NewMod 1.0 - Copyright (C) 2000 Mark "WarZone" Smeltzer
--------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer:
-----------

By using this product you agree to exempt, without reservation, the authors and owners of 
this production or components thereof from any responsibility for liability, damage caused, 
or loss, directly or indirectly, by this software, including but not limited to, any 
interruptions of service, loss of business, or any other consequential damages resulting 
from the use of or operation of this product or components thereof. No warranties are made, 
expressed or implied, regarding the usage, functionality, or implied operability of this 
product. All elements are available solely on an "as-is" basis. Usage is subject to the 
user's own risk. 

Installation:
-------------
Extract this archive to the root (base, main, umm, top level) directory on the drive of your
choice.. ie. extract it to either C:\, D:\, E:\, F:\, etc. DO NOT bury the archive into your
directory structure as it will not end up in the same directory as the Quake3 source.

Likewise, you should have already have the quake3 source could in c:\quake3, d:\quake3\, ...
etc. This archive should contain the following files:

- newmod.exe
- copygame.dat
- copycgame.dat
- copyui.dat
- copyproject.dat
- buildgame.dat
- buildcgame.dat
- buildui.dat
- compile.bat
- readme.txt

If you do not have all of these files, then you do not have a valid copy of NewMod.

The Short Of It:
----------------

This program exists to facilitate programmers with an EASY method of creating a new
batch of source files that will be instantly compilable -- and will even compile the QVM
files into the proper directory!

The program requires 3 command line parameters:
- mod's name (modname)
- directory to put the mod's code (modpath)
- path to Q3A (Q3path)

Here's the syntax NewMod expects:
newmod <modname> <modpath> <Q3path>

Here's what a typical call to NewMod looks like:
newmod mynewmod c:\mynewmod c:\"program files"\"quake iii arena"

Or, maybe something like this:
newmod newmod d:\mods\newmod d:\games\quake3


The Long Of It:
---------------

The mod's name and source directory are up to you, but you MUST supply NewMod with the
corrent path to Q3A. An easy way to do this is open up "My Computer" and go to the directory
where you installed Q3A. Find the Quake3 executable and right click on it, create shortcut, 
right click on the new shortcut, click properties, the field "Target" should already be 
highlighted, deselect it and rehighlight ONLY the path portion (not the Quake3.exe part), 
right click on the highlighted text and click copy.

Now that you've got the path to Q3A in the clipboard buffer, click the start menu, click
run, type "command.com" and hit enter. Assuming you've already installed the source code, 
and NewMod, type "c:\quake3\source\newmod <modname> <modpath> " (replace "C" with the 
appropriate drive letter), click on the MS-DOS icon in the upper left corner of the window, 
click on Edit, and then click Paste. Now that you've got the command line ready to roll, 
hit the enter key and NewMod will begin a process copying and creating the neccessary files 
to build you new mod. :)

Included with NewMod is a batch file named "compile.bat" which is copied to your mod's 
source directory. By double clicking on this file all three QVM files (game, cgame, and ui)
will be built and placed into your mod's directory in your main Q3A directory. Once that's 
done, you can double click the "play it.bat" file to automatically load Q3A with your mod. 
Cool, huh?

Modifying the DAT files:
------------------------

There are seven DAT files included with NewMod, these files are simple text based scripts
that tell NewMod how to create a copy of the current source code. So, what does that mean?
It means that even if new releases of the source code introduce new files, NewMod can
incorporate those files simply by adding them into the DAT scripts. It also means that
NewMod can be used as a very powerful source code backup system. By simply adding the new
files that your mod needs to the DAT scripts, you can create an entire source backup with
one command line, and best of all, the source copy is immediately playable. This makes it
very easy to load up an older version of you mod to see what you've changed. Not to mention
disaster recovery -- the worst situation you can ever be in is accidentally deleting a 
section of your own code and then saving the file! Disaster recovery is no sweat as long as
you make regular backups.

Here's a list of each DAT file and what it does:

  name                    function
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  copygame.dat            files from the "game" directory that need to be copied
  copycgame.dat           files from the "cgame" directory that need to be copied
  copyui.dat              files from the "game" directory that need to be copied
  copyproject.dat         files from the current directory that need to be copied

  buildgame.dat           files that need to be included in the game.q3asm compiler script
  buildcgame.dat          files that need to be included in the cgame.q3asm compiler script
  buildui.dat             files that need to be included in the ui.q3asm compiler script

So, if you add a new source file called "g_newweapons.c" to the game module, you have 
to add "g_newweapons.c" to the end of the copygame.dat and buildgame.dat files in order to
use NewMod to make backups.

Or, supposing id software adds a new file called "newstuff.c" to the cgame module, you have
to add "newstuff.c" to the end of the copycgame.dat and buildcgame.dat files in order to
use NewMod create new mod projects.


Contact Info:
-------------

If you need to contact me for some reason, I can be reached via email at:
  warzone@planetquake.com

--------------------------------------------------
NewMod. Copyright (C) 2000 Mark "WarZone" Smeltzer
