I recently upgraded from v5.40 to v5.45. To my surprise, all my characters now cannot load their respective mods. From another thread I found out that with v5.45 now strip the swf mod from chardata/Code.txt and enforce loading from Mods.txt, and this opens a whole lot can of worms to me.
1. I never had any success loading vanilla SDT mods from Mods.txt, and it is the same with v5.45. I'm attaching my own mod built from kona's original mod template with Flash CC. The mod will load and work in vanilla, v5.40, and v5.45 if it isn't loaded from Mods.txt. So I'm asking what gives?
2. In troubleshooting why the mod cannot load, I'm using SysInternal's ProcMon, which leads to another problem:
2a. If the "Default Folder" option somehow got saved into SDT preferences, then it will be appended to the final location of the mod. Example, mod foo.swf resides along with Mods.txt in "Mods\test" folder. The game root is at "C:\Loader", and somehow the "Default Folder" option got saved into SDT's options flash cache as containing "Mods\". Assume the Mods.txt contains only 1 line listing foo.swf without any path. The final path Loader will try fo look for the mod is "C:\Loader\Mods\Mods\Test\foo.swf"
2b. It seems Loader is hardcoded to append the path where Mods.txt reside to the files listed in it. This lead to inefficiency whereby it is "REQUIRED" that the mods to be loaded with Mods.txt to reside at the same place, or in a sub folder of Mods.txt folder. This is why I hate Mods.txt so much, cos I have to make multiple copies of the same mod everytime I create a character. The mod I'm attaching is used by multiple characters, and I'm tweaking it every now and then. With Mods.txt scheme, everytime I update the mod, I have to copy it to multiple locations. That is why I'm loading it with chardata instead, cos at least I can force SDT/Loader to read from a central path by listing the mod with full path. With Mods.txt, everything breaks. See problem 2a, where the full path is appended to Mods.txt path.
Before anyone suggesting that Mods.txt accept relative path and work from there, I've tried, and it's broken. Try using "..\ModsRepo\foo.swf" and see if it gets you anywhere. From ProcMon I deduced Loader is treating it as invalid path and won't even try to find the mod. *NIX guys can work around it with symlinks, but Windows guys are doomed.
So I'm asking, if Mods.txt is the way forward, what's wrong with my mod and why Mods.txt can't load it, and please pretty please fix path issues with Mods.txt.
Thanks
EDIT:
"skin" settings in Code.txt affects body mods.
To fix, "loadCodeLast=0" in Settings.txt, or remove skin setting.
EDIT2:
To load mods from a single source it's possible to exploit modDataLoader to reuse the "Data" directory as demonstrated by skp.swf:
http://www.sdtmods.com/index.php?topic=6701.0
1. I never had any success loading vanilla SDT mods from Mods.txt, and it is the same with v5.45. I'm attaching my own mod built from kona's original mod template with Flash CC. The mod will load and work in vanilla, v5.40, and v5.45 if it isn't loaded from Mods.txt. So I'm asking what gives?
2. In troubleshooting why the mod cannot load, I'm using SysInternal's ProcMon, which leads to another problem:
2a. If the "Default Folder" option somehow got saved into SDT preferences, then it will be appended to the final location of the mod. Example, mod foo.swf resides along with Mods.txt in "Mods\test" folder. The game root is at "C:\Loader", and somehow the "Default Folder" option got saved into SDT's options flash cache as containing "Mods\". Assume the Mods.txt contains only 1 line listing foo.swf without any path. The final path Loader will try fo look for the mod is "C:\Loader\Mods\Mods\Test\foo.swf"
2b. It seems Loader is hardcoded to append the path where Mods.txt reside to the files listed in it. This lead to inefficiency whereby it is "REQUIRED" that the mods to be loaded with Mods.txt to reside at the same place, or in a sub folder of Mods.txt folder. This is why I hate Mods.txt so much, cos I have to make multiple copies of the same mod everytime I create a character. The mod I'm attaching is used by multiple characters, and I'm tweaking it every now and then. With Mods.txt scheme, everytime I update the mod, I have to copy it to multiple locations. That is why I'm loading it with chardata instead, cos at least I can force SDT/Loader to read from a central path by listing the mod with full path. With Mods.txt, everything breaks. See problem 2a, where the full path is appended to Mods.txt path.
Before anyone suggesting that Mods.txt accept relative path and work from there, I've tried, and it's broken. Try using "..\ModsRepo\foo.swf" and see if it gets you anywhere. From ProcMon I deduced Loader is treating it as invalid path and won't even try to find the mod. *NIX guys can work around it with symlinks, but Windows guys are doomed.
So I'm asking, if Mods.txt is the way forward, what's wrong with my mod and why Mods.txt can't load it, and please pretty please fix path issues with Mods.txt.
Thanks
EDIT:
"skin" settings in Code.txt affects body mods.
To fix, "loadCodeLast=0" in Settings.txt, or remove skin setting.
EDIT2:
To load mods from a single source it's possible to exploit modDataLoader to reuse the "Data" directory as demonstrated by skp.swf:
http://www.sdtmods.com/index.php?topic=6701.0
