Arena Installer Tool

February 13, 2018

This tool is a standalone exe however I would heavly suggest placing it in a folder as it generates files in the directory you place it in.

First it will ask you for the location of your 2k18 file location and save location. These are for backup purposes.

Now here you will need to backup your game for the installs and uninstalls to work properly.

Here we have some options about auto rebuilding the def, this is the same builder as in 2k18+ so if there are issues please let me know.

(I still have to figure out how to have it dynamically build like the one @Cave Waverider built)

The Save BAckup will backup whenever the game installs or uninstalls a pack. This is saved in the same folder as the exe in a Save directory.

These saves are noted with what pack it has. If this is used eventually I can hopefully add save swapping to the installs as well.

THis menu Might be a little confusing right now. However if you have a full backup somewhere else you will want to select no so it only backs up what it needs.

Once this file pops up then the exe has created a txt file in it's directory.

This is the default "Filtered List"

you can add additional folders and this might be updated in future packages. I also hope to add support for backing up individual files as the splash.bmp currently isn't backed up by this.

It will then back up the required files to a /Backup/ Folder next to the exe.

After that completes we can go to the install menu.

If you have downloaded the base exe then you will only have default in your list and we will have to "Add" more on that later.

If there is an arena to select you can select and click install, this will copy the files to your game directory.

From here you can also select Default again if you would like to uninstall the mod and reset those files to what is in your backup.

If you are just going to be installing packs this is all you should need.

Adding Packages:

So each package is essentially 3 things:

A Name

A Base Package that it builds off

A Folder Name

For the folder name you need to select a folder that contains the Pac Folder and all files built in a relative sense from there.

This means that you need any miscs in pac/root/ arena parts in pac/arena ext.

From there it will ask if you want to move or copy the mod package. Again like the backup the folder needs to be in the directory of the exe so it will move or copy when you finalize adding the package.

From here clicking finalize will add the package to the packages.bin and update the drop downs.

Now to ship your mod with the right package you want it to just be your mod package so delete all the other packages before oyu send it out.

You only need to send the Arena_Installer.exe, packages.bin, and the mod folder with the same name as the one you installed it with in the menu above. (Also see released packages in the next post for examples)

Possible Improvements:

Fix the backup dialog box

Add files to the filtered list

Add version control / numbers on menus.

I need to add some sort of packages importer so packages can be combined somehow.