OmniPatch Guide

Pyro · Post by **Pyro** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:16 am

To encourage the use of OmniPatch I made this guide. Enjoy.

http://www.geocities.com/kingpyrro/OmniPatch_Guide.html

Website · Post by **iron** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 7:36 pm

Thanks Pyro

I promise I'll get back to work on Omnipatch someday & add some much needed features. Soon...

Pyro · Post by **Pyro** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 9:10 pm

My pleasure. Its quite a useful program that many people just don't use. Very useful for beta testing and their testers with slow or limited internet connections. Many times I would be told it didn't work, only to find out they just placed the file in their plugins folder and didn't know how to use it.

Some are too lazy to figure it out. They must think it will take a lot of time for them to figure it out.

Lugas · Post by **Lugas** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 2:58 pm

How do you make patches for it?

Pyro · Post by **Pyro** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:56 pm

Lugas wrote:How do you make patches for it?

Use the guide to find your answer.

Lugas · Post by **Lugas** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:13 am

Does an omnipatch file contain altered tags that have to be applied to the original file in order to fix a tag-related bug?

Post by **Death's Avatar** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:29 am

Lugas wrote:Does an omnipatch file contain altered tags that have to be applied to the original file in order to fix a tag-related bug?

Uhm, I think you can use it for that.

I don't think that is how it works though. I was always under the impression that omnipatch worked at a deeper level then "tags" per se. Iron, any insight?

vinylrake · Post by **vinylrake** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:56 am

Death's Avatar wrote:
Lugas wrote:Does an omnipatch file contain altered tags that have to be applied to the original file in order to fix a tag-related bug?

Uhm, I think you can use it for that.

I don't think that is how it works though. I was always under the impression that omnipatch worked at a deeper level then "tags" per se. Iron, any insight?

Without really knowing anything about OmniPatch, if (as Pyro's article says) it is a multipurpose file updater tool (e.g. Not Myth plugin specific) then it can't be 'myth tag' specific. It can be used to update _any_ change from one plugin(or file) to another - including bad tags.

Post by **Death's Avatar** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:37 pm

Right, whereas plugin patcher is tag by tag methinks

Website · Post by **iron** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:23 pm

that's correct. Omnipatch doesn't know anything about the files you're creating patches for. Hence you could use it to create a patch from one JPG image to another, or between two versions of a zip file, or a text file, or ... you get the idea

The problem with plugin patcher is this:- Imagine I'm making an 80mb plugin that has lots of beta versions. Using PP I make patches from beta1 to beta2, then 2 to 3, 3 to 4 etc up to my latest beta which is version 9. Then one of my testers who's been away for a couple of months comes back & wants a patch to get him from beta 3 to beta 9. You can do that with plugin patcher, but the resulting plugin will be different from one produced by applying all the 3->4, 4->5, 5->6 etc patches in turn. Different enough to cause OOS. I hit this problem when making B&G, which is why I wrote omnipatch.

Lugas · Post by **Lugas** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:31 pm

So for clarification:

1) I make a small plugin (in normal senarios, it would be big, but you get the idea).
2) I'm not satisfied with the flavor of my new zerk. I create a new plugin that has the flavor I want it to be (with the same name, 4-letter code etc). This plugin has nothing but the new tag.
3)I use omnipatch to make my original plugin have my desired zerk flavor.

Is this correct? If I'm not happy with a tag in my new plugin, I can extract that tag, alter it and put it into a plugin (containing nothing but that new tag). Then I can use omnipatch to make my original plugin have the more refined tag(s)?

ozone · Post by **ozone** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:45 pm

not exactly but sorta lugas...

You have an existing plug in--lets call it Lugas_plugin_1 it is 50M and a bunch of other people have it. Now in time you have updated this plugin with a few changes and you have made a new plug in called Lugas_plugin_2. You want everyone to get Lugas_plugin_2 but you dont want to have people downloaded 50 or so meg again. SO you use omni patcher to make a patch. This patch will be roughly the size of the changes between Lugas_plugin_1 and Lugas_plugin_2. Now...the other people dowload this patch and apply it to there Lugas_plugin_1 and a file called Lugas_plugin_2 is created. All done without having to download 50M+ again...

hope I didnt confuse you more...

Zeph · Post by **Zeph** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:19 pm

iron wrote:that's correct. Omnipatch doesn't know anything about the files you're creating patches for. Hence you could use it to create a patch from one JPG image to another, or between two versions of a zip file, or a text file, or ... you get the idea

The problem with plugin patcher is this:- Imagine I'm making an 80mb plugin that has lots of beta versions. Using PP I make patches from beta1 to beta2, then 2 to 3, 3 to 4 etc up to my latest beta which is version 9. Then one of my testers who's been away for a couple of months comes back & wants a patch to get him from beta 3 to beta 9. You can do that with plugin patcher, but the resulting plugin will be different from one produced by applying all the 3->4, 4->5, 5->6 etc patches in turn. Different enough to cause OOS. I hit this problem when making B&G, which is why I wrote omnipatch.

Speaking of B&G, i found beta7 from before myth 1.3 wherte you had tons of scripting

Website · Post by **iron** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:19 pm

wow, that's old ... brings back memories

Back in 1.3 the only way to get soldiers to reload was to script it. Very ugly indeed.

Lugas · Post by **Lugas** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:18 pm

When using omnipatch, i found a Create Patch section. There is an original and modified section. So does it go like the following?

1) I finish a plugin. I'm not satisfied with it and tell everyone that I will make a patch.

2) I fix up the issues in Fear/Loathing and assemble it into a new plugin.

3) I go into Omnipatch, select create patch. Pick beta1 as the original and pick beta2 as the modified. Both of these are full sized, but I don't want everyone to download the new (full) plugin. So this makes a small patch which people can use to upgrade from b1 to b2?

The Tain

OmniPatch Guide

OmniPatch Guide