HOW TO USE PAKRAT!

Pakrat is a GUI zip program that lets you embed your custom content (materials/models/sounds) into your .bsp file. That way when people play your map, they do not need to download the content from another source (.res file, website)

****NOTE - By embedding your custom content you are making it accessable to any player who plays your map (Your making it open source)


First step is to go here and download pakrat (101Kb). After you download the zip file extract its contents to the map folder where your map is.
i.e. - Steam\SteamApps\your_login\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\maps

I have a copy of pakrat in each folder where I make maps, one in CTF, one in DM, and one in CS:S

Now go to the folder where you extracted pakrat and click on the file pakrat.bat. DON'T click on the .jar file! Now you have pakrat open! the first thing you will be asked to do is open a map file, locate your map and click open.

A list will open up showing all the materials currently in your pak (map).



Ok so there is the pak for Dr. Bones 2fort_extreme map, which i am using as an example (Hope you don't mind).

Now to add your custom materials/models/sounds to the pak, simply click the 'Auto' button highlighted above. Pakrat will automatically scan your root folder for matching files that are not currently in your folder. After the scan a box will pop up asking if you want to add the scanned files to your pak. Click yes!

Now simply go to File ---> Save BSP and overwrite your current map.

Viola! you now have all your custom content embedded into your map for easy and pain free distribution. This is the quickest and most basic way of embedding files into your map. You can also embed stuff like text files (credits for your map) and probably even the .vmf file. But that will require you to tinker around with the other buttons in pakrat. Enjoy

-snooch