Cross-Platform Modding

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Revision as of 11:52, 6 March 2010 by TX (talk | contribs)
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EDuke32 is cross-platform and supports Mac OS X and Linux as well as Windows. A properly made mod can run on any OS supported by EDuke32, but some considerations need to be made.

Checklist

  1. Is my mod in a file that users of other operating systems can open? (No self-extracting files or installer programs. zip, rar, and 7z files are good.)
  2. Did I type all the filenames with the same case as the actual files and directories? All Unix-like operating systems (Unix, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X) are case-sensitive. This means that MyMod.con, MYMOD.CON and mymod.con are all different files. Make sure you type the paths exactly as they appear, or EDuke32 will not find them. It is recommended (and standard practice on these systems) to always use lowercase file and directory names so that there is not confusion.
  3. Can my mod play nicely with other mods and existing EDuke32 installs? Operating systems like Linux keep their programs, data, and configuration in separate locations and will have only one copy of EDuke32 and a standard directory to load mods from. Therefore, well-behaved mods will keep their files separate from files for other mods and not autoload by default. If you keep your mod together in a zip file, or a directory to be loaded with "-game_dir", you should be okay. Bundling your whole working directory with a full install of EDuke32 and DukePlus, loose EDUKE.CON and duke3d.def files, and a complicated batch file is not acceptable. As simple as it may be for Windows users, it requires a lot of work for users of other operating systems to play your mod. (It may also cause problems for people that have EDuke32 set up a specific way on Windows.)