RW Released Mod Loader

[Link2012]

What is it?

 

Mod Loader is a plugin for Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas that adds an easy and user-friendly way to install and uninstall modifications into the game, as if the game had official modding support. No changes are ever made to the original game files, everything is injected on the fly, at runtime!

 

The usage is as simple as inserting the mod files into the modloader/ directory. Uninstalling is as easy as that too, delete the mod files and you are done. Hot swapping mods while the game is running? By using Mod Loader you can!

Still not sure? Check out this nice video from Ivey.

Features:

• Do not replace any original file, all the mods are installed by injection on the fly.
• Instant mod swapping, you can refresh mods on the go without closing the game.
• Game menu for configurations, providing an even easier management of mods.
• Bug-free audio modding. When installing sound mods with Mod Loader, you'll no longer encounter this bug.
• Mod Loader will automatically read data lines from readme (.txt) files.
• If you have several of the same .dat files, Mod Loader will merge them together for you.
• Allows you to link mods to profiles, which is very useful for installing total conversions, isolating them completely from the rest of your mods.
• Mod Loader allows you to use command line arguments, you can find information on them here.

 

Download

Mod Loader will always get updated thought GTAGarage, with stable enough releases:
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=25377

Although you can also find the latest, maybe unstable, release on GitHub (recommended)
https://github.com/thelink2012/modloader/releases

Screenshots


Source Code
The source code is available under the MIT license, take a look at the project on GitHub

 

Edited January 21, 2019 by LINK/2012

[Gramps]

First !

[New display name]

looks awesome!

[TJGM]

Edit: nevermind.

 

EDIT: Okay, nvm, still broken. Original post below.

 

My modded game refuses to start with it, any idea what type of mod could be causing it? I removed most ASI's including cleo.asi and it still gave me the error.

 

"this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way"

Edited December 30, 2013 by TheJAMESGM

[KELASHI]

Prepared a clean game to use it.

[lpgunit]

Now that would make modding just as easy as it is in The Sims. I'm still accustomed to touching with the game's default asset files, but at least we now have a quicker and non-destructive way of testing mods like cars and stuff.

[Link2012]

I'd love the feedback of your guys to say if it's working or not, I know it worked pretty well for the alpha-testers but it was a in controlled-enviroment, almost unmodded base game... For that reason I recommended a base game clean, because I'm not sure how things will react to a heavyly modded base game.

 

 

Edit: nevermind.

 

EDIT: Okay, nvm, still broken. Original post below.

 

My modded game refuses to start with it, any idea what type of mod could be causing it? I removed most ASI's including cleo.asi and it still gave me the error.

 

"this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way"

I'm not sure if it's broken or not, I'm confused about your EDITs

 

Anyway, post the log file modloader/modloader.log

Another interesting way to test out the problem is to find which modloader plugin (the file handlers) is causing the problem, to do so just delete (or just set the priority to 0) for each dll at modloader/.data/plugins

Edited December 30, 2013 by LINK/2012

[New display name]

a few things that did not work:

 

.cs mods wich need a .fxt or a .ini

 

csmodels wont load (i tried cssmoke and cssweet, cutscene stayed black)

 

 

i think you know that, but just in case

[Link2012]

a few things that did not work:

 

.cs mods wich need a .fxt or a .ini

 

csmodels wont load (i tried cssmoke and cssweet, cutscene stayed black)

 

 

i think you know that, but just in case

Found out about the special models not loading properly today, I know what's the problem and the fix will be out soon.

 

About the cs mod that need FXT, they should've work... but only on CLEO4, since on CLEO3 they rely on GxtHook.cleo and as said the loader can't make .cleo plugins load (But I think I can do some tricks about it soon...)

 

The ini should work too, but it should be inside a CLEO folder.

In fact, I'd recommend CLEO stuff to be inside a CLEO folder, just like that:

modloader\cleo mod name\CLEO\script.cs

modloader\cleo mod name\CLEO\config.ini

modloader\cleo mod name\CLEO\CLEO_TEXT\text.fxt

[New display name]

bigger image: http://i42.tinypic.com/2j29bo9.png

 

thats how i had it ( i made a cleo folder for all cs mods, it goes like that: gta sa/modloader/cleo)

anyway its not a problem.

i tried a bigger mod like the ps2 textures to pc and it worked amazing!

Edited December 30, 2013 by R4GN0R0K

[Link2012]

Are you using CLEO 4?

 

That CLEO folder, where's it relative to the base directory?

I mean, if it's like that modloader\CLEO\... it's not what I mean

Instead I meant it to be modloader\modname\CLEO\...

Also, you don't have to put everything in a single CLEO folder, but well, I guess that was your choice

 

Post the modloader.log

[New display name]

i tried if it would work if i put a few mods in one folder just for testing.

yes i have cleo4, here's my log

http://pastebin.com/4H7YB08e

[Link2012]

Indeed, it's not like I said

Reading mod "CLEO\" (0) at "CLEO\"...

You're using like: modloader\CLEO\my cs files

Well, that would work for .cs and .fxt files only, but for ini to work it should be: modloader\CLEO\CLEO\my cs files or something

 

Looks like the FXT file is being placed in the right place, dunno why it's not working.

 

So much pain around CLEO instalation, that's what happens when you do dirty things

 

I also noted that your mobilehud asi is not loading, that's weird too, it works here, hm.

Edited December 30, 2013 by LINK/2012

[New display name]

i copied the fxt files to the normal cleo folder, but thanks, i totally forgotten that it takes the cleo folder as the name not the actual folder for cleo files. my bad.

[Marty McFly]

This is interesting, I always wanted something like this, testing mods without the huge mess it would take to remove them again. Waiting for a .cleo update tho.

[TJGM]

Okay, so I reinstalled SA and everything works fine now, although if I change anything in the modloader.ini I get that same error again (below). Even if I put a space that wasn't there before in the .ini I get the error and if I change it back to its original state, I still get the error. I have to replace it with the one you uploaded in the .rar to stop the error.

 

"this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way"

 

EDIT: Also, the log doesn't show anything other than it's loading the basic config file, the game won't start at all.

Edited December 31, 2013 by TheJAMESGM

[Gramps]

Yeah I agree with James.

 

"Installed" iOS Mobile Radar using ML, and worked fine.

Then tried testing the Priority feature by trying to install Citizen-style Radar by NTAuthority (which replaces the same files as iOS Radar), and I get the same error as James too.

 

See error here: http://gyazo.com/6d4c1b0d3ce1d71a54ee55d66fbaacc3

(Wouldn't let me properly screenshot the dialog box for some weird reason either)

 

See screenshots for file location information:

http://gyazo.com/8a4a6ab613ebc64518875401eef0377a

 

Edited portion of ModLoader.ini

 

[PRIORITY]

;

; Define mods priority here

; The priority must be from 1 to 100, where 100 has the highest and 1 has the lowest priority

; The priority 0 means "DO NOT LOAD"

; By default each mod has the priority of 50, and mods received by command line will have a priority of 80

; Just put the mod folder name followed by '=' and it's priority (e.g. MyMod=50)

;

; PS¹: Files following a simple overriding rule, so for example, if a mod A has priority 100 and mod B has priority 1 and both has a LOADSCS.txd

; the LOADSCS.txd from mod B will be used, because LOADSCS.txd from A was loaded then B was loaded, overriding the LOADSCS from A

;

iOS_Radar=2

Citizen_Radar=1

 

I presume this would've loaded Citizen_Radar?

Also, if I delete those 2 added lines to the .ini,(to bring it back to original state) I still get the same error when launching, until I replace the .ini with the one from the archive.

Edited January 1, 2014 by methodunderg

[Link2012]

The error is with any of the modloader libraries or with gta_sa.exe? The text box title should say that?

Also, I'd like to see the log, even that it only shows basic loading, so I know almost exactly where the thing stopped.

I'll try your ini and review the ini parser. If I can't reproduce the bug I'll PM one of your (depending on the time X timezone) with a extremely precise logging at the ini parser...

 

Some news anyway:

• Got .cleo plugins to load, the loader will take care of 'em instead of CLEO.asi
• Will be working for the loader to load it's fxt files instead of CLEO.asi, looks like CLEO.asi loads the fxts on startup, I have no idea why it worked for me.
• Found a bug on the file mixer... oh yeah!
• Reworking the std-img for a proper, working, non-prototype, version

Nope, the download isn't updated. Soon...

Edited January 1, 2014 by LINK/2012

[TJGM]

The error happens after you edit the .ini and then try to start the game, that's when you it pops up and your screen and the game just closes after you click "ok". Screenshot of the entire log below, pretty much nothing.

 

The mod works great without editing the ini though, I managed to get SRT + BSOR to work by combining them instead of using priority's, but everything else works great. It'd be pretty sad if this mod isn't one of the biggest used in the modding community for SA.

[uokka]

Amazing! So easy!

I've just installed modloader onto my heavily modded game and was expecting a crash or something.. nope - It's working! It just works.

 

Well, big mods make the game load slower but that shouldn't be an issue compared to that unreal easyness it provides.

 

Thanks a lot. You rock!

[Gramps]

Definately ^

 

Was waiting for a few more file-support additions; and I was planning on doing a ModLoader vs ReplacingOriginalFiles benchmark to see the performance impact of loading the files externally.

[uokka]

Replacing audio would be nice.

[Link2012]

Amazing! So easy!

I've just installed modloader onto my heavily modded game and was expecting a crash or something.. nope - It's working! It just works.

 

Well, big mods make the game load slower but that shouldn't be an issue compared to that unreal easyness it provides.

 

Thanks a lot. You rock!

 

Thanks for your feedback. By the way, parts of the loader is attached to the loading bar, such as the file mixing algorithm

 

 

Definately ^

 

Was waiting for a few more file-support additions; and I was planning on doing a ModLoader vs ReplacingOriginalFiles benchmark to see the performance impact of loading the files externally.

 

That would be nice.

Based on this result I could even decide if I need more optimization or not, I always wait to do optimization when it is necessary not because I can.

 

 

Replacing audio would be nice.

That's in mind, but will be the last thing I'll do, I have some real fear of the audio engine from this game...

[New display name]

Yeah, some asi mods wont load, idk why MobileHUD isnt working, but for SA:Render it was obvious that it wont run on OSX.

if it works on windows, then you know you did your mod right, its just OSX that wont do it.

 

anyways, great job, i have a few mods and i dont see a difference with the loading time!

[Link2012]

if it works on windows, then you know you did your mod right, its just OSX that wont do it.

Actually i'm not quite sure if it works on Windows, I'm running on Wine

However I tried it on Windows yesterday and found a bug that might cause the game to crash on some machines if you try to put a dff/txd/col/whatever_file_that_goes_into_a_img_file that isn't 2KiB aligned. Already fixed.

 

----

I would like to sorry for the delay for a new update and a topic uglyness fixing!

Edited January 8, 2014 by LINK/2012

[Gramps]

Get on Skype, fool.

[ALMOST610]

So this is kinda Maxo's Vehicle (And More) Loader but for San Andreas instead of Vice City?

[Link2012]

@Up

So this is kinda Maxo's Vehicle (And More) Loader but for San Andreas instead of Vice City?

Nope, this doesn't add new cars.

[ALMOST610]

@Up

So this is kinda Maxo's Vehicle (And More) Loader but for San Andreas instead of Vice City?

Nope, this doesn't add new cars.

 

Awww... How Disappointing, I hope you get to work on something similar.

[New display name]

Yeah, some asi mods wont load, idk why MobileHUD isnt working, but for SA:Render it was obvious that it wont run on OSX.

if it works on windows, then you know you did your mod right, its just OSX that wont do it.

 

anyways, great job, i have a few mods and i dont see a difference with the loading time!

 

so are you using linux? and does the sa:render mod for you?