[ShenBear]

Hello everyone!

I've played through all of the cannon campaigns, several of the user-made campaigns, and I'm trying to get my partner interested in FS as well. To do that, I've suggested CoOp gaming, but in order to fully appreciate any of the other campaigns, FS1 and FS2 need to be played. However, I have ST and FS2 as CoOp, but I have yet to find the Great War for multiplayer. Does anyone know if that has been created?

[karajorma]

If it hasn't I can tell you how to alter the missions yourself.

1. Extract all the missions from the game (fs port or FS1 should work) using VPView or equivalent (check my FAQ)
2. Open each in a text editor. Change +Game Type Flags: 1 to +Game Type Flags: 10
3. In the +Flags: section for Alpha 2, 3 and 4 add "player-start"  somewhere between the brackets

Done. FRED will hate opening them but they should work.

[ShenBear]

Ok... and I'm extracting the missions from fsport-missions.vp? Also, once I've changed these, where do I go and place them to be able to play fs1 Coop?

[karajorma]

Stick them in Freespace2\Fsport\Data\Missions. You should rename them slightly or else you won't be able to replay singleplayer. I'd suggest the same mission names but with a letter M for multi before the .fs2

[ShenBear]

Ok. Will these be linked then, or will we have to select the next mission in the campaign after we finish one?

[karajorma]

They won't be linked. The number for the mission file names are fairly logical though so it's pretty easy to figure out which one comes next without a campaign file.

Making a campaign files is a little harder as you have to figure out which weapons to make available. Then you have to use FRED's campaign editor to chop the existing FS1 campaign file into smaller chunks (Well if you simply copy and rename it you can still play but the game will expect you to play the entire campaign in one sitting with no ability to save progress.)

[ShenBear]

Yuck! Ok. Thanks for your help.

[Legendary Teeth]

Hello,

I'm trying to play the FS1 campagin co-op, following the advice above. The problem is that I can't seem to download the VPViewer from link in your FAQ. Maybe it's a temporary problem, as I've only been trying tonight. But just in case, does anyone else either have a copy, or a version the single player campaign already modded for multiplayer?

Thanks

[Talon 1024]

Legendary Teeth,


VPView32 can be downloaded from many websites, including the SCP website (the old SCP website) and the WCS website.  I don't have a copy of the MP version of the FS1 Campaign.

[Jeff Vader]

You can also try Maja, available behind the Useful Stuff link in my signature

[Legendary Teeth]

Thanks for the help. I managed to find a copy and get it working.

To save time, I wrote a simple bash script to do all the easy changes for me. All it did was make alphas 2-4 be player starts, reported which had less than 3 or 4, and set up a new campaign file to work with them (though you still have to say how many players it's for).

Most of the missions work with three (which is how many people I'm planning on playing with) so I modified the few that didn't by hand (first mission, dragon mission, a few others) and left it at that.

If anyone else is thinking of making it co-op and has access to a *nix environment, you can use my script to do most of the work for you.

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash
sed -r -e 's/\$Type: single/\$Type: multi coop/' -e 's/a\.fs2/m\.fs2/' ${1}freespace.fc2 > ${1}freespacem.fc2
for FILE in ${1}sm*a.fs2
do
sed -r -e 's/\+Game Type Flags: 1/\+Game Type Flags: 11/' -e '/Alpha [2-4]/,/\+Respawn/s/\+Flags: \( /&"player-start" /g' $FILE > ${FILE/a.fs2/m.fs2}
if ! grep -q 'Alpha 4' $FILE
then
if ! grep -q 'Alpha 3' $FILE
then
echo "${FILE/a.fs2/m.fs2} does not have three Alphas.";
else
echo "${FILE/a.fs2/m.fs2} does not have four Alphas.";
fi
fi
done