Freeworlds: Tides of War - A Starwars Total Conversion Mod!

Sushi

W0dk4 wrote:
Over the last few months, I’ve been working a lot on the graphics engine of Freelancer. Inspired by Timeslip’s work. I wrote a Direct3D8 to Direct3D9 wrapper for Freelancer to be able to directly access the graphics pipeline.The ultimate goal is to somewhat modernize Freelancer’s graphics engine. I’m not sure about the features I will be able to add further on, but let me show you the first enhancements that I already implemented.
Before getting to the eye candy, let me quickly talk about mouse lag. I guess almost everybody is familiar with the mouse lag problem that occurs in some games. In almost every case, the laggy/delayed input is to blame on VSync. If you turn VSync off, it solves a lot of the mouse lag problems for many games, including Freelancer. I did some research on the topic and found this article on a private blog by “Vorlath”. Basically, to fix mouse lag in the DirectX pipeline, you have to make sure that after any present call, the screen has really received the frame you just rendered. This is easily done in Direct3D9 as stated in the article and it was one of the first things I implemented. Thank god, no more VSync-related mouse lag in Freelancer!
Lets get to the eye candy. One of the top wanted post-processing effects in older games is bloom. As of now, I added a relatively cheap and subtle bloom effect, but in the future I want to do a proper HDR lighting implementation. Another post-process effect is Color Correction, which to me seems to be very underrated. You can completely change the feel of the game by including a nice color correction effect. The implementation I chose was very simple, yet powerful, based on this article.

The vast benefit of this method is the what-you-see-is-what-you-get effect. We simply take an ingame screenshot, load that screenshot in Photoshop and do some color correction with the Curves or Levels tool. We then apply the same color correction to a special texture that will be used by the game. Very easy to do, yet very powerful.
Here is a comparison, with color correction added in the second screenshot:

The color correction effect is implemented per-system. Its a very good tool to give systems their very own feeling, making the ingame experience as varied as possible. For example, we could give rebel and imperial systems their very unique color correction, so you quickly know in which territory you are.Finally a little video to show the effects in motion:
<object width=“560” height=“340”><param name=“movie” value=“http://www.youtube.com/v/M-shtZoovY0&hl=en_GB&fs=1&hd=1”><param name=“allowFullScreen” value=“true”><param name=“allowscriptaccess” value=“always”><embed src=“http://www.youtube.com/v/M-shtZoovY0&hl=en_GB&fs=1&hd=1” type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=“always” allowfullscreen=“true” width=“560” height=“340”></object>
http://www.moddb.com/mods/fwtow/videos/bloom-color-correction-shader

Bas

awesome

nice rank @ MOD DB =P

? Offline

Stunning work, puts the rest of us in the shade

Sushi

Bas wrote:
awesome

nice rank @ MOD DB =P

Ya, we’re getting lucky there.

Really, the only one to take credit for this astounding achievement is W0d. I cannot wait to see what the other mods will be able to do with this once it’s released for everyone to use. I think he singlehandedly gave FL one or two more years

Gisteron

even more i suppose.
therefore all of us will aim to even higher standards once the graphics and detail are becoming more and more usual. i think this is a time of a high rise of development for freelancer. Thank you all, gentlemen!

Sushi

This is the latest development image of all our new graphical toys rolled into one. Colour Correction + Bloom + Wireframe Viewer

What this image is a merging of two ingame screenshots. One with the wireframe viewer on (on the left) and the other with just the model (on the right). There’s a gradient in the middle.

I thought this would be a great opportunity to show you the power of this latest graphical update from w0d. Here’s to Freelancer

http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/11/10662/TatooWire.jpg

Gisteron

Dunno for sure but i think the ISD model i found on the web is even more detailed than yours. could we share them with each other for e.g. LOD purposes and stuff? waitin hopefully

Quarks

This wireframe thing is impressing.

FriendlyFire

This ISD is 100k+ polygons. Any more would not only be overkill, it’d be a waste.

Sushi

Ya, what FF said.

Timmy51m

Looks fantastic.

Am I correct in assuming this is still based on intercepting calls to dx8 then feeding them through a proxy dll to dx9? You haven’t actually converted the engine itself to dx9?

I’m not knocking, just curious. Looks great either way.

Sushi

Timmy51m wrote:
Looks fantastic.

Am I correct in assuming this is still based on intercepting calls to dx8 then feeding them through a proxy dll to dx9? You haven’t actually converted the engine itself to dx9?

I’m not knocking, just curious. Looks great either way.

Yep, that’s how I understand w0dk4 did it.

FriendlyFire

It’s more in-depth than ENB, far far more. w0dk4 is best placed to answer, but we’re not limited to post-processing anymore.

This isn’t just a custom ENB for FL.

Timmy51m

Must have found a way to hack the engine then I guess. Out of curiosity, is the reason for not converting the engine itself because you don’t have the source code? I’ve seen many people mention the difference it would make if you could get your hands on it, would this be one of them?

Gisteron

yes, for sure. probably soon our freelancer related programming section could even convert it to dx10, if we had the source. that w0dk4 got it that far without is indicator of miraculous skills.

Vesko

Wow, the one mod that doesn’t solely use Bloom for their graphics. Amazing.

Can’t wait to try it!

Sushi

Over the past week, the FW:ToW Dev team has really picked up steam in all areas of development. In particular, graphic effects and gameplay. In respect to the “pretty things”, our resident graphics genius, FriendlyFire, has decided to redo all the explosion effects and death fuses for the ships. What he has accomplished has been simply amazing and really shows the power of our “out dated” Freelancer Engine. He posted a video up on our new live steaming site, which I’ll discuss more about below, here:

fwtow on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
We’ve also been finishing the last touches on our shiplist with Overfiend working overtime to create this new A-9 interceptor model!

The last thing I’d like to welcome all our fans to is the Live Q&A session we will be having on Sunday July 25th @ 14h00 EDT. With the power of our new live streaming site, we can actually show you the mod in game, LIVE! So, if you have any questions and want to see the mod ingame please come visit: http://www.livestream.com/fwtow @ 14h00 EDT on July 25th.

For help with the timezones, go here: http://everytimezone.com/. We’re using New York as the standard time.

As always, any questions, suggestions or comments are welcomed!
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StarTrader

Nice work!

Timmy51m

Hard to believe this old game is capable of supporting the kind of quality you guys are showing off. It’s obvious this is going to leave every other mod in it’s wake in terms of visuals, but how long is it going to take before you get to some sort of release. Months, years, any idea or is it just a when it’s done scenario?

Why485

Agreed, the Freeworlds team is always pushing the boundaries of what is possible. I eagerly await its release. I have to say, FriendlyFire lately has been stealing my effects gig and showing me up. I ate my words when he produced that brilliant hyperspace effect. I need to get back into ALE editing and release some more sweet stuff.

Also hats off to Sushi for being the best mod manager I have ever seen by a long shot. Sushi is managing the people and project better than most professional managers you will ever meet in the workplace.