MPQ Editor Problem

[piehead]

Hey, so I've been using MPQEditor 3.5.0.733 for a while now and I just noticed something odd. As of recently I've been updating my custom patch using this program a lot. Custom items, custom setid's, spells, you name it. But recently I got Stoneharry's spell editor and started making custom spells. Custom spells are very complex(at least to me) and I kept having to change some values then load that edited MPQ to test the spell to make sure it worked(or more likely, what was broken).

But this caused me today to edit the MPQ with the new Spell.dbc a lot. Not really sure how many times. But a heck of a lot. Then, I noticed my MPQ file had gotten up to about 150MB.

Not really sure how this happened because there is absolutely no way the files I'm dealing with are that large. So I went and made a new MPQ file and added all the files back in and boom 9MB.

Is anyone else using MPQEditor and have this problem? Do I need to just update to a newer version of this program? Or just get a whole new MPQ editor.

I will probably just look for an updated version tomorrow or a new program. But I wanted advice.

[stoneharry]

MPQ is an archive format. It's not designed to be modified after being created.

Every time you update the file, it is just compressing and appending the update to the MPQ instead of replacing the existing entry.

You can do this:


"Compact Archive"

That will rewrite the entire MPQ so that any old data is discarded.

You can modify your WoW.exe to allow loading of local files without them needing to be in MPQs. To do this:

Modcraft - View topic - [TUTORIAL]*[RELEASE] Forget MPQ : don't pack anymore

[piehead]

Thanks a bunch! Compact Archive is what I needed. Although I will look into the modified WoW.exe, from just a quick glace it might be a bit over my head.