janskjaer
Junior Member
There's a War, and it ain't Easy.
Posts: 89 
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Post by janskjaer on Oct 2, 2010 4:18:23 GMT -5
Hey all,
I've been playing around with the ResEdit utility (found on Zedo's download page) and creating my own RES files. However, I'm having problems getting the game to recognise these new RES files. It only recognises the original Hardwar.res and Hardup.res files.
I tried modifying the Hardup.res file to include my files to force it to recognise, but that made things worse, producing sprite errors that prevented the game from even loading.
Does anyone know how to reference your own custom RES files in Hardwar so that they can be squirted into the game?
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Jeff
Junior Member
Posts: 64
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Post by Jeff on Oct 2, 2010 9:59:38 GMT -5
Have you tried leaving your replacement files in the Hardwar directory but outside of the RES files? Hardwar should try to use files in its directory with the same name as files in its RES files.
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janskjaer
Junior Member
There's a War, and it ain't Easy.
Posts: 89
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Post by janskjaer on Oct 3, 2010 10:58:47 GMT -5
Yeah, I know that dropping loose files in the game root folder works, but I would like to tidy up my mods and extra added files, by encapsulating them into .RES files. Depending on if I change the textures in the game, I can add these to each of their own .RES file and swap them around as and when I need to.
I tried creating my own .RES files but the game simply ignores them. It recognises default .RES files such as Hardwar.res, Hardup.res and Hardim.res (Ians). I am guessing that the HardwarW.exe file is to blame and somehow needs to be modified (or reverse-engineered?) to reference my own .res files within it. However, this defeats the whole purpose of having custom .RES files as it's more effort to reference them into the .exe.
There must be an easier way to do this. If only it was a similar structure to the Quake games where you can add your own .PAK files with custom modifications by ordering the filenames (e.g. PAK1.PAK, PAK2.PAK etc...).
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Jeff
Junior Member
Posts: 64
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Post by Jeff on Oct 4, 2010 16:18:13 GMT -5
If only someone would port Hardwar to a more modern game engine...  The Hardwar RES filenames are hard-coded in HardwarW.exe for each version of Hardwar. Hardwar.res, Hardup.res and Hardim.res for version UIM.06 Hardwar.res and Hardup.res for version U2.04 Hardwar.res and Hardwar2.res for version F2.1 Hardwar.res and Hardwar2.res for version D1.6 You could change the DataPath and/or DataPath2 in the registry to point to different subdirectories containing different modded RES files with the expected filenames. I do something similar with a simple batch file so I can install multiple versions of Hardwar and point them all to the same GDV files on my harddisk. |
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Post by riedquat on Oct 5, 2010 10:17:37 GMT -5
Sorry but... I don't see the point.... trying to change the registry seems fine but why? Isn't more simple just recreate all the res files you want with original name but completely new? Just rar or zip em with different names just to know what heck is each one, if you do as well with the original? that way you end with various zip/rar files all containing hardwar.res just unzip the one you want to use and overwrite the old one.... I did this for eons... I think it is easier..... In the other hand I'm an over complicated person...so who knows...  |
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Post by Pilot on Oct 5, 2010 14:23:14 GMT -5
You have a point there, ^^ Though if anyone could understand how to make another version of Hardwar Version Changer that would make it really easy.
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janskjaer
Junior Member
There's a War, and it ain't Easy.
Posts: 89
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Post by janskjaer on Oct 7, 2010 16:14:40 GMT -5
I tried this before my post. However, I tried it on the Hardup.res patch included with the U2.04 version.
I copied everything out of the Hardup.res, added my own (or Wez's) files to the directory and then created a new Hardup.res. The result stopped Hardwar from even starting. It caused multiple errors. This lead me to believe that each file is referenced within the .res, which in turn is passed as an argument to the HardwarW.exe upon execution. However, this sounds rather unnecessary. I can't think of one reason why SR would go to all this trouble to do that, only if, they didn't want people tampering with the original RES files, but again, this seems unlikely.
I'll give it a shot with the Hardwar.res file. I'll create a new one with the existing files, add Wez's missing res files to the package and see if it takes.
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janskjaer
Junior Member
There's a War, and it ain't Easy.
Posts: 89
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Post by janskjaer on Oct 7, 2010 16:27:14 GMT -5
I re-built the Hardwar.res file and added Wez's missing RES files, using the application, ResEdit. This also threw the same error as when I tried this task on the Hardup.res file:
FATAL ERROR: SpriteLoadCode - invalid format sprite data
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janskjaer
Junior Member
There's a War, and it ain't Easy.
Posts: 89
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Post by janskjaer on Dec 3, 2010 17:04:14 GMT -5
If only someone would port Hardwar to a more modern game engine... The Hardwar RES filenames are hard-coded in HardwarW.exe for each version of Hardwar. Hardwar.res, Hardup.res and Hardim.res for version UIM.06 Hardwar.res and Hardup.res for version U2.04 Hardwar.res and Hardwar2.res for version F2.1 Hardwar.res and Hardwar2.res for version D1.6 You could change the DataPath and/or DataPath2 in the registry to point to different subdirectories containing different modded RES files with the expected filenames. I do something similar with a simple batch file so I can install multiple versions of Hardwar and point them all to the same GDV files on my harddisk. Based on Jeff's information, I decided to make a small batch file that will do some version switching for multiple Hardwar versions. I'll include it in a seperate post. |
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