ROM Hack Portal Collection File Sideloader

[masagrator]

Portal Collection File Sideloader​

Nintendo Switch skyline plugin for Portal 1 and 2 that allows to load files outside of game.zip, so no more repacking and sending huge archives every time you want to change something.

More in Readme.

Confirmed that "Bringus mod" works for Portal 1 and 2 without any change to file layout.

Hope this helps with better thriving mod scene for this Collection.

Repo (#Readme): https://github.com/masagrator/PortalNXSideLoader#readme
Download: https://github.com/masagrator/PortalNXSideLoader/releases

 

[AlmondMilk12]

do you know if this allows you to use pc mods

 

[masagrator]

do you know if this allows you to use pc mods

Since HL2 is partially working, then I guess some should - definitely not the ones using hooking to enhance game.

 

[masagrator]

It seems for more advanced mods to work maybe I need to do one more thing - hook function that lists contents of folders.

Executable seems to have hardcoded paths for checking files that don't have absolute path in this order in Portal 2 (higher = higher priority):

• "update"
• "portal2_dlc%d" (it starts from highest detected number and goes to 1. We have portal2_dlc1 and portal2_dlc2, but stat_nx checks also if portal2_dlc3 exists. And because it doesn't, it stops here and passes only portal2_dlc1 and portal2_dlc2 to check by game. This could be potentially used as entrypoint for bigger mods)
• "portal2"

 

[masagrator]

Welp, there's it. It checks if portal2_dlc3 exists, but does absolutely nothing after detecting that it exists.
But have managed to load Portal Reloaded by putting "portalreloaded" as "portal2_dlc2" into "nxcontent" with deleted gameinfo.txt. And yeah, stat_nx modification was necessary.

Issue is some textures won't load. My guess is that it may be related somehow to sdk_content folder and not loading materials from there.
Since those are materials, I was trying to put "maps" to "portal2_dlc2" and contents of "portal_reloaded" folder in sdk_content into "portal2_dlc2/materials", but it changed nothing. Maybe I need to hook something else too. Would be nice to have knowledge of some Portal 2 modder.

 

[AlmondMilk12]

Welp, there's it. It checks if portal2_dlc3 exists, but does absolutely nothing after detecting that it exists.
But have managed to load Portal Reloaded by putting "portalreloaded" as "portal2_dlc2" into "nxcontent" with deleted gameinfo.txt. And yeah, stat_nx modification was necessary.

Issue is some textures won't load. My guess is that it may be related somehow to sdk_content folder and not loading materials from there.
Since those are materials, I was trying to put "maps" to "portal2_dlc2" and contents of "portal_reloaded" folder in sdk_content into "portal2_dlc2/materials", but it changed nothing. Maybe I need to hook something else too. Would be nice to have knowledge of some Portal 2 modder.

View attachment 323243View attachment 323238View attachment 323239View attachment 323240View attachment 323241View attachment 323242

still very impressive work regardless, maybe theres some portal modding discord server that could lend some help

 

[masagrator]

Ok, found the issue. Game for some reason don't want to load some materials within BSP files (Console is putting out which files exactly cannot be read. Since you can't navigate through dev console inside game, you need to hook "ConMsg()" and "ConColorMsg()" in tier0.nro to get console output in debugger)

Solution is to unpack "materials" folder from bsp files with VIDE and put folder into portal2_dlc2 folder.
So yeah, it seems PC mods won't work fully on Switch without little modifications to packages.

Example of how I have done Portal Reloaded (didn't play whole mod, so maybe I will miss something):
- Download Portal Reloaded from Steam
- Go to mod folder (steam/steamapps/common/Portal Reloaded)
- Delete all folders except "portalreloaded"
- rename "portalreloaded" to "portal2_dlc2"
- delete "gameinfo.txt"
- use VIDE to unpack "materials" folder from all *.bsp files inside "maps" folder and put every "materials" folder into "portal2_dlc2" folder
- (Additional bonus) repack vpk to delete resource/ui/basemodui folder, because currently it replaces options with PC settings.
- Put portal2_dlc2 folder to romfs/nxcontent

And tested Portal: Still Alive mod for Portal 1 (renaming folder to "portal" and putting it into nxcontent) which seems to work without issues.

And remember: all files must be lower case! Portal: Still Alive had .vpk files that weren't using lower case only.

Btw. first sequence of Portal Reloaded tanks FPS to 30

-------

Released updated plugin.
So I guess that's end of my involvement.
I will just fix bugs if any occur. I am going to other projects.

 

[Allen-R]

TIL you can do this

 

[vos6434]

I've tried porting Portal Mel. Chapters 1-2 crash, Chapter 3 is unplayable at 0 fps but chapter 4 loads fine.
Edit - Chapter 4 crashes after the elevator start.

 

[vos6434]

Some subtitles seem to work.
Chapter 5 is the most playable, it runs fine until Turret Factory where your fps drops to 0 and game crashes.
I don't know what happened to this glass.

 

[masagrator]

I've tried porting Portal Mel. Chapters 1-2 crash, Chapter 3 is unplayable at 0 fps but chapter 4 loads fine.
Edit - Chapter 4 crashes after the elevator start.

For me Chapter 1 and 2 didn't crash, it was just slowing down to near 0 FPS.
Mod is choking CPU for some reason. I guess code is not optimized too well in this terms?
At least according to posts on Steam and reddit it seems it's fairly noticeable FPS drops.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/317400/discussions/0/523890046881383656/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/317400/discussions/0/451850468373884354/


You need properly optimized mods to get them working properly on Switch.

Beside dunno how did you install this mod that you are getting different main menu, you have repacked vpk maybe?

 

[vos6434]

Beside dunno how did you install this mod that you are getting different main menu, you have repacked vpk maybe?

I followed your guide and took out basemodui folder and repackaged the vpk.

Yeah the mod isn't well optimized.

 

[AlmondMilk12]

anyone tried aperture tag with this?

 

[masagrator]

Updated plugin to support Portal 2 1.0.3 update.
Portal 1.0.3 update didn't change anything that plugin relies on, so you can update game without updating plugin.

 

[masagrator]

Updated plugin to fix issues with reading materials from BSP files and custom sounds.

Now you don't need to unpack materials from BSP anymore.

Now also "portal2_dlc3" folder is correctly detected.

Read README inside repo how to properly install PC mod, it's now less of a pain

 

[masagrator]

Released next update fixing issues with save flushing.

If after installing mod you can't save anything in settings, you can try to delete gameinfo.txt from mod folder. Though if you have PC settings menu, you may be forced to delete files related to it.

 

[ThatFinn]

I've tried the mod and its amazing! Thanks for the great work! But i have one question. How can you shoot the time portal in Portal Reloaded?

Post automatically merged: Nov 29, 2022

anyone tried aperture tag with this?

I've tried, but for me it's not working.

 

[masagrator]

I've tried the mod and its amazing! Thanks for the great work! But i have one question. How can you shoot the time portal in Portal Reloaded?

Post automatically merged: Nov 29, 2022

In case of Portal Reloaded time portal is assigned to "+zoom" action, which in case of Switch is R.
ZL - Orange Portal
ZR - Blue Portal
R - Time Portal

 

[ThatFinn]

Oh thanks! I was just looking for an options but i only found the blue and the orange portal. But it works perfectly. Thanks

Post automatically merged: Nov 30, 2022

I was playing Portal with the mod yesterday an at some point my switch froze. I had to reboot, but now the R Button i just the normal zoom. I tried to reinstall this mod and Portal Reloaded and resetting the controller mapping in the settings but it didn't work. Any fix for this? Or is there a console command to do so? (then i can use another mod to map the time portal to R)

EDIT: I had to reinstall Portal Reloaded in order to get it working