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The game will check for the existence of Mercenary expansion via registry string. If it doesn't exist, the Black Pyro ship is supposedly unable to be selected at Pilot->Configure (after passing Merc Level 2). #254 attempts to fix that, but Merc assets still failed to load from the steam version of the game where they are located in extra.hog.
Only after installing the CD-ROM, installing the Merc CD, then patching to 1.4, can the game function as expected by copying merc.hog and EXTRA.HOG (renamed to extra.hog) to the other install directory.
In essence #254 is only a partial fix. The underlying cause of this bug is unknown.
File breakdown:
EXTRA.HOG contains the following:
merc.hog contains a lot more:
In comparing the two, it appears the steam release extra.hog is a copy of merc.hog, and EXTRA.HOG from the CD is missing entirely.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:
I actually think that this is intentional, and I think that I know the underlying cause. I believe that this chunk of code is what causes the behavior, but I haven’t tested it yet.
Only after installing the CD-ROM, installing the Merc CD, then patching to 1.4, can the game function as expected by copying merc.hog and EXTRA.HOG (renamed to extra.hog) to the other install directory.
Here’s the mechanics of how installing Descent 3: Mercenary via CD fixes the issue. The Descent 3: Mercenary CD has a file in its root directory named AUTORUN.INF. Here’s the contents of that file:
That AUTORUN.INF file will make it so that when the CD is inserted, older versions of Windows will automatically run setup.exe -autorun. If you run the installer without the -autorun option, then it won’t create the …Uninstall\Descent3 Mercenary registry key.
I believe that this is a crude form of DRM. If you were to download the files illegally from the Internet, then AUTORUN.INF probably won’t get used because you probably won’t bother putting the files onto a CD. If AUTORUN.INF doesn’t get used, then the -autorun parameter probably won’t get used which means that the …Uninstall\Descent3 Mercenary registry key won’t get created. If those registry keys don’t get created, then Descent 3 will refused to load some of Descent 3: Mecenary’s content.
Build Version
current
Operating System Environment
Description
The game will check for the existence of Mercenary expansion via registry string. If it doesn't exist, the Black Pyro ship is supposedly unable to be selected at Pilot->Configure (after passing Merc Level 2). #254 attempts to fix that, but Merc assets still failed to load from the steam version of the game where they are located in
extra.hog
.Only after installing the CD-ROM, installing the Merc CD, then patching to 1.4, can the game function as expected by copying
merc.hog
andEXTRA.HOG
(renamed toextra.hog
) to the other install directory.In essence #254 is only a partial fix. The underlying cause of this bug is unknown.
File breakdown:
EXTRA.HOG
contains the following:merc.hog
contains a lot more:In comparing the two, it appears the steam release
extra.hog
is a copy ofmerc.hog
, andEXTRA.HOG
from the CD is missing entirely.The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: