.BAT Patches

Science Manual

.BAT Patches are the Custom Craft Patches developped originally by the Science Officer Kermee to replace the tricky manual installation instructions for patches that were in use before. They use a batch file to process the installation, using TIEPatch to edit compiled game files and Header and Isblank to edit text based game files.

General Usage

• Make sure you have the Emperor's Hammer Ship Patch (EHSP) installed (when available).
• Extract to your main game directory. (be sure to extract with directory structure).
• Answer yes to any overwrite file prompts.
• Go to your main game directory \EHPatch\ and run the ".BAT"
• Answer yes to any edit file prompts.

Problems

While a lot easier in use then the previous manual instructions, the .BAT Patches can cause problems:

• If the file is run in any other folder then the /EHPatch/ subfolder of the game the .BAT will not be able to find the game components and give an error in the line of "your game is of the wrong version". (This is usually due to players not unzipping the patch package according to the instructions in the readme.txt.)
• If there are multiple patches installed and one gets deinstalled, others may get deinstalled as well (or worse). This is because of the .BAT backing up and restoring the files it edits in the state it found then in. This can only be tackled by keeping track of in what order patches are installed in, and uninstalling them in the reverse order.
• If the file is run in Windows XP or higher it locks up. For this Den Darkhill created a tool called the XPInstaller, which allows you to still run the .BAT Patch.

Replacement

Although there have been some upgrades to the system over the years (32 bit versions of TIEPatch and Header for example) there have been plans to replace the system with a more user (and XP/Vista) friendly systems for quite a while. So far this has only resulted in the Emperor's Hammer Ship Patch (EHSP) - which only replaced the most common .BAT patches.