Marathon-Phile Juggler is a program/system extension designed to manage your Marathon files. I wrote it because I was not satisfied with any of the current file managers. One unique feature is that you are ability to save your sets as double-clickable icons. Another is a system extension that tells Marathon where to look for it's resources--no longer will you have make copies of your files for each patch you want to apply.
Getting Started
The first thing you need to do is put everything in its proper place. The Phile Juggler extension should be placed in the Extensions folder of your System folder--you'll have to restart in order to use it. Phile Juggler itself should be in the same folder as the Marathon application(s). Put Map, Music, Physics, Shapes, and Sounds files in their appropriate folders named "Maps", "Music","Physics", "Shapes", and "Sounds", respectively. All your patches should go in a folder names "Patches"--please read section about ResCompare patches below.
Using Phile Juggler
When you open Phile Juggler, it will search the appropriate folders for the various Marathon Files and place their names in the pop-up menus or list box. Then you're ready to go.
Making a Set
To make a set, select the various files you want in the set (as well as if you want to kill the Finder), choose the new set command, and name the set. The new set will now appear in the sets pop-up menu. After you make a set, don't change the names of the files in the set since all that is saved are the names of the files. Note: Sets made with any version of Phile-Juggler prior to 1.0 are incompatible with later versions.
Deleting a Set
To delete a set, just choose the set from the Sets pop-up menu and choose the delete
command.
Saving a Set as an Icon
This is the neat part, and probably the main way you'll use Phile-Juggler. Select a set, or choose the files you want in the set and choose the Save Set as Icon command then select a name and location for the set. Whenever you click on the icon for the set, Phile-Juggler will open, do its thing, and then launch Marathon automatically.
Launching Marathon
To launch Marathon simply click on the Launch Marathon button. Phile Juggler will take a moment to do it's bussiness; if Kill Finder is checked, the Finder will quit; then Marathon will launch.
Convert ResCompare Patches
Patches made with ResCompare--ones that have little "patched" application icons--don't store their resources in the normal format, so they need to be converted so that Phile Juggler can use them. First you need to temporarily increase Phile Juggler's memory partition by about 1 meg. Then you can either drag and drop them on Phile Juggler, or select Convert ResComp and choose the file you want converted; the converted files are then automatically put in the Patches folder. IMPORTANT NOTE: In order for this option to operate correctly, you need to have the original, unpatched Marathon files in their respective folders with their "default" names, i.e. "Marathon", "Shapes", and "Sounds".
How Phile Juggler Works
Phile Juggler first modifies Marathon so that it uses various support files you specify in the various pop-up menus. After Marathon launches, the system extension makes Marathon first look in the files you specified in the patches list box for it's resources before searching those support files.
Note to users of version 1.0
Since I've changed the mechanism by which Phile Juggler works (from patching the files to a system extension), the first time it encounters a "dirty" file from 1.0, it will automatically "clean it up" before using it.
Obligatory "don't blame me if your computer blows up" section
This version of Phile Juggler uses a system extension instead of modifying your resources (except for the one that tells Marathon where to look for the "unpatched" resources) this should reduce the risk of something terrible happening to your files. However, it's entirely possible that you could run into some sort of extension conflict. In that case, please inform me so I can fix it.
Version release history
0.91b
- first release version
1.0
- faster file search on large volumes
- support for patches
- filenames now listed alphabetically
- quit Finder on Marathon launch
- raised file limit from 50 to 255
snazzier interface and cool-looking icons
1.5
- added system extension(thanks to Dave Mark and Jorg Brown from Ultimate Mac Programming)
- fixed bug that made it impossible to delete sets
- changed Kill Finder default to off
1.6
- found out the right way to code a system extension (a very big thanks to Gilles Berkovitch)
- fixed major bug that caused the application heap to grow as time went on (should've spotted that one early on)
- ability to convert ResCompare files
- nice icons for system extension and converted ResCompare files
Improvements for future versions
This is pretty much it as far as the Marathon 1 goes. Since Bungie completely changed the format of the files for Marathon 2 (now everything's stored in the data fork) I'll have to totally recode the extension for it (it'll also be a lot harder to do :( Thanks a lot Bungie!)
Please send bug reports, comments, suggestions, hate mail, etc. to rickb@intellinet.com.
The latest version of Phile Juggler, as well as other cool stuff, can be found on my home page at: http://www.intellinet.com/~rickb/
