Renault on 23/1/2014 at 18:08
Nice work Terry. I messed with something like this a few months back, but never finished it. Will this file work OK with whatever is latest version of the EP too?
Gloria Creep on 23/1/2014 at 22:41
Thanks from me too Terry :angel:
I use your walkthroughpage every day ...
GUFF on 25/1/2014 at 05:49
Quote Posted by yxlplig
I'm curious, why wasn't T2X distributed in standard FM form in the first place? Was there some technical advantage to the exe version that's no longer relevant?
IIRC it installed itself in X:\Your Thief 2 Directory Path\Thief2X and had a "t2x.exe" (a launcher) which allowed you to select from the base Thief 2 game and T2X campaign which was, again, installed in a subdirectory by default and would use your Thief 2 install's Thief2.exe. It was always possible to just archive the directory starting from the base of \Thief2X and just use it with DarkLoader or whatever, though. It's just recently the launcher (and apparently installer) has become something that isn't guaranteed to work so this became something that was a really good idea.
Using the archived version does work fine with the EP. If you use DarkLoader and if the T2X missions overwrote stock textures that weren't quite the same dimensions as the originals (or as the ones in the EP) then there may be issues, but if you use FMsel with NewDark then it'll prioritize the T2X (FM) resources over the EP (mod_path) resources and everything should be fine. You'll get whatever objects/textures are updated in the EP but not in T2X as well as the original T2X textures and objects.
Ricebug on 25/1/2014 at 15:24
FYI, T2X includes EP.crf within the zip file.
Renault on 25/1/2014 at 18:52
Right, but I see it's the older version. If someone has the newer high res version installed, will the older version in the T2X zip override it? I don't know how that works.
GUFF on 25/1/2014 at 21:04
With NewDark and using FMsel to load missions, FMs have priority over mods specified in cam_mod.ini's mod_path variable, so any resources that T2X shares (in filename) with EP2, T2X will take priority over. You could use uber_mod_path but that would break all sorts of replacement resources for FMs. As a rule, putting the EP2 in the mod_path and then loading FMs works great. Except for with some animated textures, mostly water. You can individually uber_mod_path water to fix that issue, though.
Ricebug on 26/1/2014 at 01:36
Quote Posted by Brethren
Right, but I see it's the older version. If someone has the newer high res version installed, will the older version in the T2X zip override it? I don't know how that works.
I would just replace it with the newer version. I supposed I could also delete it from the zip file and add a note to the readme.
EDIT: I added a note on the web site.
Florian on 30/1/2014 at 04:29
Quote Posted by GUFF
IIRC it installed itself in X:\Your Thief 2 Directory Path\Thief2X and had a "t2x.exe" (a launcher) which allowed you to select from the base Thief 2 game and T2X campaign which was, again, installed in a subdirectory by default and would use your Thief 2 install's Thief2.exe. It was always possible to just archive the directory starting from the base of \Thief2X and just use it with DarkLoader or whatever, though. It's just recently the launcher (and apparently installer) has become something that isn't guaranteed to work so this became something that was a really good idea.
Using the archived version does work fine with the EP. If you use DarkLoader and if the T2X missions overwrote stock textures that weren't quite the same dimensions as the originals (or as the ones in the EP) then there may be issues, but if you use FMsel with NewDark then it'll prioritize the T2X (FM) resources over the EP (mod_path) resources and everything should be fine. You'll get whatever objects/textures are updated in the EP but not in T2X as well as the original T2X textures and objects.
Is there no way (like with mod-paths?) to stop this interference of EP2-pack with Darkloader overwriting textures of FMs like it seems that FMSel is capable of? It would be great if there is a possible way for this also with Darkloader to see the textures the FM authors wish to see us and not the EP2 textures instead (best example was the Mission Turmoil with the paintings that could only be seen correctly if EP2 was deactivated, while you were using Darkloader)....
GUFF on 30/1/2014 at 07:56
No, there's no way to fix that while using DarkLoader. You can't use the EP/EP2 and DarkLoader and not have custom FM resources that share filenames break due to priorities. It was this way in the original Dark engine as far as I know, as well, but way back the EP was much smaller in scope and didn't cover as many resources. The priority at work here is mod_path > base resources. DarkLoader replaces base resources to load FMs, and the EP is mod_path'd which makes it take priority. There was talk about an update to DarkLoader to make it use the mission loading capabilities of NewDark where you can just dump FM resources into their own directory path and the game exe will load them as 2nd top priority behind uber_mod_path, but who knows when/if that'll happen.
For now I would simply recommend using FMsel. Or if FMsel were updated to add some of the nicer features that DarkLoader has that it doesn't, I suppose DarkLoader would be completely obsoleted. The features you'll miss most are the automatic grabbing of mission names from document file, the automatic display of document file, the ease of adding/displaying comments for missions, as well as multi-game support from the launcher. On the other hand FMsel has superior list filtering, I'd say, and a nice 0-5 star rating column.
Florian on 31/1/2014 at 00:09
Thank you GUFF for clarification. I think it´s indeed mainly the long got-used to features and the easy usability of it, why I am still clinging to Darkloader. Well, will probably have to accept the fact and will have to swap the tools then...
