Graphics Pack (.zgp) support: needed or not?

Hi everyone,

I'm in the middle of a massive cleanup of the quest loading code (which among other things will hopefully make it easier to import/export more parts of the .qst like sounds and items/sprites, and also lift many numerical limits in the quest).

While working on this part of the code I've stumbled upon the problems with .zgp files, which bundle together many different graphics settings in the quest. This made sense back when most of the quest elements like enemies, items, etc. were hard-coded and could only be customized by changing the graphics. As they currently stand, .zgp files are unsafe to import and export from different versions of ZQ, and will do strange things to your custom items if you import/export between different quests with different sets of custom items.

My understanding from talking to some people on chat is that .zgps are very rarely used, with most tiles being distributed as .qsts or as loose tiles/combos. Is this accurate? Would anybody miss .zgps if support for them were dropped?

I'm with you DD it needs to be dropped.
They are much too unsafe.

We haven't really supported them at all. The problem with them is as you say; a zgp is more than graphics yet less than a quest file. In practice this subset of data is never what you wanted if you were to pick what goes into it. IIRC Saffith did fix the import feature for 2.50.0 ...I guess it broke again?

I doubt anyone misses that format though.

ZGP is unsupportable . The vast majority of ZGP files were from 1.92, and similarly old ZQuest versions, and these could not be read by 2.5 IIRC, leading to the complete demise of the format. It has zero handling for files outside of its internal version.

I would like to see a proper graphical export feature in the future, but ZGP is dead.

I thought that's why .QSU's and the individual formats were invented. I don't think I ever used ZGPs.

-James

Yeah those aren't needed.