[Redsand]

Hi...long time lurker/first time poster.

I read up on the HotU version of FS2 on the forums here, downloaded it, installed it, and took it for a test drive.  I was surprised to find it had animations, voice, and music when I clearly saw those folders empty in the directory.  What confused me even more on the HotU site itself that this version was basically the retail version sans the cutscenes.  Yet when I downloaded the cutscenes and went to drop them into the main folder, I was prompted to overright several of them since they were already in there.  Unless I drank an obscenely large amount of liquor and blacked out between extracting the files and booting up the game, I would bet my left nut () that I did not put those files in that folder before hand.  On top of that, the game was already patched to ver 1.20.  I read several times on the boards that this was version 1.0, had no music, no cutscenes, no voice, and was just really a stripped down version of the original.  Is there anything else I don't know about the HotU version.  Am I all set with this to upgrade to FS2_open, complete with voices, music, animations, cutscenes, etc.  Or is there anything else I should grab?  Thanks for the help.  Love the site/forums/community/game.

[Roanoke]

Hey welcome to the boards.

Don't know about HotU. Didn't know the site was still up. Probably someone updated theversion and no-one here noticed.
IIRC one of the fixes was the addition of Jump Nodes in FRED so I'd look there.

[Turey]

HotU used to have a version with no music, no cutscenes, and no voice. However, Karajorma made a version for them with everything but the cutscenes (Which were left in as 0KB files, which is why it asked to overwrite) and Underdog put it up.

[karajorma]

Yep. Now that you have the cutscenes you basically have an identical install to FS2 Retail except that you've copied the cutscenes to your disk instead of playing them off the HD.

I now recommend that you click the installer link in Turey's post and get yourself FS2_Open.

[S-99]

I remember the hotu version. That was the way i was trying to get fs2 back on my computer back in 2004. And then i tried getting all the missing **** for it which was tedious as hell. Then i was like why the **** am i messing around with the hotu version? More than enough places to get fs2 around here

[Gestalt]

K, I *just* finished "fixing" my HotU install of FS2, and I have the following advice:
Don't. Just don't.
Make a folder for the install, download the latest FSOpenInstaller, point it to your intended directory, and walk away. It'll take a while, but it's still faster than trying to "fix" the HotU version. The cutscenes aren't the problem. Since that version just plain doesn't have em, the FSOpen install will replace them. The real problem is all the sound files, specifically for radio chatter and mission briefings. They're all there.... as blank files that are 1kb a piece. I tried a repair install twice with no success, manually removed all the files and replaced the ini, nothing. When I got FSOpen fully loaded I tried to use the autoupdater to replace the files, no dice.

Don't screw around with the HotU version unless you just need something to tide you over while a cleaner install is downloading. There are a number of options linked on this forum, and they're all better than the HotU package.

[karajorma]

Ummm. You have the 250MB version. I agree. I wouldn't touch that one with a 10' bargepole.

The 650MB second release on the other hand should be more than useable.