Freelancer Initiative

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.

@FF: I know, but it would just rock!

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.

@Azureus: I think that this is NOT possible with PHP!
PHP is mostly a scripting language, it is able to calculate, draw grapics and such things but not that much more.

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.

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.

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).

If you want, I guess. Personally I just write the DLL infocards directly in FLDev, no need for the CSV parser. If I need to write dozens of guns including INI code, Excel or Google Spreadsheets beat web forms any day.

I often wonder how the FreeAllegiance group convinced Microsoft to allow them access to the Allegiance source code myself.

They are distributing a fully functional and fixed version with no fear of Microsoft legal actions.

That is the direction I wish Freelancer could go…

I will offer my opinion here, for what it is worth.

I am hugely against the idea of using Torrent site etc for Freelancer. Alot of hard work has gone into promoting Freelancer in the last 24 months by many people here and on sites like SWAT, FLC etc.

Now although Microsoft have removed support for the game, they wont appreciate any torrenting going on, or any individual sites that support it. (Yes I know Torrents already exist).

I would also recommend any sites represented here stay well away from getting involved in this also.

Personal opinion. Shoot me down if you will.

I think you may have misinterpreted my post. Please don’t think I was putting your idea down. Under different circumstances, I would probably be in full support of such an idea.

In the regards to the things I have done. The article I wrote recieved over 7000 views on 3 different sites, and to date I have recieved near 200 emails regarding it. The Twitter account is growing steadily with no maintenance by me what-so-ever. The Feeds are manually added, but after that I leave it. We are now sitting at 103 followers and near around 500 clicks to the sites currently being ‘tweeted’.

But I consider these still only minor achievements in the grand scheme of things. And still want to push things further. And I have the oppurtunity to do so having the contacts now that I didn’t have 2 months previous. But this will wait until after Christmas.

There are plenty of sites similar to Digg. There is GameKicker, which works on the same principal and a few others.

@Azureus: I thought about another thing that could be problematic in relation to torrents. I know this may sound like stereotyping, but very often, the people who torrent a game will not really be interested in participating with the community. You’d mostly end up with people going through the SP once or worse, cheaters and hackers.

I’m doubtful we’d gain much ground with this method, on top of the whole thing being effectively “unadvertizable”.