Verbose Asset Collision request.

[Steeveeo]

Yes thats basically it, I ran into some issues with getting my SRV mod to not cause a Bad Asset error in a stock game, and had to unpak the entire patch13.pak into the Addon folder and load up bz2 to find the culprits.

Now since the patch13.pak file contains 3612 files, this is quite a bit of a long process.

Since Bad Asset errors are something that many modders want to get away from while trying to make their projects not conflict with anything, I figure it would be a VERY handy feature to have the console show verbose info on what files are actually causing the issue, instead of doing the MS style "You have a problem" crap.

Thanks in advance.

[Commando]

That's been asked for repeatedly.  GSH doesn't want to give potential cheaters a clue as to how the asset checker works.

[GSH]

Plus, it requires 10+MB logfiles to debug. I can't send individual checksums for 6000+ files on modem connections, so, it's got to be compressed.

Main rules:
(1) For pb4, ensure everyone has data.pak from the same language (English, French, German) .pak file. (fixed in pb4a)
(2) Put everything in a .pak file -- that ensures that duplicate files w/ the same name will load only one consistently. Only the .autoreg files, and any IA/MP map .bzn/.inf files must live outside the .pak file. (The odfs/aips/rest of map files those loose files reference can live inside a .pak)
(3) Ensure that everyone has the EXACT SAME files. No "I've got a mod installed on only one box, and it doesn't cause bad assets." Don't believe that.
(4) If you're defining a new race, ensure that everyone has *suser_m.odf files, and the other pilot files.

-- GSH

[Steeveeo]

Can autoreg files reference Pak files? If not, then PAKs are outside the scope of SRV (run as another Recycler Variant but bring the functionality of a mod)

[GSH]

The autoreg files can't be inside a .pak file, but the files they reference can be in them. That's exactly what pb4 does -- the autoreg files are loose, and the ODFs/AIPs are in patch13.pak.

-- GSH

[Steeveeo]

well, I guess now that makes my installer scripting a lot easier now that 600 something files comes down to about 10

Thanks for the info GSH, should make my mod a lot cleaner than it is now.

BTW, can the pak be in any folder under the BZ2 root or does it need to go in a certain spot?

[Nielk1]

It can be in any folder S, when I made little minimods I always had BZ2/Mods/Mod Name/MNdata.pak

[Steeveeo]

Duely noted. At least I saved the folder with the entire patch13.pak unzipped to check for later collisions.