Loading an external ".grp"with Van Buren, how?

RedneckHax0r

RedneckHax0r

Born from rust, and firing on one cylinder.
Greeting, I'm Redneck, I've been a lurker on-and-off since 2008, and I've been messing around with Van Buren through the years, and I kinda have a love/hate relationship with the engine itself. I'll get to my point in a moment but I feel as though I need to explain, out of fear of being misunderstood.

I've played the Bethesda releases and got into 1 & 2 a bit, but then found Tactics, fell in love, and wanted more. I remembered the Van Buren tech demo and played with it for a while and wanted more from it, in my attempts to getting further into the demo itself, I kinda started liking the Jefferson engine more than the game itself (call me crazy), I've repackaged ".grp" files with minor edits to change subtle things, I've even tried finding the source of Jefferson Engine a couple times(Yeah, I'm crazy). I've come to realize getting the source is impossible, but I still wanted to mod Van Buren, and I have via hex editing. But I never knew of a way to load *non-vanilla* ".grps". I wonder if you all know of a way for me to do this.

This is a simple "mod" that makes the player spawn in the Tutorial Vault: *file removed, completely useless*

I hope I packed it correctly and I would greatly appreciate it if you can help me load it.

Link to my blog for updated info: https://redneckattempts.blogspot.com/
 
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Edit: I've tried to edit my above post, but it says that my content is "spam-like or contains inappropriate elements", this is what my edit is:

This is a simple "mod" that is supposed to make the player spawn in the Tutorial Vault. I have no way of making the game load it however. I hope I packed it correctly though, and I would greatly appreciate it if you can help me load it.
 
I don't think anyone around here ever did any modding for this alpha-state engine. At least I've never heard about more than simple 3d model exports to render them into 2d.
 
I may of stumbled upon my answer on accident, earlier I noticed that where the red circle is, is where the file knows how many files there are inside of it: *file removed, check my blog ;D*

I think resource.rht determines which file is loaded and in what order. I'm going to try adding my grp in there and increasing it's file listing by 1.
 
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Well, editing resource.rht led me nowhere, also does anyone know if the person who made the .grp extractor also made a way to repack them as well? My method doesn't seem to work, or at least, I haven't found a way to make it work.

On another note, I also found some info on ".ent_critter" files:

In the beginning of the ".ent_critter" file is a string called: "HumFStr" or whatever for each character. "HumFStr" would mean the Character is a Strong body-style, female, human.

SKIN_HUMF_DEFAULT_LG.DDS/ SKIN_HUMM_DEFAULT_LG.DDS determines the texture for that character, these are default human character skins.

I'm also looking for a way to load the .CRT in "My Documents/Characters/F3" back into Van Buren to see if it stores the character location in there, thus creating a very basic save system.
 
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WOW! I used my brain, turns out extracting the "Engine.grp" editing sys.ini and placing the extracted folder in "Override" actually does something: It overrides the default settings with what is in "Override"....figures. I wish I would've known that earlier.

No need to find a way to load an external ".grp" anymore, just place it all in "Override", Now to try to find a way to save and load.....the near-impossible part.
 
I will, and in order to prevent insanity with all my forums posts(I do that, I admit) there's a blog about this now: https://redneckattempts.blogspot.com/

I've already figured out some new things relating to ".CRT" files(not yet posted on blog)

Also, I'm only human, so if any info seems wrong or anything, let me know.
 
I downloaded van buren twice iirc and i couldnt make it work here, if you can solve this i'll download it again (in a 56 kbps connection) and i hope you'll be successfull.
 
What is your goal? To make a playable fallout mod on that engine? Or are you trying to recreate the original unfinished game? I'm sorry if it sounds silly, but I'm getting hyped when someone mentions ''van buren''. Good luck!
 
It's actually more of research into the engine itself, see how it works and what can be done with it, if I find a way to make a playable mod for it, then that's a plus.

Also, I actually already made a patch for the "Slightly-NSFW" female PCs that I put on the second post of the blog I linked, it crashes when you enter combat however, it's still a WIP.
 
It's really been since 2018 since I posted an update on here? The "research" is still going, I just only post info to Discord nowadays, the Discord link is on the blog post linked in the first post here if anyone is interested.
 
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