Detection and handling of Doomsday 2 packages (.pack)

deus-ex

1. I've just noticed that Doomsday won't detect the DHMP addon packages, if they are NOT located in a subfolder with the folder name ending with '.pack'. Is that on purpose?

2. Furthermore, Doomsday cannot handle packages correctly, that are placed in folders where the folder name begins with an underscore '_'. Packages located in a folder named '_.pack' or '_<some characters>.pack' do appear in the MOD management dialog and can be added to the load list, but the detail view (right-click) remains completely empty, loading a game fails, notifying the user to fix the seleted addon, which in this situation is impossible. Snowberry (.pk3) addons placed in a folder named '_.pack' or '_<some characters>.pack' are not detected at all.

3. Also, Doomsday does not detect Doomsday 2 packages placed in folders named just '.pack'. However Doomsday detects and correctly handles Snowberry (.pk3) addons located in a folder named '.pack'. I find that inconsistent.

If these are restrictions that cannot be removed, they should be mentioned in the manual.

skyjake

I reviewed the package documentation in the Manual. Most of the important information is in there, except one key piece seems to be missing: package identifiers are required to have at least two components, e.g., "dhmp.modelname". This is because I want identifiers to somehow identify the origin/author/domain that created the package.

1 — If you check out the section about Subpackages, it explains how identifiers are formed by combining the parent folder(s) name to the .pack. The two-component minimum requirement still applies.

2 — The underscore is a special character in .pack file names (File name and identifier). An empty file name should be rejected as an error, so that seems to be a bug.

3 — See all of the above.

These rules are only applied to .pack packages. Older formats like PK3 don't follow them because the rules weren't in place when the older resource packs were created. (Internally, Doomsday generates well-formed .pack packages representing PK3 and other older formats, and the Doomsday Script prompt can be used to dig around these if one is interested.)

deus-ex

The requirement that folder names need to end with .pack, too, isn't clearly enough communicated at the beginning of the format description. The way I perceived it was, that a D2 package can either be a folder, or a ZIP file that needs to end with .pack instead of .zip.

In the subpackage section the naming requirements are explained more detailed indeed, but that info is located in the middle of the description. I currently don't work with subpackages, so I never paid much attention to that section. I guess this is how everyone starting to work with D2 packages would perceive the information. I.e. reading just through the first sections of the description, then trying to create their first working package.

I suggest to change the description as follows:

Current:
"Package format
A Doomsday 2 package is a folder or a ZIP archive that uses the .pack extension and contains the required metadata that describes the contents of the package."

Change to:
"Package format
A Doomsday 2 package can either be a folder or a ZIP archive, both requiring the .pack extension, and contains the required metadata that describes the contents of the package."

And probably add a section 'naming conventions' at the beginning of the package definition, to make the naming requirements stand out more clearly.

skyjake

I updated the page, let me know if you have more comments.

deus-ex

Upon checking your update of the manual I came across the main page Packages / File system for the first time. Its description of the packages (folder/ZIP archive) should probably be amended, too.