Problems in Steam

[Ouflah]

Hello, guys. If my username is familiar, it's probably because I've posted here a few weeks back. That was when I was using the disk version of Freedom Force. I received good advice, and fixed the problem.

Shortly after, my computer died, with the Freedom Force DVD stuck inside it. 

It's quite old, and not the fault of Freedom Force. Regardless, now I'm having OTHER problems trying to get a custom skin on a character. This looked like the place to ask.



Alright, so I downloaded both  and  on Steam, and promptly afterward downloaded the character tools. However,  Character Tool is unable to access the FF characters, and the Character Tool isn't even installing.


What do I do?

[Randomdays]

For the 1st, you may have to unzip your art.ff file that holds all your characters in it. Never worked with the steam version, but its come up a few times before so you might want to try to do a forum search for "steam" - I'm sure a few hits should come up.

[Ouflah]

Thanks, but no cigar. I found the art.ff file-- doesn't seem to need to be unzipped.

Alright, I'll look around. Thanks for the info!

[Randomdays]

When you unzip it, it should make the library directories with the characters in it. you can then open the character viewer and point it to the characters.

[Ouflah]

It's not really a matter of when. It's not unzippable (is that a word?).
Here.

If you look at it (it's about in the middle of the picture), you can see the art.ff file is not in a compressed (zipped) file.

So, yeah, I don't know what to do.

I searched the forums for "steam" and most of the things that came up were on FFedit, which is not what I'm looking for. *shrug*

[Randomdays]

Although art.ff doesn't look like a zipped up file, that's all it is. If you try to open it with winzip or winrar it will work just find. If it helps, try renaming it to art.zip. It should unzip a directory "art/library/characters" with all the characters in it.

#21 on the list below

http://www.alexff.com/faq.php#18._How_do_you_install_Skins_and_Meshes

[Ouflah]

Heeeeeeeeeeeey it worked! The file unzipped, I found the characters, and now it's time to customize some.

If I have any more problems, I'll post them here.


Thanks, dude!

[Ouflah]

  And there's more problems. I was working on a skin for The Ant, but I had to leave. So I saved the skin, closed character tool. and left. An hour and a half later, it gives me this message: "Unable To Open Character File". I click ok, and then it gives me another message: "alert: CDataLoader::LoadNIF, Unable to locate fallback NIF thing".

I tried Freedom Force. Could not switch to the other skin.

So I thought my skin was the problem. I had it backed up, so I deleted the file. Still having problems.


Any help? 

[Randomdays]

Thought I had replied... Guess it didn't take.

That message usually means a problem with the nif. I see it alot when I try and unknown mesh with FF character tool and its for FFvTTR. Maybe the nif got corrupted. Try deleting the ant character.nif and grab it again from the art.ff file

[Ouflah]

Wow. You're good. 

Alright, back to skinning.


As always, if I have more problems, I'll post here.

[Cyber Burn]

Just as a reminder, if you are skinning for  , then you will need to save your skins in (.DDS) format because the Ant's skin is in that format for  and otherwise, you may not be able to see your custom Ant skin in game.

[Ouflah]

That's funny, I was just coming here to post because of a reason similar to that.

I'm skinning in , and it's gong great in the character tool. However, I can't switch skins to my new one when I try to make a custom character in the game.

So does need a .DDS format, too? Or is it some other problem?

EDIT: Just tried DDS for it, just for the heck of it. Nope, that doesn't work. Any ideas? 

EDIT: I copied and pasted the "The Ant" file into the custom characters area, and IT WORKED! Booyah.

[Ouflah]

Hey guys. Again. I have another problem.

Well I accidentally figured out how to replicate the bug (corrupted NIF file). When no character is open in the character tool, and you click one of the NIFs from the drop-down menu (instead of selecting the file) you immediately corrupt the NIF.

I tried what I did last time, except I had a problem: I was working on a custom character. Specifically, male_hulking. And when I open the art.ff file, all I see is the in-game characters.


ARGH.   

[Randomdays]

You should have a rar/ zip of that somewhere from where you downloaded it.

Otherwise........

http://frworld.wikispaces.com/Mesh+List+-+M

[Ouflah]

I don't see the zip (or rar), but I'll keep looking.

Nice, but whenever I click the link, I get this page. In other words, it's not downloading.

[Randomdays]

You have to join the group to see its content. To join the group (or any group) you need to have a yahoo account. I made a throw away account since I don't use Yahoo mail.

Once you make your account (if you don't have one) and join the group, click on the " more" tab and select files. You 'll see all the rars for the group and be able to download them.

This was one of the major sources of characters for me when I started getting back into FF. When I did a group search fro freedom force and started joining groups, I wound up finding 300+ groups for the game. With some of the web sites disappearing, this might be one of your best sources for characters.

Along with the help of the fine members here, of course.

The site I sent a link to you of, plus the megalist, is a good source of looking for the location of files, minus the more and more common dead links.

[Ouflah]

You are awesome! 

Alright. It's all working. I'm going to keep on skinning.

[Randomdays]

Its all good. Hopefully we'll see your skins up here one day.