Post by Gunbladelad on Jan 7, 2014 7:15:37 GMT
OK, this topic's here to fill everyone in on what's happening with the mod.
1. Hi-definition Textures for everything. The emptiness of space has never looked so good.
2. Witchspace systems now have identifier codes to make multiplayer location finding easier. Now you can tell between the 50 different systems at a glance.
3. "Human names" and comm chatter have now been removed for Thargoids.
4. Multiplayer has been fully implemented. (At the time of this post there are no full-time servers up yet)
5. Commodity pricing has been altered to make trading more viable when starting out.
1. Mining - There are no mineable asteroid fields in this version of the mod - there will be in the next version
2. Jump Drive / Mass locking preventing passage to stations - There is no such thing as a 'jump' drive in the vanilla version of Freelancer, fast passage around systems is achieved with tradelanes. That said, I have not implemented any tradelane attacks (where the tradelane is disrupted by pirates). I am also aware there is a plug-in available by Adoxa which can to some degree simulate the Jump Drive from the original 'Elite' - I will look into this for the next or future versions, the next version will definitely have tradelane attacks at the very least.
3. Hyperspace mis-jumps - this is where you end up in Witchspace surrounded by nasty Thargoids, this experience has been shaped to suit the vanilla game engine, you can get to Witchspace via Jump Holes hidden in Nebulae - it's up to you to find them - where there is a nebula, there is a jump-hole to witchspace. Again, I am aware that there is a plug-in available to do hyperspace mis-jumps, I will look at this for future versions.
4. Rotating Stations - Not having done any 3D modelling for nearly 20 years, this is something I will be definitely getting done for the next version. The station models provided by Gibbon and Griff are great, but in Freelancer you can't have them rotating because the game engine will not be able to dock the ship as it cannot natively support rotating the ship. I intend to get around this by splitting the stations up into a central static cylinder containing the docking bay, with the rest of the station rotating around it - just need to spend some time getting it done. Also, I would like to have 'The Blue Danube' music playing around station zones.
5. Bounties for pirate kills - although you will get paid for killing pirates on missions, there are no bounties awarded for killing pirates in general encounters. There is possibly a way to implement this for future versions.
6. FLhook support for Multiplayer. This is a pretty mammoth task of getting the rather temperamental FLHook program for servers to work properly in the mod. For those who are unaware of flhook, it adds a wealth of useful admin (and player) commands to the game.
1. "Crash To Desktop" at splash screen error - Freelancer Mod Manager doesn't always clear out the singleplayer save-game folder. Do this manually and this should stop this problem. Folders are allowable, but delete (or move) all files with a ".fl" extension.
2. Widescreen: Stormprooter used Adoxa's JFLP in order to implement widescreen, this sometimes means that when you first run the game, the menu is shifted off-screen to the left slightly and everything is zoomed in too far. Easy to fix, simply go into Options and set your correct display resolution, go back to main menu, exit the game and restart - this will fix the screen resolution. Work is in progress to get this set properly when the mod is activated in FLMM
3. Sound: There are known issues with 3D sound on Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, if you get crashes, disable 3D sound in the options.
4. HudShift - Adoxa's HudShift dll was used to push out the HUD to the screen edges for widescreen in-game - if you are not using a widescreen resolution and experience problems, let us know in order to provide a fix.
HudShift is now disabled by default, if you want to use it, let us know and we'll tell you how to implement it. This will be come a feature of the FLMM mod activation at a later date.
Latest Additions
1. Hi-definition Textures for everything. The emptiness of space has never looked so good.
2. Witchspace systems now have identifier codes to make multiplayer location finding easier. Now you can tell between the 50 different systems at a glance.
3. "Human names" and comm chatter have now been removed for Thargoids.
4. Multiplayer has been fully implemented. (At the time of this post there are no full-time servers up yet)
5. Commodity pricing has been altered to make trading more viable when starting out.
What's Missing
1. Mining - There are no mineable asteroid fields in this version of the mod - there will be in the next version
2. Jump Drive / Mass locking preventing passage to stations - There is no such thing as a 'jump' drive in the vanilla version of Freelancer, fast passage around systems is achieved with tradelanes. That said, I have not implemented any tradelane attacks (where the tradelane is disrupted by pirates). I am also aware there is a plug-in available by Adoxa which can to some degree simulate the Jump Drive from the original 'Elite' - I will look into this for the next or future versions, the next version will definitely have tradelane attacks at the very least.
3. Hyperspace mis-jumps - this is where you end up in Witchspace surrounded by nasty Thargoids, this experience has been shaped to suit the vanilla game engine, you can get to Witchspace via Jump Holes hidden in Nebulae - it's up to you to find them - where there is a nebula, there is a jump-hole to witchspace. Again, I am aware that there is a plug-in available to do hyperspace mis-jumps, I will look at this for future versions.
4. Rotating Stations - Not having done any 3D modelling for nearly 20 years, this is something I will be definitely getting done for the next version. The station models provided by Gibbon and Griff are great, but in Freelancer you can't have them rotating because the game engine will not be able to dock the ship as it cannot natively support rotating the ship. I intend to get around this by splitting the stations up into a central static cylinder containing the docking bay, with the rest of the station rotating around it - just need to spend some time getting it done. Also, I would like to have 'The Blue Danube' music playing around station zones.
5. Bounties for pirate kills - although you will get paid for killing pirates on missions, there are no bounties awarded for killing pirates in general encounters. There is possibly a way to implement this for future versions.
6. FLhook support for Multiplayer. This is a pretty mammoth task of getting the rather temperamental FLHook program for servers to work properly in the mod. For those who are unaware of flhook, it adds a wealth of useful admin (and player) commands to the game.
Known Issues
1. "Crash To Desktop" at splash screen error - Freelancer Mod Manager doesn't always clear out the singleplayer save-game folder. Do this manually and this should stop this problem. Folders are allowable, but delete (or move) all files with a ".fl" extension.
2. Widescreen: Stormprooter used Adoxa's JFLP in order to implement widescreen, this sometimes means that when you first run the game, the menu is shifted off-screen to the left slightly and everything is zoomed in too far. Easy to fix, simply go into Options and set your correct display resolution, go back to main menu, exit the game and restart - this will fix the screen resolution. Work is in progress to get this set properly when the mod is activated in FLMM
3. Sound: There are known issues with 3D sound on Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, if you get crashes, disable 3D sound in the options.