Anniversary Edition/Framework: Difference between revisions

The Installer first looks for any patches (.oni-patch files) among the user's chosen mods. An .oni-patch is named according to the resource it modifies, e.g. TRAMKONCOMbk_fw_kick.oni-patch, and placed in a folder with a level's name, such as level2_Final/, in order to indicate which level it patches (just like the .oni files in mod packages).

Because patches are intended to take precedence over any regular mods, the Installer checks whether any selected mods have a .oni file, meant for the same level, which matches the .oni-patch's name. If so, it converts the mod's .oni file to XML; otherwise it extracts the resource by that name from the vanilla .dat of the appropriate level (stored in AE/AEInstaller/vanilla/). If more than one mod has a matching .oni, the highest-numbered mod's .oni is used.

The AEI makes a single temporary patch file which lists inside of it a series of commands to XmlTools to perform the instructions in each individual .oni-patch file. This "master patch" is made for performance reasons and should not affect the modder who creates .oni-patches. Read the documentation for [[XmlTools]] to understand how the patch files are actually processed, and read [[Making a patch mod]] to learn how to make an XML patch mod.

The newly-made .oni files, with the patches applied, overwrite the .oni files in the directory in which they were placed in step 2.

For each level, the AEI passes OniSplit the location of the vanilla AE .dat (in AE/AEInstaller/vanilla/) plus a list of directories that contain .oni files meant for that level, in ascending order by mod number so that higher-numbered mods override lower ones*. The last directory in the list is the temporary directory containing the patched .oni files from step 5, so that the patched files override any other versions of those resources. The final .dat/.raw(/.sep) files have now been created in the AE's GDF.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Note that this is on a file-by-file basis. So a package numbered 11111 will only override package 11110 wherever their files conflict, when they are both installed. Thus a package numbered 11111 could be used intentionally to override only certain files in 11110, e.g., to improve or fix them. On the other hand, a partial override by a higher package might be an undesirable interaction. It's the responsibility of the modders to be aware when there's an unwanted interaction and to mark their mod as being incompatible with the other one using the Incompatibility flag described in [[Making a mod package]].