New Modder of Modest Ambition, frustrated

[Captain Chaos]

I'm very new to these games, having just bought them in the Steam package and played through them both.  After exploring the fantastic FF web community, I knew I had to do some modding.

My goal was very simple: Make some short, uncomplicated missions and insert them into the original FF campaign.  No additional fx, maps, anything.  Just a longer vanilla campaign that allows the basic characters to be more fully explored.

I cleared the first hurdle of getting FFedit to install on FF1 (Vista, Steam installed, using regedit).  Everything was going swimmingly until I tried to Edit In-game, at which point leveledit.exe crashes.  This pretty much brought me to a screeching halt, since I lack the time and ability to create levels without this feature.  Adding FFX 2.6 to the mix offered no solution. Some online inquiry led me to this conclusion:

1.  Leveledit.exe can't be made to work unless you're running a system older than Win 98 sp2.  So much for modding FF1 - it's dead, Jim.  So much for the wealth of maps and meshes for FF1 ... sigh.

So I turned to FFVTTR, though I much preferred the style and feel of the original game, and the original campaign is what I set out to mod.   

Still, I was able to get FFedit working fully in FFVTTR, and found that meshes can be converted to FFVTTR by an easy (but tedious) process.   Maps are a problem: conversions of FF1 maps look like hell, but I'm willing to work with the toony FFVTTR maps, if I can find enough of them.  By now EZscript looks like my best bet, so I install FFX 3.3.

My goals are still modest:  To create a small campaign from scratch using simple EZscript missions, and flesh it out as I become more familiar with the tools.  Now I have a new problem:

2.  FFVTTR's file structure is ... perplexing.   I have at least three Art folders so far, under Data, Custom, and ffx3.   What in blazes is Custom, anyway?  My mod folder will add a fourth.  Plus I've stuff scattered to Vista's goofy Appdata folders now.  What's reading what from what, and when?

It's a sad dilemma.  FF1 has a surplus of excellent raw material, but no tools to work it with.  FFVTTR has tools that work, but material is scarce, and the game seems to have been designed to trap modders in a maze.

I thank anyone who read this, and I would be glad of any advice that could be offered at this point.

[Previsionary]

Hi, welcome to the forum and the modding circle.

It's a very prominent misconception that FFv3R is lacking in material. It has tons of maps, FXes, meshes (most meshers/skinners are exclusive to FFv3R these days), skins, etc., at this point; so it's not exactly without its own resources. Gogglespizanno (and Renegade's) map packs have added even more map variety to the game for those that don't want to attempt to convert said items themselves. FFv3R was made with compatibility in mind (it was a selling point back when they were marketing the game), so at least 90% of all the items FF1 has will work in FFv3R whether it be "raw" or through conversion.

As for the art folders, "custom" is for "custom" meshes. The art folder under "data" is for the meshes that came with the game. FFvTTR has a funky set up when it comes to that (as in meshes can be installed into two places), but that's fairly well covered on the FR wiki.

As for FFedit (level editor) with Freedom Force 1, it works from Win 98 to Win XP. Vista is where you'll be unable to play around with it.

[Captain Chaos]

Thanks for the reply.  Obviously I've only scratched the surface of the FFVTTR resources.  As I said, it's a tremendous community, and a lot of people have done some incredible work.  For my purposes, I'm trying to stick close to the game's original scope: generic comic book heroes, in the heyday of Jack Kirby.

It seems to me that in Vista, the Custom folder in the main directory can be entirely disregarded in favor of the Appdata Custom folder, so I'm proceeding on that assumption. 

[Epimethee]

Welcome, CC!

If you really want to run FFEdit 1 and have install disks for Win 98 or XP, you could always use a virtual machine (Virtual Box, VirtualPC, etc.)

Good look with the modding, looking forward to it.

[Captain Chaos]

If you really want to run FFEdit 1 and have install disks for Win 98 or XP, you could always use a virtual machine (Virtual Box, VirtualPC, etc.)

That's a good idea and if I'd thought of it before I might have done it.  For now, I think I'm going to work on FFVTTR with EZscript.

[hoss20]

2.  FFVTTR's file structure is ... perplexing.   I have at least three Art folders so far, under Data, Custom, and ffx3.   What in blazes is Custom, anyway?  My mod folder will add a fourth.  Plus I've stuff scattered to Vista's goofy Appdata folders now.  What's reading what from what, and when?

The art folder under Data is used by the game, the art folder under FFX is utilized when you are using the FFX mod, and the folder under Custom (more specifically, Custom\Art\library\characters) is where you put all of the meshes not included in the game. You can download meshes created by the great people here and use them in the Rumble Room. The Character Tool also uses this as a secondary directory enabling you to view the meshes outside of the game. I am unfamiliar with the Vista file structure, so the directory may be different, as you noted. Check out this site for a good starting point to find meshes: http://frworld.wikispaces.com/ . Now a lot of the meshes have been updated since this was created, but it is an invaluable resource.