Duke3D addons from CD-ROM game data Q

[sleve_mcdichael]

In the Eduke32 installation guide for official addons, it says you can play them with the game data files from the original installation CD-ROMs. I have DUKE.RTS, DUKE3D.GRP, NWINTER.GRP, DUKEDCPP.SSI and VACA15.SSI in my roms/ports/duke3d folder. Checksums match those in their FAQ:

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie/roms/ports/duke3d $ crc32 *
fd3dcff1        DUKE3D.GRP
b79d997f        DUKEDCPP.SSI
504086c1        DUKE.RTS
f1cae8e4        NWINTER.GRP
b62b42fd        VACA15.SSI

Yet only Atomic Edition and the NWinter pack are working; the other two still just load the main game with the original four episodes, no "Duke It Out in DC" or "Life's a Beach" to be seen.

Below are two logs, one from the working "NWinter" pack and one from the non-working "Duke It Out in DC":

nw.log: https://pastebin.com/LYZKNr1k

dc.log: https://pastebin.com/YyZLDsc7

I notice the nw log says it is using both DUKE3D.GRP and NWINTER.GRP as "main game data file," while the dc log only has DUKE3D.GRP and makes no mention of using DUKEDCPP.SSIeven though it just checksummed it a few lines earlier.

Was the ability of Eduke32 to load expansion packs from SSI files removed for the RetroPie fork, or is there something else going on here? Should I shoot this question over to the ED32 support forums?

(I do have working versions with .GRP/.CON files instead, but it involved some tricky work with DOSBox to obtain them. If I can get it working with the .SSI files straight off the CD-ROMs, I can cut several steps off the updated manual installation guide I am working on and eliminate the need for DB entirely.)

Edit: well it seems this isn't unique to RetroPie. But I do know the files are good. In Windows, I dropped the game data files in my Eduke32 folder and it just...worked. In the little launcher window that comes up when I open eduke32.exe, I saw all four games. And right there in the window, it said they were using DUKEDCPP.SSI and VACA15.SSI files for the expansions. And when I launched the expansions, they worked!

However...

When I tried to launch them with a .bat file, it's back to the same old story:

start eduke32.exe -addon {n}

NWinter (the one with a .GRP file) works with -addon 2, but -addons 1 and 3 still just load the main Atomic Edition game.

So I guess the question, then, becomes "what is the command-line option to load .SSI game data files and launch directly?" -addon {n} isn't doing it. I know the files are good, because I can play them from the Windows launcher.

I've tried:

start eduke32.exe -g VACA15.SSI

That just opened the launcher, with all four games still selectable.

start eduke32.exe -g VACA15.SSI -addon 3

That opened Atomic Edition.

I don't see .SSI mentioned anywhere in the command-line options.