This project has moved to https://pevhs.ch/tf2/nhcustom2/. This repository will not be updated again.
Note (Apr 2023): v5 is out! The main changes are: The syntax changed and flags must now be placed at the start of statements. Parentheses can now be used to compartmentalise searches. A "new" flag has been added, the "add" flag (which just works like the old colon between statements).
This program is the second version of nhcustom, a program created to modify the Team Fortress 2 mod "no hats mod". If you plan to modify it to stop seeing specific hats or handpick those you want to still see, this program makes doing so easier.
Note: A problem can arise when creating a custom version of "no-hats-bgum", where cosmetics appear clipped inside default headgears. It isn't a problem with this program, but with how no-hats-bgum is made. See this image for more information.
Some improvements have been made, including:
- A more advanced config syntax
- The use of regular expressions (regexes)
- The ability to search and filter paths
Some parts of the program work differently than in the first version, making the configuration files made for the original program unusable. However, They are relatively easy to convert to the new syntax.
The program is known to work with Windows 7, 10 and Fedora 36 (Linux). I don't offer any support with this program, but feel free to let me know if something doesn't work as expected or if the database contains errors.
The program was created to work with the bgum version of "no hats mod", but should work with other versions.
If you want the latest version, you should consider building the program from source, as I won't make new releases for small changes.
Add the parameters you want in config.txt, then execute the program. An input
folder must be present next to the executable, containing a decompiled version
of no-hats-bgum, or any other version of "no hats mod".
Example of a basic configuration file:
#this is a comment
#the file must contain either "keep" or "remove"
keep
#everything will be removed, except the hats corresponding
#to the following parameters:
hat:Fancy Fedora
#quote names if they contain ! + or }
hat:"MONOCULUS!"
update:Mann-Conomy Update
#the "!" means that even though this hat is from the
#Mann-Conomy Update, it'll still be removed.
!hat:Bombing Run
Make sure to keep the database and the input folder up do date. !!! Use the database from the repository, not the one shipped with the release !!!
If you want to know more about the program, carry on reading ;D
The program accepts the following arguments:
-q, don't print info messages.-p, print the found paths to stdout.-n, don't touch to any file (the program has no effect).-i, specify the input folder. (default:./input)-o, specify the output folder. (default:./output)-f, specify the configuration file. (default:./config.txt)-d, specify the database. (default:./database.csv)-s, specify the separator used in the database. (default:;)-h -?, show the help.
The database is now in the .csv format, making it usable with spreadsheet programs. It should be encoded in UTF-8 with no BOM, with LF line endings.
A file named 'config.txt' needs to be in the same folder as the program. It's the
file containing the script used by the program. Lines beginning with a
pound sign (#) are taken as comments and not parsed. It should contain only
ASCII characters.
The configuration file should contain either the word (called command, previously
flag) remove or keep. This informs the program whether the hats the file
specifies must be removed from the game, or kept in with everything else removed.
If you plan to remove a lot of cosmetics, I recommend using the keep command. The
database doesn't cover all the cosmetics (like medals) and probably contains
errors. the keep command makes the program work with paths from the input
directory instead, which greatly reduces the risk of encountering unwanted
cosmetics in game.
The syntax of the configuration file is the following:
header:pattern
With header being the type of the argument and pattern being the regular
expression that will be used to parse the database.
By default, the values that can go in place of header are the following:
hatupdateequipfor an equip regionclassdatepathlist
Those values, appart from list, are taken from the first line of the database. One could
add extra fields in it, assuming that any new fields are added in every line of the database.
Note that headers cannot contain a colon (:).
list is a reserved keyword and so cannot be used in the database (See Lists).
path lets the user specify paths, which coupled with the new syntax can for example allow to
show/remove specific styles of cosmetics.
hat, update, equip, class or path can take any word or string, as long as something
in the database matches it. The date header, however, must be written with
care:
date:2021
date:2021-05
date:2021-05-06
date:2021-05-06/2022
date:2021-05-06/2022-12
#since v2 (Dec 2022), the dates above are NOT valid.
date:2021-05-06/2022-12-31
#this date is valid.
writing
date:2021/2022
will NOT work, as opposed to the previous program.
You can also "stack" statements one after the other, by separating them with
a flag (+, ! or }). Doing this allows to modify results found in the first statement.
For example, doing this:
Update:Scream Fortress 2020!class:Soldier!class:Scout
Will find all the hats from the Scream Fortress 2020 update, except the ones that can be worn by the Scout or the Soldier, and will not affect the hats found in the previous lines.
The program is now case-insensitive, there is now no need to open the wiki to get the name of the cosmetic exactly right. (This is only true for the pattern, the header is case-sensitive.)
If one wants to write one of the special characters that mustn't be interpreted as a separator,
they can escape it with a backslash like so: \+. This means that literal backslashes
must also be escaped (\\). To keep things more readable, it is also possible to quote
the values.
#These lines are equal.
hat:MONOCULUS\!
hat:"MONOCULUS!"
If the quoted string must contain a literal quote, it must be written twice ("").
The syntax can be a bit cryptic, I encourage to take a look at the end of the file where some examples are given after reading the other points.
The original program had a concept of "asterisks" (*) to select, for example, all
the hats that could be worn by the Scout alone or by the Scout and other classes
as well. This has been removed, and has been replaced by the ability to use
regexes instead.
This brings some differences. For example, writing:
class:Scout
will match all the hats that can be worn by the Scout, instead of the hats that can be worn only by the scout like previously. To achieve the same result, one must type instead:
class:^Scout$
For people experienced with regexes, please note that the regex implementation used by this program isn't the most feature-complete one, which could cause some "modern" regexes to fail. The standard used is the POSIX Extended Regular Syntax.
Regexes consider the parentheses to be special characters that must be escaped to be taken literally. The problem is that this program also asks to escape parentheses, so if one wants to search for a hat with some in its name, it quickly becomes unreadable. To circumvent this problem, it is preferable to automatically quote values whenever regexes are used or when special characters are present.
#Not ideal, the string is processed first
hat:The Voodoo Juju \\\(Slight Return\\\)
#More readable, the string is what the regex will be
hat:"The Voodoo Juju \(Slight Return\)"
An important point is that regexes cannot be used with the date and list headers.
This flag, if present between two statements, will simply add the results of the second
to those of the first. In other words, A+B = AB.
Note: Up until v4, this was the behaviour of two statements separated by a colon without any extra flags.
Like in the previous program, you can decide wether or not the pattern to search is an exception or not. For example,
date:2007-01-01/2007-12-31
!hat:Fancy Fedora
will search every hat from 2007, except the Fancy Fedora. It "removes" the
current results from the previous ones. Or, AB!B = A.
With the new syntax, this statement could also have been written like this:
date:2007-01-01/2007-12-31!hat:Fancy Fedora
Since v2, you can use this new flag to filter out any previous matches that do not match with the following statement. This is especially useful when you are interested in a small subset of previous results. For example, if you wanted to select all the cosmetics that came out in the Smissmas 2022 update for the Medic and the Pyro, you could write the following:
update:Smissmas 2022}class:^Medic$|^Pyro$
Note that flags cannot be used together. If one wants to use a flag character as a
literal character, they can also write a backslash before it (ex: \!), but this
is only needed when the character is at the beginning of the string.
Also, flags apply to all the previous results if written in the first statement or to all the results found in the current line, not only to the statement just before it.
Here is a theoretical example showing the usage of the flags:
hat:A|B|C+hat:D!hat:D}hat:B
A A A
B B B B
C C C
D
If one needs to filter results based on multiple criteria or if a search mustn't impact the rest of the line, enclosing the needed statements between parentheses can make the program bundle their results together and isolate them from the rest of the line. The opening parenthesis must be placed after any flag.
For example, this selects all the pyro cosmetics that are head replacements or that can also be worn by the Medic.
class:Pyro}(equip:^Head Replacement$+class:Medic)
A harder one, this will select the cosmetics released between 2009 and 2012 if they are 1: backpacks wearable by the Pyro only or 2: shoes wearable by the Scout only.
date:2009-01-01/2012-12-31}((class:^Pyro$}equip:^Back$)+(class:^Scout$}equip:^Feet$))
This one selects all hats from Smissmas 2022 that can be worn by the Demoman, including the specific paths of the cosmetics worn by all the classes.
update:smissmas 2022}(class:Demo+(class:All classes}path:demo))
This is an addition which came with v3. With the list command, one is able to
store results from searches into "lists" which later can be used in other searches.
It was created to allow users to store results from lines with no effect on
previous results.
Example:
list foo update:Smissmas 2022!list:bar
This creates a new list called foo which contains all the cosmetics from Smissmas
2022, except whichever result was in the already existing list bar. Please note
that list names must not contain spaces.
It's also possible to redeclare lists and even reuse the old content to do so:
list foo update:Smissmas 2022
list foo list:foo+hat:A Rather Festive Tree
With this example, you end up with a list foo containing the cosmetics from
Smissmas 2022 and the hat "A Rather Festive Tree" (this example isn't very useful,
it's just for demonstration).
Lists are useful if you want to reuse the same pattern multiple times in your configuration file.
Note: Up until v4, lists were the only way to filter results based on multiple parameters, like their class and equip regions at the same time.
The input folder is where must be an uncompiled version of the
no-hats-mod. If done correctly, the path should start with the following:
input/models/...
The program will refuse to run if there isn't an input folder.
After the program is run, the resulting mod will be placed in the output folder, and is ready to be compiled into a .vpk file by the program of your choice.
As of v2, The output folder is no longer wiped at each startup, so old generated
mods won't be deleted. This has been changed with the release of the -o option,
as I judged the old behavior to be too dangerous now that the user can specify
their own, potentially wrong or misspelled, output folder.
On Linux, simply use the makefile in the repository.
If you want to compile this program for Windows, you'll have to install MSYS2 and use mingw64 when executing the makefile.
This program has only been tested with GCC and glibc. It might compile on other environments, but I haven't checked.
Below are some examples of what could be entered in the configuration file.
#find hats that can be worn by mutiple classes but that are not all-class
class:".*\|.*"!class:All classes
#deselect hats that came out between 2008 and march 1st, 2013, except
#if they can be worn by the soldier (alongside other classes)
!date:2008-01-01/2013-03-01!class:Soldier
#find all the hats containing the string "aaa"
hat:aaa
#find only the 1st style of the Millennial Mercenary
hat:millennial mercenary!path:style
#find every path with the word "scout" in them
path:.*scout.*
#find only the first style of the Foppish Physician
hat:foppish physician!path:necktie
#find only the third style of the medic cosmetics from Smissmas 2022
update:Smissmas 2022}class:^Medic$}path:style3
#create a list containing the Engineer's shirts and all VALVe-made hats for the spy
list mylist class:^Engineer$}equip:Shirt+(class:^Spy$}equip:Hat}path:models/player/items)