Final Frontier Plus v1.9 Beta 1 by TC01 and God-Emperor ------------------------------------------------------- Final Frontier Plus is, as the name suggests, a modmod of Jon Shafer's Final Frontier mod/scenario included with Beyond the Sword. Unlike most of the existing Final Frontier modmods, it is not a total conversion; instead, it is an expansion of Final Frontier itself. The goals of the project are threefold. The first goal is to significantly improve the speed and reliability of Final Frontier. Through a handful of merged speed mods, as well as countless bug fixes accumulated over the last few years, we have mostly accomplished this goal. Final Frontier Plus runs at nearly the speed of unmodded Beyond the Sword and has fixed almost all outstanding issues with the original mod-scenario. Future improvements will likely still occur over time, especially as more bugs may be unwittingly introduced. The second goal is to make Final Frontier Plus a richer and more immersive experience than the Final Frontier scenario. As anyone who has played Final Frontier will likely realize, that mod is rather lacking in terms of content. This is an open-ended goal. Through the work of God-Emperor, many new features have been added to the game and the BUG interface has been overlaid over the Final Frontier interface. More work in this area of things is to come over time. The third goal is to improve a modder's experience in modding Final Frontier. To do this, we have removed a number of hardcoded limitations from the Python code of Final Frontier, created a number of new XML tags as a result of the removal of such hardcoding, and finally generally cleaned up the original Final Frontier code. This too is an open-ended goal that currently has received more focus than adding new content (as it goes along with improving speed and reliability). Final Frontier Plus is most certainly a work in progress. If you have a bug report, suggestion, request for help, offer of help, complaint, or any other reason to contact us for any reason, our development forum on Civfanatics is the place to do so: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=387 Changelog: ---------- Please see the CHANGELOG.txt file for full changelog history. The latest patch's changelog is reproduced here: Note that changelogs, these days, are mostly derived from git commit history. https://github.com/FinalFrontierPlus/civ4ffplus/commits/master v1.9b1 Changelog: -Added a ninth human colony, Interstellar Intelligence, an espionage-focused faction, aka "the Watchers", based off a suggestion by Imp Knoedel. Trait grants Improved Stealth to all Light Ships and a bonus to espionage production, at a cost to upkeep. -Imported sailbotlieh's Miranda Lawson (imported from Mass Effect 2) leaderhead for Catherine Shapiro, the leader of the Watchers. Favorite civic is Police State. -Added Stealth Cruiser UU for the Watchers; a more expensive Stealth Ship that gets first strikes. -Added Security Directorate UB for the Watchers; an Intelligence Center that produces more Espionage. -Added Galactic Infiltration technology to the beginning of the Expansion Era. -Galactic Infiltration allows the training of the new Spy Ship unit, a spy that can perform Spy Missions but is not 100% invisible; it is only "invisible to most units" ala a Stealth Ship. -Re-enabled the No Espionage gameoption (that prevents the building of Spies and turns all Espionage into other commerces). -Added No Spies gameoption that prevents the building of spies, but still lets buildings produce Espionage culture. Installing: ----------- There are *three* ways to install Final Frontier Plus. If the first two options (the standalone installers) do not work for you-- they are known to have issues on the Steam version of Civ 4-- we recommend trying option 3, which is just a zipfile of the mod's contents. If you are installing the mod onto the Steam copy of Beyond the Sword, it should work, but the installer does not currently detect the right place to install the mod. You will want to install into a path that looks like the following: SteamApps/Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword/Beyond the Sword/Mods/ Please see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=365908 this thread on our forums for more information and download links. Note: installations into your *user* My Games folder is *not recommended*. This causes problems for lots of mods. Running: -------- Beyond the Sword 3.19 is, of course, required. If you are running on Windows Vista or up, you should disable User Access Control, otherwise strange problems may occur. This is a common problem with Civ 4 mods. You can launch Beyond the Sword and use the Load Mod menu to load Final Frontier Plus, once it's installed. Alternatively, you can use a mod launcher, or the shortcut that gets generated from this mod's installers, to launch the mod directly. Building from Source: ---------------------- AKA "the fourth way" to install the mod. Building FF+ from source is not something you should ever really have to do, unless you are assembling a release or we aren't releasing patches often enough (which, let's face it, we probably aren't). First, you are going to want to compile the DLL, using these instructions and repository: https://github.com/FinalFrontierPlus/CvGameCoreDLL We do not (currently!) ship auto-compiled DLLs. Second, you are going to want to build a FPK of the art, using this repository and instructions: https://github.com/FinalFrontierPlus/civ4ffplus-art For best results, call it FFPak1.fpk. This repository only includes the changes to Final Frontier, so, you'll need to find the "Final Frontier" folder in your Beyond the Sword/Mods directory and rename it "Final Frontier Plus". Then copy the DLL and FFPak1.fpk file into Final Frontier Plus/Assets. Clone this repository and copy its contents into the "Final Frontier Plus" folder you created. At this point, everything should work. If you like, also use PakBuild to compile the existing Assets/Art folder into a "FFPak0.fpk" and land it alongside FFPak1.fpk. License: -------- Final Frontier Plus is as "open source" as a mod of a proprietary video game can get. In a nutshell that means you are welcome to use any assets (code, art, etc.) created by Final Frontier Plus contributors in other Civilization IV mods (or elsewhere, should you really want to). But we cannot, of course, relicense any of the proprietary Final Frontier content shipped with Civilization IV, or Civilization IV itself. Firaxis and 2K own Civilization 4. "Final Frontier" is a scenario created by Jon Shafer for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword when he was employed by Firaxis Games. "Final Frontier Plus" is an unofficial modification built by TC01 and God-Emperor, among other contributors (Please see the CREDITS.txt file for a full list). None of the above parties are liable for any damages caused by any part of Final Frontier Plus to your computer.