Thief Fan Mission Manager Now a Mission Loader

gnartsch on 29/6/2013 at 22:45

Seriously, although quite a few people are using FMSel these days, I still fail the reason to do so.
While it has some cute features that prevent unwanted changes to your actual game ... and such,
it lacks any feature that I require from a reasonable loader, such displaying the author, the actual FM name and more.
FMSel is a usable alternative for SS2 and TDS, but not for Thief1+2 with its 1000 FMs around.
The 'older' loaders - such as yours - still do their job nicely even with NewDark.
(But to be honest: I am still sticking to DarkLoader)

kdau on 30/6/2013 at 03:56

One thing about FMSel that isn't always mentioned is that it has two components. One sits in the patched game executable and changes the way paths are resolved, providing a much cleaner solution that is superior to any of its predecessors. The other part is the user interface DLL, which as gnartsch said is just another loader that is missing some features. But anyone can write a different front end; see fm_selector_api.txt in the NewDark distribution. So an improved selector that still uses the FMSel infrastructure would be welcome. (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140173) That's the approach Telliamed is taking with DarkLoader, though we haven't heard an update on that in a while.

Constance on 30/6/2013 at 11:11

Huh I must have missed something but, (how) can FMsel be used to play TDS fan missions ?

Athalle on 30/6/2013 at 12:00

Quote Posted by Constance

Huh I must have missed something but, (how) can FMsel be used to play TDS fan missions ?

Hi Constance, I don't know how but it works perfectly with TDS for me :)

snobel on 30/6/2013 at 14:24

Quote Posted by Constance

Huh I must have missed something but, (how) can FMsel be used to play TDS fan missions ?

You get FMSel for T3 with the Sneaky Upgrade patch (link below).

fxdwg on 30/6/2013 at 16:45

Quote Posted by tolsen64

Hi there. I've been out of circulation for quite a while. I've recently become aware of the NewDark update and the FMSel that comes with it. I was toying with the idea of updating TFFM but since Thief comes with FMSel and it seems lots of people use it (from reading the forums), is TFMM still wanted/needed? I'm happy to let it die if FMSel is the preferred loader these days.

Hey welcome back. I've always like TFMM, and since trying it way back when, I've preferred it over other FM loaders. I barely started into FMSel last year when I latched onto Skyrim and Oblivion. I haven't played Thief since. Now that NewDark updates have arisen, I have yet to make it back to Thief FM's. Although, this forum is still my browser's home page. I for one would like to see continued work on TFMM because I know I will make it back to playing FM's someday. I had downloaded your source code, but I've never had any luck with WPF. I had found TFMM easy to use and seemed reliable. I really liked being able to have multiple FM's "installed" and to be able to switch between them easily. I think FMSel is definitely worthwhile, however, TFMM is a good front-end. Maybe some kind of hybrid would be of use.

Beleg Cúthalion on 1/7/2013 at 21:41

I'd like to use the opportunity to opt for a better FMSel front-end for TDS, too. It does its job ATM, but it doesn't want to be used apparently. :erg:

tolsen64 on 7/7/2013 at 02:49

Does anyone know what exactly does NewDark do to play a fan mission given a mission folder name? I'd like to know exactly how it does it. This will help me better understand how to set up a FM so I can launch Thief using the switch -fm="folder name".

1. What files does it modify?
2. Where does it look for needed and/or optional files?
a. Does it look first in the FM folder and then in the Thief folder?
3. Anything I haven't asked that I need to know?

Thanks!

kdau on 7/7/2013 at 03:09

Quote Posted by tolsen64

1. Actually, no files are modified at all (other than the loader having unzipped the FM, of course). The magic is entirely in the engine, where all(?) path lookups in the Thief directory have been changed to try the FM directory first. Only the -fm command line switch is needed. However, it is possible to hard-code an FM name in cam_mod.ini. From there, you can also change the directory where unzipped FMs are stored, as well as change the mod paths, but it's really an end-user file. Which takes us to the next question...

2. All relative paths to files are resolved in this order (highest priority first):

* Paths (in the main Thief directory) specified in uber_mod_path in cam_mod.ini.
* The FM directory.
* Paths (in the main Thief directory) specified in mod_path in cam_mod.ini.
* The main Thief directory itself, as qualified by the usual options in darkinst.cfg/install.cfg.

3. See the "FM Author Notes" section of modders_notes.txt in the NewDark distribution for specs on FMSel's info files. For full coverage of all possible setups, you would need to interpret both the existing style of FM info and the new FMSel style (fm.ini, fmthumb.jpg, etc.).

The FM selector API has an option for language, and it would be nice to have a loader that can set a value for that. (You can just set the default to something else in darkinst.cfg, but for mission testing it would be nice to be able to switch it quickly.)

That's all I can think of. Hope this helps! :)

tolsen64 on 20/7/2013 at 22:31

I am working on a new TFMM that will specifically work with NewDark. You can view the project and track my progress at Github.

(https://github.com/tolsen64/TFMM-fmsel) https://github.com/tolsen64/TFMM-fmsel

Edit: There are now Screenshots of my work in progress at the bottom of the page (GitHub).

Note: I don't have tons of time so I get maybe 1 or 2 hours per week to work on it. So please be patient.