[Phoib]

Yes, my claim to fame in the virus world!

[smurfbizkit]

Honestly, if it ends up that EA doesn't fix the -mod command...then we should go with a launcher creator to make launchers like the Blitz2 one. I hate the idea of there being "mod swapper programs", since it adds an unncessicary step to launching a mod. I perfer people to be able to just hit the shortcut and play.

[key0p]

^Agreed, I dont like the idea of regually swapping out large chunks of data.

[Sleipnir]

Would it be possible to write a swapper as a .dll (so the game will load it automatically - substitute it for an existing dll, which then loads up the original dll under another name if needs be) that causes the game to look in a new location to read data from (such as userdata\*modname*\)? That way you only need to distribute one extra file that will work with any mod, can avoid the messyness of having to swap files in and out, and requires minimal interaction from the user (clicking a custom shortcut with a -mod switch of our own).

I'm not really sure whats possible in terms of custom .dll's (i probably should learn something a bit more complicated than php one of these days...), but amazing things have been done in the GTA and Renegade communities using them.

[Koen]

Sleipnir: I don't think hooks into the game are provided with BFME/Generals.

Well... there's no reason not to open-source it. You are right.
My thoughts on this:
- preferably most files should be kept in a BIG file and use the -mod switch
- any of the files which do not work inside BIG files should be automatically extracted from the BIG and put in the right place, thus 'emulating' the right game behavior.
- the modder should include a textfile (XML?) describing the mod with things like minimal game version and a list of files which need to be extracted outside of the BIG for the game to work.
- you can still have shortcuts with a mod selector/swapper if you make it a shortcut to the program with as a command-line argument the mod to run. So the functionality could be provided.
- we cannot escape a separate program for running mods, so we should make 'the best' out of it. It has to display a list of installed mods. My suggestion would be for all mods to install to a 'mods' folder either in the game folder or in the My Documents\Game Data\mods thing. The mod selector would then search these folders automatically for mods.

[Anthrax-1]

If the B4ME INI files are built around the Gen INI files, does that mean there will be alot of traces of Generals Particle FX, etc? Or...?

[Eradicator]

I don't it. They will probably remove man if not all traces of Generals code to streamline the code as they don't make ini files for the sake of modders, they make it to speed up their own dev process. Unless they get lazy... which is definetly a possibility.

[mastermind2003]

Anyone have any comment/ideas about this supposed unit.ini? I think that something is very odd about it, as I wouldn't think they would resort to hardcoded everything like this seems to suggest. Why throw away an entire Object oriented engine for hard coding? I'd expect to see that in something like RA1, not BFME.

[key0p]

at a guess, its probably just a simple balance file.Something to allow easy balance editing for non-code types or testers.

Well thats what I hope, wont know till I see what other files contain though.

[Kelso]

I honestly like the idea of each mod having its own launcher rather than this "swapper" business. I think that if we had one launcher that was released to the community, that everyone was able to setup on their own and release in their download packets, it would be better. Then users could simply click a shortcut, fire up a mod, and when the game unloads it moves or renames the mod files so it is still possible to play the original game without uninstalling the mod every time.