[jdjtcagle]

How do I get fred to see my mods like without changing my main root directory? can't help, then cool:)

[Nuke]

fred needs to recognize mod directories too. as of now you have to develop mods in the data directory, which makes it difficult to play original freespace and other mods. it would be nice if fred could regocnize the -mod command line option, or have some kind of mod menu in fred itself. it would also be cool if the launcher could load fred, using the mod setting to load the appropriate files.

[kasperl]

as far as i know, FRED is regarded as an utterly hellish and destructive piece of code. not a single coder is daring enough to risk his sanity by touching it. those that have tried, have dissappeard without a trace. it is a dark, dark program, and should be avoided at all costs.



ok, i went a little overboard, but you get the idea.

[WMCoolmon]

It shouldn't be that hard, just add the parsing code and set the vars.

[kasperl]

ok, i was wrong then, i hope.

[Taristin]

I really could have sworn that Kazan said he would tackle it, bu then again, I suggested this in a thread I made over 5 months ago, and even though therewas of supprt, and I mean , nothing was done...

[Flipside]

Someone should put this in the post 3.6 requests threads

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Nuke
fred needs to recognize mod directories too. as of now you have to develop mods in the data directory, which makes it difficult to play original freespace and other mods. it would be nice if fred could regocnize the -mod command line option, or have some kind of mod menu in fred itself. it would also be cool if the launcher could load fred, using the mod setting to load the appropriate files.

Not that hard. You simply make another data folder and swap between the two as needed. It is tiresome but not hard

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by karajorma


Not that hard. You simply make another data folder and swap between the two as needed. It is tiresome but not hard

Thats what I do. Now you know the main reason for my FS2 folder being 5 GB - AND you know why I'd love mod folder support for FRED.

[karajorma]

Yeah. It becomes a pain in the neck when you have lots of files you want some mods to share and others ignore.

This is something I'd love to see fixed. Don't get me wrong

[Nuke]

i started using a mod dir for my mod, then when i tried to edit a mission, nothing of mine worked, so i renamed the data folder data2 and then moved my data folder to the root freespace dir. so far my mod is about 400 files and takes up 27 mb of drive space.

for some reason when i have my mod in the data dir, it forgets to load the new hud gfx for the ballistic primaries. this does not happen if i use a mod dir. the way i understand it, freespace is supposed to load vps before loading anything in the data folder. the problem doesn't show itself unless i load the mod from the data dir. it gets very annoying because over a third of the weapons ive done are ballistic weapons.

when the code was originally released i tried to see if i could make sense of it (i actually got scared and spent the next 2 days in my closet). i think i recall that fred uses the same file loading code that freespace uses. its entirely possible that the fix is already done, there is just no way to tell fred to use it. of course my programming skills suck, and i could have been looking at a recipe for pot brownies and i wouldnt have known it.

[Singh]

Originally posted by kasperl
as far as i know, FRED is regarded as an utterly hellish and destructive piece of code. not a single coder is daring enough to risk his sanity by touching it. those that have tried, have dissappeard without a trace. it is a dark, dark program, and should be avoided at all costs.



ok, i went a little overboard, but you get the idea.

ok....now you're scaring me........
is FRED really that evil??
But the people disappearing part....hmm.....I can use that

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by Singh

is FRED really that evil??

Originally written by Dave Baranec

Fred2 is the omega of all giant unwieldy pieces of code. Its big, its horrifying, and it just doesn't care. View it at your own risk.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Nuke
for some reason when i have my mod in the data dir, it forgets to load the new hud gfx for the ballistic primaries. this does not happen if i use a mod dir. the way i understand it, freespace is supposed to load vps before loading anything in the data folder. the problem doesn't show itself unless i load the mod from the data dir. it gets very annoying because over a third of the weapons ive done are ballistic weapons.

Wrong way round. FS2 always looks in the data folder first then in the .vp files. If it didn't work that way you'd never be able to mod FS2 at all cause it would always load the table files from the .vp before the one you've put in the data folder.

As for FRED being horrible I could be wrong but I get the impression that we weren't really supposed to see it. FRED looks as though it was bundled in with the original release of FS because someone suddenly thought "why not give it to the fans?" The fact that it doesn't even create a start menu item for it when you install FS1 seems to confirm this.

The real pity is that V didn't release their ship converting tools too. I'm sure they were equally horrible but the 3DS Max users would be happier with them

[jdjtcagle]

Well all you need are the tables and everything should be fine, but it would be nice.

[Nuke]

its odd though, if i use a mod folder, i see the hud gfx from the media vp, but if i use the data folder, i do not. its just one of those weird bugs that bugs me.

as for pofgen, it goes as far back as descent. i remember having the "why dont they release the model tools" discussion when i was trying to mod descent 2. i remember daveb mentioned that one of the punishments for being bad  over at [V] was to debug the pofgen code.

[karajorma]

You sure you don't have a copy of those hud files in one of your folders too?

FS2 doesn't seem to only use the mod data folder.

Suppose I move my MindGames data folder from my freespace2\MindGames\Data directly to freespace2\Data (which I need to do to FRED for MG). Suppose I then run another campaign (Say my own TMA). What then happens is I get any MG mods appearing that don't have a coresponding mod in the TMA folder).

It appears that FS2 checks things in this order

1) Data folder within the folder specified by the -mod flag
2) Freespace2\Data
3) VP files.

[Nuke]

that sounds about right. i had my mod in freespace\nukemod\data. but because i cant use fred with a mod dir, i moved it back to the data folder. i have the latest media vp in the root folder with the other vp files. i dont have any stray hud graphics lying around anywhere. this is just one of those wierd bugs.