posted 01-17- 09:59 PM               

And one thing I've found is that taking stuff out of the par files to work on them is very difficult. What I mean is that you basically have to unpar all of the files into a single directory before you can work on them, because the files are spread across all of them.

Now once they are extracted it's easy to work with, but it seems the PP puts them back into the par files in the same place they came from - all over.

Is there any reason that file x has to be in par y? Is there a method to the madness?

posted 01-18- 11:42 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by ArgonV:
The parfile extractor does not recompile the par file once youve extraced it automatically

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I must have worded that poorly.

My complaint is that you have to run the extractor on every single par file in order to build a media folder you can work with. That's because parts of planes, their missions, their textures etc. are split up all over the par files - seemingly at random.

Why couldn't we put all of the PP6 WWII planes into a single "data10.par" file, all the missions into "data20.par" etc. Is there something magic about the particular filenames and what the game expects to be in each one?

posted 01-18- 03:12 PM               

Also, since anything in its own folder seems to "override" the parfile, it would seem that the sim doesn't necessarily expect to find something in a particular parfile, since it has to "accept" finding that thing in its own folder .

It would certainly make things easier to work with, IMO, if, say, all the German planes were in data6.par and all the American planes were in data7.par and all the ground objects were in data5.par, etc.

Just extracting a plane to work on or study can take a half an hour if you're not "lucky" in the order you unpack the files.

At the minimum, a readme should be included with the planepacks stating what each parfile contains "in general." (Maybe this was already done and I just didn't pay attention to what I was reading)

posted 01-19- 03:26 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by jedi:
Hmmm. That's a pretty good question! You'd think, since stuff is spread out everywhere, that it doesn't much matter what goes in which parfile, with the possible exception of data1.par and data2.par, which seem to have most of the terrain stuff.

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Exactly. I think you see where I'm going with this... as it stands you have to extract almost all of the pars into a single media folder before you can really start working on the models. And then once you've done that, putting it back together seems like a nightmare. It seems to me that if we separated this out a little it would make everyone's job a lot easier - not least of all building the PP's.

quote:

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It would certainly make things easier to work with, IMO, if, say, all the German planes were in data6.par and all the American planes were in data7.par and all the ground objects were in data5.par, etc.

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Exactly what I was thinking! We could drop each terrain into it's own par - say 1 through 10 - ground vehicles in 11 through 20, planes in 21 through 30 and the rest in higher numbers.

You might add a a par or two in total, but it means that if you want to work on the Ju 88 you have _one_ par to extract and re-build.

Anyone? Would this work? Is the current split-up mearly historical or is there some reason for it?

posted 01-19- 06:54 PM               

First off, the par number is critcal. The par files are loaded in order (I forget if low to high or high to low)- so files in some par files can override others. The final override is anything in real folders, these will override the par files.

Some par files come from the shipping game, and those are more or less left alone. Now the other par files are somewhat organized, don't ask me how. All I know is that the Data15.par file is left for the WWI stuff! This way we can release a new WWI pack at any time, indipentant of the other projects and plane packs.

Also we have used all, or close to all the par files supported by SDOE, so we can not split out all we want, we need to make due.

It would be nice for there to be a list posted somewhere though of what is in what par file- and maybe there is! I just always extract everything

posted 01-19- 09:46 PM            

To find out more about how I laid out plane pack 6 go to the website in my signature below.

But briefly the following logic was used

Planepacks are getting too big and I wanted to create a base set of files that everyone doesn't have to download over and over every time a new planepack comes out. So I structured it the following way(ok I pasted the following out of the readme):
1. Data10 with nonstandard components for online play - hangar missions, training etc. This file represents about 10 mb for downloading and if someone is bandwidth compromised perhaps they don't need to grab it right away. This will likely be packed separately to allow this flexibility. For now I have put ground units here. So if you haven't chosen to download this component of the pack, be sure to visit Nat's SDOE site and pick up his many creations. --(I never did separate this - anyone who wants the pack without let me know)--
2. Data11 holding all graphic elements textures and sounds. This represents 30 mb in separate files, 20 mb in the parfile and 15 mb after zipping for download. These aren't specifically checked for compatibility but are kind of required for the plane to work. It is likely many of these files will not change frequently and therefore updates to this file will be less frequent.
3. Data12 all sm, airfoil, loadouts files required for online compatibility, this will also include cockpit files. The parfile is about 30 mb uncompressed and 8 mb for download.

The intent here is to allow updates to the planes without having to download all the components over and over again. If a creator updates the sm file then that is all that needs to be updated and downloaded. In cases where texture files are updated then they will be included in a separate parfile ( or the sm parfile) on a temporary basis until a major update is developed. So in the future more frequent plane pack updates will be on the order of 8 to 12 mb, or less if a fourth parfile is released instead of sending out a full revision of the third file.

So there you have it.

On the grand order of things (how does SDOE overwrite) it follows the following pattern:
Reading in order and overwriting as necessary:
data1
data2
..
data15 (is there a 16?)
--then,
for 1.5.1 (the beta)
It would then load the OpenPlane folder par files in the order selected in the options screen (I dont know if it's bottom up or top down)
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Then it loads the folders.

If you intend to edit items in the parfile DO NOT rebuild the parfile with modifications. This will could cause online incompatibility and potentially other problems. Put the modifications in the proper media folder as they will be the last to overwrite. If you have a problem with the change you make, delete the file and go back to either the original file or backup version of what you created.

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Spin