Well, what I was up to, was preparing the 9 custom mansions for all our MMF-members and -guests, where not-standard music, screens, graphics, sprites and/or sounds are involved. So far, only 2 got
done
. See upper left corner of our homepage.
As I tried to explain in a previous post, there is a major difference between:
1° sprites, sounds & graphics;
and:
2° screens & music.
When items from point 1 are involved, you really need to wait. As soon as I receive the updates of those mansions of the designers, they will get released.
When only music and/or screens are involved (and you can't wait ) you need to create a folder with exactly the same name of the mansion + Data. In your example: Church Data. In that folder you put all screens and music files. You place that folder besides the mansionfile in the Custom Mansions folder. And when you start playing Church, the game automatically finds the needed files in the Church Data folder!
The reason that the other 7 mansions are coming a little bit later is because of other issues. E.g. sam skelton is right now busy with the fixings in Church.
If memory serves (and I think it does ), this is how things have worked since 1.0.8:
1) Tiles and sprites can be placed in the mansion file and will be loaded by the game.
2) Screens and music need to be placed in a folder named
[Mansion Name] Data
and will be loaded by the game. The mansion is not placed in this folder, and both the mansion file and the folder are placed in the root of the
Custom Mansions
folder.
3) The game will not load custom sounds. So, if you want to change the sounds you still need file swapping. I'm pretty sure
Dominator
is the only mansion that has changed the sounds. In that case, Decorum is your friend.
I've been a little confused about the new mansions that have come out with instructions on how to swap the files in by hand, when it's not longer necessary. I had no idea that people just didn't know about these things, since (I thought) they were pretty well-documented. Anyway, kudos for this new effort.
ryos wrote: ... I've been a little confused about the new mansions that have come out with instructions on how to swap the files in by hand, when it's not longer necessary. ...
This feature might be around longer than we have noticed, however there are still many custom graphic mansions out there that have not yet been updated accordingly.
Dominator, Mummy's Revenge, Star Craft, Testing Mansion and Church are the ones I remember now, but there could be more.....!
I'm sure there are other users out there, like myself, who would like to play - say - Dominator again, and would do so much more spontaneously if the mansion could be played without the need of file-swopping.
So it's only a small step for the designer, to misquote Neil Armstrong, but a huge leap for MM-ankind..... to make these mansions work with the new feature.
aquaMat wrote: I'm sure there are other users out there, like myself, who would like to play - say - Dominator again, and would do so much more spontaneously if the mansion could be played without the need of file-swopping.
I've been playing Dominator since the betas without manual swapping, via Decorum. Decorum's been available for quite some time (almost a year, right?), and is so much nicer than swapping by hand that I'm frankly a little bemused when people who don't use it complain about what a pain it is to swap files by hand.
I'm just saying. 8-)
So it's only a small step for the designer, to misquote Neil Armstrong, but a huge leap for MM-ankind..... to make these mansions work with the new feature.
While I agree that it would be nice if designers did this, I also recognize that there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it themselves. It really isn't that hard...just a copy/paste job with a resource editor, right?
However, it's worth noting that Dominator will never be swapping-free, due to the fact that MM does not load custom sounds and (if Vern is to be believed) never will.
EDIT: I decided Joeb probably wouldn't mind if I posted Dominator (and Chase the Bots) here, wrapped in Decorum. So, here you go. Have fun.
I know that you developed and use Decorum for that purpose, but - although I downloaded it back then - I never got to grips with it.
Apart from that.... the new
process
/method would be even simpler than Decorum.
And as for your second point: I agree that users could do it themselves, and, frankly, I did in a few instances. But not only would it be better if the designers did it
officially
, there also are a few more
complicated
custom graphics mansions out there, that require a bit of fine-tuning before the new method can be applied.
That was the case with Discotheque Of Doom, I had to change/adapt a couple of things, including BBB backgrounds and texts and more....and that would have been clearly beyond the scope of the
normal user
.
Besides I wouldn't want all the users to mess with my mansions, resulting in X differently adapted versions. Then I rather make the effort to invest an hour or two of work and adapt it myself.
Lastly, as for
Chase The Bots
, which was my creation based on the Dominator graphics, I had thought about adapting that....but I found it'd make more sense to let Joe release an adapted Dominator first.
Interesting. Out of curiosity, what sorts of issues did you encounter getting DoD ported over?
I'm also interested to know what factors kept you from
coming to grips
, as you put it, with Decorum. Not that I'm likely to improve it (as you correctly note, it's pretty much unnecessary as of MM 1.0.8), but I like to hear constructive criticism on my work in the hope that things I do in the future turn out better.
As for my
just do it yourself
quip...I think I have to apologize. It's my kneejerk reaction to complaining on Internet message boards--there's so many people pining for others to do things for them that they could do for themselves that I tend to get a little grumpy about it. I do agree that it would be nice if developers adapted their mansions, and didn't realize the greater issues facing such efforts, but I'm also the type to try and fix things that annoy me before asking someone else to do it for me.
So, I'm sorry I said anything.
Oh, and sorry also for not giving credit for
Chase the Bots
. I'd forgotten it was you who made that. I'll say it a third time - a
converted
version of Dominator is impossible due to the custom sounds. It remains the only graphic set for which something like Decorum is absolutely necessary if you want to avoid swapping by hand.
) you need to create a folder with exactly the same name of the mansion + Data. In your example: Church Data. In that folder you put all screens and music files. You place that folder besides the mansionfile in the Custom Mansions folder. And when you start playing Church, the game automatically finds the needed files in the Church Data folder!
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