A workaround for getting FFX3 to play nicely with Windows 8.1

[detourne_me]

Well, I've been a little down for the past year since a number of FF related mod tools just don't work with windows 8. That meant I couldn't play my favorite game, and I couldn't upkeep my existing hero files and whatnot.  Also a number of maps were getting dicey, and I couldn't even run the rumble room in vanilla FFVTTR!
It was time for a cleanup.  I uninstalled and deleted everything! Well, almost everything. I kept my custom character folder, and my FX dat and files.
I reinstalled the steam version of  then started thinking..... Well how should I install everything again?
Remember when we had extensive lists of install orders?

I started by downloading a few mods by John Jr., Prem, and Benton. These all worked well. A-ha! This is a good start.
Then I tried Alex's new  mod tools installer.   Worked like a charm and took a fraction of the time the official mod tools took.  Great!

I tried a few mods and goodies from Alex's site (and others from prem and c4).... But when it was an .exe installer, it would freeze up.
I just realized I shouldn't change the default install location. I just ran the installer then moved everything over to the insanely long file path where FFVTTR currently resides. Perfect.

Now how about FFX3? That was the biggie, especially since essential tools like ffxedit2 had stopped working. Well, I went with the default install route again. And this time, I didn't just move everything over to the new location. I copied the ffx3 folder and left the original one sitting there.  Well, guess what? Ffxedit2 works! It can read hero files!
So I tried some power swaps, but nothing was happening in game.... I remembered the ffxcustom.py and ffxcustom2.py files....they were default in my steam folder....but in my initial install location? Full of the power swaps. A little more CTRL-C,CTRL-V later and I was good to go!  But you have to make sure the powers, fx, and characters.dat files line up as well.

TLDR - if you want to use FFX3 with Windows 8.1, install two copies of ffx
1) default location: C:Program Files/Irrational Games/Freedom Force vs The Third Reich/ffx3
2) your regular location: like steamapps/common/freedom force vs the third reich/ffx3

Keep the same .dat files (characters,powers,fx) between both copies.
Any changes you make using ffxedit2 will be saved to the default location ffx3 ffxcustom.py and ffxcustom2.py under ffx3/missions/scripts, so you must copy them and paste them into your regular location ffx3/missions/scripts.

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Good work Det!