[iOS, Modding] .pstoverride files?
CrevsDaak
Member Posts: 7,155
in PST:EE Mods
If you go to the planescape.com site, and scroll down, you can see that there are a bunch of things to download, the manual, Even More Irish Annah and Easter-Egg Morte. OK, that's what everyone would expect, but if you look closer on the NPC appearance changes, it says "to install in iOS click here" and links you to a .pstoverride file (a zip file with a different extension, nothing weird here). Basically, this means that iOS versions of the game are much more moddable than any other of the EEs. I just hope they port this over to BG:EE and company when they release their next patch.
Right now, this is pure speculation because I yet have to see it work, but it's certainly very good for they few that would like to distribute non-WeiDU mods without new strings for iOS IE games.
Right now, this is pure speculation because I yet have to see it work, but it's certainly very good for they few that would like to distribute non-WeiDU mods without new strings for iOS IE games.
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Not that I usually play with mods, but it always felt like the iOS BG1/2:EEs were missing out on stuff that everyone else easily had access to.
@JuliusBorisov - any word on what you can do with the .pstoverride files? Can you load a dialog.tlk?
*crosses fingers*
In so doing, people can use this thread to discuss modding on tablets ( since it seems to be a real possibility now.....)
However, there are a few important considerations for the iOS mod scene...
1. It is very cumbersome to access to dialog.tlk. Any mods that might work on iOS are pretty much restricted to stuff you can just drop in the override directory unless you have a PC version of PST:EE to work with.
2. iOS has a case-sensitive filesystem. It is entirely possible to have BANTTIMG.2DA and banttimg.2da in your override directory at the same time. You need to be careful to deconflict filenames when experimenting.
3. Aside from PST:EE, there is presently no easy way to uninstall mods on iOS. PST:EE has iTunes File Sharing enabled, so third-party tools can manually remove files from the override directory. The other games do not have any such access. Without having to reinstall BG, BG2, or IWD, your only other option might be to package an "uninstall mod" which would overwrite files is in the override dir with originals (keeping in mind #2 above).
As long as the mod is fairly basic, there is an okay chance that it will work in the iOS sandbox.
Edit: An old method to slip in a custom dialog.tlk still appears to work.
I feel like it is some form of grave heresy to even suggest this, but it would really convenient if the game could pick up a modified dialog.tlk file from the override directory. You'll still need a PC/Mac to pre-stage most mods before transferring them over, but at least you would have some way for the app to find everything.
As for the downsides, tokens (such as <CHARNAME> or <PRO_HESHE>) are not supported and you can't associate sound files with them. The game might also behave strange or might even crash if you add too many strings. I have tested this method some time ago with mixed success.
This convoluted bit of hackery still seems to work with PST:EE. As a quick test, I successfully overrode my english dialog.tlk with a german translation.
iOS PST may not be entirely limited after all, but you still need a bit of a "lab environment" on your desktop to install/stage mods and then prep everything for transfer.
It wouldn't take too much to automate things with a script to pack a custom .pstoverride and lang.zip, but it is still going to be an ugly process...
As translator of PST:EE to Russian, I tried zip approach for Android & Desktop versions. I have follow structure:
- lang - ru_RU - dialog.tlk - override - graphics... - override - includes.LUAIt's work if you place zipped file to INSTALL:/override or HOME:/override (or just HOME:/, not quite sure). But it's seems that during initialization game don't see dialog.tlk in INSTALL:/lang/ru_RU and then excludes it from available languages, but after accessing to zip it will appear. So, if you translating PST:EE to complete new language, you have to manually set your language after every game restart. But, if you need only override already existing INSTALL:/lang/de_DE/dialog.tlk, it will fine, just place your dialog.tlk to same folder structure (FILE.ZIP:lang/de_DE/dialog.tlk).
languages = { {'en_US', 0, 0, 'English'}, {'de_DE', 0, 0, 'Deutsch'}, {'fr_FR', 0, 0, 'Français'}, {'ko_KR', 0, 0, 'Korean'}, {'pl_PL', 0, 0, 'Polski'} }Infinity_DoFile("util") Infinity_DoFile("BGEE") # Adding new language to languages table table.insert(languages, {'ru_RU', 0, 0, 'Russian'})https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/04/files-app-for-ios-leaked/
Looks promising, we shall see very soon......
So, after watching Apple's WWDC keynote presentation, it is clear that Apple's mobile OS is beginning to look a lot like its desktop..... Nonetheless, we still don't have a real finder........