Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:13 am
**Tutorial** Alternative method of installing large mods
You certainly know the kind of expansion packs you install, but then you are still able to open up the unmodified main game. Two examples for this would be Age of Empires II and Rome: Total War.
What if you could do the same with a Freelancer mod? Well, you can! I have just found out how.
But first of all: Whould this have any advantages? Form my point of view, yes. Just yesterday, I activated Freeworlds 1.66 with the FLMM, and it took my rather old PC ages to do so. Needless to say deactivating didn't go much faster, either.
So I came up with the idea that large mods could be installed using one of those free install EXE generating programs with modified files being renamed and new stuff going into new files as well. For instance, you'd have market_misc_freeworlds.ini and so on.
All those new files would then be copied to the Freelancer directory and would not overwrite anything of the original game's content.
Next step is to tell Freelancer it has to use those new files instead of the original ones. This is done in freelancer.ini. But here comes the tricky part: Modify freelancer.ini and Freelancer would no longer be accessing old stuff at all when the user wants to switch back to normal Freelancer.
So we have to modifiy Freelancer.exe itself. First, make a copy and rename it so your mod's title can easily be seen, for instance Freelancer_Freeworlds.exe. Then, open up the new file with a HEX editor and search for "freelancer.ini". Replace this with, say, freelancer2.ini or any other name (although I don't know, if considerably longer names are possible, as I just quickly checked this through). Save.
Then, copy freelancer.ini and rename the copy to match the title you entered in Freelancer.exe. Now you can change all references to your new files and Freelancer will load only your new files.
So the result is, if you click your new EXE, Freelancer will load the mod and if you click the original EXE, vanilla Freelancer will be launched.
So let's list the pros and cons:
+ you only have to install large mods once
+ you can still play vanilla FL, if you want
+ you can activate a second mod, with the first installed in the method described here
(+ new EXE icon for your mod)
- a bit more space is needed for the completely new files
- a bit more complicated to manage for the user
=> huge time savings, but a bit more complicated; only good for large mods
NOTE: This is mainly thought as a time-saving alternative to activating large mods with the FLMM, but not neccessarily better in general. I just wanted to make clear this is possible. I am sorry, should this already have been revealed somewhere in these forums.
What if you could do the same with a Freelancer mod? Well, you can! I have just found out how.
But first of all: Whould this have any advantages? Form my point of view, yes. Just yesterday, I activated Freeworlds 1.66 with the FLMM, and it took my rather old PC ages to do so. Needless to say deactivating didn't go much faster, either.
So I came up with the idea that large mods could be installed using one of those free install EXE generating programs with modified files being renamed and new stuff going into new files as well. For instance, you'd have market_misc_freeworlds.ini and so on.
All those new files would then be copied to the Freelancer directory and would not overwrite anything of the original game's content.
Next step is to tell Freelancer it has to use those new files instead of the original ones. This is done in freelancer.ini. But here comes the tricky part: Modify freelancer.ini and Freelancer would no longer be accessing old stuff at all when the user wants to switch back to normal Freelancer.
So we have to modifiy Freelancer.exe itself. First, make a copy and rename it so your mod's title can easily be seen, for instance Freelancer_Freeworlds.exe. Then, open up the new file with a HEX editor and search for "freelancer.ini". Replace this with, say, freelancer2.ini or any other name (although I don't know, if considerably longer names are possible, as I just quickly checked this through). Save.
Then, copy freelancer.ini and rename the copy to match the title you entered in Freelancer.exe. Now you can change all references to your new files and Freelancer will load only your new files.
So the result is, if you click your new EXE, Freelancer will load the mod and if you click the original EXE, vanilla Freelancer will be launched.
So let's list the pros and cons:
+ you only have to install large mods once
+ you can still play vanilla FL, if you want
+ you can activate a second mod, with the first installed in the method described here
(+ new EXE icon for your mod)
- a bit more space is needed for the completely new files
- a bit more complicated to manage for the user
=> huge time savings, but a bit more complicated; only good for large mods
NOTE: This is mainly thought as a time-saving alternative to activating large mods with the FLMM, but not neccessarily better in general. I just wanted to make clear this is possible. I am sorry, should this already have been revealed somewhere in these forums.