For Lerster - re: 9 character maps in pak files

[Baker]

Lerster, you were not thrilled that certain maps like bomberman couldn't go in a pak file. Well, actually that is a limitation of Pak Explorer (<--- sux).

Use PakScape and bomberman and other maps that exceed 8 character names can go into pak files.

Yeah, authors should really limit the names of maps to 8 characters for reasons that seem to elude some of them (such as some mods, engine code I imagine in server-side old QW servers engines/DOSQuake and maybe some engine side for other things occasionally, some QuakeC code expects 8 digit files names) and I notice that so far I've not seen a DM map that breaks that informal rule, but tons of SP maps do.

Download: PakScape Link/Info/Download

[Solecord]

..... razzing me for posting stuff that coulda been sent via PM .....

[FrikaC]

There's really nothing preventing longer filenames in Quake. Most of what you listed is incorrect. QuakeC doesn't care, QuakeWorld has never been a DOS application and it doesn't care. Pak files certainly don't care. The filenames in paks are all stored as 56 character strings. Eg, "progs/somesuch.mdl" is what it stores in the pak directory. So the combined length of the path and filename in a pak cannot exceed 56 characters. PakExplorer is old and stupid for enforcing 8.3.

Outside a pak, it's good practice to keep with a 8.3 file naming convention to remain compatible both with DOS Quake and GP32 Quake (which uses FAT12 and 8.3 names) and with older utilities people may still employ such as pkzip. As an extension of this, most content authors try to remain strict to the 8.3 convention so the content works pak'd or unpak'd and with all engines directly.

[Baker]

I've seen some QuakeC code that displays map names in columns and maybe even some (server) engine code and some Linux scripts to support that stuff that expects 8 character map names, that was one of the first things that comes to mind. There was something else too but I can't remember what it was.

I was kinda being vague and disclaiming it by using "I imagine" and such in the wordsmithing :d :d (Didn't feel like doing research to back it up).

[FrikaC]

Well the people who made those scripts and wrote that QuakeC are obviously brain damaged. As is the author of Pak Explorer.

[Lerster]

Pak explorer

Well, personally i wouldn't be to hard on the creator of that particular software....

There's a number of reasons for sticking with a 8character limit. Those people that are hard up on dos is awesome... and whatnot. After all you have to remember that was built quite a long time ago.

Also maybe at the time the program was built there wasn't an easy route to creating the program using unrestrained windows, filenaming. Course i have no clue, as i forget when it was built i think it was 98.

Anyways, i got no clue. I just liked it because it's super user friendly, and u can wack off while u move stuff around in a pak file. Plus it's GUI unlike some old console based pak file builder/editors.

And yes, baker i think you told me that it had the 8char limit b4 in game, on some server i was bitching over how i couldn't get the bomberman map into my pak file.