Freedom Reborn

I'm having trouble with getting FFEdit (for FF1) to work properly and I could really use some help. Specifically, I can not get the Sounds tab in FFEdit to work. I can get FFEdit to run and I can interact with all the other tabs. I can even add FX through the FX tab. But every time I click on the Sounds tab it hesitates... then crashes to desktop without so much as an error message.

Here's what happened:

I'm running Windows XP Pro and while it was originally SP2 it's now upgraded to SP3. Originally (like a couple years ago), I installed Freedom Force, Character Tool, EZ FX and a bunch of stuff, then installed FFvT3R and a bunch more FF2 tools. But I had since uninstalled parts of that and now that I want to play Freedom Force again I decided I needed to do a fresh install of everything.

So, following the installation order on Alex's Fantastic FF FAQ (http://www.alexff.com/faq.php), I used the reverse install order to uninstall everything (starting with FFvT3R). Then, trying to follow the install order, I installed

1) Freedom Force disk
2) Character Tool 1 (plus overwriting with contents of CTOOL_Update.zip)
3) ...

At this point I panicked, thinking I should have installed Patch 1.3 before character tool or anything more. So I mistakenly installed Patch 1.3 next:

3) Patch 1.3
4) FFEdit

But then (gasp!) I noticed on Alex's list that Patch 1.3 did indeed come after FFEdit. So I tried to re-install it:

5) Patch 1.3

However, unlike the first time I ran the patch, some windows popped up in rapid succession and it didn't seem to do much.

6) EZ FX 5.1

I stopped here as I wanted to add some custom FX in addition to what EZ FX provided. So I opened FFEdit and proceeded according to directions. Then I tried to add the sound to the FX and encountered my problem with the Sounds tab. Thinking it may be due to my incorrect order... I uninstalled everything again!

After uninstalling everything related to FF, I reboot the machine (to let it make any registry changes and clean stuff out) and then manually deleted any leftover content in the Freedom Force folder. Then I very carefully followed Alex's install order. This time I waited until after installing FFEdit to install Patch 1.3. And I even stopped to read all the install instructions and readmes I could find. I read that FFEdit needs to have the *.ff zip files in the Data folder unpacked in order to edit stuff. Thinking this was why it crashed on the Sound tab, I unpacked the Sound.ff (into F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data\Sounds) and Data.ff files (into F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data). I also unpacked the Art\library\characters\ portion of Art.ff because I planned to customize some skins and stuff. But I stopped there. (Perhaps I should have unpacked all the *.ff files?)

Then I intalled EZ FX again. And, holding my breath, I tried FFEdit again...
Sadly, it behaves the same as before. Everything works (including the game and Character Tool) except the Sounds tab in FFEdit.

I suspect it might have something to do with how I have to install on my F: drive instead of the default location. But I checked the program paths in FFEdit and they all seem correct. I even checked all references to "Freedom" in my Windows registry. But nothing seems amiss. These are all the registry entries I found related to FFEdit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Irrational Games > FFEdit
(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Irrational Games > FFEdit > Paths
(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)
EditEXE REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\leveledit.exe
GameEXE REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\fforce.exe
Local REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data
NIF REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data\Art
PythonEditor REG_SZ C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE
ResData REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data
Server REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data
Sounds REG_SZ F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Data\Sounds

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Irrational Games > Freedom Force Editor
(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Irrational Games > Freedom Force Editor > 3.37
(Default) REG_SZ (value not set)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > SharedDlls
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\fforce.exe
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\python15.dll
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Sound.dll
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\Standard.dll
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\System\ai.py
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\System\goal.py
F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force\zlib-1.1.3.dll

There were a few leftover references related to FFvT3R, some outdated recent mesh load paths for Character Tool and such, but nothing that seems significant.

Any suggestions are appreciated. I really want to be able to use FFEdit as it was the main reason I bothered to reinstall everything...

EDIT 1: I'm not certain how templates.ff is supposed to be unzipped. It seems to contain subdirectories of art\library\ including:
* area_specific
* vehicles
* fx\ fx_levels
* characters\ turrets

I'm just wondering if these should be unzipped to a new folder Data\Templates\, or if they should go into the usual art\library\?

EDIT 2: Weird! I had a backup of my FF directory before I installed FFEdit and I was going to rename the existing F:\Irrational Games\Freedom Force to something else so as to try to a different installation. However, Windows would not let me rename the folder! So I created another folder and tried to move the contents. But this gave the following error:

QuoteCannot remove folder Sounds: It is being used by another person or program.
Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.

I checked and double checked with the Task Manager and Process Explorer, but there are no processes running in the background that should require a Freedom Force directory. Though, Windows still thinks there is data access to there.

EDIT 3: OK, I think I have an idea of what's wrong now. After rebooting, Windows allowed me to rename my faulty FF directory and I replaced it with a backup from before I installed FFEdit (but with Character Tool installed). So then I (uninstalled, then) installed FFEdit on that copy. Then I installed Patch 1.2 and then Patch 1.3 on top of that. (Probably pointless to use both, I know.) And I stopped here before installing EZ FX or anything else. Then I tried FFEdit and... it worked!

Well... sort of. I could get all the tabs to work, including Sounds! However, the Sounds tab seems pretty empty because it showed no sounds installed. So, I unzipped the Sounds.ff data file as well as data.ff. I tried FFEdit again and... it failed like before. Then I removed the entire Sounds directory and tried again. Still, the Sounds tab of FFEdit failed me yet again. But then I restored the Sounds directory and deleted the sounds.dat file that was extracted from data.ff. This caused the Sounds tab to work again, but it was again missing all the sounds. :(

It seems clear to me that there is something wrong with the sounds.dat file from data.ff. But that seems impossible since it came with FFEdit. And I know many FF fans have gotten FFEdit to work. I thought that, perhaps, it crashed due to running out of memory - even though FFEdit was the only program running. Here's what System Information showed:

Total Physical Memory:  1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory:  409.92 MB
Total Virtual Memory:  2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory:  1.96 GB

Man, I'm stumped!

This is the exact problem that I had when I was still using my old desktop to play  :ff:. It would appear that there's a problem with XP and the FFEdit app that doesn't allow you to upload a pre-existing sound.dat file. t will, however, work on ME, Vista, 7, and any other permutation thereof. Looks like this simply can't be helped. Sorry.

...HOWEVER, there are ways around it. I had to do this, and it works well enough; move the sound.dat to another folder that you can easily access later (like the 'temp' folder or something). Then start FFEdit, and go to the sounds tab. You will have a completely blank list. From there, simply start adding the desired sound fx. Note: I would try to sample the sounds before saving it; if they play, save it then and there, and then copy it to a backup folder. When you are finished, save the sounds, merge them to the original sounds.dat, and put it back in its original location.

Backing up the new sound.dat you created is crucial, kiddo; FFEdit is still capricious with XP, and may suddenly render that file useless. If that happens, delete that file and put the backed up copy in its place. It took me awhile to get the hang of it, but it's not that hard. Don't go crazy and add a whole bunch of new sound fx.

...or, you could just by a new laptop.

Thank you darkphoenixII! This was driving me crazy. At least I know there is a fix - even if it is quite troublesome.

Hmm... I still hear sounds when I play the game. And I see that if it does not find Sounds.dat the game gets the default FF sounds from the Sounds.ff zip. So I suppose it would be redundant if I added those manually to a Sounds.dat?

I don't suppose someone with Win XP who already manually added the sounds from EZ FX 5.1 would email this Sounds.dat? (Email addy in profile has been fixed now...)
Though, from this description, I wonder if each Sounds.dat has to be unique when running on Win XP.

Edit: Er... I just tried a Sounds.dat with only 1 added sound and now there are no sound effects in-game. Apparently, as long as Sounds.dat exists, the game will not bother to look for sounds inside Sounds.ff...

Agh. I'll send you my copy. Back it up immediately, though. I don't believe they have to be unique to each comp w/ XP.

...did you add a whole bunch of sound fx at once? I'd only add a few and then save. And, yes, if you don't merge the sound dats (the new one TO the old one) and move the old one back to its original place, you'll have wiped the other sounds clean as far as the game engine's concerned.

Your offer is appreciated. However, I found a solution.

It took me a while, but I got Freedom Force and the same patches and mods installed on my old AMD K6-II 500 Mhz machine. I figure it's too slow to play the game, but I find it runs well enough with the modified Windows 98SE+ME to run FFEdit and change the sounds to my desire. I have a KMV switch to alternate between machines, too. And I'll copy the files to my XP machine when it's finished.

I'll be satisfied once I have several additional FX and sounds added, in addition to EZ FX and the defaults.

The reason I want so many is that I need to be able to test and use them to see which ones I like. These I plan to include (permission allowing) in one or more mods I might create. But I think those will be made in FFvT3R, so I hope I can convert my favorites. At least the move will solve any further Sound tab problems.

As far as upgrading my machine... I plan to, eventually. But if at all possible, I will avoid Vista and any subsequent monstrous Microsoft progeny.