[TopAce]

I keep hearing that people should place their MediaVPs in the 'mediavps' folder and edit the mod.ini and the MediaVPs will work (or you can disable them).

I still do it "the old way." If I want to use the MediaVPs, I just place them in the root FS directory. If I want to disable them, I move them out of sight - incidentally, into a folder named 'mediavps'.

I've never had any problem with the MediaVPs with this method, yet I keep hearing that you're encouraging people not to have their MVPs in the root and use the 'mediavps' directory instead. So, what makes the new method superior?

[captain-custard]

you can control it from the launcher and can run mods with or without the mvps  according to what is marked in the secondary or primary list in the mod.ini
without having to open the freespace folder each time

other than that not a lot

[Jeff Vader]

I keep hearing that people should place their MediaVPs in the 'mediavps' folder and edit the mod.ini and the MediaVPs will work (or you can disable them).

I still do it "the old way." If I want to use the MediaVPs, I just place them in the root FS directory. If I want to disable them, I move them out of sight - incidentally, into a folder named 'mediavps'.

I've never had any problem with the MediaVPs with this method, yet I keep hearing that you're encouraging people not to have their MVPs in the root and use the 'mediavps' directory instead. So, what makes the new method superior?

It "works". But basically you could also do it so that you just stuff the mods you want to use to \freespace2\ and move them away after you're done with them. The point of the mod folders is to reduce the hassle of moving files around. Even if it means messing with mod.inis. Even though messing with mod.inis can be minimized as you can often just copy an existing mod.ini from one folder to another.

Of course, if/when you know what you're doing, you can stuff things into \freespace2\ but we (or at least I) try to teach new people to never put anything non-retail to \freespace2\, but isntead place each and every mod into its own subfolder.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Can't believe you left out it's a pain in the arse to troubleshoot when you have extra stuff in the main FS2 directory. 

[Jeff Vader]

Pardon my failure. That too. But again, if one knows how the game works, he can do unspeakable stuff and can most likely solve his problems if he forgets things to wrong folders.

[Mobius]

New method? That's the old one. It's been in the FAQ for ages.

Replacing the MVPs continuously may corrupt pilot files. It happened to me two years ago. Also, the Launcher is a valid tool to manage mods.

[Jeff Vader]

New method? That's the old one. It's been in the FAQ for ages.

I think he meant "new" as in the FSO method. The "old" method on retail was to stick mod vp's to \freespace2\.

Also, the Launcher is a valid tool to manage mods.[/mobius]

Oh, right. Almost forgot. You can always forget the mod.inis completely and use the -mod parameter manually on the Launcher's Custom flags field. It'll get the job done and might also give a mild feeling of 1337ness to the user.

[Mongoose]

The bottom line is, if you know your way around the FS2 file structure to a sufficient degree, you can put the MVPs in the root directory and never see any problems.  However, you do lose the ability to run retail FS2 at the push of a button.  It's certainly not what we recommend new users do, since there's a much greater propensity for something to go wrong, and Lobo's already lost enough hair troubleshooting issues as-is.

[TopAce]

Ok, thanks for the replies.

[Nuke]

it could also break mods that expect to see a mediavps folder. think of it as standardization.

[Jeff Vader]

it could also break mods that expect to see a mediavps folder.

Not necessarily. If a mod had a mod.ini referring to a "mediavps" folder, the game would attempt to read that folder, but if it doesn't find anything, it'll merely carry on with the rest of the stuff. And if a mod needed something from the MediaVPs and the MediaVPs were placed to \freespace2\, they'd be read, unless if the mod folder itself had contradicting data.

Still, best to keep any non-retail stuff in subfolders.