UE2 File Path Formatting

Unreal Engine 2 (or UE2), in most cases, when it needs a file path typed out literally (typically in a console command), it requires a specific kind of formatting. You cannot simply type out the full literal directory, like you'd expect. Let's take a look at an example that is valid, and then walk through each step individually.

Example file path: C:\UnrealEngine2Runtime\System\\..\Maps\ExampleMap.unr

Pay very close attention to the formatting used in the file path above. While it may look complex at first, by the end of this explanation, you should fully understand how to construct your own file path directories that UE2 can understand.

Step 1: Pointing to a UE2 directory

In UE2, you CANNOT simply point toward a file inside its directory, without first pointing toward its System directory. So, the first step is to get a file path to the UE2 directory you're looking for. In this case, let's point toward this example level editor directory. Here's the part of the example you should focus on for the time being:

C:\UnrealEngine2Runtime\System

The directory first begins with C:\, because C is the initial this particular data drive goes by. After this, we need to point toward a specific folder. In this case, we need to point to a specific UE2 System directory folder. You can either manually find the path of folders you must take to get to a specific file which you do by getting each literal folder name in order from the beginning to the end, with a \ between each folder name, or you can use the File Explorer program, which allows you to simply click on the folder path at the top to copy a folder path as text. Since in this example directory the folder UnrealEngine2Runtime is visible from the beginning of the C drive, pointing toward the UE2 System directory doesn't involve a lot of text, which makes step 1 quite straightforward. 

Now by this point, you'll have a file path similar to this:

C:\UnrealEngine2Runtime\System

Step 2: Pointing the existing file path toward the entire UE2 data structure

At the moment our current directory simply points toward an existing UE2 System directory. This all well and good, however now we need to go back once in the directory path, so that we can access all the folders outside of the System directory we're currently pointing to, since the file we're looking for may not always be in the System directory. Before we do this, UE2 requires that we append \\ onto our existing file path. This essentially tells UE2 we've found our base directory, and need to make some adjustments to it.

After doing this, we now actually need to specify in our file path that we're going back a single time. We can do this by appending ..\ onto our existing file path. This tells our file path that we're officially moving back a single folder, just as if we've clicked the back button in the File Explorer. Now you should have a file path similar to this:

C:\UnrealEngine2Runtime\System\\..\

Step 3: Pointing the existing file path to our file inside the UE2 data structure

We finally have a file path that now allows us to point toward any file in the UE2 data structure, that being all of the files related to UE2 as a whole inside the directory. From this point, we need to point toward our file. This step is almost a repeat of step 1, but since we don't need to clarify where we've started from, we simply start a path from the beginning of the UE2 directory to our file. For this example, let's say we need to point toward a specific map file in the Maps folder. We'd first append Maps, since that's the name of the folder, then we'd append \ since we've moved forward a spot in the file path.

From this point in the file path, we can finally see the file ExampleMaps.unr inside the Maps directory. All we need to do now is type out the FULL NAME of the file itself. The full name of the file includes both the literal name of the file, plus any/all file extensions that append itself. Since a UE2 map data file's file extension is .unr by default, we'll append that onto our existing file path. If you cannot see the file extension, you need to enable them in your Windows operating system. If you do not know how to enable these, it's recommended to look up how to enable them.

And would you look at that, after the 3 steps, now we'll have a file path similar to this:

C:\UnrealEngine2Runtime\System\\..\Maps\ExampleMap.unr

This file path above will successfully tell UE2 to locate a particular map file inside its UE2 directory. Congratulations, you've made your first literal file path!

With this all being mentioned, it's important to mention that this is specifically for pointing toward a UE2 file directly, not exactly toward a directory. If you needed to point exactly toward a directory, you'd do everything up until you'd provide a file name, which would make a valid directory path.