RCT Discussion / Package dat Files to Accompany Park

I'm sure this has probably been discussed somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. When uploading a park, or when sending someone a save file for a park that contains custom scenery objects they don't have, how do you create a zip folder or whatever that contains just the dat files for that park?

If you are trying to export your objects there is a button in the options called "export plug in objects with saved games" or something like that.

 

If you want to place the non-exportable rides in a zip file, you'll have to do that manually.

If you have non-exporting objects try saving with OpenRCT2 - it should be able to export them. I've heard there are still failure cases but I wasn't able to find any.

And that's "backward"-compatible to RCT2 opening?

Yes, the non-exporting is caused by a checksum issue. OpenRCT2 will modify objects to force the checksum to match. It retains the original checksum, so the two versions are not distinguished by the game - any park that had the original version will open fine if you have the exporting version installed.

 

There's a few subtleties - users who had already installed the object manually retain the broken version as the game considers it already installed. Anyone who did not previously have the object will have a modified version installed that should export even when saving in vanilla.

 

Since NE uses MD5 rather than the game's checksum to distinguish objects, it can distinguish between exporting and non-exporting versions of the same object. Some objects may therefore appear twice in the object database as a result of this.

Good to know, thank you.

 

So could we technically replace all the SV6s of NE releases with "true" non-exporting DATs in them with the fixed ORCT2 ones, in an attempt to extinct non-exporting DATs altogether?

Yes, we could. I have a script that does that, though it may be too slow to process every park on NE (it was intended to process new ones as they are added). I have some ideas for speeding it up though, and I can always download the parks and process them offline.

 

It's unlikely that non-exporting DATs will ever be gone completely - there's enough copies of them floating around and Buggy's ridemaker still has the bug that causes it.

Well at least having NE releases non-exporting DAT free would be an important step. We should then integrate that check as one of the steps of submission approval before the download gets public.

I think that the non-exporting versions will eventually go extinct simply because objdata folders get renewed by people all the time.