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Offline 456820

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addons but still addon free
« on: 16 Oct 2005, 22:32:29 »
i thought of an idea which may or may not work
its a way of getting addons to work without putting them in the addons folder

if you put the addon in your mission folder is there any way of accesing it through that mission folder ? or is there no way ?

also would it be possible with anim files ?

Offline General Barron

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #1 on: 16 Oct 2005, 22:48:03 »
Try it yourself: it doesn't seem to work for me. At least, I couldn't access units/objects from an addon I put in the mission folder. I suspect you could reference stuff in that .pbo, like scripts, sound files, etc in your missions (just like referencing that from any other .pbo), but I doubt you can put a .pbo in the missions folder and get OFP to read it as if it were in the addons folder.

I'm not entirely sure I see the point though. How is it any harder to put an addon in the addons folder than in the missions folder? Unless you are trying to get addons combined in with a mission, which I agree would be very helpful, but I don't think it is possible.

What might be possible is to make a .pbo file that can be used as either an addon (if put in the addons folder) OR a mission (if put in the missions folder); but not both at the same time--unless you made a copy of it. So the user would download your mission, put it in his missions folder, then make a copy for the addons folder.
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Offline 456820

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #2 on: 16 Oct 2005, 22:56:21 »
yep im trying to get missions combined with addons for people who dont like downloading addons it comes in the mission so it doesnt clutter up there addons folder so you can have everything addon free which most people even people who download addons would agree would be so much cooler
ill have a play around would i have to call the addon through a path like
/users/missions/mission_name/addons.pbo/addon.p3d

like that but i doubt that would be a correct path

Offline Planck

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #3 on: 16 Oct 2005, 23:07:33 »
OFP reads all addons when you start the game and presumable checks all the configs for them too.

It reads addons from the Dta folder and the Addons folder.
The same goes for those locations in the Res folder.

AFAIK those are the default locations that the game reads for addons.

It doesn't check mission pbo's at startup.


Planck
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Offline h-

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #4 on: 16 Oct 2005, 23:16:11 »
I concur with Planck :)

And there's no need to clutter your addon folder, just use mod folders and some OFP launcher/mod shortcut(s)...

I'm 1000% sure you will never get the addon in the mission.pbo to work, although that doesn't mean you shouldn't try, you never know... :)
« Last Edit: 16 Oct 2005, 23:25:45 by HateR_Kint »
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Offline General Barron

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #5 on: 17 Oct 2005, 00:30:01 »
I really hope that in Game2, they decide to blur the line between missions and addons, so this can be done. I agree it would be very helpful to be able to make small 'addons' to include in your mission. Other games such as Warcraft III work like this: new models, animations, etc are included in the mission file itself. The nice thing about OFP is that large addons don't have to be downloaded multiple times, but it would be nice to have BOTH options available, for small customizations that can't be done otherwise.

*Sigh*

A guy can dream, can't he...
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Offline bdfy85

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #6 on: 17 Oct 2005, 02:24:29 »
@456820
IMHO if you really want lamers friendly solution (:)) for people that do not want messsing around with addons/folders - the onlu solution is installer, but many peoples do not like them. Thus just place all small,rare addons needed in rar together with the entire mission and provide links for the rest  
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Uldics

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #7 on: 17 Oct 2005, 03:56:39 »
What about depboing the addon .pbo and placing the inside stuff in mission folder? Maybe the problem is in "pbo in pbo" if you know what I mean?

Offline h-

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Re:addons but still addon free
« Reply #8 on: 17 Oct 2005, 09:03:29 »
@G. Barron:
Sure, that would be a nice feature, for small addons and maybe for some custom configs so you could have some customised units for one mission etc... :)

Best thing would be that both would be supported... So you could either include the addons in the mission or as a separate addon...
For bigger and more popular AddOns the AddOns/mod folder would still be the best solution...

@Uldics...
I think the problem is that OFP does not read the mission .pbo when it loads up the game, which it does with the .pbos in the AddOn folder (like Planck said)...

As the config is not read (from the mission .pbo or folder) there is no units to place in the editor :)

The mission .pbo is read only when the mission is loaded up from the SP/MP menu...
You can see this at the most simpliest way, load up a SP mission and then try to delete the mission pbo; you will get 'access denied' error..
Then load another SP mission and then try to delete the previous mission pbo again, and now it gets deleted...
With pbos in the AddOns folder you will always get 'access denied' error when OFP is running and you try to delete/modify them...

What could be tried to do is to include the AddOn's config in the mission.sqm, but I very much doubt that it would work either..
In the past I (and others) have tried to use the description.ext to config an addon but it has not worked..

I guess OFP uses different kind of 'parsers' (or whatever they are called) for each 'code' type they use in OFP since if you try to config an addon in the description.ext which is very similar with config.cpp in format you will only get errors...
If you preprocess/loadFile and call a .sqs you will get errors because the .sqs is in the wrong format as the preprocess/loadFile and call functions require the ; semicolon in every end of line, which IMO clearly shows that the scripts is run through a different kind of process with those functions..
So, when you get only errors with the description.ext when trying to config an AddOn in it it again IMO shows that the .ext is passed through a different process that the .cpp, the .ext process does not understand the .cpp values and vice versa...


Which IMO leads to the conclusion that mission.sqm is again passed through a different process than the rest so having the AddOn config in it should just cause trouble..

Anyway, IF the config in mission.sqm works, then you could have an addon in the mission because then the addon would 'loaded' when the mission.sqm is accessed by the game.. In theory.. :P
Of course you would need to have the mission not pboed in the mission folder like Uldics suggested...
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INFORMATIVE THREAD TITLES PLEASE. "PLEASE HELP" IS NOT ONE..
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