Author:
Ruprt (
ruprt@atlas.cz), CSLA Studio member
Download link: http://ofp.ruprt.cz/download/ofppbo_v141.zipCSLA Studio home page: http://games.tiscali.cz/flashpoint/Total Commander© home page: http://www.ghisler.com/Created for OFP community.
Freeware.This pluggin is not a product
of Bohemia Interactive Studio© nor C.Ghisler & Co.©. Although this
plugin has been fully tested, its author doesn't take any responsibility for
using it, that means... use it at your own risk :-).
Total Commander© is Copyright © 1995-2005 by Christian
Ghisler, C. Ghisler & Co., Switzerland.
This pluggin has been made for using with Total
Commander© version 5.51 or greater running on Microsoft Windows 98,
Microsoft Windows Millenium, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP,
Microsoft Windows Vista© operation systems.
The installation of this pluggin is
automatic if the Total Commander© is of a version 6.5 or greater. In
such a case the installation starts automatically if you
double-click the ofppbo.zip file from within the Total Commander or
you try to open the ofppbo.zip archive pressing the Enter key.
If you need to install the pluggin
to a Total Commander© of a lower version than 6.5, perform
these steps :
- In the Total Commander©'s installation folder
(usually C:\TotalCmd\) create these three subfolders: Plugins\wcx\ofppbo.
- Copy the ofppbo.wcx file included in the ofppbo.zip
archive into the newly created subfolder (C:\TotalCmd\Plugins\wcx\ofppbo\).
- Choose the Configuration->Options item of
the Total Commander's main menu. In the "Configuration" dialog window,
that has appeared, select the "Packer" tab.
- Click the "Configure packer extension WCX's" button
in the "Additional packers" frame. An "Associate" window will appear.
- In the "All files with extension (ending with):"
combo box enter the following text : .pbo
- Click the "New type" button, than select
the C:\TotalCmd\Plugins\wcx\ofppbo\ofppbo.wcx from the "Browse"
dialog window that has appeared.
- Confirm your new setting by clicking the OK button.
- Restart the Total Commander. The pluggin is ready
to use now.
There are 8 settings of this pluggin which can
be set up through the "OFPPBO plugin options" dialog window accessible by
pressing Alt+F5 -> "Configure" button (recommended way). If you want to change some
setting manually you have to edit the pkplugin.ini file located in the Total
Commander's installation folder (usually C:\TotalCmd) (in some older versions of
TC it can be the system folder - C:\Windows, C:\Winnt). Be extremelly carefull
while you are doing that, because of this file contains initialization
settings for all other packer pluggins (if any).
The ofppbo pluggin allows you through the Total Commander© to pack, unpack, compress,
decompress PBO files and to decode BIN files (or encoded SQM,
FPS, CFG, ArmASave etc.) of the Operation Flashpoint© and ArmedAssault© games. The pluggin has been tested
on all available PBO files as well as BIN files (packed using StuffPBO,
MakePBO, CPP2BIN, PBO Manager, OFP engine etc.). No bug has been found.
Nevertheless, in case of any error let the pluggin's author know via email
please.
During the pluggin's beta testing a non-standard
behaviour of the Total Commander© has been encountered. In case of you open
any PBO file (or its subfolder), than you delete all its files at once, the
content of the file (or subfolder) remains visually unchanged (the original
content is still shown), but the real content is correct (it doesn't contain the
recently deleted files). This behaviour has been consulted with the Total
Commander's author with a conclusion that it's not a bug but an effort to
keep up a compatibility with other packer pluggins. To workaround this
behaviour, simply close and reopen the PBO file.
Notes for
external tools developers :The pluggin can be used
as a part of other applications because it exports functions (OpenArchive,
CloseArchive, ProcessFile, ReadHeader, PackFiles a DeleteFiles) needed for
un/packing and de/compressing. The logic and signatures of these functions can
be found in the WCX Writer's Reference located at
http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/packer_interface.html.
The following conditions must be kept to use the pluggin as
a part of an other application:
- In the release version of the application the
unchanged ReadMe file (in both language mutations - Czech, English) must be
included.
- The pluggin's author must be informed by the
applicaton's author(via email) about using the pluggin as a
part of the application.
The ofppbo pluggin's control
completelly depends on the Total Commander©'s user interface that means its the
same as for all other packer pluggins. Therefor I describe here only the basic
UI actions :
Opening PBO
file : double-click a PBO file or press Enter key while the
file pointer is on the PBO file.
Extracion from PBO file : press F5 key (Copy)
or drag and drop an archived file from one TC pane to the second one
where the target folder should be opened.
Creating a new PBO file : right-click the file you want
to archive. From the context menu, that appears, select the "Pack files"
item. In the "Pack files" window select the ".pbo" packer from the combo
box than click OK button. The key shortcut for this operation is Alt+F5.
Add a file to an existing PBO
archive : open an existing PBO archive in one TC pane. From the second pane
copy the desired file to the PBO archive using F5 or drag and drop operation.
Decoding and displaying BIN file (or
encoded SQM, FPS,
CFG etc.) : OFP BIN file (or any other OFP encoded file) can be displayed by pressing Ctrl+PgDown key
combination. While doing this the BIN file is automatically decoded to
CPP. Note: The BIN file must have the OFP signature (there are other BIN
files than only OFP BINs). When a CPP file is adding to an existing archive no
encoding is made (the CPP file is not converted to its BINary
representation).
Date and time
of extracted files : when a file is extracted from a PBO archive it is saved
with the current date and time rather than with the date and time stored in the
archive. This approach has been chosen to keep better lucidity between extracted
and archived files. The user can better monitor changes made to the
extracted files since they have been extracted. Note : Some PBO
archivers, such as StuffPBO, don't save the date and time (it's an error,
even when the archiver's signature is appended to the end of an archive).
In such a case files in the archive are shown with the time the
archive has been opened.