How to set up a new mod properly?
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Hallo,
I am new to modding and want to start out. I have looked through the tutorials here and on other sites and there are really good ones for beginners, but all assume I know how to set upt the starting package. Sp how do I set up a new mod, so I can mod without changing vanilla? Any help and advice is greatly appreciated.
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That’s a pretty broad and vague subject, but I think what you are asking is how do you seperate your mod from the vanilla game in terms of how its located on your computer.
If so, that’s easy, you just copy the freelancer folder from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer to somewhere else on your machine.
That seperates it from the main game you play. However, you will need to point your Freelancer Mod Manager to that seperate folder if you want to use it with it. Then you can just manually launch the game.
I am in the process of refining my Windows based portability wrapper right now. There is a beta of it posted in these forums, called PortableFL.
I am still nailing down the technologies I am using in the launcher I am building for it. As Windows 10 looms, I may just wait until that comes out and start work on it in earnest then.
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That’s a pretty broad and vague subject, but I think what you are asking is how do you seperate your mod from the vanilla game in terms of how its located on your computer.
If so, that’s easy, you just copy the freelancer folder from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer to somewhere else on your machine.
That seperates it from the main game you play. However, you will need to point your Freelancer Mod Manager to that seperate folder if you want to use it with it. Then you can just manually launch the game.
I am in the process of refining my Windows based portability wrapper right now. There is a beta of it posted in these forums, called PortableFL.
I am still nailing down the technologies I am using in the launcher I am building for it. As Windows 10 looms, I may just wait until that comes out and start work on it in earnest then.
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Hallo ZyosV2,
thank you for your answer! I think that answers at least part of my question, maybe all of it. What I wanted to know is, what is the very first proper step to start up a mod. I have downloaded and installed the following programs:
- The Freelancer Mod Manager 1.5b sdk (FLMM, right?)
- The Freelancer Explorer v 2_0_6_23
- The Freelancer Mod Studio 1.2 from here
The installation of the FLMM seemed not to work properly. I could not find an FLMM exe. I think the FLMM installation just installed extrcated files to the vanilla freelancer directory.
So if I understand you correctly, I will have to copy the vanilla folder with the now extracted files to somewhere else and then work on these files. This will keep the vanilla game intact.
To test my mod and play it, I will have to start up the FLMM (where I have no idea where the exe is or how else I do that), set up the FLMM to point to this new directory (presumably in a preference/options setting?), chose my mod and then start the regular game?
Am I missing something?
Sorry for my beginner questions and their vagueness. I have modded games, but only ones which had an inbuilt mod-support (inbuilt mod-launcher, separated directories, prepared files easy to read and modify). There are great tutorials out there for modding FL (giskard’s system tutorial suggested in gthe beginner’s guide, for example, ship tutorials, even a quite confusing but still interesting singleplayer story mission tutorial). I just missed these crucial frist steps, like download these programs/tools, extract files/use the extracted file pack prepared here, set-up your mod directory with tese files. Thanks for clearing that up. If you can expand on anything there, just feel free to add. As I said, any advice is greatly appreciated.
And again: Thank you very much for your answer and help!
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Well, you need the quickfix patch (contains non encrypted data files)
FLMM installs to its own directory and looks for Freelancer in its install location it will put a shortcut on your desktop for it.No idea why installing FLMM would end up not being able to find FLMM.exe? No idea what you have done there.
When you have FLMM open you would point the Freelancer directory to your seperate install.
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For best results always start with a fresh install of Freelancer…
Then download and install the official MS update patch: Moddb
Download and install the JFLP update patch here: Adoxa Site and install it by right clicking on the exe and choosing the option ‘run as administrator’.
Now backup your DATA directory somewhere. You can always use that to restore files when they get out of control. (Delete the data file in the game directory and copy the backed up directory back in).
Download FLMM and install it by right clicking on the exe and choosing the option ‘run as administrator’. We’re using FLMM v2e which is written around installing mods based on XML scripting although it should work when install mods that just contain edited ini files. The last FLMM I trusted before version 2 was version 1.3 although 1.5 should work if you’re careful. IIRC there were some issues with 1.5 deactivating mods properly…
Once you’ve done all that you should be gtg.
FLMM comes with some mods so you can dissect them to see how they’re formatted.
There used to be a mod here called FLServerOperator 2 which is an old mod that I used to start learning how to mod. Let’s see if I can find it… yeah, here it is: FLServerOperator_2
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Wow, I didn’t know there was a new FLMM (v2e)? I’ve used v. 1.31 for so long that, I’ve never paid any attention to a new one being released.
I know v1.5 was trouble and I had some difficulties with it, files getting corrupted and all. Some swear by it though.
Thanks for the info, robocop.
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you’re welcome BUT, be advised that FLMM v2 handles xml scripted mods differently and may not activate legacy mods that are heavily scripted.
It should do just fine with mods that replace ini files but I had to do quite a bit of editing to our mod to make it compatible with v2e.
v2e can do much more with xml than 1.3 and up can but results may vary.The FLUAddon Mod for example was written with v2e in mind because there were some things we wanted to do that 1.3 couldn’t handle. FLMMv1.3 cannot activate our mod.
IIRC there was a limit to how many xml instructions 1.3 could perform. FLMMv2 does not have that limit. Also, IIRC FLMM v2 will run the xml files sequentially rather than all at once. I’ve had mixed results with that however. -
I doubt I’ll ever use it. I was just new to that info. I have one mod installed on one of my XP system and on another one, I play around with other single player mods when in the mood.
I have several Freelancer installs on them so, I cruise around the modding world for a change of game play. I always keep a clean, 1.0 version handy for jumping on Vanilla servers too.
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Thank you all for answering. I made a mistake and for I do not know which reason thought that the Freelancer SDK 1.5b was the FLMM 1.5 beta, which it was not.
@robocop
Thanks for the detailed answer.Now I will try to set up my own mod, starting with a new system and then looking if I can get new storyline missions working.
