GoopSwagger's Quickprecache mod, on Linux

The title says it all.

With the creation of the Modern Casual Preloader, players can now easily use mods in casual games. The main downside of this preloader, however, is the loading time it adds to the game's boot, which can easily go beyond one minute.

GoopSwagger has created another type of preloader, which uses a script to compile a dummy model that will then call in other models when loaded in. This simpler method of preloading models significantly cuts down the loading times. The main con is that this script 1) uses Java; and 2) calls studiomdl.exe, which by default cannot run on Linux. Goopswagger's program is therefore restricted to Windows only.

Looking at their Java program, I've written a shell script that roughly reproduces the behaviour of their program, while not being a 1/1 copy (less options, some directory paths are different, the ability to exclude mods using regexes has been added). The script uses Wine among other sister programs to do the job and depends on some files and environment variables being present, so it isn't a drop-in replacement. However, once everything is set up, it works well enough.

Anyone using Linux and wanting to use their precache method can use this script instead. Read the comments in the script for more informations on its inner workings and how to set it up. (Note that you still have to grab the VPK available at the given link to make GoopSwagger's method work.)

Note: GoopSwagger is as of writing actively maintaining their preloader and made its behaviour change a couple of times. The script here is then diverging more and more from the original and will not benefit from any changes as I am not keeping it updated (and am not interested to do so).