[Buckshee Rounds]

I'm fairly certain I've seen this done somewhere before: I'd like to be able to access the retail missions in FRED. My reason for doing this is really nothing more than seeing the ackgrounds used and so I might learn a thing or two.

[General Battuta]

You can extract them from the root_fs2 VP with vpview.

[Buckshee Rounds]

Wow, interesting. Is this what you guys use to look through those VP files or something a little less...dated?

[The E]

Personally, I use cfileextractor. But that's cos I likes me some commandline tools.

There's also Maja. Which is pretty good.

[headdie]

most of the time I'm on VP view, its robust and simple enough to use but can be a pain when looking at non retail format assets

[Qent]

I use QuickVP.

[Buckshee Rounds]

How do you create VPs also?

[The E]

Maja.

But honestly, It's a step that isn't strictly speaking necessary, and should only be done as one of the very last things before you release a mod.

[Buckshee Rounds]

I just want to edit "Their Finest Hour" so that the allies have beams.

[General Battuta]

You won't need to create a VP to do that. Put the altered mission file in /FreeSpace 2/data/missions without altering the name.

[The E]

In fact, unless you really, really, REALLY know what you are doing, you shouldn't alter VP files.

And under NO circumstances should you alter the retail VP files. Doing that is about the most stupid thing you can do.