In 2013, SteamPipe content distribution system was introduced in Source games. Source games were updated to use this new system. This made many older mods unplayable due to the older mounting mechanism incompatible with SteamPipe's mounting mechanism. It is possible to get pre SteamPipe Source mods working again but this requires a lot of manual fixes and adjustments.
Lately, I have been working on two tools that can do the work automatically. See the following:
The presentation shows a preview of the tools and nine pre SteamPipe Source mods (before and after fixes). Note that this is a WIP. In each mod, not all areas and or cases are yet covered and reviewed.
I still have a couple of unit tests to write and retest all mods shown in the presentation. After that, I'll make the repository public and release a first build of the tools.
My university session ends on April 26 so until then the remaining work will be slower. Otherwise, it should be released during summer if it doesn't happen sooner.
Unit tests are finished.
Remaining work before first beta:
- Retest all mods
- Clean repository
- Add documentation
Bear in mind that remaining work will be slower due to studies.
Quite a useful tool, I hope someday we will see Get A Life working using these tools
IDDQD_1337
Get A Life appears to be already playable.
I installed the mod and the v1.1 patch. The gameinfo.txt has the following:
- Custom client.dll and server.dll
- Steam App ID set to 215 (Source SDK Base 2006)
- No game content dependencies
I quickly played through the first levels until chapter 'rebirth' and it seems to work correctly.
"Get a Life" occasionally crashes when using medkits on body parts. Also can you possibly extend that flashlight glitch near the end? In fact if players keep their flashlight on right before getting knocked out, they can use the flashlight glitch which makes such a mod's lighting less like Doom III, by jumping over a flaregun after waking up, and sadly the [so helpful] glitch compromises later on. I recommend you to test such a glitch, if you don't mind, and maybe release two different versions of this mod (just in case others hate the flaregun, as well as "Doom III" lighting issues that "Get a Life" is actually reminiscent of).
RyanFoolishGenius
If the crashes are due to bugs in code, this would require the source code. Afaik, Get a life's source code was never released so this would require me to either recreate the mod's features from scratch or attempt to reverse engineer the mod's binaries and rewrite the source from decompiled info. For disassembling, I know programs exist for that but I don't have experience doing things like that.
As in some of the Source 2013 patches, e.g. 1187, recreating features does not guarantee 100% accurate behavior or the original mod. Disassembling guarantees 100% behavior, minus differences in some game entities between older and newer engine branches. In both cases, this requires a lot of work and at this time I want to focus on getting the first build available.
In regards to the suggestions for the flashlight, the first goal with Mod Patcher is to make mods playable under their original engine branch. The second goal is to fix misconfigurations that can cause issues but without changing the original gameplay e.g. UI glitches due to misconfiguration in HudLayout.res, typos in titles.txt.
Two mods remaining to test: 1187 and Coastline to Atmosphere.
Other patching will have to be made too on various files included in several mods original releases but it's only minor stuff.
Given I have a lot of work during session, this will likely resume after it's finished.
Make sure that in "Coastline to Atmosphere" & "Final Project Diary" you'll fix the missing HUD (can't even see my health/energy or amount of ammo), plus also certain glitches that make it sometimes impossible to switch weapons without using all ammo. Both mods showed those glitches. It's amazing nonetheless, but I'd really appreciate patches fixing all those glitches! Also in 1187, please either remove barnacles from the tunnel with trainwrecks, or instead make a "game over" sequence saying John died if the barnacle eats him (so it'll reload the player's last save), otherwise players might not notice John's dead and might unfortunately save the game enough that all quicksaves with him still alive could get overwritten, then get stuck in that map consequently (it actually happened to me before once, and ****** me off).
RyanFoolishGenius
Thanks, I'll check when I'll test Coastline to Atmosphere and Final Project. Note that the first build will only contain Coastline to Atmosphere. Final Project will eventually be added.
For 1187, adding a game over sequence would be ok in this case. Can you precise which map it is ? Afaik 1187's map sources were never released so I'd have to decompile, edit and recompile them. Decompilation is not 100% perfect and recompiling decompiled maps may introduce issues. Another approach is by using lump files. I'll see what can be done.
Developer.valvesoftware.com
Work will resume after April 27th. Only a few weeks remaining.