf Zahl]

So, I've been playing with this setup and am wondering a few more things.

1) I have the GOG version of Redneck Rampage (with Route 66 and Rides Again), but it seems that the music is stored within CD tracks that the GOG version has a CD Image for (a .gog and .inst file, which DOSBox reads via -t iso). How do I rip these tracks to OGG format when I can only get to the CD contents within DOSBox?

This tool was really helpful: https://github.com/hansschmucker/CueToOgg

2) Is it possible to make the Duke Nukem 3D addons work without duke3d.grp, being as the Atomic episodes are all present within World Tour? Only it seems a waste to have to duplicate these four episodes. World Tour does in fact have a duke3d.grp file present, albeit modified (the CRC32 doesn't match).

There's one issue: You cannot play them with the WT .GRP as long as it is in the same folder as the rest of the WT data because it'd pick up some unwanted WT data as well. As a result there's no such definitions because they might cause problems.
The detection mechanism as it is right now cannot deal easily with this special case. I think the only safe way to play them is to extract the grpinfo.txt, edit the CRC and copy all you need to a separate folder

3) Being as World Tour only adds one new episode, a few new monsters and a weapon, and those commentary bits, can it be compressed to make it smaller? The size difference between duke3d.grp and the World Tour data files is relatively large (World Tour being 20x larger than duke3d.grp), and as above, World Tour already contains a duke3d.grp file.

[/quote]

It depends on what you need. A lot of the data in WT is redundant or a matter of taste. What you can safely delete is the music replacements for the original songs, they are far and away the largest piece of data an Raze has a fallback to use the MIDIs instead.
The second largest block is the developer commentary, so if you think it's just bloat, it can be deleted as well.
You can also delete the new "high quality" (I wish they were...) sounds, but have to be careful only to delete the actual replacements and not the additions.
The Videos, UI and textures folders can be deleted entirely, nothing of it gets used ever. You can also delete the two large .pdb files in the root folder. The rest is either small stuff or needed to play the new episode.

[NightFright]

You can cut the size of WT a lot if you omit the OGG music for episodes 1-4, the dev commentaries and don't use re-recorded Duke speech. That's what's using most of the disk space. The new episode and additional art itself doesn't add too much. I remember writing a batch script creating a minimized standalone release from an existing WT installation and can provide it here if desired.

As for the CD soundtracks - if there are no legal obstacles, I could compile ready-to-use soundtrack packs and upload them for common usage. You can get the music from pretty much anywhere these days, anyway.

[Korell]

This tool was really helpful: https://github.com/hansschmucker/CueToOgg

It depends on what you need. A lot of the data in WT is redundant or a matter of taste. What you can safely delete is the music replacements for the original songs, they are far and away the largest piece of data an Raze has a fallback to use the MIDIs instead.
The second largest block is the developer commentary, so if you think it's just bloat, it can be deleted as well.
You can also delete the new "high quality" (I wish they were...) sounds, but have to be careful only to delete the actual replacements and not the additions.
The Videos, UI and textures folders can be deleted entirely, nothing of it gets used ever. You can also delete the two large .pdb files in the root folder. The rest is either small stuff or needed to play the new episode.

Cool, that CueToOgg tool worked great. Got all the music now. Thanks.

Does Raze even support the developer commentaries for World Tour?

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, they are fully supported.

[NightFright]

How is Raze handling CON and DEF files? Are there autoload mechanisms in place, such as eduke.con or duke3d.def in EDuke32?

[Graf Zahl]

The rules are moslly inherited from EDuke32/RedNukem/NBlood/PCExhumed, but with one recent difference:

Since these files are not cumulative in the mentioned ports they also cannot be in Raze to avoid portability issues.
So for 1.0.1 I added one new feature - if there's files that are named, e.g. duke3d-raze.def, those will be loaded cumulatively, but then the base versions will not be loaded if such a file is found.
I will probably remove the deprecated backwards compatibility handling once the new way has been firmly established, but only time will tell.

[Proydoha]

In 1998 there was a Russian game Ликвидатор (Liquidator) made using Build engine. I assume it was actually Duke Nukem mod because if you open it's .pak archive (renamed .grp) in its .cat files (renamed .art) there is leftover Duke Nukem assets. Game wasn't good at all, just a not very creative time capsule. But I was wondering if it's possible to run it using Raze.

I could give a link where to find its files but I'm not sure if it's against the forum rules. You can not buy it anymore, there are no more games made by the studios listed in credits, it's publisher Akella is defunct since 2012.

[Graf Zahl]

Send it via PM then. I'm fairly certain nobody here cares but it is surely better not to post in public.

[NightFright]

M210 beat you to it. He published the entire game for his BuildGTX port. It's horrible indeed, on the screenshots I can already spot the traced-over uzi from Shadow Warrior and the shotgun was ripped from Redneck Rampage. Nothing I personally need in my life.

[Graf Zahl]

Oh my!
Nah, no need to bother. This looks like an amateurish Duke TC

This file can just be loaded as a Duke mod if you delete the eduke.con file in it - it contains code that requires EDuke32 but which isn't even needed. For me that's good enough 'support'.

[Proydoha]

This file can just be loaded as a Duke mod if you delete the eduke.con file in it - it contains code that requires EDuke32 but which isn't even needed. For me that's good enough 'support'.

This is good enough for me, thank you!

[Dynamo]

Liquidator and Legend of the Seven Paladins are among the worst FPS games in existence, much worse than even the Capstone games, so I would advise much caution when playing them

[NightFright]

Worse even than TekWar, this amateurish garbage without any artistic cohesion? Hard to imagine. But if you say so... We don't need native support for absolutely everything, I guess.