Seriously, Smirftsch is making "netcompatible" packages all the time, so he should be an expert knowing what is required to achieve that. Otherwise, just ask Kerilk what his tool actually does
From what Kerilk told me it works as follow: i have to create a folder that has the same name as the texture package. In that folder is a folderstructure that matches the groupnames of the texture package. The DDS files (the S3TC textures) are stored in that folder structure. If i run the mergertool than it reads the original package and compares the folderstructure, if it now finds a DDS file that matches the PCX file in the package it will switch out the file in favor of the DDS file while maintaining the GUID. If no DDS file is found it will leave the PCX sitting in the package untouched.
As for asking Smirftsch, well i dont really have to explain, he is also drowning in work as you and me
And i forgot to mention this last night but it also aplies to UT, the tool breaks his neck over the UT files and simply chrashes. Which really is a shame. At this moment theres already more than 1000MB more textures available as S3TC and the UT users cannot use them for online playing......... And the UT community still has a staggering 168000 players each month online. Thats 168000 users that cannot use the packages. If i create a normal package with Unreal and an S3TC conterpart than tests shows these packages will work for both Unreal and UT.
From what I know, I believe the only thing necessary for netcompatibility (from the file load point of view at least) is the GUIDs of the files to match. So try using a hex editor and copy the couple of bytes over to your new file and see if that's enough.
Writing a tool that replaces a couple of bytes at a certain location of a file shouldn't be that difficult if you know exactly where to write. The package file format has changed but it's news to me it has changed so much that the GUID has a new location, so under the conditions that Kerilk's tool indeed only replaces GUIDs and they are at the same locations then his tool should work for ut2k4 as well as u1...
I have little to none knowledge how to proceed there, aside that i need an actual tool so i can simply run it while re-using the same same folder structure for all games somehow. As it is the textures consume more hardrive space than i actually have.
The complete wishlist at this moment is:
Unreal:
Mergertool having the abillity to also work with procedural textures.
Mergertool having the abillity to also work on .u files like UnrealShare.u
Having the tool create a folder called Unreal instead of Temp.
UT:
Having a mergertool to be able to create netcompatible texture packages for normal, procedural and .u files
Having the tool create a folder called UT.
UT2004:
Having a mergertool to be able to create netcompatible packages for normal, procedural texture packages.
Having the tool create a folder called UT2004.
Thats sums it up pretty much. But yeah the problem is Smirftsch, he could do it for sure i am convinced of that. But his lack of time prob prevents him from doing so. And that is the reason i started to ask around.
And Kerilk did a great job on the current tool (though it has a huge memory leak lol) cause i can work with it just fine. There is no hasle using it, just double click on the tool and it will run. Diving myself into a an hexeditor will prevent me working with the textures in a decent way. It will become to complicated to keep working on it. It already consumes a rediculous amount of time and i need a simple program that will do that task for me.
I guess my question remains, do you know someone else that really could pull it off except you or Smirftsch ?
.
.
.
