Durinda D'Bry on 14/6/2005 at 13:35
Shadowspawn
The thing I'm unclear on is can we make a FM which runs on the unmodified Thief3 game, not the editor. Does the executable have to get patched?
AFAIK. We should use new version of main executable. We have to copy T3MainRelVersion.exe shipped with editor and rename it to T3Main.exe (instead of existing one). That's it. We even may use old T3Main.exe but probably there are some problems with custom sound schemas.
scumble on 14/6/2005 at 14:12
Has anyone tried to compress an ibt file to see how "dense" they are? It's possible they may reduce in size by a fair bit.
rujuro on 14/6/2005 at 14:21
I'm pretty sure Durinda is right here. I think the only difference between the original executable and the new on is added ability to run custom sound files from outside schema metafiles (as long as they aren't streaming zone ambients, but that's another issue).
On that issue, if people want their own custom zoneInfo sounds, they will have to make a new schema metafile, which could be a really annoyingly large download. There is a workaround to this, using volumes to trigger sounds and kill them, which works without recompiling the schema metafiles, but I'm not sure how this effects performance.
epithumia on 14/6/2005 at 14:38
Quote Posted by scumble
Has anyone tried to compress an ibt file to see how "dense" they are? It's possible they may reduce in size by a fair bit.
gzip compressed one 51MB ibt I have handy by 40%. bzip2 did a little better (45%). No 7zip on this machine.
Certainly not as compressible as .mis files, but certainly not bad.
Durinda D'Bry on 14/6/2005 at 14:53
Well, I continue about IBT. AFAIK, it may contain any resources (incl. even gamesys, trigger scripts etc. except probably sound files; I also doubt about text resources). I didn't examine what resources are included when "write to block files" option is enabled in INI. If yes, then IBT file is enough (again, except probably sound things and text resources) for mission distribution. Definitely here should be some guy who may write guide about how particular type of resources should be distributed :)
About solution with special IBT "cut" that includes only custom resources and just references to original resources in IBT files shipped with game. Of course, it is not too hard to create this application(s). There should be indexer that scans original IBT files and creates mapping "resource path - where to find". When IBT is created using "write to block files" feature on designer side, manually invoked "stripper" may replace existing resources on references (it uses created indices to improve performance). On "client" side we just need "combiner" application (probably part of loader) to restore mission IBT.
It seems pretty trivial but there are some open items (at least for me):
1. Again, type of resources stored in IBT by enabling "write to block files".
2. What about "special" (kernel, menu) IBT files created by enabling "write to block files"?
3. Are there duplicated path resources in original IBT files with different content? It is easy to find such things by indexer, so, indexer could be written before other code anyway at least as research tool :)
I had experience with C/C++ in past (1,5 years of development 4 years ago). Now I'm Java developer. Therefore, I may write such application(s) but I have great lack of free time (at least while I haven't finished T2X :) ). Probably somebody have more free time to start this work before me...
scumble on 14/6/2005 at 14:53
In the broadband era it's not an enormous problem. There's only so much that can be done for dial-up users.
Dark Arrow on 14/6/2005 at 15:41
Which one would be smaller: .unr files with the extra files added to folders in the .zip with the .unr file, or .IBT files and only those files that are not in the .IBT file.
I assumed we would be using .unr files and then have the loader pogram convert the .unr files to the IBT file that Thief 3 wants.
potterr on 14/6/2005 at 16:09
Quote Posted by Shadowspawn
What happened to the guys who were working on the FM loaders? Pipe up please! Where'd you go?
I was hoping someone (not me for a change) would figure out how to "patch" your install to run an FM, and then "unpatch" it later when you moved to another FM or uninstalled it.
I'm here, the installer is nearly done, I successfully installed a T3 FM last night, although didn't backup things well (paths work slightly differently than T1 and T2), hopefully I have fixed that but I will require a re-install of T3 to make sure...I will have a FINAL FINAL beta release next week sometime. Also I managed to get the group scoring working in GarrettLoader, so you can upload your scores and download the group score...
Durinda, yes, the Krellek's Labyrinth FM I downloaded last night runs perfectly well on a PC without the editor...
I am aiming to have a packager in GarrettLoader and this kind of discussion will help alot. The thing is it would be best to try and delve into the ibt files and see exactly what is contained in there as it should only really be custom stuff. Not sure if this is entirely right but I would assume that the IBT should only contain what is not in the core T3 install, unless you are overwritting an existing IBT file (however that may still not be the case as if you are overwritting one then you don't actually need whats would have been in the original as your level will be different...talking textures and things here)).
Shadowspawn on 14/6/2005 at 16:28
potterr :thumb:
It sounds good. Glad you're making progress. I can't wait to try it out.
Ziemanskye on 14/6/2005 at 16:40
I know the ibt files contain a lot of the stuff for the level - just watch the filesizes leap with each additional smesh or pawn can prove that, and I think the textures are there as well (because when it goes wrong it can't find them - remember that the editor comes with most of the textures and things seperately, where the normal game doesn't have them).
And considering that ascottk's Labyrinth had a non-normal Assassin in it, I guess that triggerscripts go in too.
I think there's only so much space the ibts allow for things though - hence my street level running into Missing Resource problems when my friend tried to run it.
