[QUESTION] Manually Installing to Albion Prelude (Steam)?

[Wilson-MG-]

I'm away from my home PC so trial and error isn't an option at the moment so forgive my ignorance here...

I recently reinstalled X3: TC on a newly built PC because of the release of Albion Prelude and immediately I went out to snatch up my favorite mods and plugins again before even starting a new game. I want to play purely in the AP setting, skipping vanilla TC, with all my mods, scripts, plugins, etc. (all of them should be compatible).

I learned the hard way last night that I needed the Cycrow's Beta Plugin Manager to properly install .SPKs to Albion Prelude. I had installed about twenty items with the stable version when I loaded up the game only to discover none of them were detected by AP, only vanilla TC. I decided just to scrub the whole installation, including the Manager, and start fresh in the proper order.

I installed TC and AP via Steam, then I installed the Bonus Pack, then I installed the Beta Plugin Manager (v1.40) and it detected AP's install, so I then switched it to Modified mode. Now at this point, installing all of my chosen items to AP should be no sweat, so long as they're .SPKs.

However, my question is where do I stick all those mods that aren't conveniently packaged into .SPKs? Do I drop the folders (scripts, t, etc.) into the main TC directory ...\steamapps\common\x3 terran conflict\ OR do I drop them one folder lower into the ...\addons folder since that is where AP seems to read from? I'm assuming the latter is the correct course of action, but I'd hate to be wrong and have to hunt down dozens of added files and move them and restore backed-up files, etc. Assuming incorrectly can be quite a pain so I figured I'd just ask and see if anyone can set me on the correct course initially.

Even better, if it's possible to easily convert those loose files and folders (from .ZIPs, .7Zs, .RARs, etc.) into .SPKs so I can at least add/remove and enable/disable them via the Manager, that would be even better.

Thanks in advance! I hope your answers might help other lost souls who might be returning to X3 because of AP as well.

[Cycrow]

a few things u could do.

first, in the beta plugin manager, theres an option called "Install Archive"
this will be a ble to install any zip or rar file

or, you can create your own spk files in the creator, easiest way is to import the archive, and it'll create one automatically, you just need to add the name, author, version, etc

[Wilson-MG-]

Awesome! Thanks, Cycrow, that's exactly what I was looking for!

I didn't know what those options did so I had never experimented with them.

EDIT: Also, you might consider putting a note on the Plugin Manager thread that if folks are trying to use it for AP, they need the Beta client. I just checked to be sure I hadn't missed any notes, and it's not on there. I had to read the last few pages on the Beta thread to figure out that's the client I needed.