primordial stew
Emperor
Don't know if this is below even the SDK, but what would be amazingly helpful to all modders is a new routine added somewhere deep in the bowls of warlords which checks to see if the necessary graphics files actually exist, before the game finds this and bombs out without telling us anything as to what the problem is.
My guess is that the graphics engine fatals whenever it doesn't get what it is supposed to. So sometime before that can happen, after all of the xml is loaded, all the paths are set, and everything is just about to go, just loop through all referenced graphics to see if they actually do exist. If something doesn't, just put a log message about it in some log, and then let the game die normally.
I don't know much about the architecture of game, so maybe this doesn't need to be SDK, maybe it can be done in python? I know python is loaded before a graphics or map problem can kill the game. Hmm...
I thought about an external script, but .fpk files make that awkward since there's no utility to just list the contents. So something that runs in the game may be best.
Can someone create this?
My guess is that the graphics engine fatals whenever it doesn't get what it is supposed to. So sometime before that can happen, after all of the xml is loaded, all the paths are set, and everything is just about to go, just loop through all referenced graphics to see if they actually do exist. If something doesn't, just put a log message about it in some log, and then let the game die normally.
I don't know much about the architecture of game, so maybe this doesn't need to be SDK, maybe it can be done in python? I know python is loaded before a graphics or map problem can kill the game. Hmm...
I thought about an external script, but .fpk files make that awkward since there's no utility to just list the contents. So something that runs in the game may be best.
Can someone create this?
