Delta Force Quick Mission Importer

A CLI for importing quick missions into Delta Force games. Delta Force 2 is currently the only supported game.

This is a proof of concept and isn't terribly user-friendly, although it is an improvement over manually editing .pff and .bin files. If there is interest in growing this project, I will create a GUI to make things easier.

Install

Download import-quick-mission.zip and extract import-quick-mission.exe into your Delta Force 2 folder.

Creating a Mission

This section is for mission authors. If you're trying to import a mission created by someone else, skip to Importing a Mission.

1. Create a .bms file with the MED as normal. You'll need to follow the DF2 naming convention for quick missions which is D06M followed by two alphanumeric characters. I recommend # or ! followed by a number or letter so that your mission appears at the top of the list, e.g., D06M#1.bms.
2. Create a metadata YAML file with the same name, e.g., D06M#1.yaml. Don't worry if you don't know YAML, just copy the example below and substitute your text:

   title: |
     My Mission
     By Bullet Magnet
   quickBriefing: The quick briefing appears in the main menu when previewing the mission.
   longBriefing: |
     The long briefing appears when you select a mission.
     
     It can be multiple lines.
   
     Like this.

3. (Optional) include a 240x240 TGA image with the same name, e.g., D06M#1.tga. This appears in the main menu when previewing the mission.

Importing a Mission

1. Place all mission files created in Creating a Mission in your Delta Force 2 folder.
2. Open a Windows terminal (Terminal, PowerShell, cmd, etc.) inside your Delta Force 2 folder.
   1. A simple way is to right-click inside your Delta Force 2 folder and click Open in Terminal.
3. Enter ./import-quick-mission.exe <your-mission-name>, replacing <your-mission-name> with the name of your .bms file (exclude the .bms extension).
   1. For example, if your mission file is named D06M#1.bms, the command would be ./import-quick-mission.exe D06M#1.
   2. You should see console output similar to this:

      PS D:\Games\Novalogic\Delta Force 2\Sandbox> .\import-quick-mission.exe D06M#1
      Backing up df2.pff to df2.pff.backup...
      Reading df2.pff...
      Reading df2brief.bin...
      Adding briefings...
      Packing TGA image...
      Saving df2.pff...
      Renaming D06M#1.BMS to D06M#1.BMS.packed since it is now packed in df2.pff...
      Successfully imported mission!

The quick mission should now be fully imported with a proper title, briefing, and image (if applicable):

Behind the Scenes

The CLI does the following:

1. Back up df2.pff as df2.pff.backup.
2. Pack the .bms and .tga files in df2.pff.
3. Append the text from the metadata YAML file to df2brief.bin inside df2.pff.