Map Conversion utility for Total Annihilation ported to the Macintosh by Bruce Payan (with many thanks to Joe D for the PC version)

HPIPack allows you to convert and manage maps for Total Annihilation (TA) that have originated on the PC. Some of these TA maps (and units) are either in TNT/OTA format or are self-extracting EXE files, both of which cause grief for the Macintosh TA enthusiast. HPIPack allows you to repackage these files into the internal HPI format that both the Mac and PC versions of TA can deal with.

This program is E-MAILware. If you find this program useful, send me an e-mail at <bpayan@kallion.com> Thanks!

Bruce.

Download HPIPack v1.0 for Macintosh from my site or from MacGameFiles.

At the time of this writing (08/31/99), TA for the Macintosh does not support TNT/OTA files, so if you download TNT/OTA files off the internet and wish to use them, this program will come in handy to produce the required UFO file which you can then put in the "Internet Maps and Units" directory of TA.

To create a UFO (or HPI or CCX) file, do the following:

Create a folder to contain the files you want to pack, and in there also create a "maps" folder. This is how the folder would look for a pair of TNT/OTA files you have downloaded off the internet and likely unzipped:

Run HPIPack for Mac, and choose the name of the folder. In the example above, it would be the "my map" folder. Do *NOT* compress the "maps" folder; compress its enclosing folder. You may wish to move the README file outside the "my map" folder for easy reference later and not include it in the compression.

When saving the file, choose the compression method. I believe TA uses LZ77 as its preferred method of compaction for maps, ZLIB for TA:CC maps. I suggest using ZLIB as the default in either case as it appears to be better and faster than LZ77. You will need a file extension (typically ".ufo"). Press "Compact".

HPIPack is also drag-and-drop savvy. You can drag the enclosing folder ("my map") onto the HPIPack application. The resulting file will be compressed using ZLIB compression, and will be automatically saved as "mymap.ufo" next to the enclosing folder. You can do multiple folders at once.

Support for TNT/OTA files will likely be included in a future patch of TA. However, you may still appreciate using HPIPack to compress those files, saving you valuable hard drive space. For example, a 7.5mb map file compresses to about 2.5mb using LZ77 compression, 2.1mb using ZLIB compression.

Some TA maps and units, when downloaded, come across as self-extracting archives (EXE files). HPIPack can also attempt to find and save the HPI data contained in these files, eliminating the need to run those EXE files on a PC.

Try this first: If the EXE file was compressed using WinZip or a similar utility, you may be able to unzip it. Change the EXE extension to ZIP and try running it through your favorite zip-savvy Mac decompression utility. It may unzip itself, in which case you need not go any further.

Try this second: Drag and drop the EXE file onto the HPIPack application icon. If HPIPack manages to find the embedded HPI data, you'll likely see any README & legal text for the file in a mundane console window and you'll have a resulting UFO file. Many downloaded maps/units can be extracted this way. You can do multiple files at once.

Caveats: HPIPack will search for only the first occurrence of embedded HPI data; multiple embedded files will not be found. Also, some files will not work as the self-extracting data is likely encrypted and/or compressed -- Cavedog's Core Immolator unit is an example of this; many other Cavedog self-extracting EXE unit and map files appear to work fine.

A last resort: Find someone with a PC and get them to run your executable, then transfer the resulting files back to the Mac side!

HPIPack is not restricted to maps -- you can also use HPIPack to compress units as well, though units will likely originate on the PC anyways and will already be packaged as UFO files. It is important to note, too, that the HPI internal file format is the same whether the resulting file has the suffix HPI, UFO, or CCX.

Either way, put the resulting file into your "Internet Maps & Units" directory:

That's it! The above map or unit should now appear when you run TA.

Macintosh PowerPC, Mac OS 8.x (with Navigation Services and Appearance Manager) or Mac OS 8.5 or later.

Many thanks to Joe D <joed@cws.org> who wrote the PC version of HPIPack, who kindly provided his original source code and his support for the Macintosh version. ("Oh the endian-ness of it all!") Please do not bother him about bugs/reports with respect to the Macintosh version.

ZLib compression and decompression by Jean-loup Gailly (compression) and Mark Adler (decompression).
For more info, see the zlib Home Page at <http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/>

Many kudos to Westlake Interactive Inc. and Varcon Systems for their hard work in porting the PC version of the game to the Macintosh.

You may freely redistribute this software as long as the application and this file (HPIPack README) are included. I would appreciate an e-mail <bpayan@kallion.com> if you find this software useful.

This software is provided AS-IS without warranty of any kind with respect to its use or misuse. Total Annihilation is a trademark of Humongous Entertainment, Inc. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Trying to repackage large maps using the "Uncompressed" format fails unless the entire map can be read in at once by increasing the application's memory partition. This will be fixed shortly to handle any size of map, as the compression methods currently do.

A small memory leak has been noted. I'll be tracking this one down too.

In an upcoming version, I hope to support the use of multiple instances of HPI-data in downloaded self-extracting EXE files.

HPIPack [version 1.0] -- released September 18, 1999