Freelancer Initiative
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I might be blown out of the water for discussing this, but I generally keep an eye on the active players via the global stats site.
Not a great number playing this game anymore, it IS an old game but it is still fun, and the modding community has come up with many many ways to expand that.
Now that MS has pulled multiplayer server support, and I don’t know how many copies now exist in the world, there doesn’t seem to be a great influx of players, mainly older players who keep coming back for more.
I just had some thoughts, I know it’s a little taboo, but could we not patch together a community made installer with everything we have enhanced on the original game, and get it out there on the web, i.e; torrent (obviously no hacked exe’s would be included so the downloader must have the original CD).
Some plan could also be devised to get the word out about Freelancer amongst the social news sites, gamer magazines, to promote the game.
Seems like were getting towards an end-game for Freelancer here, there’s only so much that can be done within the scope of the game, but I think its enough to be able to show that the game has weight and can look and play almost as good as some of the current games.
What are your thoughts on this?
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I think the key to promoting FL is simply writing awesome mods.
Just look at Discovery, they managed to pull in such a crowd, its ridiculous how much interest they created for FL.Also, games magazines and websites are more likely to report about the awesome mods rather than about the actual game.
So get out there and spread the mod news, like Sushi did on ModDB:
http://www.moddb.com/games/freelancer/news/freelancer-the-game-that-just-keeps-on-ticking -
The only thing that has stopped me playing discovery, is to be honest a very strict community, with too much restriction on what you can and can’t do, say, feel lol (okay last part I exadgerated, but my point stands).
Freelancer is about having freedom, not stupid rulesets aside from the obvious, cheating, laming etc.
I’m just thinking at this point, what do we have to lose by getting our own custom installer going with all the community built updates and features.
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There would be no actual mods in it, just the improvements and tweaks to enable people to play the game, mainly widescreen, global server and the patches. Maybe include mod manager into it via Start Menu shortcuts along with hyperlink shortcuts to the various community sites we have.
Then at least the player who downloads it has immediate access after installation to multiplayer support and an updated client.
We’d obviously need to come together as a community to decide what would make the cut.
As long as no illegal no-cd patches are included, I think it should be fine. As with anyone buying the game themselves they would need the CD or to look for what they need on their own.
As it currently stands, anyone who downloads the game or buys a CD of it, has to use their own initiative to resolve the issues which would in my opinion give new players more reasons to stop playing after completing single player. The main reason people still play this game is of course multiplayer, robbed of that it doesn’t have much future for beginners to it.
But we all know this already…
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IF we do such a programm it should include FLMM with an better Design, so you can browse and download the Mods DIRECTLY in FLMM, so Players wouldn’t even have to search for the Mod on the Internet, On start of Freelancer the Mod should be Checked on version and if outdated, the player notified.
That would be awesome! But it’s unlikely to happen, however, if you need an PHP Coder to realize something like this, ask me!
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A DLL that points to a website that has a list of mods along with download links included (maybe via RSS?) could be used to allow a player via a custom launcher for FL, to download and via “run” from the download box, open them up and extract them into FLMM, although it would be good if we could make FLMM automatically extract and enable a mod, and then launch Freelancer automatically.
An auto updater for the client as well for future use when more bugs are quashed or other subtle improvements are made to the client data would be immensly beneficial.
I was just personally thinking of just slotting in the FLMM in there, the only other one in existence as far as I know, is a beta version.
For now we could just include that … We could always update the torrent with a new release at a later time.
EDIT:
Also, a seperate add-on to this could be a developer toolkit, you know the error checkers, modding tools like FLDev, even small stuff like Notepad++ as a standalone text editor (it provides syntax highlighting and other impressive text features).
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@tai: I think you like the package managers from Linux a bit too much
@Azureus: Two points:
- It’s nice and smooth to include other software in a new installer, but that package would get outdated VERY quickly. You also get the problem of what to include. w0dk4’s workaround? Crazy’s? Do we want to support FLDS and FLCompanion directly or not? Is the “Unofficial 1.4 patch” something that should go in, or would you rather include the Quickfix? What about JFLP? Hardware update? That thing gets updated very often and would actually require a small refreshing right about now.
I just feel like it would be a LOT of work to keep the installer updated.
- You keep saying “without the EXE” because that’s illegal. Well… It’s the other way around, actually. A no-cd crack is usually accepted by companies on the basis of “backup copies”. Distributing the whole game, however, would be a big no-no. That means redistributing copyrighted material, including and not limited to reverse-engineered pieces of code. I hope you realize that, since Microsoft has never made its stance clear on the matter, we’re treading on the border of legality with our mods, patches and tools? Things like the UTF editor, the SUR exporter, the SDK, the list server, most mods, etc. used some part of reverse-engineering, which is against the law.
Oh and psst… 99% of the mods around here include a no-cd patch so EXE hacks can be applied (the original EXE is obfuscated and cannot be hacked in this way). Not including the EXE would just reduce the number of people who’d be interested in distributing and trying the game because of the hassle (after all, what’s the point in downloading the whole game if you can’t play it without having an original copy in the first place? Just install the game yourself instead, no need to download stuff).
Finally, I’ll point out that it’s not “taboo” as you say. It’s a rather simple thing, actually: if we want to stay around, we need to be legal. As simple as that. Advocating what amounts to warez would put us in direct infringement of copyright laws, which could result in a swift death at the hand of a thousand angry lawyers. As you could expect, we aren’t wishing for that, so any attempt to pursue your idea will have to either be put off until the game is no more sold anywhere (at which point it becomes abandonware and policies often change, even though it’d still be stretching it), or you don’t get to mention it here.
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As for deciding which software and addons etc fixes to package, thats something I guess we can decide given that we all know what works and what doesn’t in terms of the people here who mod the game regulary.
Its going to come to a point where this line we’re bordering on crossing needs to be crossed, they cut all support for the game, theres no server anymore, its not even sold on microsofts website, although I know that doesn’t effect the copyrights, trademark or intellectual properties or anything, but still
I’d rather the game continue on …
Maybe something could be packaged together and microsoft update their page to link to it, so that multiplayer can be enabled again for people that visit that site …
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Is the “Unofficial 1.4 patch” something that should go in, or would you rather include the Quickfix? What about JFLP? Hardware update?
I feel that this little bit right here needs to be specifically highlighted, considering that not all of the so-called unofficial patches are universally supported or approved of. What works on server X won’t always work on server Y, and may end up getting you banned outright from server Z.
Give people Crazy’s list server, the GLS workaround (as a failsafe), FLMM, and the resources needed to go from there.
Perhaps a link to a simple server index site of some sort that contains barebones information regarding registered servers - ie the mod they use (if any), requirements for the mod (like the SDK, if any), website URL, and other such information would be better than trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink into one single package - easier to manage, and it’d keep the filesize from becoming astronomical.
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Just out of curiosity, which is the best and most current patch? Is it Jasons or Quickfix 1.0c?
Tai, there IS something you can help me with, basically an online version of FLDev, FriendlyFire’s little tool, will require some PHP work, I can do the HTML/CSS front end …
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PHP cannot do what FLDev does.
And JFLP and Quickfix aren’t the same thing. There isn’t a most “recent” one, it’s more of a Ford VS Toyota thing than a 2007 VS 2009.
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Ok, so FLDev doesn’t allow templates to be filled in with data entered in by some format, i.e; currently CSV, rather than my version which would be a web based form, and then output a file such as script.xml based on that entry, accomplishing the same feat. FLDev also has math tools which could also be reproduced in PHP.
I know what PHP is my friend, I use it in Wordpress lol.
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Yet the #1 feature in FLDev, the DLL editor, can’t be reproduced in PHP. I’d argue 90% of the users of FLDev don’t touch anything but this.
The Template feature is also greatly improved by its DLL support.
The CRC tool would also be unfeasible in PHP.
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I am all for anything that promotes Freelancer in a positive light. Have to use care with the words “Torrent” and “Patch” in vicinity of commercial products or a real bad opinion forms.
They have not actually stopped selling the game in retail stores. I find three major store chains with a quick search…
Target Sells Freelancer
Radio Shack Sells Freelancer
Walmart Sells Freelancer
I doubt the story is different on the European side of the pond, someone is still selling it. They don’t do that for very long if no one is buying a product. I still see new players myself, the activity just goes up and down.
Last thing Azureus, there is other servers and MOD’s with less rules.
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Yes, but clearly not in this way. They still retain copyrights and still get money off every purchase, hence why they wouldn’t like to see some random person start distributing their game for free.
As for the infocards, what’s the point? XML != DLL. Whatever you do, you’d still need another tool to sit between that XML data in the DLL data. At that point, why bother? There are already tools that allow direct modification of DLL files which are way more convenient than a web page (and safer, too).
