Newbie Says Hello & Shamelessly Sells Himself

[The Flying Rodent]

Hi all, and thankyou for accepting me in!

A small introduction: I have played the original Freedom Force on and off since it was released in 2002 (when I was a kid, still am one at heart I guess), and recently went back and replayed the game, with the intention of writing a guide based on playing it using Vanilla Heroes only, on the highest difficulty setting (which works out to be Very Hard, not Impossible, given how difficulty was implemented).

The guide has since been completed (around 40,000 words), and can be found on Steam (given that where my other guides are). RingsOfReznor was very helpful for his game knowledge on certain effects, so shoutout to him for helping with parts of the guide (as well as notifying you guys of my forum invite!).
The guide can be found here: Freedom Force Campaign Guide: Very Hard Difficulty + Vanilla Heroes Only

After replaying the game half a dozen times in service of learning how all 16 heroes operate best on Very Hard difficulty ... it turned out I was pretty good at playing it & I fell into speedrunning it.
So I also now occasionally do that.

In saying all of this: I understand that this commmunity 'largely' has been centred around modding the game & creating content, and not necessarily focusing solely on the OG stuff like I have. I intend to check out the modded content at some point, as it sounds very fun! (I've heard good things about the 'suicide squad' campaign for instance, though I've failed thus far to find a place to download it).

Anyhoo, that's me. Glad to see a community like this is still going after all these years. Hope it continues for years to come, and thanks again for letting me in. =)

[Randomdays]

Welcome to the site!

[deanjo2000]

Welcome to this amazing forum (family) 

[BentonGrey]

Howdy FR, and welcome to FR!         
RoR recommended your guide, and it looks awesome!  I'm looking forward to digging through it.

Man, if you haven't tried the modded content, you haven't even scratched the surface of FF!  And I say that, even aside from being a modder myself!  These are amazing games, but their greatest quality is their incredible versatility!  Suicide Squad is great, but you have GOT to play The Strangers!  That one will blow your mind!  Some of the community members and I also made a little FF expansion to fill in the gap between the first and second game.  I've also got an FFIII project still waiting in the wings.

[WyldFyre]

Welcome aboard!

[Jimaras8]

Welcome!! Playing this game on the highest difficult sounds stressdul as hell, i applaud your skill level. Im firmly a hard difficulty player and i dont think i crank it up.

You should check out the mods for this, a lot of love and content has been put into those.

[The Flying Rodent]

Thanks for the support all! Will definitely check out the modded stuff soon. I suppose The Strangers is a good place to start!

Welcome!! Playing this game on the highest difficult sounds stressdul as hell, i applaud your skill level. Im firmly a hard difficulty player and i dont think i crank it up.

It is indeed stressful, but you figure out the play pattern soon enough. The stressful part mainly comes in getting the wrong end of the damage/crowd control rolls. But it's part of the fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IvoMvfBtys&t=2571s

Fresh off the press: Here's my first attempt at a 100% speedrun of the game, with No Custom heroes, which I finished yesterday. Took almost 6 hours and could definitely be improved, and was a slog from start to finish. But at the very least it's done and provides a decent example of what the game at that level is like!

[BentonGrey]

Very impressive!  I've been playing these games for ages, and I couldn't do it nearly so fast!

Let us know what you think when you try out some mods.  I'm excited for you to experience Strangers.  It's an amazing technical achievement, as well as just being a great story.

[The Flying Rodent]

Very impressive!  I've been playing these games for ages, and I couldn't do it nearly so fast!

Let us know what you think when you try out some mods.  I'm excited for you to experience Strangers.  It's an amazing technical achievement, as well as just being a great story.

Thanks! I grew up playing RTS/CRPG/FPS games, so I suppose I'm alright at mouse movement lol.

So my first experience with The Strangers mod was, er, not the best, but I'm not sure if I've done everything correctly.

https://www.freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=61658.0

Found a thread here that included a mediafire file dump with 'strangersgold.exe' in it, which I assume is the Strangers mod. Downloaded it and fired it up and got to the start screen fine (targeted .exe at the fforce exe, fired up fine and can still run the original game).

Hit New Campaign though, and then was ported into a mission with 'The Handsome Doctor' running around, with no objectives or intro cutscene. He couldn't collect any XP canisters available for the mission, he couldn't interact with any of the teleport devices scattered around the map, and if he died to thugs then nothing happened either.

Went into the Mission folder and found that 'Rite Of Passage' was the first mission, and that the mod came with a bunch of saves. So I looked to see if any of those happened to include the first mission, but they didn't. Lots of random test maps is about all I could find there.

So my questions I guess are:

- Did I download the right mod?
- If yes, can you just run the .exe straight out of the box? Or do I need to move things around to get things like objectives/cutscenes/etc. to work properly?

[BentonGrey]

FR, I'm not sure what the issue is there.  I downloaded that version and it's working fine for me.  It sounds like the mission script is breaking.  The doctor is meant to show up in a CS at the beginning, before the hero is spawned.  It wouldn't be the shortcut, I think, since it is actually launching the game.  Did you see the Strangers main menu screen, with the devil character and the ice man? 

What version of the game are you using? 

[The Flying Rodent]

Did you see the Strangers main menu screen, with the devil character and the ice man? 

What version of the game are you using? 

The main menu shows 4 people (2 female, 2 male) standing around the Earth. I am admittedly a comic book luddite, so I have no idea if any of them are meant to be members of the Strangers cast or not. At the very least 'The Strangers' is the title in the top left, so I assume it's the right mod?

The version I'm using is 'whatever the GOG version is', with no modifications. There's no version displayed in the intro screen, so not sure what number it is.

Is there a patch I should be installing first?

[BentonGrey]

Yep, that's the mod, and those are the titular Strangers.  If you've got the GOG version, that's the best, and it should be working.  I assume you installed the mod into your FF directory, so if you go look at your FF folder, you'll see the Strangers folder inside?

How are you running the game, with Administrative mode or any compatibility settings?  Try this: Go to your main FF.exe in your  folder and right click.  Choose properties and then set it for "Run as Administrator" and set it for compatibility mode for XP Service Pack 1, 2, or 3. 

[The Flying Rodent]

Yep, that's the mod, and those are the titular Strangers.  If you've got the GOG version, that's the best, and it should be working.  I assume you installed the mod into your FF directory, so if you go look at your FF folder, you'll see the Strangers folder inside?

How are you running the game, with Administrative mode or any compatibility settings?  Try this: Go to your main FF.exe in your  folder and right click.  Choose properties and then set it for "Run as Administrator" and set it for compatibility mode for XP Service Pack 1, 2, or 3. 

I'm currently running The Strangers mod from the exe from within the folder inside of the FF directory, yes. Am also using Windows XP compatibility & running as administrator.

I'm guessing the issue is that the cutscene isn't triggering for some reason, given that I'm starting with the Doctor?

[BentonGrey]

Hmm, yeah, it sounds like you're doing all the right stuff.  Does your shortcut have a target datapath that looks more or less like this?:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Freedom Force\fforce.exe" -game Strangers

Yeah, the issue is the script is breaking.  I'm afraid I don't know much about troubleshooting  , as most of my experience is with  .

I know in  , the script.log has the output for the game and any errors.  Anyone know what the equivalent is for  ?

I suppose it's worth opening up your Strangers/Missions/01_Rite_of_passage folder and making sure that the mission.py file is actually there.  It's possible the mod didn't install properly. 

[The Flying Rodent]

Hmm, yeah, it sounds like you're doing all the right stuff.  Does your shortcut have a target datapath that looks more or less like this?:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Freedom Force\fforce.exe" -game Strangers

Yeah, the issue is the script is breaking.  I'm afraid I don't know much about troubleshooting  , as most of my experience is with  .

I know in  , the script.log has the output for the game and any errors.  Anyone know what the equivalent is for  ?

All good. I'll try another mod for now and see how that goes. Any recommendations?

Suicide Squad was recommended to me but I think that one's dead...

[BentonGrey]

Nothing Freedom Force is dead!     Here's the Mod Graveyard, which has backups of a lot of the otherwise unhosted projects.:
https://www.freedomforce4ever.com/graveyard/index.html

Suicide Squad is great, though I don't think I'd start there, as it's really hard...though, that might appeal to your speed-running style.  I'd recommend Teen Titans.  I'm not sure where that one is hosted at the moment, but someone can point you in the right direction, or I can throw it on my Mediafire page if not. 

I also really love Alex's mods, like the DCU and the JLA one.:
https://alexff.infinityfree.me/mods.php

[Jimaras8]

Hmm, yeah, it sounds like you're doing all the right stuff.  Does your shortcut have a target datapath that looks more or less like this?:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Freedom Force\fforce.exe" -game Strangers

Yeah, the issue is the script is breaking.  I'm afraid I don't know much about troubleshooting  , as most of my experience is with  .

I know in  , the script.log has the output for the game and any errors.  Anyone know what the equivalent is for  ?

All good. I'll try another mod for now and see how that goes. Any recommendations?

Suicide Squad was recommended to me but I think that one's dead...

It depends on what mods do you prefer? More contained, small campaigns for speedruns or more vast and total conversion ones? Also what are you into? Marvel, DC, Saturday cartoons, Transformers?

[RingsOfReznor]

Welcome 

[The Flying Rodent]

Alright. Have finished what I wanted to accomplish with Freedom Force 1 (i.e. speedruns in a bunch of categories), and have now moved on to Freedom Force vs The Third Reich.

Ran through the game a few times now, and am in the process of sussing out an 'optimised' (sort of) Impossible difficulty run through of the FFvTTR campaign. Using Vanilla Heroes only. May I say it is a 'lot' harder than FF1 lol.

For those interested, you can find my Impossible FFvTTR run here.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIFJZa0Lw05o

And 'maaaaybe' we'll finally give some FFvTTR mods a try after that.

Enjoy!