Alex's Freedom Fortress Update! - 10 Oct 2007

[GogglesPizanno]

Was it the fatal "Morph Channel" error?
Something like "There is an incorrect number of morph channels...."

[detourne_me]

thats exactly it Goggles

[GogglesPizanno]

Yeah there are a few head.nif files from FF1 that just dont play well with FFvTR...
When i was talking to Alex about the conversion, he said that they had fixed the O'Connor and that others were in the works.

If you wanted to keep testing the game, you could copy a working head.nif file from one of the other characters (O'conor or one of the thugs should work) and overwrite the broken one. It means you dont get Lord Dominion's head talking, but it wont error out the game either.

[justintyme2174]

I encountered the same problems as Human Ton.  I also noticed that on the O'Conner mesh he doesn't actually hold his gun, it is attached to his fingertips upsidedown.

[BentonGrey]

Woo-hoo!  Bounding boxes galore!  Haha, this is great guys, and it's great fun to be able to play FF again in the updated graphics of FF2.  However, the thing I love best about this is all the wonderful FF1 objects that are now available for use thanks to your hard work.  Thanks again guys!

[justintyme2174]

I just played the third mission and like the second mission, everything went fine until the end when you have to interrogate Sukhov.  Neither Mentor nor Minute Man could interrogate him.  I used the Mission_Win cheat to end the mission.  Once it got to the next cutscene in the base it was very dark.  The dialog from the talking heads continued into the team selection screen and then started over with the entire dialog on top of the team selection screen.  I was never able to enter the fray for the next mission in the frozen park.

[abenavides]

Thanks for all the input everyone!

Especially GogglesPizanno, who has been both gracious and extremely helpful. I am happy to say that what I did will benefit greatly from what he has already worked out and he has offered to share info freely. For that, he has my thanks and I'll gladly credit him for anything I use. Isn't it nice when everyone helps out?

So this thread isn't completely taken over by feedback on this mod, I will set up a new one in the Mods section. I didn't want to take over GogglesPizanno's thread, so I'll make mine separate for now.

[Peerless1]

On another (AFF) note...

Alex:
I for 1 hope there are plans for JSA in your future...even if it's distant.  That idea really piqued my interest.  I'd offer to help, except that I don't know what I could do.  * maybe stop whining? *  ;)

[GGiant]

When are you gonna finish JLA mission 7?
I really want to defeat Darkseid.
Please finish it,please.
PLLLLEEAAAASSSEEE!

[abenavides]

To the last 2 posters .. stay tuned.

[GGiant]

Thanks abenavides,I wish you a lot of luck. :D :thumbup:

[the_ultimate_evil]

great to see one of the classic sites up and kicking again

[abenavides]

Major update today!

First up - Riddle Me This has patched Forum Battle Royale 2 into the "Final Version" which is now available on my Goodies page. Download it and Forum Battle Royale 1 to play the entire Forum saga for the original FF game.

And Finally, EZ Hero 3!

I actually never thought I'd release this. Personal issues forced me to stop working on it back in mid-2005. Sad, because it was about 80% done then and I had rebuilt the EZ Hero code base from scratch, fixing lots of little things and adding big new features such as:

• Supports hero files for both Freedom Force (FF) and Freedom Force vs The Third Reich (FFv3R)
• Lets you save to either format at any time
• It will batch convert a whole folder from 1 format to the other
• It will Send hero file info to DAT files for FF and FFv3R mods (EZHero2.6 did it only for FF mods)
• Send to DAT feature now has health override option
• Has all the latest attributes in FFX 3.2, but also lets you easily add custom ones
• EZAI tool for FF (thx to Taskmaster for all his input on this)

In late 2005, my hard drive went boom and with it the EZ Hero source code, so it was all over.

Until 2007, when I ran across a version of the code on an old backup drive. I tried it and found most of it worked. I put it together an important piece of code I found on another drive and then spent a little time debugging and adding a tweak or two. And EZHERO 3 finally sees the light of day! It's dedicated to my Dad, CB. Grab it on the Goodies page also!

[GogglesPizanno]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
So awesome...
:thumbup:
I (along with the community at large I'm sure) thank you profusely for all your work on both the original and now New and Improved version.

There goes my night....

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Yeehah!

This will make things considerably easy.  And fun.  Thanks.

[Previsionary]

thanks for the awesome update Alex. It's nice to finally have a [hero] tool dedicated to FFVTTR. Atleast now I don't have to go in game to send all my herofiles to my mod dats now. :P

[vortex]

 :drool:

I can't tell you how awesome this sounds, Alex!  Can't wait to try it out!

[BentonGrey]

Wow!  Amazing Alex, absolutely amazing, this is a great step forward for the community!  Thank you for all your hard work, and I'm glad you've found enough peace to rejoin us. :)

[USAgent]

Great news, as you can see this is a tool that we have been salavating for for some time.  Awsome!

I am having trouble opening up FFV3R hero files. I get a "runtime error 52  bade file name or number"  That is the same error I got when I tried to open up FFV3R hero files with your last hero editor.  It opens up FF1 hero files just fine though.

[abenavides]

US Agent-can you email me one of the files that's causing a problem?

[GogglesPizanno]

I am having trouble opening up FFV3R hero files. I get a "runtime error 52  bade file name or number"

I think this may be the issue that I had figured out a batch hex workaround for initially.
It was back in this post:

http://freedomreborn.net/archive/index.php?topic=41626.0

Basically I think it involved the path to the mesh being absolute as opposed to relative.
I ran into the same problem with USAgent's hero files, and changing the path in a hex editor made them open in the original EZHero fine.

[abenavides]

Interesting, I'll check it out.
How did we get absolute paths in there in the 1st place?

[GogglesPizanno]

Most people would use MrBordos tool for editing FFvTR hero files as it was the most compatible, but when it saves the file, it writes the paths as absolute.

The game itself doesn't have any problems with it...
Unless of course like me, you don't have it installed in the default location, which was why I was trying to hex edit the paths in the first place.

[Previsionary]

Most people would use MrBordos tool for editing FFvTR hero files as it was the most compatible, but when it saves the file, it writes the paths as absolute.

I don't think *most* people used Brdo's tool, maybe the unmodding people, but I think Goggle is correct as I remember back in ff1 that anything I changed with brdo's (or Mic's maybe?) tool would sometimes not work with your tool. *shrugs*

[USAgent]

It looks like Goggles is right, I can open up Taskmaster's FFV3R hero files fine, and I found I could open up only a few of mine which I think were ones I created from scratch.   But with most of my hero files I did use MrBrdo's to edit and save.  
I sent  off a hero file to you via the address on your website to contact you.

*crosses fingers for a easy solution so I can use this with 1,300 hero file :unsure:*

[Podmark]

Wow you've been putting out some awesome new stuff. It's great to have you back Alex.

[justintyme2174]

I get an error saying Componet COMDLG32.OCX or one of it's dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid.  I've uninstalled, redownloaded, and reinstalled 3 times and still get the error from EZHero3.

[detourne_me]

I got that error too,  but Alex had directed me to this download...  and it fixed everything.

http://www.ascentive.com/support/new/support_dll.phtml?dllname=COMDLG32.OCX

I don't think *most* people used Brdo's tool, maybe the unmodding people, but I think Goggle is correct as I remember back in ff1 that anything I changed with brdo's (or Mic's maybe?) tool would sometimes not work with your tool. *shrugs*

pssst.   i always used Brdo's tool for FFVTTR,  and even for FF,  i just liked the openness of it,  i'd use it in conjunction with Alex's whenever I could,  but for most things like changing weight,  i used Mr. Brdo's tool.

[abenavides]

Took a look at the hero file and yes it's because there's a full path in it.
While the game works with this, like GP says it's not good for the folks who don't install in default paths. (isn't the proper path for customs in XP a personalized folder? )

So 2 options I see:
1. Use GP's batch file fix to correct all the files (knowing that if you use the other editor, it will screw them up again).

2. I add a little code to EZHERO to notice these bad paths and correct them.

[GogglesPizanno]

So 2 options I see:
1. Use GP's batch file fix to correct all the files (knowing that if you use the other editor, it will screw them up again).

2. I add a little code to EZHERO to notice these bad paths and correct them.

Hmmm. I wonder what the preference will be...  ^_^