For our non-Windows users who don't want to copy TBP over from a Windows installation:
- Download this non-exe version of TBP 3.4 Final and extract it to the location of your choice
- Note: if you get a page full of gibberish when clicking the download link at FreeSpaceMods, it means that your browser is opening the .7z file. That is weird and shouldn't happen but if it does happen, go back, right-click the download link, select "Save as" or something and save the file to your hard drive. If you don't have the Save as option in Safari, you have to disable "open safe files automatically" in the Safari preferences (on the bottom). This is good for security reasons.
- extract the contents of the .7z file to the location of your choice. You'll need an archive program capable of opening .7z files. WinRAR should work.
- Whenever someone mentions "the root TBP folder" or "\tbp\ folder" or something like that, they mean the folder that contains at least a subfolder called "data" and some .vp files.
- Go to the SCP board and download the latest FSO build that is stickied there. The thread name should be "Release: 3.6....". Make sure you get the Inferno (INF) variant. Regular builds cannot handle the amount of ship types in TBP.
There are also Launchers available in the release threads, should you want to use one.
- Download Zathras 2 and unpack the .zip to your TBP folder. There should now be a subfolder called "Zathras" there.
[li]If you're going to use a Launcher (YAL, Soulstorm's Launcher etc...), good luck. I don't know much about them. But in any case, you'll need to set some commandline flags for the FSO build you've downloaded. The most important one is the -mod flag, which allows you to use Zathras as a mod. Simply enter
[/li][/list]
-mod Zathras
as a flag. More flags can be found in
this article, along with explanations. It is recommended to enable at least:
-spec -env -glow -tbp -ship_choice_3d
You can also experiment with the flags listed in the "Lighting" section. These allow you to change various lighting values and personally I concider a darker atmosphere to be much moodier than the atmosphere with the default values. Also, you can use the -res flag to set a resolution for the game. Using your monitor's native resolution is highly recommended.
I think that's it. The game starts when you run the FSO build you downloaded. Just make sure to run a release build (for example, fs2_open_3_6_12
r_INF_SSE2_RC2) instead of a debug build (for example, fs2_open_3_6_12
d_INF_SSE2_RC2.exe). Debug builds are meant for bug hunting and for gathering information when encountering problems. They will throw warning and stuff on the screen and will not provide an enjoyable playing experience.