Freeworlds: Tides of War - A Starwars Total Conversion Mod!
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You may be right about the audience point, but when it comes to MMO-style multiplayer space scifi game without monthly costs and highly moddable, FL is still the best choice around, even considering the latest open engines.
Especially the persistent universe architecture you cannot easily reproduce.Also, I’d like to mention that FL is not a bad codebase to work from. The engine is pretty solid, polished and bug-free if you compare it. With the enhancements we are doing to the engine, FL might just live a little longer in the current next-gen environment, especially given that to this date, there is no comparable game available.
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I agree, I’m just saying it might be worth having a think about the possibility of moving to a different engine should Freelancer not deliver the audience your work might be deserving of. Thinking about how the limitations freelancer might impose upon you might not apply should that hapen, i.e if you make a fantastic model but find it’s too detailed or has too many polys or whatever for freelancer, keep em just in case those rules don’t apply at a later date. You’ve probably already thought of such things anyway.
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due to patriotic reasons i’d like to mention that with post #199 FL modders recieve a suggestion, even somewhat like an inspiration to work on another engine. don’t get me wrong that i slightly dislike that. yes, UDK is good and prolly a development with this engine is very promising but maybe this does just not belong to the main archive of information about the Freelancer modding branch…
anyway, i think that an ego shooter engine is prolly good for a Star Wars environment, but it is not to compare with a space sim like freelancer is. these two are just too different, different genre, different style. moreover, if it is about keeping the very life of Freelancer, that will not work if the most talented teams start leaving the game and switching to other engines.
and btw: if its about modern effects or detailed models, if its only about graphics, Freelancer has so far not shown any significant limitations. -
Ah, don’t be like that. Freelancer is a game with a lifespan just like any other game, but a project like Freeworlds or a community like the Starport is an idea, and ideas can last forever! I’m just offering up an idea, it’s not blasphemy. I’m not going to be shy about saying this, there appears to be potential in this mod, the team is a good one, well organized, committed to a cause, I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t aim as high as they can imagine and bring their work to as many people as possible. Who knows where it might get them.
There appears to be a few hundred players left playing this game, if they’re not into star wars then I would imagine there’s an alternative option somewhere that could provide thousands of players. I see no reason therefore not to consider other possibilities should the need arise.
As a side thought, I wonder if you could actually generate a few thousand players for freelancer. Could you reach out to star wars fan forums, not necessarily related to gaming, there’s a hell of a lot of them surely and fans don’t come much more hardcore. Show samples of your work and videos and see if you can attract yourself a rather large fanbase. Could be worth a shot. Cheap game to buy now and no monthly subscription fee, win! win!
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As a side thought, I wonder if you could actually generate a few thousand players for freelancer. Could you reach out to star wars fan forums, not necessarily related to gaming, there’s a hell of a lot of them surely and fans don’t come much more hardcore. Show samples of your work and videos and see if you can attract yourself a rather large fanbase. Could be worth a shot. Cheap game to buy now and no monthly subscription fee, win! win!
oh you might want to check ModDB, we have quite a following there (576 watchers as of now).
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thanks, w0d. i doubt, all of these are regular freelancer players we see on discovery and crossfire but new players we prolly have not seen yet on FL or who left some noticable time ago. it is initial for the survival of FL, that modders like this stay part of the community. ofc it might be useful and efficient for them to join others, too, but leaving FL now, in the golden age of limit breaking is what we have to avoid if we consider the game worthy of survival.
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Sushi’s already taking care of updating a lot of different sites when we post new stuff. We’re doing our best not only to make a great mod, but also to attract players from outside the FL community.
From past experience, I can tell you that a good mod with a strong IP behind it can seriously drive numbers up, even if those people have never played FL before. It’s entirely possible to do it.
@timmy: You’re not thinking this through. The only dated thing about FL is the graphics. UDK is all about flashy, but where’s the persistent multiplayer framework? Where’s the character creation/storage? Where’s the economy? Where are the NPCs? Where are the missions?
The graphics engine is the first thing you see, but it’s definitely not the most important. Rebuilding FL from the ground up using UDK would take a very long time and demand huge resources specifically because all it has is a FPS framework. It’s got nothing of the RPG or near-MMO structure that FL does. It’s also not easily programmed by people who’re only used to INIs. You must remember that modders in FL are just a bunch of people with high knowledge in very specific areas. Transport them in an actual game development environment, where actual programming skills are required, and most will fall flat on their faces (not to be insulting, it’s a fact). They will most probably learn and adapt, but the required time, dedication and patience are just not worth it when the mod itself is already more than half completed (which is the case with Freeworlds and with most other mods which could possibly have the resources to start such a venture).
Further, tying us down with the UDK would prevent a lot of developments in the future. If I ever see a FL clone popping up from some member of the community, I truly hope they use open source or at least permissive engine licenses that do not require players to buy anything.
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FW:ToW is a massive project and has been very, very fortunate to have such a wonderful group of developers behind it. Furthermore, we’ve also had such amazing support at TSP, that we wouldn’t have got to where we are today without the enthusiasm as well as knowledge.
That being said, the thing that makes FL so wonderful is that, for most things, you can have ordinary people, without a lot of knowledge of how to code, put in a ship, planet, system, etc. There aren’t too many games out there that make a engine so moddable. Even if we wanted to switch over to UDK, 90% of the team wouldn’t know what to do, I sure know I wouldn’t!
Nevertheless, I appreciate the thought, Timmy and I understand your reasons for suggesting it. However, I couldn’t leave the FL engine even if I wanted to
Thanks for all the support and kind words, everyone. It means a great deal!
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I know you guys use Moddb and have quite a following there, but there are other sites where even more traffic can be generated once you have a download. Moddb is not the be all and end all of places to advertise a mod. I generate over 10x the downloads on Strategy Informer than i do on Moddb. I have no idea why, it’s just how it is for my mod. Maybe advertise there as well, bring in some more folks. More the merrier i say. An example, on Moddb i have over 1000 downloads, which isn’t saying much really, on Strategy Informer, nearly 13000 which is a huge difference
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Good info Gibbon!
13000 downloads is impressive.
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just can repeat, that my first flmod download was the discovery mod 4.84 from strategyinformer. only a few days later google pointed me to the moddb. even today i sometimes look over there as many minor modders post their mini-mods there, all unknown to the moddb community but still worthy of mentioning. btw, some older versions of both freeworlds and tides of war are uploaded on the strateyinformer.
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http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/freelancer/mod/29542.html
Old Freeworlds version has about 11k downloads…
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Strategyinformer has a lot of hits because its one of the first entrys for a google search on “freelancer mods”.
If more mods would be listed in our Wiki (click on Freelancer Mods on the left navigation) Im sure we would get more traffic over here.
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Gisteron wrote:
btw, where is the current freeworlds to download? this thread’s link calls 18.31 (and is down as far as ive tested) and the “old version” on strategyinformer is 18.44.Seriously now! What IS the latest version? I tried to search but I didn’t find any information or link (I’m a bad searcher).
How old is this thread? -
@ w0dk4
All the more reason to make sure the new version gets on there. I hear what you’re saying about there should be more mods listed on the wiki but you can’t force people to go there to find out mod information. If people do a search and the first hit they get is strategy informer, that’s the first place they will go, it’s really that simple.
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FriendlyFire wrote:
@timmy: You’re not thinking this through. The only dated thing about FL is the graphics. UDK is all about flashy, but where’s the persistent multiplayer framework? Where’s the character creation/storage? Where’s the economy? Where are the NPCs? Where are the missions?The graphics engine is the first thing you see, but it’s definitely not the most important. Rebuilding FL from the ground up using UDK would take a very long time and demand huge resources specifically because all it has is a FPS framework. It’s got nothing of the RPG or near-MMO structure that FL does. It’s also not easily programmed by people who’re only used to INIs. You must remember that modders in FL are just a bunch of people with high knowledge in very specific areas. Transport them in an actual game development environment, where actual programming skills are required, and most will fall flat on their faces (not to be insulting, it’s a fact). They will most probably learn and adapt, but the required time, dedication and patience are just not worth it when the mod itself is already more than half completed (which is the case with Freeworlds and with most other mods which could possibly have the resources to start such a venture).
Further, tying us down with the UDK would prevent a lot of developments in the future. If I ever see a FL clone popping up from some member of the community, I truly hope they use open source or at least permissive engine licenses that do not require players to buy anything.
Hey, that’s what you’re here for, to think things through when I don’t! Nothing new there eh!
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I’ve seen a lot of pie-in-the-sky, shiny-rainbow ideas that quickly die off because people didn’t quite realize how much work was actually involved. Just remember, anyone can have ideas, but only a fraction will manage to realize even one of them.
The first thing any project should do is evaluate the amount of work required to finish. Sometimes that’s enough to show the project is not worth it.
