Mod deployment: BFME Mod Launcher

[Koen 2]

Everyone who wants to make a mod for BFME probably has found out by now: the game is incredibly picky when it comes to mods. It will only read BIG files if they are in the "Application dataMy BFME files" folder through the -mod switch. That's what I found at least.

 

The goal of BFME Mod Launcher is to allow you to easily deploy a mod, together with a launching program and an installer.

As an example of deployment you can try the RingMod example and see how it works.

 

Here's a screenshot of the launcher program:

 

What the program does:

- install your mod

- offer option to make a desktop shortcut to your mod

- install BFME Mod Launcher

- create start menu group 'BFME Mods' and puts your mod in there (direct launch from the shortcut is not yet in build 4).

- displays a screenshot of your mod, version, author, website and a custom icon (as I did in the screenshot, I gave my mod a Generals icon).

- installer with LZMA compression, giving much smaller files than ZIP.

 

What it does not yet do:

- directly launch the mod from the start menu shortcut or the desktop shortcut. I just forgot to add this in, it will be in the next version.

- you cannot use custom Asset.dat, custom movies. Only single .BIG files are supported in the first version.

- preferences dialog is missing (cannot yet change game folder and things like that).

 

The toolkit to deploy mods is not yet ready, but what do you think? What would it take (feature-wise) for you to use this program for mod deployment. I am now talking to people who do not use Tibed 2, as for TibEd 2 the program will be mandatory.

 

Hope to hear!