[sinclair44]

I've been trying to get Fred2 to work without using Windows (becaue I don't have a Windows box at my house ). Here's what I do have and what I've tried (with both the original fred2 and the 3.5 release):

x86 Gentoo Linux
 - running through wine: wine segfaults
 - building using winelib: complaines very early about missing headers "afxwin.h", "afxext.h", and "afxcmn.h" which seem to be part of Windows but not wine

G3 iMac, OS X 10.3.5
 - darwine is in too much of an early stage to try it
 - VirtualPC *did* work, but was so ungodly slow, especially to launch, that it wasn't worth using

RDC access to WinXP Pro
 - I can only RDC to it, so there's no way to get the fs2 files over there (1.3 GB! no way!) but I did transfer the fred2.exe. It ran, but gave me a cryptic error about not being able to find something... probably one of the data files.

I can provide more info on the various errors if needed. So, how can I get fred2 running on one of the above machines (prefereably on one of the first two and without waiting for taylor's wxWidgets port [which will be great, but it seems like it's going to take a while])?

Thanks.

[Setekh]

I'm not the one with enough knowledge to answer your question, sinclair, but welcome to HLP.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by sinclair44


RDC access to WinXP Pro
 - I can only RDC to it, so there's no way to get the fs2 files over there (1.3 GB! no way!) but I did transfer the fred2.exe. It ran, but gave me a cryptic error about not being able to find something... probably one of the data files.
 

It it's missing something in the data files, then you could try copying over the VP file/s required... they're quite large in total, but you shouldn't need all.  Offhand, i think the largest ones hold the command briefing anims, and you should be able to run Fred without them.  

Unfortunately, i don't have FS2 on this machine, so i can't experiment to see if you could survive with only select VP files and the Fred2 exe.  And even with minimal VP files it's still a lot of data.

[sinclair44]

Originally posted by Setekh
welcome to HLP.

Thank you!

Originally posted by aldo_14
It it's missing something in the data files, then you could try copying over the VP file/s required... they're quite large in total, but you shouldn't need all. Offhand, i think the largest ones hold the command briefing anims, and you should be able to run Fred without them.

Unfortunately, i don't have FS2 on this machine, so i can't experiment to see if you could survive with only select VP files and the Fred2 exe. And even with minimal VP files it's still a lot of data.

I think that's what it means, but it was very cryptic... I had to goggle it a bit. If you get a chance, determining the files needed would be very helpful... it would take me ages to do under VPC myself. I hope it's not too big... the only way I have to transfer things there is to start a webserver on my iMac and download them on the other via RDC.

As a side thought... is there any way to make fs2 missions without using fred2 or a text editor? Even another Windows editor might work with wine.

[Goober5000]

You can't really run FRED on anything but Windows.  Seriously, it's a huge behemoth of ugly code, and even getting it working in the first place (after you've changed the code) is tricky.  Your best bet is to run it on Windows with all the data files in place.

What was the error message you got?

[Hippo]

probably error parsing the ships/weapons table, or file not found?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by sinclair44

I think that's what it means, but it was very cryptic... I had to goggle it a bit. If you get a chance, determining the files needed would be very helpful... it would take me ages to do under VPC myself. I hope it's not too big... the only way I have to transfer things there is to start a webserver on my iMac and download them on the other via RDC.

I'll try and check what would likely be needed & get back in a couple of hours or so.  I think the minimum is still going to be a large file/set of files, though - all the ships, art (textures, backgrounds), tbls, etc.  So may be unfeasible.

Originally posted by sinclair44
As a side thought... is there any way to make fs2 missions without using fred2 or a text editor? Even another Windows editor might work with wine.

Nope.  Only way I know of that you can properly create missions with is FRED, or an ASCII text editor (which would be really horrible I'd imagine, and only suited to masiochists) to directly edit the mission files.

[taylor]

If you have VMWare for Linux you can get FRED2 running in that.  You'll need Mesa6 dlls for it to run at all but I can send you those if you want.  It runs fine but is using software rendering so can be slow moving the view around unless you are showing wireframes only.

I know I said in the IMG forums that I'd never do it but I have started rewriting FRED2 using wxWidgets so that it would run on Windows, Linux and OSX.  I'm only doing this in spare coding moments so it's going to be a long way off but it will get done.  Since Linux is my primary platform working on FRED2 is not the easiest thing in the world to do for me either so there is motivation to get it done.

[sinclair44]

I do not remember the exact error message and cannot access the Windows box to check it right now. But it seems I'll probably have to transfer most of the data files... if I have to move more than 100MB it isn't really worth it.

I do not have VMWare, and it looks like it's a commercial product? I don't want to buy something just for FRED. I'll go ahead and wait a while for the port.

Thanks everyone for your help!

[aldo_14]

I think to run FRED2 - and I'm not 100% sure - you'll need;
root_fs2.vp (table data - 5.3MB)
sparky_fs2.vp (ships, maps, general images - 231MB) :eep:

So...it'd be 236MB.  Not sure if you'd need any of the FSO media VPs for it, either.  It'd be a (even greater) pain in the tits if you wanted to work with mods.

[WMCoolmon]

Well, you could always try compressing it to RAR...