Thief Fan Mission Manager Now a Mission Loader

tolsen64 on 1/7/2011 at 05:35

Quote Posted by gnartsch

2. Problems when no default language is not availlable
I tried an old version of 'Vol De Nuit'/'Night Flight' by 'TheHardy Boyz'
While the mission was installed, the objectives were entirely empty and readables would have shown no text either.
Note that that old version exclusively supports french as language with all resources located in 'french'-folder. The zip for it can be found (http://www.keepofmetalandgold.com/missionst2/VolDeNuit_FR.zip) here.
Also I think it would be good to allow the user to pick a specific language e.g. for testing purposes or due to personal preferences.
DarkLoader e.g. identifies the possible languages correct and also allows to pick a language.

EDIT: I guess this means in general: if there is a multilanguage-FM (using language specific resource folders), but YOUR language is not supported, then you can not use TFMM, because all resources won't be installed.

what is the best method to detect alternate languages available in a mission? Will the folders always be spelled the same 'french', 'german', 'english', etc?

gnartsch on 2/7/2011 at 09:34

Quote Posted by tolsen64

what is the best method to detect alternate languages available in a mission? Will the folders always be spelled the same 'french', 'german', 'english', etc?

I am not perfectly sure, but from what I read in the past there are 4 supported languages:
english, german, french, italian
As far as I can tell these names are 'fix'.
See GarrettsYoungYearsXtra (by Zappenduster) as an example.
When someone provides a mission with a different/additional language, then there is a statement that it would replace a different language.
e.g. see Zontiks 'Kings Story' with a couple of language zips inside that would need to be installed manually.
But I am not even sure if this limitation to 4 languages is found in the game or whether it is related to DarkLoader.

I am afraid I can not fully answer this question.
And since my SSD crashed 2 days ago, my PC is not fully functional again at the moment.

tolsen64 on 3/7/2011 at 18:01

This new version has a few bux fixes and has added two new features:

* Enable Debug Logging in the File Menu
* User can choose language to install when Fan Mission contains alternate languages

You will want to download the full program because you will need the new "Languages.txt" file. This file is used to make the program aware of languages that appear in Fan Missions. You can edit this file using the "Language File" menu item from the "Edit" menu. The entries in this file are compared to folder names and zip file names in the Fan Mission. So if you have a language folder or language zip file in a Fan Mission file that isn't in the Languages.txt file, you will need to add an entry for it.

When installing a fan mission, if an alternate language folder or zip file is found, you will be prompted to choose from a list of languages found. If you choose "default", then none will be installed. The mission will be left with whatever files are installed by default (if any).

(https://github.com/tolsen64/TFMM-fmsel/blob/master/Release.7z) Thief Fan Mission Manager Website

gnartsch on 4/7/2011 at 20:38

Hmmm... no idea what the problem is, but installing a mission in a specific language does not work.
I tried to install '(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136120&page=1) The Day Worker' by Basso71 in german and Gaetanes 'L'Arsene' in french.
Both end up showing english objectives, object-names and readables.
At the same time I see the german movie for 'The Day Worker' play alright in the game
And I see that the files in 'books' are the same (german ones) as in 'books\german'. The same for 'intrface' and 'string'.
But in the game everything except for the movie is in english.
So, although I can see no obvious mistake, it just does not work :confused:
Both missions show up with the right language when playing through DarkLoader.

There also seem to be problems with RTF files.
I installed all 3 missions from '(http://thiefmissions.com/search.cgi?search=%2bauthor=DrK%20(Kubiac)#m) Night In Rocksbourg' (Ink and Dust, Discovery and New Beginning)
Only for one of them (Ink and Dust) the RTF would be displayed.
This seems to be an issue with the specific 'dialect' of the Editor being used.

tolsen64 on 5/7/2011 at 02:41

Quote Posted by gnartsch

I just looked at a darkloader install of the "The Day Worker" and it doesn't copy any files out of the german or english directory. But I still got all the english objectives, etc. So I changed the language setting in DARKINST.cfg and install.cfg to german. Now the main menu is completely blank except for the german title image. But the objectives and in-game readables are german. Does your darkloader install have a blank main menu?

Another thing I did to see what would happen is this: I installed The Day Worker and chose german as the language. I went into the game and everything was english. Then I went in and deleted all the english folders and went into the game again. This time the main menu was english but the objectives and in-game readables were in german.

Try this and let me know what happens: Reinstall The Day Worker and choose "default" for the language. Then let me know what you get for the menu, objectives, etc. Also, what language does your original DARKINST.cfg and install.cfg files have in them?

I think what I might need to do is to copy the files out of the chosen language folder and then delete all the language folders. This would force it to use the "installed" language. Thoughts?

tolsen64 on 5/7/2011 at 04:56

Ok. I "think" languages will install properly now. Here's how T2 seems to work (I assume SS2 and T1 would work the same):

When the language chooser pops up and you choose default, nothing will happen. The language folders will not be deleted and no files will be copied. The language that will be shown will be the either the language of the files that are installed, or if they are in folders, the language that is specified in the DARKINST.cfg and install.cfg.

If you choose a specific language (not default), the files will be copied out of the language folder that you specified, then ALL the language folders will be deleted. This will force thief to use the files that have been installed and not look for a language folder.

AND...new feature. Instead of trying to find a mission info file to display, it now displays all files in a tabbed interface. The files that are displayed are files with extensions of .rtf, .wri, .txt, htm, html, .glml. With the .glml files, it just strips off all the markup tags and displays the raw text.

(https://github.com/tolsen64/TFMM-fmsel/blob/master/Release.7z) Thief Fan Mission Manager Web Site

gnartsch on 5/7/2011 at 21:53

Great !

Works fine for me! All readables, menus, inventory, etc. now do match the specified language.
Thanks!

Thanks to the tabbed file-info I can see why no 'Readme'-info was displayed for some missions:
there is a tab called 'patchlog' (created by TafferPatcher) besides the readme/RTF files for the missions I mentioned.
The odd thing : although it is a plain text file with 17KB, the entire tab is just blank.
Would that size be too big to handle already ?
Anyway, another thought coming up along with that:
since that file comes from my original Thief-install, it makes little sense to display it here, since it is not at all related to the mission.
Would it be possible to identify the relevant text files by checking if they are linked to the installed Thief games? If so, then they should be skipped. Only files coming from the ZIP should be valid candidates.
Here is a (http://www.gnartsch.de/Thief-FM/beta/TFMM/patchlog.png) screenshot and the (http://www.gnartsch.de/Thief-FM/beta/TFMM/patchlog) file itself as well.
Since it seems to me like you skip copying/linking any text-files from the game to the mission-folder, I would like to claify that this file indeed does NOT have any file-extension. It is named just 'patchlog'.

tolsen64 on 5/7/2011 at 23:39

Quote Posted by gnartsch

Great !

Works fine for me! All readables, menus, inventory, etc. now do match the specified language.
Thanks!

Glad to hear it! Now I can move on to other issues. Like the next one....

Quote:

Thanks to the tabbed file-info I can see why no 'Readme'-info was displayed for some missions:
there is a tab called 'patchlog' (created by TafferPatcher) besides the readme/RTF files for the missions I mentioned.
The odd thing : although it is a plain text file with 17KB, the entire tab is just blank.
Would that size be too big to handle already ?

No, it's not too big. Don't know why it isn't loading. It shouldn't even be displayed as it doesn't have a .txt extension.

Quote:

Anyway, another thought coming up along with that:
since that file comes from my original Thief-install, it makes little sense to display it here, since it is not at all related to the mission.
Would it be possible to identify the relevant text files by checking if they are linked to the installed Thief games? If so, then they should be skipped. Only files coming from the ZIP should be valid candidates.

I've got an array of files not to include in the mission directories. I'm going to include that one. I also noticed other files that have tabs for them but are blank on mine, like some with just a .t extension. I'll figure out why and get all this fixed tonight.

tolsen64 on 6/7/2011 at 04:38

I think I have the mission info files display fixed. It shouldn't display any files that aren't one of the correct extensions. So the 'patchlog' file won't display. it also has been added to the "don't copy" list when installing a mission so it won't be copied from the original game folder to the mission folder.

I also added the Custom GameSys info file to the tabs for T1, T2 & SS2 missions.

There's also text added to the original T1 & T2 mission info that shows all the individual mission names and how to start at any mission.

You should download the entire zip file. The text file in the "Patches" folder has been changed.

(https://github.com/tolsen64/TFMM-fmsel/blob/master/Release.7z)

tolsen64 on 7/7/2011 at 01:11

I've been considering this for quite a while. How much interest would there be in adding another tab to Thief Fan Mission Manager for chatting? What about how it works? I was thinking about a chat system that doesn't use a central server but the program would act as both server and client. People could post their IP & Port that others could connect to. Once connected, the host would send a list of all others currently connected to the client. The client would then initiate connections to each of them. That way if the initial host shut down, all the others would still be connected.

I'm also thinking that "activities" could be transmitted in the chat room such as "tolsen64 is installing T3 mission 'Cabot'" or "user23 is playing SS2 mission 'zygot'", etc.

So the main question is: Is there interest in adding a chat function to the mission manager? What features would be wanted (private chat, etc)? Or is this a bad idea altogether?