RWP's Help

[Ajay1]

Thanks Gary for your info regarding going into the registry to change. It seems a bit long winded for me to attempt so I might leave thing as that are at the moment. All I am really trying to achieve is reverting the .RWP icon back to show as it did
when they were first introduced into TS XXXX or whichever before it's opened to be extracted into TS.

[Carinthia]

I don't know how you can lose critical files using 7-zip to extract rwp files and then merge them in TS2015.
All it is doing is the same as utilities.exe except you have to manually merge the Assets/Contents folders yourself.

I hope you don't consider this rude but that is because you, like many, do not understand utilities.exe which is a very sophisticated and useful little programme.

The reason it takes a while to refresh if you have a lot of add-ons is because it maintains a database of everything you have installed and has to read all that detail - concerning every single file. An example of how it works:

• You install route A installs a number of assets, including one I'll call example.bin
• You install route B which also includes example.bin
• You uninstall route A, for which all files are deleted except those used by other installed routes, e.g. example.bin
• You uninstall route B, and its deletion process will include the removal of example.bin

Thus your system is neatly cleaned up.

On the other hand if you install and remove routes manually you can do two things:

• Delete every file you installed with the route, running the risk of deleting example.bin when it is used by other routes
• Delete the route and not the assets, leaving unwanted and unused assets bloating your system.

That's fine if you or anybody are happy to work that way but I feel it is unsound advice for people to tell everybody they should do the same without explaining the implications.

John

[gptech]

As WinZip doesn't support .rip the obvious course of action is to junk it and install something that does.
Peter, WinRAR also allows extraction of single files from an archive.

[gptech]

All I am really trying to achieve is reverting the .RWP icon back to show as it did

That, unfortunately, under Win 7 also needs a registry tweak...

but....

this might be of interest.. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/12383/ch ... windows-7/

[gptech]

it maintains a database of everything you have installed

John, like Peter I use a file manager (WinRAR) to install new goodies, so I'm happy to be proven wrong here (in fact I've half a mind to do some experimenting even if I prove myself wrong) but are you absolutely positive about that?

Isn't the package manager simply that: a tool to manage the installation and removal of packages rather than an asset manager?
If so, that would mean it's database is just of "everything you have installed using Package Manager", or a long list of which routes install which assets rather than which routes use which assets
so taking your example:

• You install route A installs a number of assets, including one I'll call example.bin
• You install route B which also includes example.bin
• You uninstall route A, for which all files are deleted except those used by other installed routes, e.g. example.bin
• You uninstall route B, and its deletion process will include the removal of example.bin

Thus your system is neatly cleaned up.

works perfectly, but........

• You install route A installs a number of assets, including one I'll call example.bin
• You install route B which doesn't include example.bin, but simply references/calls for it
• You uninstall route A, for which all files are deleted except those marked as "also installed by another installed route"---which would mean example.bin is deemed to be not needed.
• You play route B, and find you've an asset missing

There is no single 'one size fits all' solution, and we could discuss the pros and cons of the various strategies all night without ever agreeing, but we do agree on:

I feel it is unsound advice for people to tell everybody they should do the same without explaining the implications

and that a comprehensive guide to the various methods, how they work, and their shortfalls is needed.

[peterfhayes]

John
I take your points and many are quite valid, but using a manual method of installing rwp files may be useful to some simmers.
Yes I agree with you that if you need to remove a rwp file that you have installed using utilities.exe then using that app is the only way to go, and it cannot be removed easily if at all just using Windows commands.
Yes you are correct, in that if you don't install a rwp file via utilities.exe it is dangerous or nigh on impossible to remove it manually using windows commands (scenarios excepted).
That is definitely the downside to not using utilities.exe.
You are correct that both sides of the argument need to be presented.
pH

[gptech]

Yes you are correct, in that if you don't install a rwp file via utilities.exe it is dangerous or nigh on impossible to remove it manually using windows commands

Peter, if you install a .rwp file using 7-Zip etc then for all intents and purposes you've only extracted and pasted folders/files from one location to another---no hooks into the OS or core programming of any game. Of course without the .rwp, or at least a listing of what it contained, you have nothing to refer to to determine just what the contents were so you can remove them but who deletes all their downloaded .rwp's anyway? If push came to shove deleting the whole assets folder and rebuilding/checking with RW Tools would eventually give a clean, non-cluttered, Assets collection. Daft way to do it of course, but nothing dangerous or impossible.

When discussing .rwp's we have to consider just who supplies them---users, just like us, so any .rwp has a greater risk of being *wrong* than a commercial installer. There are at least 2 routes in the UKTS library that have included assets in the wrong location, nested too deep or in a completely different tree to that specified in the route files. Dead easy mistake to make, but one that's obvious once you have a feel for the structure of the game files, something you don't get when installing 'blind'. Yes, that means having to learn to some degree how the game is built up but that knowledge holds every TS user in good stead and is only perceived as a black art because none of us have explained things properly to the *average* guy, helping to perpetuate the myth that you need to have a Masters Degree in Computing Science to be able to understand how to do anything. Another case of a useful utility becoming more of a means to 'dumb down' owning a PC?

Earlier in this thread it was noted that installing via Package Manager takes longer than a straight forward extraction from the .rwp because PM takes a long time to refresh....

RUBBISH!

when installing you can happily bypass the refresh part, just click on the 'Install' button and the package you then choose will be quickly (though admittedly not as quickly as when using an archive manager) be installed. A refresh is only essential when creating a .rwp for distribution. Just one example of the confusion/erroneous information surrounding it!
It works, works well, but shouldn't be seen as the single best way of doing things, nor should 7-Zip, WinRAR etc be touted as the *only* way--we both know from our discussions about hardware that there's a lot of scope for maneuverability when finding any *answer* and how to install stuff is exactly the same--lots of options, lots of possible combinations of tools to make the job easier.