[StratComm]

It's about the easiest but it's also the least centrally documented, IMHO.  So while it might be easy once you know how to do it, you've still got to find the instructions.

[TheAgent]

Nuke and Vengence, are you both referring to modding as in,

-building new ships and then adding them, or are you on about downloading ships that someone else has done, and adding them?

Either way, its always easy when someone tells you how to, but until someone does, its actually quite hard when there are no viable tutorials that are easy to find.

As my first post suggests, I do Know how to use Google and the forum search function, I also know how to add mods to other games, it was simple because with the other games, there were plenty of good tutorials on the same forum as the game its self.

Take X3 reunion for example:

http://forum3.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=96337

this is stickied on the very first "scripts and modifications page" it is visible as soon as you enter the forum, IE: noob friendly.

HLP, on the other hand, cater for a minority of gamers who have been signed up to the forum for some time, an thus haven't really found the need to stickied a tutorial on how to add ships and other modification's to the game for newcomers.

i understand this, yet at the same time, also had to ask how to and if someone could point me in the right direction.

In the end though, it boiled down to it being me at fault (as pointed out a few posts above this one), my research into how to add ships and mods to the game was correct, it was how i implemented them that was wrong. IE: i should have added the mediaVPs file location, in the mod tab in the launcher.

[asyikarea51]

I actually find adding ships in X2/X3 a lot harder than in FS. And I still consider myself a n00b to FS modding - I've only been here for a few months. Maybe all that time in RA2YR is actually helping me here... all Notepad stuff...

Especially in X2 when you have a six-gun limit on fighters with a rear turret. I spent over an hour in positioning guns 7 and 8 and getting them to fire (using Notepad of course), only to realise that they won't fire. Not to mention that the missiles only launch from a centre point on every single fighter... odd.

Then you still have to rebuild the package file using an MSDOS tool, etc... With FS I can just slap in an entry and go hunting.

FS -> Red Alert 2 YR (how to edit AImd.ini? i are n00b) -> X3

[Vengence]

Nuke and Vengence, are you both referring to modding as in,

-building new ships and then adding them, or are you on about downloading ships that someone else has done, and adding them?

Actually, I never downloaded and installed a ship in my life yet. So far all I have are mods and custom models. I actually self learned the folder structures and some of the tables. The part where I needed help was the naming of objects when I was going to export models. Other than that I was pretty fine. I once tried to mod X2, never worked out for me.

[Taristin]

downloading and installing is much much easier than creating with this game, though.... I mean, quite frankly, it's "put the appropriate file in the correct folder" and you're done. And worst comes to worst, you put the whole thing in the data folder, and it still works... It's reeeeaaallly easy.

[bizzybody]

What there REALLY needs to be on the forum is a subsection for 3D modeling programs, with subfora in it for each of the ones commonly used for FS work. trueSpace, Blender, 3DS Max, etc. I posted a couple of mini tutorials on how to achieve specific things in trueSpace 3.2, but without a tS forum or even a sticky tS thread they've gone way down in the past threads.

[Vengence]

downloading and installing is much much easier than creating with this game, though.... I mean, quite frankly, it's "put the appropriate file in the correct folder" and you're done. And worst comes to worst, you put the whole thing in the data folder, and it still works... It's reeeeaaallly easy.

Indeed! I once accidentally copied some tables into the data directory and I noticed that my changes to the correct tables weren't having any effect at all because of the clone in the data folder.

[Getter Robo G]

Long description of my advice cut short...

  IF you plan on making any changes, make them really small until you learn how everything works.
  If you want to add a ship new model, copy an existing entry and change the model name it points to towards the NEW ship. You can tweak stats later once you know it works in game with no problems.

  Same for anything else. For each change take it one at a time test , change retest... It gets monotonous BUT if something messes up and causes Game or Fred to crash at least you know WHAT did it and can take it out till you can figure out what's wrong with your last change...

I'm almost a complete noob as far as modding goes but I've tackled almost every aspect of FS2 modding to varying degrees of success...

FS2 is pretty cool to mod as most other games I've seen make my head swim. 

Good luck with your efforts, and if you got a voice file upload it to a storage site and post it in the VA forum (under Campaigns). I'm sure some of us would give it a listen and see if you're suitable for any roles we have in mind...

[TrashMan]

What he said..

[asyikarea51]

FS2 is pretty cool to mod as most other games I've seen make my head swim. 

I second this statement.

[Snail]

I would just like to say sorry to TheAngent for you, know, using the rolleyes smiley. I kind of hate that smiley cause it's sort of insulting if you're directing it on someone. Sorreh. 

[TheAgent]

Hehe, no problem snail, its OK...

Didn't know my thread would cause such a stir with in the community, but least its given us something else to talk about.

[Nuke]

with most vp mods its pretty much stick it in a mod folter and point to it with the launcher. unpacked mods like nukemod are more a drop the nukemod folder into the game folder (i set up the dirs for you just extract to freespace root). did you even bother reading the wiki, iirc it had a whole section on the subject.

[WMCoolmon]

with most vp mods its pretty much stick it in a mod folter and point to it with the launcher. unpacked mods like nukemod are more a drop the nukemod folder into the game folder (i set up the dirs for you just extract to freespace root). did you even bother reading the wiki, iirc it had a whole section on the subject.

There is a section on mod installation, but it only covers using the -mod feature in fs2_open with the MediaVPs, with the focus on full, complete mods (eg nukemod). In this case, the OP was talking about the standalone HTL Herc mod. I though I spent a considerable amount of time writing a page that listed all the directories, what file types went in each one, and what type of files each directory contained. I don't have a clue what happened to it; it's not accessible from the front page in a way that makes sense to me, and I can't find it via search. The search didn't turn up any pages like it, either. It may have been lost when we upgraded the wiki.

Not only that but part of the misunderstanding here is that the OP didn't even have to install the HTL herc in the first place, that's what the MediaVPs are for. However, starting from the front page of HLP, here's what I'd see myself doing (Assuming virtually no prior knowledge of Freespace 2, outside of the game):

(This became massive, as I went through the steps as I was writing it. It could probably be cut down, but I feel that the unedited aspect is valuable.)

1) I'd have to know beforehand that upgraded graphics for Freespace 2 even exist, and are worth searching for. That's a big step already; usually I check out screenshots of a program before deciding whether or not I really want to invest my time, and/or risk my system integrity. The better things look, the more time, effort, and risk I'll be willing to put into it.
Response: Absolutely dismal. For all the upgrades that FS2 has gone through, there's a very poor amount of screenshots anywhere. There are a few on the wiki, but those reveal very little. However, for the sake of the example, let's assume that I continue ahead.

2) At this point the first thing that would catch my eye would be the Freespace Upgrade Project, and the Freespace Source Code Project titles on the main page. Unfortunately, these are both forums.
Response: By now, I'd say that my theoretical interest would strongly be in doubt. Not only is there no clear download link, but development is based entirely in forums. My experience has been that programs on forums are difficult to use, and oftentimes poorly supported, as evidenced by the lack of enough interest to create even one page providing the steps needed to install everything.

3) By now, my choice largely depends on how well informed I am. Assuming that I found the wiki article with either my search for screenshots, or the wiki was on the path to reaching HLP, I'll probably know that I want to check out the Source Code Project. If I didn't read the article, "Freespace Upgrade Project" sounds much more like it'll upgrade the graphics.
Response: I don't see anything in the FSUP forums that would catch my eye. The only release thread is for the MediaVPs - and being a newbie to the community, I won't know what that means. It also isn't worded like a release thread (Yes, that is my fault ). The first thing I'll see is "Tiny Rerelease: FS2 Demo with SCP Enhancements  New" - so I could easily draw the erroneous assumption that so far, only the demo has been updated. Or perhaps I'll see the HTL thread, and think that I have to update every model, individually, myself, and end up posting a thread like this one.

4) But let's assume that I (also?) thought to check the Source Code Project forums. The release thread is more clearly denoted on the front page, so I'll probably head to that first.
Response: The first post is going to annoy me, because it's not intuitively organized and presented. It's difficult to skim it and understand what, exactly, I need to upgrade my copy of Freespace 2. Do I need OpenAL with Turey's installer? Does the first pack contain the enhancements? Does the installer click the movie? Regardless, the installer's going to sound like the least likely way of screwing up - so I click that, expecting a download link.

5) I run into another thread, with slightly better formatting than the previous thread, but still with a lot of extra jargon that I don't understand and, for that matter, don't really want to take the time to understand.
Response: What are the MediaVPs? I guess they have some kind of enhancements, because the advanced pack says that they have some kind of enhancements. Is OpenAL required? This page says that it's optional. Why are launcher6.ini and fs2open_pxo.cfg listed, what do these do for me? What's Just Another Day? What's Freespace Port, don't I already have Freespace? Why are the cutscenes included, don't I have those already? Why is the Windows installer 20 MB - 19MB more than the Java installer, but not large enough to contain all the stuff listed. I don't know what any of this stuff does! I just want to upgrade the Freespace 2 graphics, goddammit.

6) However, the Windows installer link looks promising. So despite not knowing what 95% of the stuff listed is, I'll probably click the download link. I get a ZIP file - vaguely annoying, I like things that I can easily install.
Response: What the hell are these files? I already have Freespace installed, so do I run the updater? Or do I want to run the FreespaceOpenInstaller? Figuring that it'll give me an error if I already have Freespace installed, I choose the installer.

7) Great, a console prompt. Fortunately, I'm computer literate enough to know how to use it. Unfortunately, I'm computer literate enough to know that it's not all that hard to implement a standard Choose Directory dialog box, and that dos boxes are usually a sign that the coder didn't want to spend the effort to write quality software.
Response: BOOM! What the HELL happened!?!? I just saw some text appear, and the program disappeared. Did it update my Freespace2 installation? Or did it crash in the middle? What the **** do I do now - is it safe to try and run Freespace2 to check if it's OK? Can I rerun the Installer, or does it generate some kind of files I need to cleanup? There's no readme included with the Installer, either.
By this point, I may just decide that it's time to give up or ask for help on the forums. Maybe it's not worth risking my installation and player progress. (Thankfully, I've been thoughtless enough to not consider whether or not there was a danger to any savegame files I might have, or this whole thing would be complicated by several extra steps as I searched the forums for "savegames".) In reality, all that happened was that I made a typo and the installer got pointed to a nonexistent directory.

8 ) But let's say I do try again, and get the right directory this time. I'm prompted for things that I only partially understand; let's assume that I choose to install pretty much everything, and I get it right. I'm probably going to err on the side of caution - although I'll still have questions like "Which do I install, MVE or OGG movies? Do I need either one?" Then the installer...disappears. Did it crash? Most installers tell me that they installed successfully.
Response: If there's no message or start menu entries, I'm not going to know which executable to run. I may try to run retail FS2 - the Installer didn't tell me to do anything else, and didn't make any separate shortcuts anywhere. I may assume that the lack of any message or shortcuts means that the Installer didn't complete successfully, and try to run it again. The installer doesn't detect whether files have been installed already or not, so I could spend a half-hour needlessly downloading files.
If we assume that I actually do find the SCP Launcher, we can probably assume that I'll get everything set up and running, because the Launcher has a lot of basic config common to many other games. The command line options will probably give me some trouble, but the descriptions are clear enough that I can probably figure it out. That's an unsafe assumption for people who are used to choosing "High" "Medium" or "Low" settings, but by this point, they'd probably have given up already.

Summary:
When I began writing this post, I assumed that it'd be relatively short and to the point and obviously demonstrate that their was a significant difficulty for newbies to get involved with Freespace. However, even assuming that I would have the technical skill that I do now, I still encountered significant (and wholly unnecessary) problems in upgrading Freespace 2. In addition, I also displayed a lot of unwarranted faith in the upgrade by installing it without question, even though I didn't have a clue if I could do what I wanted with what I was actually installing, thanks to the bizarre names, and lack of description thereof.

There are three principal things that would have greatly assisted me, which I left out.

1 - Reading the WIKI. I typically think of a wiki as a repository for encyclopedic data, eg Memory Alpha, Wikipedia, BattlestarWiki, etc. If I had checked the Wiki, the Getting Started link and Installation guide in there could have massively helped me understand what exactly I needed to do. They are also woefully out-of-date and undermaintained, and the sheer number of choices would probably leave me slightly confused. However, I chose to err on the side of not reading the wiki, because it's iffy as to whether a normal, non-technically oriented user would think to check it.

2 - Reading any other install guide. This is hopefully self-explanatory - nowhere on my quest for freespace 2 upgrades did I see anything resembling a proper install guide. As a member within the community, I know they exist - except I couldn't name how to get to any of them reliably, besides search (or the wiki ones)

3 - Visiting the Source Code Project Site. I could skip to about Step 6 because I include a link to the installer in the news post at the very top of the page. Not only that, but I would've understood what I was doing, because it explicitly states that it's a Source Code Project installer. (SCP = Source Code Project seems like a safe assumption to make) I didn't do this in the guide because I was focusing on HLP, since it's described on the Wiki as the main activity center of Freespace, and it seems like the likely place that most newbies would be directed to.
This small discovery may very well be the most important part of this post, because it shows just how much trouble can be saved simply by including a direct "Update Freespace" download link on the front page of HLP, with a readme in the ZIP that explains what to do (Or the download link itself links to a page that explains what to do, since most people around here seem to assume that nobody reads the readmes - which left me high and dry on step six.)

One of the criticisms I'm expecting is for somebody to claim that the only reason I had trouble is because I rushed through it all, and didn't take the time to understand what the MediaVPs were, and so on. I feel that that's unrealistic to expect of a normal user, especially if you assume that they don't know to assume the wiki. (There's also no MediaVPs page on the wiki, although there is a description in the FSSCP Introduction). There's also the aspect of advertising - even if we don't have a concentrated campaign, per se, anyone who values their time really has to be convinced that it's worth their time to learn about this community, and all its anachronisms. Screenshots are a good incentive - they look pretty! They also give an indication to the person of what they can expect to get. Most people, however, seem to find HLP thanks to nostalgia or the recommendation of a friend. Playing the game is an even better incentive - but unfortunately, it requires a considerable amount of correct assumptions to even get installed, and once installed, there's no sign of what you should do to actually play it.

[Huggybaby]

Awesome post. Those reasons are why I started my own guide. Now at least I have a procedure to follow when I become senile.

Another irritation is that I can't find one place to download all the finished mods, missions, etc. I used the Shivan/Turey process, then zipped each mod and uploaded them. When Creash and I went asking for TBP info we were talking to ourselves...

The number of out of date websites, and sites under construction, and bad links around this project must be setting some kind of record.

I'll stop now, you've pretty much said it all.

Please Read

[TheAgent]

There is a section on mod installation, but it only covers using the -mod feature in fs2_open with the MediaVPs, with the focus on full, complete mods (eg nukemod). In this case, the OP was talking about the standalone HTL Herc mod. I though I spent a considerable amount of time writing a page that listed all the directories, what file types went in each one, and what type of files each directory contained. I don't have a clue what happened to it; it's not accessible from the front page in a way that makes sense to me, and I can't find it via search. The search didn't turn up any pages like it, either. It may have been lost when we upgraded the wiki....

Wow, iv just relived those two days of searching the forums, in one easy to read post

What you say is basically what I just went through,  I came across HLP by mere accident, I was looking for a star wars mod, and this popped up, when I noticed it was for freespace2, I ran to my games rack and dusted off my free space 2 cd's.

If you need any help making a tutorial for how to set up freespace2 to use with fredopen, let me know, its still fresh in my mind so I have a better understanding of how the processes works, I can also upload pictures to photo-bucket, and as I never delete any thing iv uploaded to there, they are not going to disappear off of the forum.

[bizzybody]

One thing that needs done is to dig through this forum and other places and remove links to and mentions of old and outdated versions. Leave only the last stable version and the betas, with clear indications as to which is what.

For a long time, the SCP site some olde version up as the official download, so I did. Then I come in the forums and everyone's saying "Aaaahhhhh! Why'd you get THAT? It's horrible!". Eventually I got pointed around to 3.6.8Z, but it would've been nice if the SCP site had said "We recommend you download 3.6.8Z AND you'll also need OpenAL."

*goes and checks the site*

Ick! It's still all the same olde stuff here http://scp.indiegames.us/download.php as was there (and outdated) when I first downloaded FSO. Update and save yourselves yet more "I can't get 3.6.7 to work!" posts.

[TheAgent]

I think a really good idea would be to just combine all the key files into one easy download, even if it means adding OpenAL to each built, its not that big anyway, and would save a lot of trouble. 

There also needs to be a more clear cut set of instructions, with in readme files that come with what ever it is your trying to install, even if everyone added a readme that said what to do with that particular file, it would be a lot more helpful than nothing at all.

Well its now 8:24am, and i have to do some taxi work (running the Mrs around) soon, so i think later tonight, ill trudge through the forums and gather as much information as possible, and compile it all in one big post, even if it means downloading and then re-uploading files to somewhere like filefront/mega upload or others. ill dig out all the small but useful files and add them to one download. Don't worry, all readmes will be rolled into one, to give proper credit.

Ill also add useful things, like how you can edit .tbl files with word pad. (thought I'm not to good with mission editing, so i might need some help on that side of things)

As for actual model building tutorials and texturing, I'm staying way clear of them, as i know next to nothing about the subject.

[Huggybaby]

If you're going to include readme files, you have some editing to do. Most include obsolete installation instructions.

[WMCoolmon]

To get FSSCP ready for primetime, there are three key things that are needed (IMHO):

1. Visible download link
I've asked about this in the 'SUPPORT' forum, as well as posted a sample banner, but something on the HLP front page would be great.

2. Web-based, well-formatted, short, install guide
Short being the key word here, I think. This may also require some repackaging of files...but basically, the goal for this should be that it looks professional, and doesn't require any kind of program installation other than Freespace 2. Mounting ISOs on virtual drives to run the original installer is an unnecessary step in the process; it should be listed as an alternate solution, but not the primary method. You don't need to run the installer to be able to run Freespace2; you can just copy the VPs and EXEs to a directory and let the program fill in the registry entries itself, so all that's really needed is a self-extracting ZIP, or just a plain old ZIP.

3. A user-friendly installer
Doesn't really have to be standardized, but something with a GUI and point-and-click user interface. I'm skeptical of Java because I couldn't get the .jar file running on my machine, and not everyone is going to have or want to install Java. A binary, wxWidgets-based installer would be ideal. It should also be able to offer a description for each component.

In addition, the installer should be able to check for gotchas (directory typo, missing/incomplete/corrupted FS2 install) and tell the user what is going on.



My goal in all of this is to work out a relatively simple, standardized, and semiofficial process to install Freespace 2, and then upgrade it to fs2_open if so desired. Not only would this let us advertise FSSCP more openly, but it will also make it easier to provide support to people installing fs2_open.