Proposed development of YR 1.002 Community Patch

[Marshall]

The following is a message from Cannis, hopefully some of you can understand the details, especially pd who might be able to do something about the exe in this respect:

Many of the issues could be avoided depending on what is changed in the exe, which you are suggesting would be changed as well.

1) read string files from MIX files, also read multiple string files, rather than just one. So, a CSF in a higher numbered expandmdXX.mix takes preference over one in a lower numbered MIX. But, a CSF in an ecache*.mix would be read in addition to that primary string file. In that way, every mappack could have its own string file...

But we're really only talking about maps in this instance, and one idea I tried to sell Delphi on (before I realized what a waste of time it was to talk to him) was the ability for the game to read strings from maps themselves. See #4 below.

2) Read PKT files from MIX files, so each mappack includes its own PKT. This of course assumes that the bug where maps are listed multiple times when multiple PKT files are used is also fixed.

3) If #2 is too hard, then perhaps simply changing the error message that pops up when you try to load a map you don't have could suffice. It could just say, umm, "You don't have this map installed", you know? It's not like the game crashes and burns with attempts to load maps you don't have.

4) On this thought, reading replacement load screens from MIX files would be nice too. (Basically, if you're hacking the EXE, why not get rid of all instances of needing loose files?) For that matter, why not read MMX and YRO from MIX files too. As I mentioned above, these formats would be good for the string problem. Right now the game sees the filename as a string label for these maps. Suppose it looked for that string label within the map file itself, instead of just in the CSF file?