Last Month the Japanese try to retrive this mod a little bit more. They played in the at 2pm CET. At the moment the gametracker,com Server Monitorring is off. Hope soon they turn it on. The ranking seems to work.
Registered Member #727 Joined: [ 10:25 ] [ 12 Nov 2004 ] Posts: 998
What should the tool do when double-clicking on an RFA file?
1 - Always ask where to put the file
2 - Put bf1942 folder next to the rfa file
3 - Put a folder with the rfa name next to the rfa file and the bf1942 folder in that
Do something else!
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Votes: 13
I'm currently writing an RFA extractor/packer for Mac OS X. My question is: How should it behave when you double-klick on a file? I see the following options:
Ask for a place to extract to every time. That'll get annoying if you unpack a lot, but it's in line with what the Windows RFA tools do.
Extract automatically, and put the bf1942 folder right next to the .rfa file being extracted. That is what Apple's unzip tool does when all contents of a ZIP file are in a single folder. The problem with this approach is, of course, that all RFA files have a folder called bf1942 as their root folder, so it would get confusing very soon.
Extract automatically, create a folder with the name of the rfa file next to the rfa file and put the bf1942 folder in there. That would put all map files in yourmapname/bf1942/levels/yourmapname/... This is what Apple's unzip tool does when there are many files in a zip archive and not in a single folder. An advantage of this approach is that it makes packing rather straight-forward: Put a folder on the icon of the RFA tool, and it'll create an RFA file with the contents of the folder and the name of the folder + .rfa.
I like #3 most, and for people who absolutely insist I could make #1 an option. I cannot see any point in doing #2. Do you have any other idea what I should do?
Ideally the fuctionality should be like the existing winrfa tool I think..
You open the mac application... you browse to the desired rfa. You double click it and it opens the entire file structure in front of you. a single click on any con file allows you to edit that file within the application.. and there is a save button to overwite the existing data and your modified rfa is ready for testing.
Or you browse to the desired rfa. You double click it and it opens the entire file structure in front of you. then you have the option of extracting a single file, multiple files or everything. You choose a location to extract to and it creates a folder with the map name (perhaps with the word 'extracted' appended to it.. then inside that is the actual rfa structure.
so you end up with a file (on the desktop or wherever you choose) with the following structure/sppearance.
Then to recompile the rfa you choose 'make rfa' or whatever in your mac application.. choose the ''deathrace - extracted -'' folder and it automatically uses the next folder (bf1942) as the root folder and asks you for a file name. in this instance 'deathrace'. If it was clever it would look into the file structure to find the folder name after 'levels' and automatically call the rfa that name.
Im not sure if you are aware that the map MUST be called whatever that folder under 'levels' is called or bf42 will not start.
Registered Member #727 Joined: [ 10:25 ] [ 12 Nov 2004 ]
Hm. I could do that rather easily. NSTreeController has some bad habits but I can use a normal data source, which is slightly more code, but not really a problem either. Text editing on Cocoa is so easy it's a joke. I guess the main problem would be managing NSWindowControllers myself, which is supposed to be easy, but I never tried it. And setting a represented file for a NSWindow when the file is not actually in the file system (but in the rfa), of course, but if all else fails I can do without that just fine. Text editing is so easy on Cocoa it's a joke
What this all means is that the reason for me not liking the proposal is not that it's too difficult. It's more that this results in an RFA modifying doing everything tool, instead of just something like a very basic ZIP tool for RFAs. I like very basic ZIP tools, however, because they don't get in my way and let me access/create the files as soon as reasonably possible. A huge app with built-in text editor, however, is putting a whole lot of things in may way before I can finally start hacking, with not a whole lot of value added. Granted, it's one key stroke for saving both the text file and creating the RFA file, which allows faster debug cycles, which is a very valuable thing. But is it that important? I don't know, I've never modded Battlefield.
As for the issue with the name: Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know it and the idea of automatically taking the inner folder name is a very good one. It's no technical problem, so whatever I'll do, I'll do it that way.
It is certainly an interesting challenge for you then.
There have been several rfa applications and winrfa seems most popular. not that it doesnt have bugs.. but its functionality makes modding easier...
Modding maps takes time and so anything which speeds up that process usually wins the day.
It's purely about clicks... it takes so many clicks just to pack a map, open bf42, load map etc...
Make a fully functioning rfa tool and you may attract more people to the project.
However, I would say that the ability to edit con files within the rfa tool is very useful when tweaking a serverside patch/mod (ssm) file for example where the changes are purely text based.. but less important for client side mod (csm) where the changes are more physical*
*I'm just suggesting that modifying con files is more virtual and adding 3d models and textures etc is physical.. for the sake of this topic.. im sure there is a better way to phrase it.
So maybe dont focus on that ability to edit file within the editor.
You really need to fire up a pc emu on your machine and take a look at both winrfa and gmake. These are the two main choices for rfa extraction/compilation and I am very familiar with using both.
Registered Member #78 Joined: [ 18:27 ] [ 13 Mar 2004 ]
No, you can install and run Windows, just like any other laptop. For running Win software under OSX, you need virtualization software, like parallels, or WMVare(someday in near future)