• Hello and welcome to MSFC. We are a small and close knitted community who specialises in modding the game Star Trek Armada 2 and the Fleet Operations modification, however we have an open field for discussing a number of topics including movies, real life events and everything in-between.

    Being such a close community, we do have some restrictions, including all users required to be registered before being able to post as well as all members requiring to have participated in the community for sometime before being able to download our modding files to name the main ones. This is done for both the protection of our members and to encourage new members to get involved with the community. We also require all new registrations to first be authorised by an Administrator and to also have an active and confirmed email account.

    We have a policy of fairness and a non harassment environment, with the staff quick to act on the rare occasion of when this policy is breached. Feel free to register and join our community.

A2F Archive

Knight

"What? Too flashy?"
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Shame. its where i started out from, before finding a home here. Sad to see it come to an end :(
 

Avon

The older I get, the more I forget
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It's a sad day indeed. Many good memories.
Amazing it was 12 years ago I first found AFC, then 2 years later a2files.
Good times
 

Majestic

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Nice to see the old files have been archived. It's just for the old files right?
 

Syf

Lost Finder
Star Fighter
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Might I say, while the A2F and related sites are Gone. Armada and Armada 2 are over a decade old (the later being close to 2 decades old), I think we all agree to carry the Armada Community (and modding community) Banner long into the night. The night is coming for these old games, but
"We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive!".
 

Majestic

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Might I say, while the A2F and related sites are Gone. Armada and Armada 2 are over a decade old (the later being close to 2 decades old), I think we all agree to carry the Armada Community (and modding community) Banner long into the night. The night is coming for these old games, but
"We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive!".

^ I agree with President Thomas J. Whitmore there. :lol2:
 

Elrond

Crusher of Capitalism
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Thank science for the internet, where the works of fallen websites and their communities may see the light of day once again! Mostly thanks to those who kept backups/are making backups of this otherwise lost content. There are some people out there making similar arrangements for LotRFiles, so perhaps all those maps that I played for Battle for Middle Earth will not be lost. I'm a packrat, but I cleared out a lot of old stuff about a year ago...just before all this went on. Talk about bad timing! :( But the internet always finds a way, so s'all good! :)
 

Majestic

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Threads RIP Armada2Files and A2F Archive have been merged. They were pretty much about the same thing anyway. :)
 

Syf

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I miss playing Armada. I have Ubuntu for a primary OS these days (I still have a couple systems running Win 7 and kids have WinXP. I can't stand ME, Vista, Win8, Win 8.1, nor Win 10). Thus, no Armada gaming for me. I will still support those games until the day my dream of a replacement (multi-platform) is realized.
 

CABAL

<< ■ II ▶ >>
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I miss playing Armada. I have Ubuntu for a primary OS these days (I still have a couple systems running Win 7 and kids have WinXP. I can't stand ME, Vista, Win8, Win 8.1, nor Win 10). Thus, no Armada gaming for me. I will still support those games until the day my dream of a replacement (multi-platform) is realized.
Tomorrow, I will see if I can get A1 and 2 working in Wine and share the results. I feel like the last time I tried it was okay except for the BIK movies.
 

Majestic

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Also give FO a shot Cabal if you feel like it. A1 and A2 are great for the campaign but for instant action and modding I would recommend FO any day. Many mods are now available for FO too and it's not too much work to convert older mods to FO.
 

Aad Moerman

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I am glad to be here at MFSC, but losing FF was hard. There was so much to find...
 

Majestic

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Unfortunately it was a long time coming Aad. Ever since Break Media bought Filefront is had been on a steady decline. The main thing is, unlike some communities, MSFC, AFC and FO are there to continue to support the community. I know some communities only had their Filefront page as their only community site. It's going to be hard for them and they may have lost a lot, not just files either but members.

Google Armada 2 mods and most people will eventually find MSFC, AFC and FO. :)
 

Terra_Inc

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Tomorrow, I will see if I can get A1 and 2 working in Wine and share the results. I feel like the last time I tried it was okay except for the BIK movies.

I have A2 working pretty fine under wine. The bik movies don't work, yeah. It doesn't seem to accept keyboard input until the settings have been modified once per running game ( I think it was the scrolling rate). IMO it's a minor issue if you play normally. I also had some issues with the stock models glitching a bit graphically, though that could also be the fault of my graphics HW/SW. Modern models work just fine. I mostly play heavily modded A2 anyway. (*cough* Wastelands *cough*) Everything else seemed to work fine.

Also, due to the nature of wine, different versions on different systems might handle A2 differently. So take everything I said with a grain of salt. I can post my setup if it helps.
 

ISS_Enterprise_D

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So it turns out I have close to 400 mod files from BC and A2. Somehow I forgot I had the folder despite accessing it almost daily.
 

Terra_Inc

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I will still support those games until the day my dream of a replacement (multi-platform) is realized.
That's also my dream. If there was a project like that, I'd join it immediately.

Actually, is anyone aware of an open source 3D space rts at all? I don't think there is one.
 

CABAL

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Also give FO a shot Cabal if you feel like it. A1 and A2 are great for the campaign but for instant action and modding I would recommend FO any day. Many mods are now available for FO too and it's not too much work to convert older mods to FO.
I already know FO doesn't work, and won't for a while, if ever. Basically, FO and several other things (like the Morrowind Graphics Extender) exploit a security hole to get the game to load additional DLLs as it starts up. Something about Wine or Linux itself closes off that entrance.

I have A2 working pretty fine under wine. The bik movies don't work, yeah. It doesn't seem to accept keyboard input until the settings have been modified once per running game ( I think it was the scrolling rate). IMO it's a minor issue if you play normally. I also had some issues with the stock models glitching a bit graphically, though that could also be the fault of my graphics HW/SW. Modern models work just fine. I mostly play heavily modded A2 anyway. (*cough* Wastelands *cough*) Everything else seemed to work fine.
That's about how I remember it, but I don't think I had an input bug. Performance was pretty horrible, but my system was also much weaker then.

Also, due to the nature of wine, different versions on different systems might handle A2 differently. So take everything I said with a grain of salt.
I suspect that Wine compounds Windows specific hardware problems and Linux specific hardware problems. The only time I'd say that something is will absolutely run in Wine is if you're using a combo of the same program, Wine version, and Linux distro as someone who registered a platinum rating on WineHQ, assuming they rated it properly. Still, we can get a general idea by testing with as many systems as possible. In addition to my desktop, I also have an old laptop with Ubuntu 14.04. If it doesn't have Wine already, I'll add it.

I can post my setup if it helps.
Yes, please. As much info as you can get. Distro with version number, Wine version, any tweaks to Wine including DirectX installation, hardware, etc.

---

Actually, is anyone aware of an open source 3D space rts at all? I don't think there is one.
Yes, actually. Spring is free and open source. Most of the games are Total Annihilation-likes.
 

Aad Moerman

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Just been looking at armadafiles. Great the files have been saved, but I could not find my latest uploads on FF. My Breen/Dominion mod f.e. is not saved.
 
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Terra_Inc

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Just been looking at armadafiles.com. Great the files have been saved, but I could not find my latest uploads on FF. My Breen/Dominion mod f.e. is not saved.
I think all the very recent files are missing from the new archive. A2Files must have gone offline shortly after they were posted, and so there is no Wayback Machine backup of the site from that time. So Doca probably didn't know they were missing.
 

dvatreknerd314

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I have your Dom/Breen set Aad, so if for some reason that's missing, I can provide it!
 

Aad Moerman

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I just uploaded the mod on MFSC, but thanks anyway.
 

Terra_Inc

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I've copied the relevant posts over to a new thread about A2 under Linux, so this thread can stay on topic.
 

Rifraf

I know just enough to be a danger to myself
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Does anyone know if the FF Forums are now also gone? I keep getting an unable to connect this evening. I'll be devastated if they go down as it's such an immense repository of resources in all those threads from over the years.
 

Aad Moerman

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I can't get a connection either. I fear the worst.
 

Majestic

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If the network sites are down the forum is only a matter of time.
 

Terra_Inc

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FF forums seem to be back up ATM. No idea whether they'll stay, so if you need anything from them I suggest to grab it now.

Also, there is new information on the status of the files:

Freyr said:
Everything any staff member, or former staff member posts is true as to the best of our knowledge. Like Goody, I'm a former Network Administrator, and had been a volunteer staff member for just shy of a decade when the plug was pulled. For general reference I shall outline why I think what I say is true and everybody can make their own minds up. Frankly, the bottom line is that nobody knows for sure.

Basically, a long time ago the entire downloads operation was run through an inhouse system at filefront. Simplistically, when we posted a file through our backend system the download was also posted to the system which is still available though the filefront site at the current time.

After Break took over there was some really extensive work done on the network sites and download handling was shifted to an external Content Distribution System (Amazon Web Services IIRC) which took over hosting the downloads. The important thing from todays point of view is that at this point to the best of my knowledge the files were no longer being transferred to the filefront system.

I no longer have access to the sources that would have given me a precise date for this, but we don't really need one. Pick one of the archives for your game of choice and then sort it by the most recent files. Picking my former network site as a reference point which I can compare against the archive we have I make the cutoff point as being roughly half way through 2009 so it would appear that anything submitted after that date has been lost.

Given that the gamefront site has had it's staff laid off, and the network has now been closed I wouldn't count on that archive being available forever.

FileTrekker said:
The intention is to remove any files that were not popular or downloaded very often. If these files are still there now, they won't be forever.
 

Aad Moerman

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I tried to go the site, but got a message the site could be harmfull for my PC.
 
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