KARAJORMA'S FREESPACE FAQ

VERSION 2.1

What is covered in this FAQ??

The FreeSpace Wiki is probably one of the best resources available to the community. However due to it's structure some people have found it hard to use. This FAQ is designed to contain much of the basic information in a simpler and easier to use fashion. It's worth remembering however that while the Wiki is maintained by whoever in the community wishes to update it, this FAQ is maintained by just myself. As a result it can date more quickly. For this reason the FAQ will in general avoid the most up to date solutions and problems as those are the ones that change the most quickly and then make the FAQ look inaccurate.

This FAQ is not designed as a replacement for the Wiki. Instead it's designed as an index and guide to it. Many entries in the FAQ will have a link to the Wiki so that you can check there for further information or an alternative way of doing things.

In addition to indexing the wiki the FAQ can carry guides to things like the HotU version etc that HLP have previously had to distance themselves from somewhat. Lastly unlike the wiki the FAQ has my own personal opinion of things. While I'll be mostly objective about things I'm going to occasionally say how I prefer things to be done. Feel free to ignore me if you wish. I won't take any offence.

If you haven't come here with a specific question in mind the General Questions section is the place to start. This section covers how to get FreeSpace and why the series never proceeded beyond the second instalment. The FRED Questions section aims to teach you everything you need to know to start making your own missions. The Modding Questions section gives an overview of how to make your own ships, weapons and effects and get them into the game. Other aspects of modding for FreeSpace are also covered. The Gameplay Questions section covers problems like how to play online or get promotions and medals. The Technical Problems section covers crashes or resolution problems. The Storyline Questions section contains transcripts of the cutscenes from FS2.
Lastly and possibly most importantly there is my installation guide. This is basically a walkthrough of how to install FS2, FS2_Open and modifications for the game. Unlike the version on the wiki it is designed to be generic so that it goes out of date very slowly.

News

06-05-07 - Another massive gap between updates. Gotta stop doing that. Anyway gave the FAQ a small update (hopefully the first of many).

08-12-06 - Wow, been a while since I last updated. In view of the fact that I now have a new domain for the FAQ I decided to do a little cleaning up. This isn't the big change I've been promising for a while but that's coming reasonably soon. Instead you get as many changes as I can make before I get sleepy.

08-02-06 - Well those lovely people at HotU have decided (with a little bit of a gentle shove from me) to upgrade their version of FS2. Basically it's the full version except for cutscenes available at their website. That's great news but it does mean that I now need to comb through the entire FAQ and make sure that every single reference to the old version is now updated.

18-01-06 - Interesting. It appears I forgot to post when I did take the old FAQ offline. I'd have thought a major change like that would have gone in. Oh well this major change did get in. The FAQ now contains a detailed guide on installing FS2, FS2_Open and mods for FS2_Open. You can stop all bugging me in the forums now (only joking. Bug me if there's anything I missed).

06-08-05 - Time for another push. With luck I might be able to get everything to the stage where I can take down the original FAQ and replace it with this version. If not I'm going to upload what I have and link to both the Beta site as well as the original from now on. Thanks to Goober for correcting some of the errors in the cutscenes section. No thanks for changing it all to American English but I've changed it all back anyway!

06-08-05 - I'm moving the location of the FAQ ever so slightly. I don't much like having the FAQ, TMA and SoR all sharing the same folder and with the number of new sections I've introduced it's getting to be a bit of a mess. Time to tidy up a little.

03-07-05 - Hmmmm. It's been a while since I uploaded the page in response to HLP's disappearance and I've not changed much. Time to do some work. Went through the HotU FAQ and found it surprisingly current (I expected it to need lots of editing). That means that the modding and technical sections are the only parts of the original FAQ that need work.

03-04-05 - Progress on the new version is still ongoing but in response to the temporary disappearance of the forums on HLP I decided to upload what I had so far.

19-03-05 - Big things are coming. FAQ v2.0 is well under progress. Updates are done to the General, FRED, Gameplay, and Storyline sections. Some of the features of FAQ V2.0 are a transcript of all the FS1 cutscenes, more FRED help and for the first time the SCP information is now separated out to make it easier to access.
Planned features include a list of the FS1 missions detailing when each ship became available (in a similar fashion to the FS2 one already present), an in depth explanation of several of the new SCP SEXPs (with examples of how they can be used to do things that were previously impossible), a much larger SCP section covering many of the more common bugs and workarounds, a glossary of common FreeSpace terms and an enhanced downloads section which better details what can be found on this site (cause sometimes I surprise myself with some of the useful stuff I've uploaded and then forgotten about!).

18-03-05 - Updates take time. The upgrade is now about 50% complete. Lots of new content added. The same ugly look remains though. I've decided that I'm going to add all the new content and get the FAQ up. Once I've done that I'll start thinking about improving the quality of the HTML.

06-02-05 - With my time on an average visit to HLP climbing back up past the two hour mark it's become obvious that the time has come to dust off the FAQ and revamp it properly for the SCP era. Either that or start being a bit more hard-hearted and leave people to find their own solutions.
The result is that I'm reversing my long-standing position on SCP information in the FAQ. I've been loathe to include much of it previously because it tends to go out of date quickly resulting in me having to edit all the time to keep the FAQ current. However it's starting to look like it would be quicker to simply address SCP issues here than it would be to keep answering individual queries on the SCP forum.