About this mod
Alternative mod manager that can install (most) mods regardless of which game version they were made for.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
When browsing Rise Of The Tomb Raider mods, you're immediately greeted by warnings such as
"This mod doesn't work on the Epic Games version"
"This mod only works on the Steam 813 beta"
...No more!
This mod manager can install most mods into the latest version of the game - be it the one from Steam or Epic Games - regardless of which version they were originally made for.
Installing the manager
Simply extract to any location (doesn't have to be the game folder).
Installing mods
Mods can be installed either from an extracted folder or straight from their .7z/.zip/.rar archive. This can be done in multiple ways:
- Click one of the "+" toolbar buttons and select the file or folder to install.
- Drag-and-drop the file or folder onto the listbox.
- Drag-and-drop the file or folder onto the .exe.
Creating a backup of the game's .tiger files is not required. The manager installs mods by creating new .tiger files rather than modifying existing ones.
Uninstalling mods
To uninstall a mod, select it and click the "×" toolbar button (or press the Del key).
Manually deleting the mod's .tiger file is also possible, but not recommended. If you install mods A and B and then delete mod A, the game might stop working until you delete B as well. This won't happen if you delete A from the mod manager instead.
Enabling/disabling mods
You can use the checkboxes to temporarily disable mods so the game will no longer load them. Later on, you can just as easily enable them again.
Reinstalling mods
If your mod setup broke for some reason and the game no longer starts, you can try clicking the arrow toolbar button to reinstall all your mods. This is a quick and fully automatic process that doesn't require the original downloaded files.
Uninstalling the manager
Simply delete the files again.
ROTTR Extractor
A simple .tiger extractor that outputs meshes and textures with their original names rather than just section numbers.
For mod creators
The source code of the tools is available on GitHub.
Creating a mod
- Use the Extractor to find and extract the files or resources (sections) you're interested in.
- Make any desired modifications. See the page of alphaZomega's mod installer for a description of modding tools.
- Delete any files you didn't modify (but keep the .drm files if you changed something other than meshes and textures).
- Pack the folders into a .zip or .7z
- Done
Differences with alphaZomega's mod installer
Improvements
For meshes and textures, this mod manager ignores the file names in the mod. Instead, it reads the original names from the file contents, finds any .drms in the game referencing meshes/textures with those same names, and copies patched versions of those .drms into a new .tiger archive. This means that:
- Mesh and texture files in the mod can have any name (such as the one produced by the above Extractor) and can be in any folder. They no longer need to follow the "Section X"/"Replace X" naming convention and don't need to be in a folder together with, or named after, a .drm file.
- For mods that only consist of meshes and textures, it's no longer necessary to include any .drm files at all.
- Meshes and textures are always replaced in the so-called "deep search" mode, where all references to them are patched (as opposed to only the references in one particular .drm file).
For other section types such as .dtp, the same conventions should be followed as for alphaZomega's mod installer: "Section X" naming convention and included .drm file. However, the containing folder doesn't have to be named after the .drm file, and the .drm can be in a higher-level folder than the section file.
Another case where you might want to include .drm files as before, even if your mod only contains meshes and textures, is if it contains multiple variants for the user to choose from. In this case, the mod manager will detect the presence of duplicate .drms and warn the user that they should probably be installing a subfolder instead.
.log files are no longer necessary for speeding up the installation process (the mod manager creates its own cache when it's launched the first time).
By following the game's folder structure in the mod, it's possible to replace not just .drm sections but also .bin and .mul files. For files with multiple locales, the same convention should be used as produced by the Extractor: a folder named after the file, containing files named "Locale X.extension" where X is the locale ID in hexadecimal, optionally followed by a language code (for example: mod.zip\pcx64-w\local\locals.bin\Locale FFFF0001 en.bin).
Limitations
Deep search is not supported for section types other than meshes and textures. "Replace X.dtp" will be recognized but installed as though it were called "Section X.dtp" - that is, it will only be patched for the one included .drm file.
"Section X.txt" and "Replace X.txt" redirect files, which are used for applying one file to multiple sections of the same .drm, are not supported.
Credits
alphaZomega for their file format descriptions and Ekey for their open source CDCE TIGER Tool. The majority of the knowledge used to create these two tools comes from there.
Indra and Raq for the filename hash lookup table that's included in the Extractor.