Samase is an experimental modloader for BW 1.20+ including SCR.

It is not really user-friendly, does not currently allow creating self-executing mods like MPQDraft/Firegraft, will break on the next patch, may corrupt your installation (Tbh seems pretty unlikely), and may get your blizzard account banned (That might actually happen Blizz decides to have a no-mercy policy regarding any exe editing, who knows)

But it should work if anyone wants to do research on 1.19 modding. Should also work with SCR once it comes out if there isn't a patch on release day. If it doesn't work on your system I would appreciate a bug report =)

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Basic usage
You'll need to run the program from the command line to use it, and mod files need to be in a directory structure that follows the CASC/MPQ structure. For example to patch arr\units.dat, place it in C:\something\directory\arr\units.dat and run and your units.dat should get loaded. Files that are stored in CASC can be placed similarly among the MPQ files and everything should work.

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Other flags for launching

--log
Logs all files that BW accesses to samase.log.

Can be useful if you want to see which files are being changed or aren't sure why a file doesn't seem to be loaded. May also be useful if you are crashing during loading, to show last accessed files.

You can force BW to use higher quality assets (located in HD/) by creating file named "starcraft.ini" in same directory as starcraft.exe (So 'x86' for now) and writing the following lines to it

Alternatively if you want to see the lower-quality remastered assets (HD2), use "scale = 2". Though I can only get tileset graphics in "4k HD", unit .anims still are read from HD2/. Not sure if it's limited by weak hardware or if the unit graphics cannot be overridden from the .ini.

--no-hd
Disables HD graphics.

This speeds up the initial startup quite noticeably (At least on my old pc). Also reduces memory usage to ~300MB. Pressing F5 will crash in most of the places, so don't do that

--map <PATH>
Launches directly into a map that was specified.

Settings will be Single player, Use map settings, Brood war.

--fake-gpu-mem
Reports 8GB GPU memory, allowing some lower-end hardware to enable real-time lighting setting. Note that this will end up also causing the asset scale be 4, so you might want to use starcraft.ini to set asset scale to 2 (As shown above)

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Packing files to a self-executing mod
To create an executable out of your mod files, run

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Grafting support
Samase also supports patching buttons, requirements and unit status screen types. You'll have to create an 1.16.1 mod with Firegraft, and open the executable with an MPQ editor. Extract the `.fgp` file from MPQ's `Firegraft` directory and place it in Firegraft subdirectory for Samase to find. (The exact filename can be anything; as long as Samase sees something that matches "Firegraft/*.fgp", it will be loaded)

Firegraft exe edits are not supported.

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Download is below.
Just please acknowledge that Blizzard might not like running programs like this, and you're taking a risk by doing it >:)
I've personally had no issues so far

(Edit Jan 21st 2018: Updated with a beta version which works with more systems)
(Edit Apr 14th 2018: Fixed for 1.21.5)
(Edit Apr 15th 2018: Fixed a launch error)
(Edit Oct 3rd 2018: Fixed for 1.22.1)
(Edit Dec 13th 2018: Fixed for 1.22.2)
(Edit Dec 19th 2018: Fixed for 1.22.2 rev 4)
(Edit Jan 18th 2019: Fixed a bug which would cause plugin save data not get loaded properly)
(Edit Mar 16th 2019: Fixed a bug with aise idle_orders and latest patch)
(Edit May 3rd 2019: Fixed for 1.22.4)
(Edit May 5th 2019: Support for a new aise feature)
(Edit May 8th 2019: Support for plugins messing with rendering)
(Edit May 19th 2019: Support for iscript hooking)
(Edit May 26th 2019: More plugin updates)
(Edit May 28th 2019: Fixed a file reading bug)
(Edit Jul 11th 2019: 1.23.0)
(Edit Jul 20th 2019: Fixed player color changes to not crash on D3D9 renderer)
(Edit Aug 11th 2019: Campaign list editing update)
(Edit Nov 20th 2019: 1.23.2)
(Edit Nov 21st 2019: Now automatically merges older string table xml/json files in rez/ with current patch's one)
(Edit Nov 27th 2019: Fixed bugs with xml string table support)
(Edit Dec 19th 2019: Fixed more bugs with string tables)
(Edit Jan 16th 2020: Added --no_hd and --map cmdline parameters)
(Edit Feb 15th 2020: Updated for 1.23.3)
(Edit Apr 16th 2020: Updated to fix plugins for 1.23.3.8177 and added --fake-gpu-mem)
(Edit May 15th 2020: Fixed a bug where rez\dialog.ui.json files were not being packed into exes)
(Edit May 29th 2020: Fix for some UI editing functionality being broken)
(Edit Sep 11th 2020: Fixed to work with the latest hotfix)
(Edit Jun 8th 2021: Fix for the latest mess of a patch)
(Edit Dec 31st 2021: Fixes to work with the latest patch)
(Edit Jan 13th 2022: Added locale path support)
(Edit Jan 15th 2023: Updates for plugin support api)
(Edit Aug 8th 2023: Updates for plugin support api)
Download

Post has been edited 89 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2023, 3:56 pm by Neiv.

Excellent work. I'll play around with it and let you know if I have any issues.

I updated the program to work with 1.20.1.2616, and hopefully also resolved some Windows 7 issues - I don't have it to test with.

I'm also planning to make it support upcoming versions without having manually update it every time a patch hits.

I tried it and it ran the SD version of SC.
I put the exe in C:\ and did samase.exe c:\mod which is where I put my files. C:\mod\glue\mainmenu



But it runs SD version so I cannot check if my HD files got changed. Is this how the program works?

Hmm.

I don't have the HD version yet so I'm not sure how it's exactly supposed to work, but I thought that once you have bought it, it should simply launch in HD. Or the very least you should be able to change the graphic settings once the game has launched.

I'll try to look more into it D:

Afaik you can run sc with starcraft.exe but the blizzard launcher automatically launches in HD. The changes I did were adding .ogv video files instead of smks which is why I cannot view my change in SD and I do not know where the switch to HD is to try out what you are saying.

I will try later with some in game changes.

Under normal circumstances you can use F5 to switch between SD and HD graphics.

So, turns out I actually failed to update for 1.20.1 properly and the casc file replacing didn't work at all D: It's fixed now.

Also, samase cannot separately replace files under SD\ path, like the smks in glue\. Instead, adding a file for glue\mainmenu\single.smk and such causes the same file to be used in both HD and SD modes (Assuming it's currently possible to get in HD at all, I'll purchase it later this week and look into it myself)

HD does not use smks at all. It uses .ogv files which would render the posibility of having smks in HD and viceversa ogvs in SD down to null.

I am out of home atm but I will try out the new build properly and not like... 5 minutes before I have to leave for work ;o

Um, right. I'm just mixing up the file formats, BW 1.18+ doesn't use smks anywhere at all.

Neiv, I thank you for your service to this nation.

Okay, I have an update which works with 1.20.2, 1.20.3, possibly older versions, and likely any future version as long as there are no large changes to BW's code.

=)

Fantastic! Thanks for this.

By your estimate, what would the process look like if someone wanted to create an exe out of their mod files, similar to 1.16.1 mods? It doesn't seem like there's a solution to this currently, which makes distribution more complicated than the masses are generally equipped for. Any plans to update Samase to compile the components into an exe that functions with remastered?

Yeah, the plan is to have exe creation for publishing mods, hopefully I can get it done soon. Maybe also support for loading Firegraft button/requirement edits after that (Supporting all exe edits that there are for 1.16.1 is not realistic though).

Would be nice to see some patches from Blizzard to see if Samase can actually be relied to work in future before releasing any complete mods using it.

Excited to see where it goes. Blizz has been patching on and off throughout this past month so we probably won't have to wait for very long. Eventually they'll stop patching, which is when we can get memory-dependent stuff started, I hope.

I've added support for creating self-executing mods.

Run `samase.exe "C:\things\mod root directory" --pack mod.exe" to create one.
Or to set custom icon/name/version run `samase.exe "C:\mod dir" --pack mod.exe --pack_icon icon.png --pack_name "Pro SCR mod" --pack_version "1.23.4"`
At least .png icons seem to work, .bmp and .ico files should work as well.

That's very exciting! I'll spread the word.

Do the exes created by Samase function on battle.net? Will they function for future patches, similarly to Samase itself?

Yes and yes.

But since Blizzard is active and still making changes, I'm a bit concerned that they may suddenly start banning people for code edits like samase does :l

Hopefully that doesn't happen. If it does, I'll be sure to spread the word so others don't fall victim to the same issue. Thanks for the info!