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October 2007

Monday, October 29, 2007

SCMLoader 1.30 beta - ShadowFlare - 17:58

Since SCMLoader is likely nearing a release marked as non-beta and has had many features added in the mean time, I have decided on increasing the version number by more than just a single step. Today's beta release has even more added features. These include:

- Support for the newer FireGraft patch format. Currently data files for SC 1.15.0 and 1.15.1 are included.

- Capability to create patches all in one file, that use SCMLoader to load them. To use this feature, make a copy of SCMLoader.exe, attach an mpq archive to it, and add SCMLoader.qdp to the archive. The constructed exe package will load the mod mpq along with SCMLoader when running it. If SCMLoader is already running, it will use SCModLoader to tell SCMLoader to load up the attached mpq archive.

- SCMLoader for single player campaigns. Now scm/scx files can be used directly for the single player campaign maps. Simply add the map uncompressed and unencrypted to the mod mpq archive at the campaign's path, with either .scm or .scx added to the end (for example, campaign\expprotoss\protoss01.scx) - no special paths are needed within the scm/scx file. Any maps loaded this way get the same SCMLoader features that any external scm/scx maps already do.

- SCMLoader.exe and SCModLoader.exe now accept command line parameters to specify an mpq archive to load.

- When attempting to load an mpq archive in SCModLoader when Starcraft is not running, it will launch SCMLoader and load the specified mpq archive at startup.

- mpqpacks\mpqlist.txt will now also accept a colon ":" at the beginning of a file name to specify that SCMLoader should find and open the archive from within an already open mpq archive. This feature is likely most useful when used in combination with SCMLoader for single player campaigns for map-specific mods for the campaign that are shared between only some of the maps.

Download SCMLoader

Saturday, October 13, 2007

SCModLoader bug fix - ShadowFlare - 01:05

I have updated the SCMLoader beta download with a fix for the mod loader so that it properly recognizes the existence of .grp files in a loaded mpq archive without the other graphics-related files so that it will reload them as it should.

Monday, October 08, 2007

GRPAPI Bug Fix and Small SFGrpConv Update - ShadowFlare - 22:59

Two updates, which also affect SFGrpConv since it uses GRPAPI:

- Now correctly generates uncompressed .grp files. The previous hack-ish code for generating them has been rewritten to work more like the encoder for compressed .grp files.
- Added an additional encoding optimization which recognizes duplicate rows in a frame to make the output .grp file size a bit smaller in some cases. This goes beyond what even Blizzard's own encoder did and makes some of the files even smaller than the originals. It was supposed to be included in the initial release of my encoder, but I did not figure out a certain bug until the partial rewrite today.

Download GRPAPI

The updates for SFGrpConv are more minor:

- When loading .grp files, the "Compressed GRP" check box is now checked or cleared upon opening to indicate whether the .grp file is compressed or not. Starcraft does not automatically detect the format, so compressed .grp files must be kept compressed and uncompressed .grp files must be kept uncompressed. This change allows the user to know which is needed.
- The "Open palette file..." button now only prompts for a palette when converting from .grp format, so as not to confuse the user.

Download SFGrpConv