I want to play through the original FS2 Retail before I play through the FS2Open version.
The FreeSpace2 campaign, played with FS2_Open engine, is (assuming nothing bugs) exactly the same as what you would get playing it in the retail FS2 (exept if you play the version with new backgrounds added, but that's unimportant in this context). As far as I know, the FS2 Source Code Project has put specific care to not breaking retail compatibility.
This means that if you install FS2_Open (OpenAL sound libraries, Launcher and executable) and proceed to play the game, you most likely won't even notice a difference right away. That comes after installing the MediaVP packages, which put the game on steroids and make it look awesome without affecting the retail campaign gameplay.
I've successfully downloaded the CD images and installed FS2 using daemon tools to mount the image of each CD in order to get through the install process. I then patched the game to Version 1.2.
At this point I can successfully run the game, however if I try to run a cutscene (Tech Room > Cutscenes > Intro), it asks for a CD. Well, duh, so I get the CD crack for the game which comes in a rar archive which I extact to my Freespace2 directory (according to instructions...). But it seems to have no effect - the request for disk 2 still pops up.
Well, I've poked around enough (and attempted to obtain the retail vs. through Turey's installer enough...) to know what each of the different files on the FS2 CDs are for. So I'm thinking, hey I'll just grab the MVE's from the CD images and place them in the Freespace2 directory and it'll find them just like the FS2_Open verson and similar to the HotU version (with it's dummy MVEs). Well - no luck. Apparently FS2 Retail doesn't have a "search path" like FS2 Open... it just wants the CD.
Now, I know that my problem is solved if I just use daemon tools to keep the images of the CDs mounted while running FS2. I don't want to do this however, because I don't like having Daemon tools or the virtual drives present during regular computer usage, and I don't want to have to deal with the hassle of opening Daemon tools and mounting the images every time I want to run FS2.
So... how can I get FS2 retail to work without Daemon tools or the CD? Is there a more robust CD crack I can get, am I placing files in the wrong places, or are you going to tell me to use yet another of the installers floating around HLP? As I said before, I also tried to get this to work by using Turey's installer and only selecting the Retail components, but I then got an error saying that something couldn't be run from a drive root directory (and no there weren't spaces in the filepath).
I hope I've explained my self thoroughly enough, and any help would be appreciated! This community is awesome and I look forward to exploring the Freespace universe thanks to you all!
If you insist, you could perhaps try putting tthe MVE cutscenes to ..\FREESPACE2\data\movies\ directory. Though I haven't done this myself ever and thus cannot be sure if it would work or not...
I know, however, that if you install FS2_Open you won't need to use any cracks...
And since your original reason for wanting to play retail before FS2_Open may be based on misconception (?) that the FS2_Open version would have a different campaign, you might want to reconsider that decision to begin with.
It's the same campaign, and if you don't enable the MediaVP's it will even use the exact same retail models, textures and effects so it will look the same. It just uses heavily modified engine. Gameplay and graphics should be the same - exept you can use greater than 1024x768 resolution, which I'm not sure retail FS2 did...
and obviously there's a lot of optimizations and bugfixes and additional features and it currently uses OpenGL renderer way better than Direct3D.
All in all, I would just recommend running the game with FS2_Open. As it's easiest, the installation consists of three steps assuming you have a functional FS2 install directory (which you obviously do):
1: Download
OpenAL and
3.6.9 version of FS2_Open2. Run OpenAL installer
3. Extract the files from the 3.6.9 archive file and put them in your FS2 directory.
Now run the Launcher, set things up and you have installed FS2_Open in it's barebone form. Installing mods to top of this is relatively simple. In your case, also put the MVE cutscenes into the root (or data\movies\) directory and you're set, if you want to just use the retail graphics.
If you still want to use the retail graphics, by all means do so... the oomph-effect after installing MediaVP's will be all the bigger that way.
