[GoblinToe]

Hi, all!  I just recently received Freespace 2 from a friend who said I'd really enjoy it, so after the training missions, I went out looking for some forums to see if I could get any dogfighting tips, etc.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I found THIS community!  The activity of these forums was not what I was expecting from a game that is so old!  I was pleasantly surprised.  

However, after reading these forums for awhile, I'm totally overwhelmed!  Where do I start?  

For starters, I'd like to play the single player campaign through, so I guess my question is, what mods, tweaks, patches, etc, do you guys recommend for me to get the most out of the single player campaign?

Currently, I'm patched to 1.20 and everything is working fine at 1024x768 resolution.  But if you guys have some updated 3D models or HUDS, or anything, I'd love to get all that before I start!

Thank you very much in advance!

[kode]

I'd play the main campaign through at original settings first, and then get the FSO exec and play it through with up-to-date graphics.

I don't think anyone has made any real effort to update all the ship models or the hud. at least not yet...

edit: oh, that's right, you're new here... welcome.

[Hippo]

yes, i'd reccomend playing through the campaign first, and there arent any mods that would be useable in it anyway... except FSO builds...

[karajorma]

I'd play it through on FS2_open first to be honest. When you buy a new TV you don't turn the colour down to minimum just so you can see what it looked like for people in the old days.
 Get FS2_open 3.5.5 first. Then have a look on the Lightspeed's shinemaps thread and download everything you can from there. Install all of that and FS2 will look 10 times better than it used to.

[Drew]

hippo... kmon lets make this guys experience the best as possible...
1. First you wanna check you the latest FSopen build. (Links anyone?) Bob put in (*bows*) spec mapping and a bunch of other improvements.
2. Then you wanna download the latest Media VP's so you can experience all the fan made art ingame. (Links?)
3. Go to http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/, go to the downloads section and get some of the tools there (namly VP veiw)
3. For good measure you might wanna download the FS port and plop its large textures into your map dir. Thatl make a bunch of ships in FS2 campaign look a heelvah lot nicer. (pm me if you need instructions)
4. When your done with the FS2 campeigh, go around and look for fan campeigns. Deus Ex Machina , Derelict (a must) , Warzone, The Babalyon Project (one of the highest quality mods out there), Inferno (tho its not on my Great 1's list.)

[magatsu1]

Wether or not you go for FS2 retail or FS_Open depends on your general PC trouble shooting skills. Open has a couple of bugs, though I've had very little trouble myself. Their results are pretty cool, too.

AFTER playing the campaign, check out FRED2 in the main FS folder. Best mission editor I've found so far (if you like that sort of thing) Just make sure you read the walk through first!

I'd also recommend VP viewer
You can use it to check out voice, music, sound effects etc etc.

[GoblinToe]

Thanks a million, guys.  I have very good troubleshooting skills, so I'm definitely going to go with the FS2_open first.  I'll do all of the above steps and see how smoothly it all goes

[kode]

but does FSO play mve-files? if not, he'd lose a lot with not being able to see the movies.

[Drew]

btw, you should check out these threads
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,18657.0.html
Lightspeeds effects. (IIRC For better performance download the 8 bit engin trails instead of the 32 bit ones.)
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,16418.0.html
Medie VP thread. The Media VP gots the rest of the eye candy. Download "mediavp355_to_356b.exe" AND "mediavp356b.exe" from the server.  That has MOST of Lighspeeds maps; they are constantly updated, the latest ones are in the previous link.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,18385.0.html
Best working build right now.

[Galemp]

True. Ok, you really ought to use retail FS2 your first time around so you can get the story info and have all the movies work, with no hassle. Then you can come back, install FSOpen, download the Port, mess with FRED, and generally have a blast.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by kode
but does FSO play mve-files? if not, he'd lose a lot with not being able to see the movies.

That's a good point. The avi versions of the movies are available though and they will work in FS2_open. Just look in my FAQ for info on how to get them.

[kode]

Originally posted by karajorma


That's a good point. The avi versions of the movies are available though and they will work in FS2_open. Just look in my FAQ for info on how to get them.

and that is, to half-steal your analogy, like buying a classic book, rip out half of the pages and then replacing them with the same pages, only more compressed...

[karajorma]

Well it's a trade off. Watch the movies in their full glory or the game in it's full glory.

Of course if you have around 10Gig of free disk space you can get hold of mve2avi convert all the movies yourself and just play them uncompressed and get the best of both worlds

[Setekh]

GoblinToe, welcome to HLP! It's always a happy event to see new people strolling in. Indeed, I'm project leader here and I can hardly believe it's so alive. I'm overjoyed you're enjoying FS2, but there's one thing I would like to say to you, regarding this:

Originally posted by GoblinToe
Thanks a million, guys.  I have very good troubleshooting skills, so I'm definitely going to go with the FS2_open first.  I'll do all of the above steps and see how smoothly it all goes

I actually strongly encourage you not to do this. Don't get me wrong - FS2_open is fantastic, I'm a huge supporter of it and its talented coding team. But even if you're able to get it up and running straight away, I really suggest you go through the retail version first - it will improve your appreciation of all that the SCP coders have accomplished. Consider it seriously. And again, welcome.