JFLP / Jason's Freelancer Patch

@Bas: Sounds like you’re confusing Console with JFLP. You were never meant to save in space, especially during a mission, so unlucky. Hm, I must have forgot to mention in the readme that using Console during a mission could be risky. Sorry 'bout that. Likewise with cruise. It seems missions are very particular to speed and timing, as Rebalance 3.55 RC4 discovered.

@warlordfmike: I haven’t said anything, because I have no idea.

Sry, I was talking about SP console ^^

After doing some troubleshooting of my own. i managed to get rid of the screen/mouse lagg performance problem. not sure what it was. but i did the following

I stopped using Jason Patch ( Not installer, only Dlls. ) but stopped using it none the less.

Stopped using FLMM ( meaning i copyed over Fl with mod ).

Than using Swwt widescreen and Hudshift. updated Flconfig. and than went to performance tab ingame and just a tad lowered the detail silder just abit.

That all caused the screen/mouse lagg/slow performance to stop. but the blur is still there. that im sure is caused by the HD LED screen.

So im not at all sure what caused the lagg or what not. so one of those is causing it. if not a mix of one or the other. And its not heat related as iv done nothing to stop or slow heat problems.

Thanx for all the advice/support

Reducing the video performance slider is the most likely of those changes to reduce any screen lag problems.

(It also will reduce the heat generated by your graphics adapter, by the way.)

Anyway, I am glad that you solved your problem.

Stopped using FLMM ( meaning i copyed over Fl with mod ).

FYI: This might be not suhc a good idea since some FLMM-archives contain scripts which get parsed by FLMM. The content of the scripts will be missing in your FL then.

unless you understand the script and apply its functions manually

For the most part theres alot of things that FLMM can cause. like script problems and FLbak being maded. along some other things. which all can cause some sort for problem either with Jason freelancer patch,Hudshift or the mod it self. either way some where down the road FLMM can cause all types of problems. to me in some cases even performance problems.

@Gisteron, True. but for the most part. people that dont know all the techy stuff could get lost in how to do it that way. and would be best to just stop using FLMM and just unzip the mod and than just copy over the FL fresh install. as its the same thing that FLMM does. but it makes all types of things and does things to the install of FL/Mod on the fly such as FLbak. which to me causes problems.

Plus. FLMM is out of date and has stopped being updated. i have 1.5 beta 1 installed and its not even for use in Vista or even Win 7 so that it self can cause problems. plus FLmm is not perfect in the way it handles mods and your files to the game.

Just my deep thoughts. not sure if any of it makes sense. and this is getting of topic. mybad.

warlordfmike wrote:
Plus. FLMM is out of date and has stopped being updated. i have 1.5 beta 1 installed and its not even for use in Vista or even Win 7

There’s half your problem to start with. 1.5 is rubbish, if you want to screw up FL then carry on using it. Go back to 1.3, it’s the most stable version, only files i’ve seen it leave in are custom system folders, everything else is returned to normal if you use the ‘RESTORE BACKUPS’ function after de-activating a mod

Im not gonna use FLMM any longer. il keep 1.5 installed just to have it. but to me 1.3 is just as unstable as 1.5.

1.3 does not support vista or win 7 so its unstable there. plus it still creates FLbak files and i for one feel those cause problems of some sort. either way FLMM either needs to be updated or not used. for the reason of it only supporting Win xp.

execute 1.3 as administrator and you are just fine. also, if the FLMM wouldn’t create backups, how could you deactivate a mod? no, these files never cause problems as they are not even read if you don’t point to them in any ini.

Some things I’ve learned over the years. Probably basic for most of you, but for some newer folks this might be helpful.

We used SDK 1.3 when we developed our mod. In order for our mod to even install, the client has to install SDK1.3. That’s because, with the exception of ADDED directories and files, FLMM does ALL of our mods edits via scripting and with no problems. We will be switching to the JFLP for future edits.

In order for the SDK and mods to work, there is some prep work you have to do however.

You need to start with a clean install of FL. This is normally a no-brainer, but surprisingly often, it’s the last thing players, modders, and even admins think of. Uninstall Freelancer after saving your savegames to another location, (if you’re running a server, save the multiplayer folder in your my documents\my games\freelancer folder to another location).

*** Win7 and Vista Users Note: *** For Win7 and Win Vista users, Install all Freelancer programs by right-clicking on the setup.exe file and choose ‘run as administrator’. Some people have found it necessary to disable User Account Control in order for it to work as well.

Now, reinstall FL. Running the MS 1.1 update is necessary only if you’re running a server. I think it’s a good idea to do regardless. After installing FL, reboot your machine and run FL in order to set up your multiplayer profile on your client machine.

Once that’s done, right click on the installation file for the SDK and again, choose ‘run as administrator’. Make sure the SDK file installs to the same location as your Freelancer\DATA folder. It overwrites the ini files in that directory and subdirectories. When that’s finished, verify correct installation by opening any *.ini file in your FL directory. If you can’t read it, you installed the SDK to the wrong location. If you installed FL into it’s default location, the SDK install should just follow it there automatically.

Now, right-click on the installation file for FLMM, (we’re using version 1.4beta4 as it has some features 1.3 does not have. It also has some issues such as not deleting directories that have been added in, but there are ways around that…). Choose ‘run as administrator’ again.

You should now be completely set up to run mods via FLMM. For best results, when switching mods you need to shut down FL (duh), and then verify that it is indeed shut down by making sure the Freelancer and FLServer processes are no longer running in Task Manager (start/run/taskmgr) If the program is still listed there, some files won’t be written to because they’re still showing up as ‘in use’. After disabling/deactivating a mod, go to the Tools/Restore Backups option in FLMM and run that also. Once you’ve done that, you should be gtg to activate the next mod you wish to use.

Now, regarding scripting… Whenever our players complain that the mod won’t activate, it’s almost ALWAYS because the above directions weren’t followed. With Win7 and Vista 64-bit installations Freelancer is usually installed into the C:\Program Files (x86) directory instead of the C:\Program Files directory. For best compatiblity results in running a 64-bit OS, manually install FL into the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\ directory.

FLMM has a built-in ini decompiler. my mod, too, does lots of changes via scripts and is working without any SDK.

Good point. I always recommend players run the SDK before running our mod in order to ensure a good clean install, but also because my mod is written to the SDK. If my mod is written around a file that the SDK has already edited, it may not find the correct line(s) to edit if they’re still vanilla.

warlordfmike wrote:
Im not gonna use FLMM any longer. il keep 1.5 installed just to have it. but to me 1.3 is just as unstable as 1.5.

1.3 does not support vista or win 7 so its unstable there. plus it still creates FLbak files and i for one feel those cause problems of some sort. either way FLMM either needs to be updated or not used. for the reason of it only supporting Win xp.

Some people don’t want to listen.

SDK 1.3 just replaces some files in FL just like 1.5 does, there is no such thing as incompatibility with Win Vista/7

StarTrader wrote:
SDK 1.3 just replaces some files in FL just like 1.5 does, there is no such thing as incompatibility with Win Vista/7

He speaks about FLMM (which works with Vista though). Learn to read before you tell others to listen…

robocop wrote:
Good point. I always recommend players run the SDK before running our mod in order to ensure a good clean install, but also because my mod is written to the SDK. If my mod is written around a file that the SDK has already edited, it may not find the correct line(s) to edit if they’re still vanilla.

Your mod should be replacing the file with a complete one, not appending to it.

The fact you can append lines is fine but many times FLMM cannot undo the append correctly to de-activate the mod.

Be sensible.

Doesn’t FLMM create a backup of all files it modifies? So it should be able to undo these changes.

We keep trying to tell you about what we have, our utilities are not 100% reliable in function. In fact only a few of them are reliable.

With FLMM, should ¬= does

Over to you, do what you want.

StarTrader wrote:

robocop wrote:
Good point. I always recommend players run the SDK before running our mod in order to ensure a good clean install, but also because my mod is written to the SDK. If my mod is written around a file that the SDK has already edited, it may not find the correct line(s) to edit if they’re still vanilla.

Your mod should be replacing the file with a complete one, not appending to it.

The fact you can append lines is fine but many times FLMM cannot undo the append correctly to de-activate the mod.

Be sensible.

afaik FLMM tries to create a backup of any file edited - otherwise section delete could not function as it will not have any content to replace it with.

You all talk about 1.3, try 1.31 instead - it was better than 1.3, and with extra functions from memory.

Or do you actually mean 1.31? edit having checked downloads, I believe you have 1.31. Never had any issues with that version, it was great!

The problem with the built in decompression is that if it still uses Mario’s original Bini decompresser, that generated errors… certain lines had their start truncated, and then the remainder appended to the line before (or was it the second half after a = sign truncated, and the line below appended to it).

Needless to say, use the original bini, open your ships or mbases file and you’ll be able to locate errors within a minute.

Now flbak files can’t cause issues.They are an existing FL file with .flbak appended - no voodoo or mystery :lol: Any method of mod management MUST utilise this method, OR have access to ALL Freelancer files (i.e. the full 1Gb) to re-overwrite all existing files upon “deactivation” - at which point, doing a reinstall is the exact same thing.

At the moment I have my own FL Mod Manager programmed in Java. It is very basic - it backs up files, it correctly restores and deactivates - but I wouldn’t even have been aware of “support for Windows 7/Vista”. I program in Java, ergo, I don’t worry about OS compatibility - but it sounds like OS compatible, and more OS function… it requires the User to specifically OK a program to carry out certain tasks.

If a program is able to execute itself as Admin and make changes to the file system without any user interaction, then the security feature of Windows 7/Vista that requires this is utterly POINTLESS.

What I am saying, until someone who knows this stuff specifically, is that due to those OS you’ll always have this admin problem irrespective of whether it “supports” the Operating system.
Since all it does is copy files and edit files, they’re supported already imo

FLMM v1.31 shows as v1.3 on its “About” screen.

My method is to make mods that don’t need FLMM. I can just unzip them over a vanilla Freelancer game folder, and they also work with FLMM.

But FLMM has always given me trouble eventually.