PortalNXSideLoader Download - PortalNXSideLoader Source code download

PortalNXSideLoader

Other source code

1.0.0

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Portal Collection File Sideloader

Nintendo Switch plugin for Portal 1 and 2 that allows to load files outside of game.zip, so no more repacking and sending huge archives every time you want to change something.

Plugin installation

You must have 1.0.3 version of Portal 2 and version 1.0.2 or 1.0.3 of Portal

From releases download:

for Portal 1:

Portal-NXSideLoader.zip

for Portal 2:

Without network patches (it won't block you from using network):

Portal2-NXSideLoader.zip

With network patches (for people that block Nintendo servers, it will block game from connecting to network to prevent crash + helps with debugging):

Portal2-NoWeb-NXSideLoader.zip

Put atmosphere folder to root of sdcard (yes, your CFW won't be deleted...)

How to install PC mod

Rename main mod folder (for example in case of Portal Reloaded it's "portalreloaded") to, depending on game:

Portal: portal
Portal 2: portal2_dlc3

and put this folder into:

Portal: atmosphere/contents/01007BB017812000/romfs/nxcontent/
Portal 2: atmosphere/contents/0100ABD01785C000/romfs/nxcontent/

All folder and file names inside romfs folder MUST be lower case!

Some mods are overwriting menu options, so you can lose access to Switch controller settings.
If after installing mod you can't save anything in options, try to delete `gameinfo.txt` from mod folder. You may also delete custom options menu.

They are stored either freely somewhere inside mod folder OR they are packed to some vpk file.

Mods need to have properly optimized CPU code, otherwise Switch will be choking.

Examples of properly optimized mods:

Portal Reloaded
ERROR
Portal: Still Alive

Examples of badly optimized mods:

Portal Stories: Mel

Informations for mod makers

Few files in nxcontent may not be supported as they are preloaded with separate functions. I needed to add specific support for one function so rom_boot_params.txt could be loaded. If there is any file that is not working and you want it to work, write an issue.

Game supports vscripts.

Modifying source code is unsupported for this mod. You would need to make your own hooks manually.

How this works?

Game devs redesigned whole cstdio to use game.zip as filesystem. Portal games to open most files are using function called fopen_nx(). To read this file - fread_nx(), etc. All functions are cross compatible with cstdio, so solution was pretty easy:

Hook fopen_nx()
Detect if passed file path exists on SD card
If it exists, redirect call to fopen() with correct path starting with rom:/
Hook additionally stat_nx so game can properly detect custom content

There were 2 issues with this solution:

not all files are using this function. It seems there is not many of them and only important one in my opinion was rom_boot_params.txt so I have hooked function reading this file and redesigned it to load file from SD card. Later it turned out that the same function is responsible for loading sound files and textures from bsp files.
fopen_nx() path load is ignoring case + has priority to check first if file is inside nxcontent folder, and if not checks root of zip. Inside hook I've reimplemented this check + used tolower() for file path since HOS romfs file loading is case sensitive and all original files are lower case.