Sorry for necro this thread. Don't know if you had solved this issue.
But I had this same question recently and your
valve article link reference helped me a lot.
So first of all according to the wiki, if you change the "particles/particles_manifest.txt" it doesn't work, cause it will read the file inside the "pak01_dir.vpk" anyway.
Source here:
Code:
Source 2007 usage
Due to the recent Steampipe update, particles now require VPK integration. This is because the VPK takes priority over non-VPK files, so the VPK's manifest will always overwrite your own.
What I have tried on
L4D2, I created a file inside the maps folder (dead center for example)
So my file will end like this: "left4dead2/maps/c1m1_hotel_particles.txt"
And I added a new line (based on the original "particles/particles_manifest.txt") to the end of the file
Would look something like this:
Code:
particles_manifest
{
"file" "!particles/error.pcf"
... // A lot of lines here
... // then
"file" "particles/custom_particle_test.pcf"
}
What I have to add to my plugin?
I had to use a FastDL to transmit this .txt to my clients and also the custom particle (.pcf)
So the code ended up like this:
PHP Code:
public void OnMapStart()
{
AddFileToDownloadsTable("maps/c1m1_hotel_particles.txt");
AddFileToDownloadsTable("particles/custom_particle_test.pcf");
PrecacheGeneric("particles/custom_particle_test.pcf", true);
}
Then it worked.
Just sharing here in case helps someone else.
Note: I didn't try the "particles/<mapname>_particles.txt" solution, which may work too.
This may not work for custom maps when the custom .vpk already has this file