Mix File Experiments

CCHyper · Defense Minister **Joined**: 07 Apr 2005

Well, Hello all, hope your all doing well Very Happy

It has been a while since I made a proper appearance and made a post, you know, life gets in the way...

PCache.mix
Anyways I was working on the Tiberian Sun Squared Executable yesterday when I stumbled across something what I totally forgot to tell you lot about a while back, a mix file that I have not seen in any ship version of Tiberian Sun or Firestorm, it goes by the name of “PChache.mix”.

Now tell me if I go wrong but I have seen no appearance of this anywhere, no doubt SMIFFGIG has came across it though #Tongue

, so I did some peaking into the code myself, I can just about follow the simplest Assembly routine so I did not find much, but to me it looked like a Patch Cache that could be used in conjunction with Patch.mix. So... as most Modders do, I tested it, I did not have much time to play with loads of files but I tried INI files, and guess what... it worked! PChache.mix works with INI files, so that means that you Modders out there could put all your INI files in one Mix file!

I am somewhat busy the next few days; I do not even have time to play the C&C3 Demo! So if you guys (and girls #Tongue

) out there could do some testing for me that would be much appreciated!

Patch.mix
This file is not new, but I did some testing for Muldrake a while back so he could use it for internal updates for C&C: Tiberian Odyssey, so this part is just a topic of what I know so far with this file...

File Types
.VXL
.HVA
.TEM – Isometric Terrain
.SNO – Isometric Terrain
.INI
.AUD
.PCX

Files
SideC##.mix – Sidebar Resources

So feel free to try out more and post your results here. If I get more time in the future to sit down and work on these then I will update it with my findings.

ELocal.mix
Hmm, well this was only in the Demo version of Tiberian Sun as I recall, some type of Expansion file like Expand##.mix and Ecache##.mix. It would be cool if Extended Tiberian Sun could add a set of files like these, like EConquer##.mix, ELocal##.mix and EIsoTemp/Snow##.mix Etc. Files could be more orginised, Modders could update files with much ease.

Well, that’s it, I got to get back to my normal, busy life #Tongue

TSHyper over and out!

Creagor · Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 6:18 pm Post subject:

Hmm, interesting about "PCache.mix", never seen that before, will test some things on this.

The "Elocal.mix" things would npot be that useful IMO, as ecache/expand.mix files can be used allready. Okay, granted, it might look more organized, but it isnt that necessary.

And I knew about patch.mix, it can be used to have the FS stuff in mods, but is rarley used because it a an awkward setup when its done like that.

Nice findings Hyper Razz

Edit: Do you know what the "F" in front of one of the language.dll references is for?. It may be that FS was going to have a modified version. However Flanguage.dll does nothing I can see, and the exe seems to read the F as somthing separate. My searching through the asm code has revealed nothing also, though like you, this may be due to lack of proper asm knowlage Very Happy

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CCHyper · Defense Minister **Joined**: 07 Apr 2005

hmm, its not used... the F could have been for firestorm, but it is in the exe since the demo #Tongue