Long time - no C - but C++ instead !

[Varpu]

Well, it's been some time since I had the time to visit this place - and the time seems to be in the short side in teh future as well.....

However, I have made some use for my C++ skills and created an application that helps in packaking your creations.

It is an archiver utility specially tailored for Unreal mod mappers.

Here are some of the features in it:

• very easy to install
• very easy to use
• automatic detection of UT and UT2003 installations
• automatic inclusion of needed packages
• automatic exclusion of official packages
• fully configurable
• previews for unreal files with image extraction to ICO, BMP and JPG formats
• previews for image and text files
• can generate zip, tar.gz and tar archives
• can include zip comments and a special readme for gz (unix linefeeds)
• small executable size
• standalone construction - does not depend on registry or system DLL:s
• does not clobber your computer with temporary files

You can download the utility from here. The zip is only 450Kb so you will not be sitting and getting old while downloading it.

I know there are many VERY good archivers around but still - those don't meet the needs of a mapper.

Another thing:
My site was down for quite long time simply because I turned the power switch off when we left to our trip to Europe. We have been traveling through the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Poland and the Check republic.
We had our dog (irish wolfhound) with us - and it was propably the best car theft "protector" there is - seeing a vechile having a meter high furious looking animal inside WILL make the thief consider it again...
If you ever have the opportunity to visit Lithuania and especially the Kaunas region - do NOT miss it - the people are very friendly and have sort of twisted (in a good way) sense of humour.
For example, the lithuanians have collected all the Soviet time statues and jacked them to some forest - now they serve as a tourist attraction - "See 1032 Lenins, 640 Stalins and 385 Marx's" ... whoa!

So, please try out the UnrPack utility, tell me if you know anything that could make it better - I'm always open to suggestions when it comes to programming.

 

[Twrecks]

wb Varpu
I'll give it a go when I've finished something to pack.
Lemme know if this is a final release or no, be good news to post on the main page :tup:

 

[Varpu]

wb Varpu
I'll give it a go when I've finished something to pack.
Lemme know if this is a final release or no, be good news to post on the main page :tup:

It is the final release.
There may come some improvements to it but all files (the project files) will be kept backwards compatible.

Possible areas of improvements are:

• Creation of UMOD and UT2MOD files
• Creation of uz and uz2 files
• Automatic bundling of custom textures into the MyLevel package (hard to do but might be worth it)
• Publishing aid (FTP, HTTP, SSH upload)

 

[Bot_40]

Well, I can give you suggesions...this is scary but last night I just suddenly had a leet idea for a prog which would auto generate zip files and include the required texture files, and now when I check the bbs this morning....
Anyways, there are a few things which I thought of that you didn't already include.
A texture replacer...you would be able to look at the 3rd party texture packs that the packer has included and replace those textures with ones from default packages if you want.
A readme generator, which would just be a form with Author, map name etc. etc. There would be the option to save the readme as a default so next time you no longer have to fill in all the author details etc. (in general, mappers are lazy )

 

[Varpu]

A texture replacer...you would be able to look at the 3rd party texture packs that the packer has included and replace those textures with ones from default packages if you want.)

This would involve modifications to the map itself - if I start doing a thing like this it will be bundling the textures into the MyLevel thus removing the need to add any extra texture packages.

However if you mean renaming a badly named texture package - that should not present a big problem although this will as well involve modifications to the map file which is always hard as you have to recalculate the MD5 and the GUID....

A readme generator, which would just be a form with Author, map name etc. etc. There would be the option to save the readme as a default so next time you no longer have to fill in all the author details etc. (in general, mappers are lazy )

Added and working. Updated the archive file to the latest version which is fully backwards compatible with the previous version.
There may be certain thisgs to add to the generator but IMO it is working quite well now.

 

[Bot_40]

well the idea was basicly, that if you use the prog to zip your map, you might realise that you have a texture pack included that you didn't mean to where you might have used say, 1 single texture from a 5Mb pack. The idea was to have an auto replace thingy so you can replace that texture with another so that you don't need to include the texture pack with the map.
It would just save having to do in the editor and using the texture replacer followed by a texture cull, but it's not that big a deal.

:tup: for the readme generator though btw

Edit: I just though of another idea...Unreal playground auto generates a map screenshot from your zip if you include a .jpg file called "Screenshot.jpg" in your zip so it might be nice to have some option to include a screenshot in the zip.
Maybe if it could search for a jpg in all the paths that has the same name as your map (eg. DM-CrotchShot.jpg), rename it to screenshot.jpg and include it in the zip.
Also, I'm not sure whether it's still the case but you always had to make the screenshot either 800x600 or larger, so it might be an idea to automatically check that before the jpg is imported.

 

[-=Forza=-]

ty Varpu, it's great ! I really like being able to see everything that's packaged in my map(s). In the troubleshooting forums I asked a question directly related. This will be an excellent tool for me as I'm new to mapping.

 

[Varpu]

ty Varpu, it's great ! I really like being able to see everything that's packaged in my map(s). In the troubleshooting forums I asked a question directly related. This will be an excellent tool for me as I'm new to mapping.

Good to know it has been working as intended. I have also made a bunch of maps and I always ran to the same problem as well. After being very "productive", I had no idea which textures I had used and most importantly - which one were custom and which ones were delivered in the installation CD.
Although this tool is not the perfect solution for that kind of problem - it might help.
Today - if I start making a map - I make a separate project directory for it alone and put every custom package in there - this way I can easily keep track on which packages I have used.