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The Onramp to F4Plus:
A Guide to Patching Falcon, One Stitch at a Time
by Bob "Groucho" Marks
Run Scandisk on your destination hard drive. The "Standard" option is OK. When this is complete, run the "Defragment" tool. Couple of hints here…if your computer is the host on a LAN, shut off the client. This will keep the defrag process from resetting. If it's late and you have a lot of stuff on your hard drive, shut the monitor off and go to bed. This takes for-freaking-ever. This step is good practice before installing ANY large program (meaning sims), even if it is a pain in the six. Get into the habit and run Defrag like a union member votes- early and often.
Restart your computer.
Install Falcon 4.0 from the CD-ROM. Do yourself a favor- let it install to the default C:\MicroProse\Falcon4 directory.
Run "f4108us.exe"
Unzip and run "iBeta Realism Patch V3.0.exe"
Restart (Hey, it couldn't hurt)
That's it! You now have two different versions of Falcon 4.0 installed in your Falcon4 directory: "iBeta_F4_RP3.exe" and "falcon4.exe." The "falcon4.exe" is in actuality the v1.08i2 version; it was upgraded during the installation of the RP3 patch. I have detailed what exactly RP3 is in the last F4Plus article (F4 Plus Part I, F4 Plus Part II, F4 Plus Part III). I highly recommend sticking to the RP3 executable.
Also installed with RP3 is a "lite" version of F4Patch- v2beta. This version is pretty limited. There are not many patches to apply in there (only the so-called "iBeta Approved" patches). To really get the most out of Falcon, we need to get the whole enchilada: F4Patch v2.11.
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