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The Onramp to F4Plus:
A Guide to Patching Falcon, One Stitch at a Time
By Bob "Groucho" Marks
The F4Patch Utility
F4Patch, by Joel Bierling, is the utility in the world of F4 patching. It gives you the ability to apply and remove most third-party patches with relative ease. There are dozens of patches included with v2.11 (the latest, greatest version at this time). While some of these patches are outright fixes addressing issues that are broken outright, most are optional tweaks that are strictly up to the individual. The included patches are really only part of what's cool about v2.11. Enhanced functionality and ease of use make the Big Cheese of Falcon 4.0 utilities even cheesier. Here are just a few of the improvements: the ability to launch the .exe directly from F4Patch; better organization, and the ability to "filter" patches (keep a core of required fixes on an .exe, for example).
This new version of F4Patch can be easily had back at http://www.falcon40.com (if you are seeing a certain dependence on this site, it's strictly intentional as just about every patch is available and is kept up to date). Download "F4Patch211_noexe.zip" (noexe because we already have RP3 installed). While we are here, download "F4Patch21Cockpits.zip" and "F4Patch21Sounds.zip."
Now that we've got them:
- Delete the "F4Patch.exe" and "F4Patch" folder from the Falcon4 directory.
- Extract the contents of your "F4Patch211_noexe.zip" to the Falcon4 folder.
- Extract the contents of "F4Patch21Cockpits.zip" and "F4Patch21Sounds.zip" to the F4Patch folder in the Falcon4 directory.
- Run "F4Patch.exe."
- At the very least, apply the following fixes (ensuring that the Executable "target" in the F4Patch interface points to C:\MicroProse\Falcon4\iBeta_F4_RP3.exe):
- (108i2) Bounce Landing Fix
- (108i2) Bubble slider fix
- (108i2) CAT III fix V1b
- (108i2) Comm patch
- (108i2) GLoc Patch
- (108i2) Nike RWR symbol fix
- MSVCRT.dll fix
- The cockpit of your choice
