Official T3ED FM Distribution Document:

Dark Arrow on 21/6/2005 at 15:03

Here are some facts about the sizes. My FM for the small mission contest currently has 5 rooms and one hallway. I have not added all the detail to those rooms and there are several things missing from the level, but here is what sizes I got:

gmp+triggerscripts folder (I added the whole folder although 6-10 files would have sufficed)+.unr file (unneeded, but added for those who wish to edit the level)+ t3gamesys:

Filesize: 1,59 Mb (1,674,206 bytes)

gmp+ibt

Filesize: 14,5 Mb (15,263,127 bytes)

Both files were zipped with winzip (maximum compression). I mean, just look at those filesizes. With a proper program the the fm players wouldn't need to do anything else except press a play button for the fm to start, if we decide to go with the gmp+resources way. The only problem would be the long loading time.

The easiest way would be to use a stripper program that ShadowSpawn is suggesting and sending stripped ibt files. I vote for this idea over gmp+resources way, but it only becomes relevant when such a program exists (or we find a way to strip them without the program). But if someone is working on such a program, then we should just wait and see what comes of it before we make our choice on this matter.

redface on 21/6/2005 at 16:19

Isn't there a way to compile the gmp to ibt on players side ?

Shadowspawn on 21/6/2005 at 19:44

redface;

Quote:

Isn't there a way to compile the gmp to ibt on players side ?

Only if the player has the editor, which I'm sure most players DON'T want to deal with.

I'll try and get an IBT dumping program developed over the next week, so we can see the contents of the file, and whether or not we can compile one. It doesn't look hard to take them apart, and I'm hoping they're not hard to put back together. If I can do this, I'll make a program which can strip IBTs and rebuild them on the players machine. And make that available to all the guys writing T3 FM installers.

In the meantime, since this method will produce a nice IBT file on the player's machine, we should go ahead with plans to include the IBT file with the mission. After I figure this out, we can continue to ship missions with the IBT, but it will be a "compressed" IBT, compressed by removing the redundant information and reconstructing it when the FM is installed.

This gives us the best of both worlds, since we have a path we can follow now, and a major optimization we can use shortly (I hope). :tsktsk:

Komag on 21/6/2005 at 21:14

Oh man, this sounds like a dream come true! :D

SneaksieDave on 21/6/2005 at 22:01

By what Ziemanskye said above, the rebuilding process might not even be necessary. If the assets are stripped out, then they must be generic anyway, so they could/should be laid out in /DynamicallyLoaded folders on the player's drive. Or am I misunderstanding?

New Horizon on 21/6/2005 at 22:45

Quote Posted by SneaksieDave

Hmmm, that would be interesting....but that would be the same as using a gmp anyway, since all of the content would be ripped out and would have to be in the content folders. The only difference would be that the .ini setting would be set to use blockloading but there would be no benefit since everything would still be loaded externally from the contents folder.

potterr on 21/6/2005 at 23:01

Presumably though the content on the players PC will need to be "installed" first before any FM's ibt files can then be rebuilt?
Also Shadowspawn if you make an exe can you do it so that it accepts a command line of location of the resource folder on the players PC and a location of the IBT file to append to.

Also FM distributions will need some kind of flag to indicate this process needs to take place.

New Horizon on 21/6/2005 at 23:10

Quote Posted by potterr

Indeed. People will have to download a resources package regardless of whether or not we give them a stripped ibt or a gmp.

Shadowspawn on 22/6/2005 at 01:10

potterr,

I can do that. Let me see how this pans out first.

Crispy on 22/6/2005 at 05:56

There also needs to be a standard way of organising, labelling, and installing resource packs, unless I miss my guess. The default set of resources (in T3's content folder) needs to be incorporated in the labelling system, though organising and installing them is not necessary.

Some thoughts:

- Installation: Just zip the resources up. Players download the resource pack and place it in a folder somewhere.

- Organisation: Inside the zip file, the resources should have the same directory structure as the [Thief3]\CONTENT\T3 folder.

- Labelling: The filename follows a standard convention, perhaps something like: Authorname_Packname.zip. An FM would then state (perhaps in a simple plain-text data file) what resources it needs in the IBT using some kind of "resource path" - say, a new texture in Crispy_NewStuff.zip might be Crispy_NewStuff.zip/Textures/MyNewTexture.dds. A standard texture would be referred to using "T3" instead of the .zip name; the taproot texture would be T3/Textures/NATtaproot_D.dds. The IBT compiler takes all of these file references, extracts them as needed from the .zip files, and compiles them into the FM's IBT.

The FM archive itself should also be able to contain resources destined for IBT-ness. The simplest way to do this would be to include these in the labelling convention; say, using a single period as the "zip file name" part: ./Textures/AnFMSpecificTexture.dds. Obviously the file is contained in a Textures subdirectory in the FM zip in this example... depending on how the IBT file is set up, having files in subdirectories like this may not be necessary, but that's an unimportant detail at the moment.

Yes? No? Have I missed something blindingly obvious? :eek: