[starfox]

I finally managed to install 3.2 and 3.3....
 

As I said earlier something just "popped up" and 3.2 installer miraculously worked without any problems...
3.3 Installer worked perfectly, no problems whatsoever on that arena...

[PSI-KILLER]

Downloading base and patch, Looking forward to it!!!   

MY GOD!!!!!! that 3.3a patch .rar file , whats up with all the different varients??????

[Trivial Psychic]

Not everything that was supposed to, made it into the 3.3 update.  The 3.3a patch corrects (most) of those problems, and includes a few other things.

[PSI-KILLER]

Seem to be missing files. Just installed base.  In folder only file is Unisnstall_base, no vp files, no folders at all. Do I transfeer Tables, B5_core etc..etc???

[DirkDP]

 

Hi, just found out about  TBP.
I'm totally confused as to what I need for this game...
Base download 3.2, 3.3 Release, 3.3 Patch? Then there is this FS2Open 3.6.7 thing...

What exactly do I need and in what order do I have to install it? All I figured out is that the install doesn't include campaigns and missions.

Thanx in advance

[karajorma]

Basically all you need is the 3.2 download and one of the campaigns (like Raider Wars or Minbari-Earth War if you want to stick to the official ones). That should give you everything you need to actually play the game.

3.3 enhances the overall package by adding new ships etc but at the moment there are no campaigns that actually take advantage of this yet so I'd personally advise playing through 3.2 and then upgrading to 3.3 once you are a bit more settled.

Now if there are some issues that 3.3 has fixed you might be better off starting with 3.2 and then immediately upgrading but at the moment it sounds like you're better off with 3.2.

[Trivial Psychic]

Freespace Open is an open_sourced version of the game engine that TBP uses, we sometimes refur to as FSO.  There are constantly new builds being released, but there are a few that use a certain numeric designation that are refurred to as "official builds", in that they are (usually) the best ballance of features and the fewest bugs possible.  One if these usually follows a "code freeze" when only bugs are dealt with.  The last official build is 3.6.7, and if you're gonna stick with just 3.2, I don't suggest you use any newer build.  3.2 has some DDS (image) files that are incompatible with newer builds.  Unfortunately, 3.6.7 isn't included with 3.2, but if you download the 3.3a patch (which is a rar file), you can find it in that and extract it.

[starfox]

Little question about the Nova class Dreadnought, shouldn't its turret barrels be a little shorter than what they are now ?
Little nitpicking maybe, but they just looked considerably shorter in the show, maybe it's just me though...

[Trivial Psychic]

I think you're correct about that.  There has been some discussion of a possible HTL upgrade pack, and the Nova would likely be included in this.  I haven't seen the model, but it may have more correct turret barrel length.

[DirkDP]

Thanks for the info.
So if I install Base3.2, followed by FSO3.6.7, then Release 3.3 and Patch 3.3a I would be ready to go?

[Trivial Psychic]

That's correct, although I may release another patch sometime in the near future.  It turns out there was a map file for a missile which had an incorrectly sized DDS file.  In release builds it simply won't show up, but it'll complain about it for debug builds, if its used in a mission.  It'd also feature a fix for the turrets of the Excalibur, and some new weapons for the Victory.

[starfox]

Speaking of Victory, it's weapons simply act mindlessly... They will not target enemy ships at all. The pulse cannons and beam weapons alike will simply pick the dead space as their "target" and fire away....

The main Beam Battery at the front of the ship is very accurate and lethal, just as it should be....Can't be said for the rest of the Victory's Arsenal....

[Wanderer]

If you are using recent CVS builds then there is currently a bug with multi-part turrets that causes all swarm turrets (primaries & secondaries) and also type 4 beams to fire aimlessly into the void. This in fact affects all weapons but only with those certain weapons (swarms) it has any influence on the gameplay.. Other weapons wont bother to use turrets barrels for anything so the bug has no influence on those.

But even with those the turrets aim at empty space..

[Trivial Psychic]

The 2006/01/09 CVS build is the last one without this bug, though there is still another bug for swarming primaries, that I have to track down.  It affects them when they are put on single-part turrets.

[CaptJosh]

Well, a lot of bugs were fixed in the 02/24/06 build. You might want to test it. Thruster trails work, the AI isn't acting lobotomized, video is working correctly in OpenGL mode...  You might try it and see what happens with multipart turrets. Haven't had a chance to check their behavior under this build myself.

[LtNarol]

First things first: 3.3 is a beautiful piece of work, it's brought me many hours of joy in between my days of cramming and mindless homeworking

Now, on to the annoying bugs:  I seem to be having trouble getting FRED 2005-12-22 to do texture replacements without crashing thereafter on save.  I thought the 2006 build might have fixed this, but much to my dismay, the 2006 build buries me with what looks like a hundred or so errors in ship.tbl on load (it seems to dislike the $type, $animation, and +relative_angle tags).  When 2006 finishes loading, the main panel - the one where ships and such would normally be, is not rendered and the mouse disappears.

Now, obviously these are not TBP issues so much as SCP issues, but I figured you folks have seen this plenty and would have some ideas as to the culprit.

[Trivial Psychic]

Now, on to the annoying bugs:  I seem to be having trouble getting FRED 2005-12-22 to do texture replacements without crashing thereafter on save.  I thought the 2006 build might have fixed this, but much to my dismay, the 2006 build buries me with what looks like a hundred or so errors in ship.tbl on load (it seems to dislike the $type, $animation, and +relative_angle tags).  When 2006 finishes loading, the main panel - the one where ships and such would normally be, is not rendered and the mouse disappears.

To allow you to use any builds newer 2005-12-22, you need to extract the file called ships-adv.tbl, located in the 3.3a patch VP, and rename it to ships.tbl.  That should eleviate the error messages.  I would however, advise you not to use any builds newer than 2006/01/09.  There's a bug with the listed IFF, as well as a turret bug, with most builds after these.  The IFF bug was fixed earlier this month, but the turret bug may have been fixed in the build released today.  Unfortunately, there's another change for the turret animation code, for builds within the last few days.  The "initial" line in the $type: "initial", has been misspelled as "inital" in all previous codes.  If you leave it as "inital", the code will ignore it and start wanting +delay and even +acelleration data.  I plan on including fixed tables in the next patch, whenever that comes out.

[CaptJosh]

They fixed the IFF bug in 02/24/2006 IIRC. If not there, it should be fixed in 02/26/2006.

[LtNarol]

Wouldn't it be easier to convince the SCP guys to recognize both tags?  This is what some of us would call backwards compatibility =)

[karajorma]

True but you have to remember that anything apart from the official build is theoretically a beta. The coders have to reserve the rights to fix any features that aren't in an official build yet.