Naming conventions for CAMPAIGN FILES

(G0-Gerbil) #1

While exploring my etmain/ folder, I came across several campaign files with incredibly stupid names.

I am referring to:

pak5.pk3
pak7.pk3

Why is this stupid?
Because they’ve used the naming convention of official PK3 files. Should SD choose to release client-side patches (and who knows? fingers crossed) then these are the kind of names they’ll be using - which means either people won’t be able to use these campaigns (it’ll abort cos pk3s don’t match) or, GOD FORBID, it’ll download the campaign files OVER the proper PK3s (not likely, but still…).

Can people ALSO just please make them obvious?

How about:

campaign_<your_unique_campaign_name>.pk3

eg

campaign_custom_maps_suck.pk3

etc?
Come on guys, use a little common sense and don’t spam our folders with meaningless or potentially damaging files!

(Pog'S) #2

makes sense :slight_smile:
Secret Operations file will be : SO_campaignname_mapname.pk3

(zEal) #3

There is a reason someone would use a filename such as that, if they were including modified versions of original files. The engine appears to require that naming convention to ‘update’ default skins, sounds, etc. However I’ve experimented with this myself some and have found that the engine only need the first three letters of the file to be ‘pak’, this would allow people making such mods to not cause potential problems with future patches. For example, the paks being made for a full conversion I’m a part of uses the naming convention ‘pak_cp_##.pk3’ this seems to work just as well as a ‘pak5.pk3’ would in the eyes of the engine.

(Fenris) #4

Most likely you’d get a pak5.pk3 and a pak5.h5j834b.pk3 where h5j834b = ome random number, still a bad idea anyway, also it’s much easier to clean out old unused campaigns if they don’t appear as required default pakfiles.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that some people renames the maps as well when creating their own campaigns, can’t say why since I usually just delete them if I get them, and haven’t bothered to check if/what is changed inside the map except the name, but personally I don’t like that either, as it means multiple downloads of the same map.

(zEal) #5

I wasn’t refering to pk3’s with campaigns in them, using this naming convention in that regard would be asinine. I was making reference strictly to mods (read: not campaigns, not maps) that REQUIRE the pk3 file to have ‘pak’ as the first three letters. Such as full conversion mods, default sound mods, default skin mods, etc. Everyone that puts campaign files into a pk3 starting with ‘pak’ need to be tied together and pushed off a cliff. :smiley: