launch option to play vanilla map using mod?

[neogeographica]

Let's say that Copper is already installed. In the launch menu for a "vanilla" (no progs) map, we could give the option to launch using Copper.

Possibly we could also do this for the Arcane Dimensions "chaos mode". That involves launching with the AD mod and also setting scratch3 to a value of 1, 2, 17, 18 or 666 for the various chaos levels/styles (cf. https://media.moddb.com/images/members/1/389/388775/profile/chaos_mode_4.jpg ). That one's a bit harder to nicely squeeze into a menu though since it has multiple variants. Probably there's a nice way to represent this as chaos levels 1-5 ... it's too bad that the option for Copper needs to be "c" (IMO) otherwise e.g. could represent this as choices c1,c2,c3,c4,c5.

Even normal AD (no chaos) could be a launch option for vanilla maps I think. So maybe options like ad,adc1,adc2 etc.

The only gotcha here is that possibly Copper or especially AD could break a "map hack" used in a vanilla map which depends on some id1 progs quirk.

This depends somewhat on issue #35 since if we have this feature we really should also provide a way to independently install Copper rather than just having its installation triggered when it's a dependence.

[neogeographica]

Another gotcha is then potentially having some vanilla saves in the gamedir and some Copper saves (or AD or etc.). Unfortunately the savegame file itself doesn't tell you how Quake was launched for that session.

If there is a good solution to this, it could also help make issue #38 nicer.

There's various ways I could track/manage savegames within Quakestarter to make sure that only appropriate ones are available, but the obvious ones can all be broken by launching the gamedir outside of Quakestarter and fiddling with the saves.

The only foolproof solution that occurs to me at the moment is to have yet ANOTHER gamedir created specifically for this. For example if we have vanilla gamedir foo that we want to use with Copper, we could do that through making another folder e.g. foo-copper and then launching with "-game copper -game foo -game foo-copper".

It's still possible to mess up those savegames outside of Quakestarter of course, but you would have to be much more aware of what you're doing. In fact Quakestarter could even shuttle those folders in and out of id1 so that they aren't normally visible there except when they're being used, which would also make things less messy. Another nice benefit is that you can make Copper-related config changes if you want without disrupting your usual config for that gamedir.

That would only work with engines that support multi-gamedir, but that's already true for our normal AD/Copper stuff anyway.