Gruntz … the game of my entire childhood (right after The Neverhood) and the game I have really fond memories of. And definitely I’m not the only one out there – since the game was produced in 1999, numerous Gruntz communities and fan pages have been created. Unfortunately the time spares no man and these activities were not an exception. Most of them have been forgotten or closed down due to lack of activitity. The one that did survive and is noteworthy is the GooRoo’s Gruntz Forum. The forum has been already running for 14 years (and I’ve been its proud member for 10 years). Naturally it had its ups and downs but thanks to Ed Kivi – the founder of the forum – everything is running smoothly and the forum is prospering. The most of the forum’s activity is based on the work of the Designers, who design custom levels for others to play. At the time of writing there are 619 custom levels and counting! 12 of which are made by yours truly 😉 The most recent level was released less than month ago so the site is doing perfectly well.

I’d even say there’s quite a fandom concentrated around the game. There are illustrated walkthroughs to guide the player through a level, be it standard or custom one (some of them in a video form), there are countless discussions on possible sequels of the game (some are even in the making), there was also a time when comic strips were put together. Oh, and there’s an interesting habit of changing the spelling of words ending with an “s” where it’s replaced with a “z” instead, so we can spot “Switchez”, “Cheatz” and “Toolz” all over the place instead of regular “Switches”, “Cheats” and “Tools”. It’s not only restricted to plurals – just take “Indiana Jonez” as an example (and bonus point to those who know where this phrase is used in the game!). This distinctive notation was introduced by the creators of the game themselves (the name of the game being a subtle hint – “Gruntz”).

It’s the first version of the application used to modify REZ files based on patches. You provide a list of patches which program then analyzes and modifies the contents of the original REZ package.

Gruntz REZ Patcher is intended to finally make Gruntz a moddable game! To some extent at least.

Since it’s the first working version of the program, you’re likely to encounter some of the bugs. When this happens, report them in the comment section below this post alongside ideas for new features and constructive feedback in general. I don’t think there’s a need for a special place for it at this very moment, maybe I’ll think of it later.

DOWNLOAD
Gruntz REZ Patcher 1.0.0.zip (1.45 MB)

Below are the screenshots of the addition of the custom tileset “Virtual Reality” by Zu:

When I had released the first version 0.1.0, I promised I would take care of a proper, even the simplest GUI to make the program user friendly. Well, it turned out the current release, even though it’s got a GUI, has nothing to do with the original 0.1.0. I should have named it “Gruntz REZ Packer” or something alike and reserve the name “Gruntz REZ Patcher” for a version that actually does patch anything whatsoever. Ah well, should have thought of that sooner.

A brief manual and the way the program works:
The program creates a backup copy of the original REZ file before it patches it for obvious reasons. Later on it treats the backup copy as the base for patching. It’s placed in the folder where the application is located. The program is split into two functional parts: the top list named Pool is a workspace of some sorts used for stashing the patches we’re working with. The bottom one named Patches is the list of patches that actually are included when building a new, altered version of a REZ file. They are read in order from top to bottom (in case of file conflicts between patches, the lower a patch is, the higher priority it’s got). A quick way to add new patches to those lists is to simply drag them onto a program from Explorer window.

As of now patches can have *.zip or *.grp extensions. The latter is in fact a ZIP archive, however it’s interpreted in a slightly different way. The program looks for a patch.txt file in a top directory of the archive and when found, reads detailed patch information included (author and a patch name). This data is viewed in both lists when a program is up and running.

For future reference for modders, here’s an example of how patch.txt file should look like:

[patch]
author=Foo The Third
name=My name for a patch v5.7.0

I’ve just finished the first version of “Gruntz REZ Patcher”. The application is primaly written for use in the game Gruntz, however it’s very likely to work with other Monolith games as well, such as Claw and Get Mediaval. Its primary goal is to make it possible to mod Gruntz: the program would allow anyone to create new tile sets, adding new image sets, sounds etc. As of now it isn’t really possible because of a lack of proper tools.

This version features only the most important functions, which practically are the “basis” of the future versions. These features are: creating a REZ package and exporting its contents. The user input is received via command-line; it’s got no GUI – I’ll add it later, since it’s not a priority now.

DOWNLOAD
Gruntz REZ Patcher 0.1.0.zip (485.32 KB)

A list of arguments can be thought of as a list of commands – they area analized one by one and the proper functions are being executed on the fly. There are four commands so far:

-dr <directory path> <output REZ file>
-rd <REZ file> <output directory path>
-lr <REZ file>
-l

Here are some examples of command lines:

::Packs the entire directory with subfolders into REZ file
"Gruntz REZ Patcher.exe" -dr "C:\Gruntz Data\\" "C:\Gruntz\GRUNTZ.REZ"

::Exports the contents of a REZ file into the directory specified and lists the contents of the same REZ file
"Gruntz REZ Patcher.exe" -rd "C:\Gruntz\GRUNTZ.REZ" "C:\Gruntz Data\\" -l

::Lists the contents of a REZ file specified
"Gruntz REZ Patcher.exe" -lr "C:\Gruntz\GRUNTZ.REZ"

The next version will be all about implementing automatic conversion of PID files during packing as well as exporting a REZ file. Then I’ll think of a simple GUI.