VPMage

From FreeSpace Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

VPMage is a fairly powerful *.VP editing tool. It is meant to be a utilitarian tool for mod or source code developers to create and edit VPs. It doesn't have the scripting features of Kazan's command-line VPmake, or the preview features of VPView, but it can be used to extract and edit files in a VP, as well as merge multiple VPs, files, and directories to create one VP.

VPMage works by adding a list of all the files and directories into memory, and then copying the data they contain to a VP once it's built. If any files are extracted/edited, they are saved in a temporary folder of the hard disk, in the same directory as VPMage. This folder is deleted after VPMage is closed.

Using VPMage

Caveats

Please be advised that the tools will remain resident in memory, even after you terminate the UI (user interface). To avoid having multiple instances of VPMage running simultaneously, bring up the Task Manager (by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del), locate the vpmage.exe process and terminate it. This is the only way to ensure that the tool is unloaded from memory. Having many instances of the process resident in memory might cause system instability and ultimately compromise system integrity.

At times if you do not provide an extension for the created file, the file will not have an extension. Be sure to provide the necessary *.VP extension to the created file. Further, the created archive will usually have the Read-Only attribute set. To reset the attribute, bring up the file properties in Windows Explorer, uncheck the Read-Only box, and click OK.