Mod Idea - Against the Grain
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Graphics is just a short term motivation. If you really want to fix things in Freelancer to make it attractive again, you must first rebuild it from scratch. Most useful things for multiplayer can only be achieved by hacking the game itself. Don’t forget that Freelancer was made for single player in the first place.
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Tell me this, how difficult a task would it be to rip out say… the Manhatten city scape along with the textures for it? I really enjoy 3D Modelling, perhaps to a lesser extent, the UVW Mapping. I can do the mapping, i’m just not as good as an artist would be
I would still love to at least try to redo it, but not if it’s a technical nightmare to put it back into the game, I don’t have the knowledge or skills for that end of things.
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There is a working CMP importer for Milkshape, so importing is no problem. But getting it out of Milkshape to some other program might give a few problems.
I’ve sent you a private message. -
making use of it actually isnt that hard
http://swat-portal.com/portal/continuum/webplayertest.html
its more complicated to get it back into FL
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Able to extract most models and stuff, which is fab though cant seem to find the textures for planets, I gather these are hidden within libraries or something.
Gosh the potential’s so amazing, though I doubt I’ll get much done by myself because most of it goes over my head but I might at least be able to start creating some decent stuff but most importantly in the spirit of the original game.
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Mobius1NI wrote:
…but most importantly in the spirit of the original game.AMEN BRO… think you´re one of my kind to see the awesome potential of the original game-data/structure…
Wish you all the best and many thanks in advance for all your efforts. Hope you successfully master this HUGE task.
Regarding Planets-Textures:
afaik they are stored in the corresponding mat-files…
Or am I totally wrong folks?Greetings
J.R.
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Tonight i’m going through each asteroid in the game with the intent on increasing the poly count on each by a small fraction and re-doing the textures at a higher res. I could much more easily just knock together a bunch of all new asteroids but don’t wanna risk it for fear of it not looking original.
I’m just gonna take them one at a time, there’s quite a few to do though so might take me a while.
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Sounds great! Can you also create nice height and normal maps for them?
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Asteroids are a little tricky because they have to match with some bases which you’ll want to apply that new texture to, dynamic asteroids, weapon platforms and the band that acts as the visual backdrop to the field itself, so you might want to try and stay as close to the vanilla texture as possible.
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Admittedly, i’m not using the original textures but am trying to make it as close to original as possible. The rock based platforms and stations I’ll get too eventually, worrying though it might be.
Anyway, so the left shows my new asteroids and the right shows the original, I think it’s a reasonably good recreation.
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Let me know if you actually manage to replace asteroid models, because for some reason I never managed to make the game accept the new 3db files.
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Shattered worlds has replacement asteroids, ripped from X3 I think, you worked on that mod I thought FF.
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Nah, those were ships spawned for asteroid mining.
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They look a lot better than the vanilla fair play. Test them in game as you go mind (if you’re not already). Doing a shed load of work and dumping it all in one go will always be a bad idea, no matter how much faith you have
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I’ve been trying to get them in game tonight but not working. I think it’s a problem with the Freelancer CMP exporter for Milkshape. Upon exporting the asteroid file, I have a sneeking suspicion it’s exporting as a blank file. The rock’s do not appear in game and upon trying to reimport the file back into Milkshape, it appears either blank, or it crashes.
So… yeah… that’s a brain melt.
I winrar’ed the 3dsmax master file i’m using along with each asteroid in .3ds and the associated texture files in .dds if someone wants to try for themselves, welcome to do so.
http://www.filedropper.com/asteroids_1
Not sure wot to do, but then I’m not particularly knowledgeable in the modding, more so the modelling.
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I cant seem to make this happen, it’s putting my head away. I have rared all 16 of my so far remastered freelancer asteroids including texture and bump .dds files, 3dsmax master files and .3ds files.
http://www.filedropper.com/asteroids_2
It’s right there on a platter, somebodies gotta take a swing at it.
I’n going to continue remastering the models on the assumption that I’m just not very good at the modding end of things, though evidently, some folk around here are brilliant at it.
I’ll stop if someone confirms it’s simply not going to happen.
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Why don’t you try something a little different to begin with. Import a known game asset into milkshape, like one of those station modules, don’t mess with it too much, export it and put it back in game. You won’t need to edit any text, but it will help you find out whether it’s your export process that’s no good and help you figure out what to do differently if it is.
