CPKREDIR - loading and combining mods for Sonic Generations

A few people still seem to prefer releasing mods as CPKs instead of just the modified files. Plus there are a few older mods that only exist as CPKs.
To get those mods working with CPKREDIR, you have to extract the files from the mod CPKs and if possible delete all files that haven't been modified.
That can be tedious work, so I made a little program to automate the process.
You'll still have to manually create a mod.ini for any mods you extract, but that shouldn't be too difficult.
You can download the program here.

 

Update:
CPKREDIR v0.41

Now save file redirection works with older versions of SonicGenerations.exe (no more error 0xc000142).
And there's a new SaveFileOverride setting, for forcing your own save file on mods without having to disable save file redirection.

 

Thanks for the notice.
First, it looks like you're running v1.0.0.1 of SonicGenerations.exe. The current version is 1.0.0.5, so update the game if possible.

Second, my guess is the game crashes because the redirected save file is attempted to be written to a folder for which you don't have write permissions.
One solution is to run the game with admin privileges (right-click -> run as admin).
A better solution is to check save file settings in cpkredir.ini (namely SafeFileFallback and SafeFileOverride) and in the mod.ini you're using, and to make sure they point to places where you're allowed to create files.
Since mods probably want to save files in their own subfolder, you should take ownership of the parent folder in which you keep all mods (check the "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects" option). You also should have write access to Sonic Generation's folder (usually C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\sonic generations), so take ownership of that as well, if necessary.

 

I'm not intentionally adding support for pirated versions. If I could, I'd make CPKREDIR work only with legitimate copies of the game.
The problem is, how do you detect that a copy is pirated?
I could remove support for all but the current version of SonicGenerations.exe (v1.0.0.5), as legitimate users should always have the latest update.
I could check if there's a suspicious DLL in Sonic Generation's folder, as many pirated versions use a cracked steam_api.dll called storm_api.dll or burst_api.dll.
Tell me if you think I should really be doing this. And if you have any good ideas for detecting pirated copies, I'm all ears.

The console was disabled by default, as it seemed to cause performance problems for some people.
Just open cpkredir.ini and make sure it contains the line "LogType=console". If you're using the default cpkredir.ini from the latest zip file, this line is already there, but commented out. So just remove the ";" in front of it.

 

I built a flexible patching system to be forward compatible, so that CPKREDIR would be likely to work with Sonic Generations v1.0.0.6 and beyond, should there ever be any more updates released (yeah, seems unlikely).
The fact that this also makes it backward compatible to Sonic Generations v1.0.0.4 and older was just a welcome side effect.
I could implement a simple version check to test if SonicGenerations.exe is older than v1.0.0.5, display an error message and refuse to run. But given how easily this could be circumvented, it's probably not worth the effort. Still, it might deter some pirates who don't know how to use a hex editor.

That's how I see it as well. While it might be fun to annoy people who try to run CPKREDIR with a pirated copy of Sonic Generations, every measure that I take could be circumvented. And unless CPKREDIR v0.5 introduces a killer feature that most mods would end up relying on, people could just continue using v0.4.

 

Yep, it is.
You might want to add controls for the new SaveFileOverride key to SonicGMI, because it's the way to play mods such as Dragon Road with your own save file instead of the mod's save file. Without disabling save file redirection, which ideally should always stay enabled.

 

So, with the release of the Sonic Generations Unleashed Project, cpkredir is put to the test like never before.
If you run into any errors, please report them here. Reproducible errors complete with test cases would be best, of course.

I've experienced a few infinite loading screens myself after quitting a stage, but so far I haven't been able to reproduce the error and track down the cause.

However, I have found and fixed a bug that prevented cpkredir from adding external files via the normal IncludeDir function when a CPK ini (bb/bb2/bb3.ini) was specified.
I'll post an update soon.

 

Interesting. Is that mod still available somewhere? I could never reproduce that problem, so that bug might still exist.

In other news, mega bump. First post has been updated.