Authentic Old-School Mabinogi Experience
Checking for outdated Mods (data folder) (rev. 1 by LazyFae on 10-05-20, 02:57 am)
Posted at 10-01-20, 04:36 am Link | #1
Thread's a bit wordy, sorry about that. Tech stuff tends to require lots of words for layman's purposes though. Process itself though, is actually really simple, so I'd encourage readers to not shy away. I'll even share the simplified steps in a spoiler that this guide covers, and you'll see them again below. Which should show the difference in Layman's terms as opposed to a bit of experience, and highlights how simple this actually is in the end.
This is just to tell if your mods are outdated, this is not a guide to updating them, though I may do that in another thread if requested. This only covers the data folder, patcher or dlls are beyond me.
Things you'll need: MabiPro, Mabi UnPacker, and a data folder. If you don't have a data folder and you're certain you have mods, then it's a patcher which is not covered here.
https://mabimods.net/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item33 Link to UnPacker, on Mabimods. I will not supply another link, you are welcome to find another source if you wish. Anything that can view or extract a pack file will suffice for what we're doing, so long as you understand the tool you are using.
You will need to know where you installed MabiPro as well as your UnPacker. Any location references, will assume you're starting within the Pro folder.
First you'll want to decide on a file within your data folder to check if it's outdated. For the purpose of this guide, I'll be using data/db/itemdb.xml. Starting off with an older pack, just to give a rough idea of what you'll generally be seeing, then moving on to a more recent pack.
With UnPacker open, click the toolbar for File, then Open. You should be going to your package folder. Image above shows my package folder, and the pack file I chose to open. In live, the names are more reader friendly, in Pro they probably seem like gibberish. Just check the date modified to see which one is most recent. In fact, I strongly advise sorting your pack folder by date modified, and when opening files with UnPacker you do the same through it. There are two panes for your unpacker, left and right. Left is the file directories and file names, right is currentl selection's content. Right pane will only show text based files, images and such will not be previewed. This would be my itemdb.xml. As you can see, pack files use the same structure as your data folder.
The example has been for data/db/itemdb.xml, but I opened an old pack. I can extract files from this pack, but in doing so, I should assume I'm grabbing outdated files. There's plenty of reasons to avoid outdated files, but all that matters is it's bad. There's more that could be said on extracting, but let's not ramble. With some logic you could glean necessary info from what's in this thread though.
With this, you may understand why an older pack was showcased first. More files in the older, less in the newer. Obviously I skipped a few packs, but keep in mind we're only looking to see if one specific file is updated, itemdb.xml. All the other files you see from the original image, are meaningless for this. What matters is the most recent pack has itemdb, so we know it's been updated since the first example. Any updates that were in between, don't matter. Game may see the old ones, but it's basically going to say "we're using the shiny new one!!" So that's what matters, the shiny new one.
In the case of mods at least for pro, data folder is always your shiny new one. No matter how old a data folder file is, or how new pack files are, the game is gonna think your data folder is the new one and read it. This is how you get outdated mods and why they're bad, because updates do not add to your data folder and the game doesn't recognize the newer files that came with the update, because of your mod.
While the process may be slow, the method for checking for outdated mods is simple. Check the date modified for your data folder mod, data/db/itemdb.xml, then go through any pack files that are more recent than your mod, looking for your file. We're not updating, just checking if it's outdated. So the order you go through the packs, won't matter, just check every pack more recent than the mod until you either find the file or confirm it is not there. In the case that you can't find the file in any packs released after your mod, that means your mod is currently up to date and safe to use.
At the time of writing this post, you can see today's date on my itemdb, (left) and the date of my most recent pack file, ordered by modified date. (right) Itemdb is more recent, making it safe to keep for now. Next game update, we'll follow the process again, look for it in the most recent pack file. If we find it in the pack file, then it needs to be removed from our data/db. If it is not in the most recent pack file, it's good to stay until an update happens that includes it.
For a first timer, doing the process again may sound daunting. But now that we don't need all the layman's terms and we can assume you'll know what to do, it can be broken into some really simple steps.
1)Open UnPacker.
2) Open most recent Pack file with UnPacker.
3)Cross check file names with your data folder.
4) (If Necessary) Delete files from your data folder, if they show up in the pack file.
That's it, you're done. I will say, that 90% of the time the only outdated files you will usually have to watch for, are any files within data/db. There are files in other locations, but they generally will not be overwritten again. So after going through data/db, it's actually recommended to start up your game, if there's no problems you shouldn't even need to look into other directories. If you think something is wrong, is about the only time you'll care to check them.
_________________________
Discord: Tonkatunk#7079
https://github.com/Tonkatunk/Mabi-Pro-Lazyfae-Mods
This is just to tell if your mods are outdated, this is not a guide to updating them, though I may do that in another thread if requested. This only covers the data folder, patcher or dlls are beyond me.
Things you'll need: MabiPro, Mabi UnPacker, and a data folder. If you don't have a data folder and you're certain you have mods, then it's a patcher which is not covered here.
https://mabimods.net/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item33 Link to UnPacker, on Mabimods. I will not supply another link, you are welcome to find another source if you wish. Anything that can view or extract a pack file will suffice for what we're doing, so long as you understand the tool you are using.
You will need to know where you installed MabiPro as well as your UnPacker. Any location references, will assume you're starting within the Pro folder.
First you'll want to decide on a file within your data folder to check if it's outdated. For the purpose of this guide, I'll be using data/db/itemdb.xml. Starting off with an older pack, just to give a rough idea of what you'll generally be seeing, then moving on to a more recent pack.
With UnPacker open, click the toolbar for File, then Open. You should be going to your package folder. Image above shows my package folder, and the pack file I chose to open. In live, the names are more reader friendly, in Pro they probably seem like gibberish. Just check the date modified to see which one is most recent. In fact, I strongly advise sorting your pack folder by date modified, and when opening files with UnPacker you do the same through it. There are two panes for your unpacker, left and right. Left is the file directories and file names, right is currentl selection's content. Right pane will only show text based files, images and such will not be previewed. This would be my itemdb.xml. As you can see, pack files use the same structure as your data folder.
The example has been for data/db/itemdb.xml, but I opened an old pack. I can extract files from this pack, but in doing so, I should assume I'm grabbing outdated files. There's plenty of reasons to avoid outdated files, but all that matters is it's bad. There's more that could be said on extracting, but let's not ramble. With some logic you could glean necessary info from what's in this thread though.
With this, you may understand why an older pack was showcased first. More files in the older, less in the newer. Obviously I skipped a few packs, but keep in mind we're only looking to see if one specific file is updated, itemdb.xml. All the other files you see from the original image, are meaningless for this. What matters is the most recent pack has itemdb, so we know it's been updated since the first example. Any updates that were in between, don't matter. Game may see the old ones, but it's basically going to say "we're using the shiny new one!!" So that's what matters, the shiny new one.
In the case of mods at least for pro, data folder is always your shiny new one. No matter how old a data folder file is, or how new pack files are, the game is gonna think your data folder is the new one and read it. This is how you get outdated mods and why they're bad, because updates do not add to your data folder and the game doesn't recognize the newer files that came with the update, because of your mod.
While the process may be slow, the method for checking for outdated mods is simple. Check the date modified for your data folder mod, data/db/itemdb.xml, then go through any pack files that are more recent than your mod, looking for your file. We're not updating, just checking if it's outdated. So the order you go through the packs, won't matter, just check every pack more recent than the mod until you either find the file or confirm it is not there. In the case that you can't find the file in any packs released after your mod, that means your mod is currently up to date and safe to use.
At the time of writing this post, you can see today's date on my itemdb, (left) and the date of my most recent pack file, ordered by modified date. (right) Itemdb is more recent, making it safe to keep for now. Next game update, we'll follow the process again, look for it in the most recent pack file. If we find it in the pack file, then it needs to be removed from our data/db. If it is not in the most recent pack file, it's good to stay until an update happens that includes it.
For a first timer, doing the process again may sound daunting. But now that we don't need all the layman's terms and we can assume you'll know what to do, it can be broken into some really simple steps.
1)Open UnPacker.
2) Open most recent Pack file with UnPacker.
3)Cross check file names with your data folder.
4) (If Necessary) Delete files from your data folder, if they show up in the pack file.
That's it, you're done. I will say, that 90% of the time the only outdated files you will usually have to watch for, are any files within data/db. There are files in other locations, but they generally will not be overwritten again. So after going through data/db, it's actually recommended to start up your game, if there's no problems you shouldn't even need to look into other directories. If you think something is wrong, is about the only time you'll care to check them.
_________________________
Discord: Tonkatunk#7079
https://github.com/Tonkatunk/Mabi-Pro-Lazyfae-Mods
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