Is it hard to mod? What basic knowledge do you need to have?

First of all: Welcome to TSP!

Second: Depends on what kind of mod do you want to make? A small one with new systems, ships and weapons, or a major project with new features, new server commands and so? To make basic modifications all you need is knowledge with ini files and xml scripts.

To make your mod “useable even by other players” (don’t make it sound too big) all you need is to zip it, upload it to a storage domain (MegaUpload for example) and share the link!

Other questions are welcome.

Wooh, you pissed me off… A little help here? Anybody?

You should start learning inis and practice on making small mods. Until you get to New Universe’s level it may take some time, since I can see you have no experience in modding at all.

About Mass Effect: Try to find one person in the world who doesn’t know about it!

The crashes youre talking about are probably crashes caused by an invalid code and so. If you check youre code and sure everything is fine, youre mod won’t cause a crash.
If youre talking about the crash caused by using FLMM (Freelancer Mod Manager) - when you install a mod, uninstall it and try to launch the game but it crashes - there is no solution I know of.

About the DX Freelancer uses, thats right - Freeworlds: Tides of War’s dev team managed to make Freelancer’s graphic engine use DX9, and if this is possible, it will be possible to upgrade it to DX11 some day.

I hope it helped, its all I can provide you.

http://the-starport.net/modules/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page#Modding

Some other tuts might be around in the forums archieve.

"As for other things, I’ve heard that people converted the engine of Freelancer to use DX9 instead of DX8. Is it possible to convert it to DX10? "

“Freeworlds: Tides of War” dev team did a convert to DX9, but it isn’t public yet (only after the mod release), but I doubt a convert to DX10 will follow so soon.

DX8 and DX9 are relatively close to each other, but DX10 is a major retooling, so I doubt you’ll see that happen.

Plus, there are very few reasons to want DX10 over DX9. Most of the advancements are things that FL couldn’t benefit from without rebuilding the graphics pipeline from the ground up.

Also, FL is very stable if well modded. It’ll crash if the mod is poorly made (bad definitions, bad encounters, etc.), but that’s the case for just about any game out there. Make a buggy product and you’ll get a buggy release!

You’ll only need C/C++ if you want to make FLHook plugins (I think someone made a plugin that allowed you to code plugins in perl a while back) or want to do client hooking.

DX10 only if you apply the concept of infinite monkey theorem.

If you are planning on doing the whole thing yourself (a daunting task), I’d recommend starting with System editing. Perhaps create a very small system, with 1 planet and 1 gate / jump hole. This will start you getting familiar with FL’s directories, Infocards, and IDS names / numbers, etc.

There are a few ways to approach this:

1. With a Visual tool like FL Explorer. It can cause errors, but does give you a taste of what you’re dealing with. Plus it’ll help you learn the coordinate system FL systems use. Don’t mess with Encounters for a while, they can really biff your mod if done wrong.

2. Pure INI editing -you’ll need a tool to Un-BINI all the INI files, since they’re encrypted and compressed - or use the Freelancer SDK from the downloads section. To start, familiarize yourself with what each type of entry contains, which files they’re in, and which files reference each other.

3. GUI INI editing, with a tool like FLDev, where it guides you a bit by organizing IDS editing and such on different tabs. Also helps that it can create new IDS Name and Info entries to use in your inis.

Why start with System creation? Even if you only want to add ships, you will need to know which inis define their loadouts / market equipment, engine appearance, market price and location, and ship spec info.
Creating a system usually involves including a base which sells stuff, so you’ll dig encounter the market here, specifically the Ship Dealer. This leads to looking up Ship packages, which leads to ship info defining what equipment should be mounted/able, which also leads to Engine appearance, which can later lead you into CRC for effect names when creating new engine and gun effects. So you’ll be digging through FL’s directories all over quite a bit, and memorizing in the process ^.^

There should be a modder’s starter pack lying around here, I know there’s a post on it for sure. That should have many of the tools included, just be sure to check the Downloads section for updated progs. Anyways, this will just scratch the surface, but it’s a good foundation. Then you can move on to building ship models and custom textures, creating ALE effects, new Market icons, Faction editing, Formations, Patrols, Base scripting, Mission Creation (for Single Player), Tips, Bribes, News, Wrecks, Hidden systems, on and on and ooooon.
The community has unearthed quite a bit, but there are still things which remain elusive. Digital Anvil -the Devs- have passed away thanks to MS, and the code remains closed, so there is plenty left to figure out, but what is possible right now is enough to provide months or years of fun. And certainly months of learning how to mod. Don’t get discouraged when something breaks; odds are it’s happened to many others before, so search the forums and use google’s site search if that fails. EX: in the search field type your search items, followed by site:http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/

Once you start seeing your blood sweat and tears show up in the game, it’s all worthwhile!

There was a TC beginner’s pak at www.freelanceruniverse.com (.org, .net?) somewhere.

Centurion_ wrote:
Lets say that I want all the systems gone, so no more New York or New Berlin or yet again Tokyo or London. How can I do that to have a ‘clean and empty’ universe in which I can test stuff? What do I need to delete (or modify)?

And can someone make me a brief list of what I need (in matter of tools) ?

You have to learn to walk, before you run…

Simply put, yes, people could give specific instructions to get rid of all systems, but this won’t achieve anything. You won’t have a CLUE about Freelancer, modding, or anything else. Your mod will crash, and you’ll give up fast.

Trying a full on TC from the start features the whole gamut of Freelancer modding…lets try an analogy.

It’s like thinking you’d like to start Rock Climbing, so you start by attempting Everest - without any knowledge or equipment.

You should start at the equivalent of a 2m high climbing wall. Your goal is to achieve a TC, but start with learning the basics first.

Have you even opened an ini file yet? I’d advise something simple, like trying to alter the fire rate/dmg of a starfliers guns (using Open SP) and playing around to see what happens. Then the engine speed, cruise speed, cruise start time, shield regen rate, shield capacity etc - and on various ships, so buying a patriot that comes with different equipment than it should etc.

This can be expanded, change the liberty police weapons, change liberty rogue weapons and so on.

If you’ve not got the patience to try these steps, then being both honest and blunt, forget modding Freelancer.

http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3849&forum=10

here you go

Centurion_ wrote:
Lets say that I want all the systems gone, so no more New York or New Berlin or yet again Tokyo or London. How can I do that to have a ‘clean and empty’ universe in which I can test stuff? What do I need to delete (or modify)?

And can someone make me a brief list of what I need (in matter of tools) ?

Total Conversion Mod Starter Pack right on the front page.

http://freelancercommunity.net/

I can give you another hint:
First start with modding systems, ships and maybe weapons.
This are the basic thing to understand how inis work and if you make any mistake in these files the game may survive it.

NPC modding is one of the hardest things because a small mistake anywhere can crash your game even if the NPC has no spawn in your system where you are!

Beginner tutorial to Freelancer modding by SWAT_OP-R8R
What is changeable

How to install the SDK to enable easy editing of ini files (pre-decrypted)
How to use bini in order to decrypt and edit ini files
How to make a mod in flmm
How to make your mod into an flmod file for others to download and use
Which files contain what?

Finding the right entries for what you want in the files

What is changeable in this game???

You can change:
-The stats of ships
-The location where ships are sold
-The stats of equipment
-The location where what equipment is sold
-The location where wich commodity is sold for what price
-The location of bases, tradelanes, jumpgates etc.
-The Stats of asteroid fields, nebulas and similar stuff
-Patrols (who patrols where, new patrol pathes etc)
-Basically everything about the universe that is information
-Names and Info-text of stations, equiment etc. (You need Visual C or something similar to do this )
-You can add new ships, equipment, stations etc (everything mentioned above)
-3D models
-Textures
-Icons/graphics
-Missions
-Ingame cinematics
-Savegames
You can’t change (yet):
-Character animations
-Ship collision boxes
-new effects
-Anything that is related to the actual game engine. We don’t have the sourcecode of the game, so we can’t change what is hardcoded.
-Random Missions - either new types or other
Don’t be expecting us to teach you how to make a new storyline. You CERTAINLY need to be able to crawl before taking part in an olympic marathon!

So which files will I edit to do something then?

Well - once you have installed the SDK so that you can open files at will - then this may just help you. Sure is confusing and large - but you have to start figuring out things from now on. Modding does take a small amount of ability in the very least!:

Which files do what?

Equipment, weapons, commodities
equipment/weapons_equip.ini - this file contains all the raw data for weapons on how they fire, how much damage and stuff
equipment/weapons_good.ini - contains data on how they look in game, the price, and stuff (visible icons at dealer etc, price at dealer)
equipment/market_misc.ini - deals with selling weapons and equipment at the bases in game
equipment/st_equip.ini - shields and thrusters stats, regens, drain rates etc.
equipment/st_good.ini - goods file again, what is sold at bases, its kind of the package up. Links the weapon stats to the images and price you buy (same as for guns)
equipment/market_misc.ini - they are stated again here for selling
equipment/select_equip.ini - filled with an assortment of things, mainly this contains the info for commodities - like volume they take, what they are, information about them
equipment/goods.ini - contains the info on all commodities - like price, what is a good deal, what is a bad deal etc etc etc.

Ship Related

equipment/goods.ini also contains all info on ships prices, what they are sold with and more (called packages).
equipment/market_ships.ini - where ships are sold (upon which bases)
ships/shiparch.ini - contains all rough data on ships for stats, and links it to ships models and stuff
ships/loadouts.ini - contains all info on NPC ships loadouts for the game
ships/loadouts_special.ini - same but for capships etc
ships/loadouts_utility.ini - same but for the transports etc
Ships directory contains all ships models.

Systems and bases, and everything within!

universe/universe.ini - contains all base and systems references. ALL need to be declared here.
universe/systems_shortest_path.ini - links between systems and stuff - NEED to declare route in here to make jumpgates work
universe/shortest_legal_path.ini and shortest_illegal_path.ini - same again, but specific for jumpgates/jumpholes routes mainly
universe/systems folder - contains ALL systems folders which in turn contain system and base files.
solar/solararch.ini - contains data on all base models, and planet models in game. Basically anything in a system NOT a ship/star/nebula is in here. Asteroids aren’t here either
solar/loadouts.ini - contains info on what base models have mounted and stuff, including weapon platforms
solar/asteroids/all files - contain info about the asteroid fields, contents, loot and more
solar/nebula/ same again, but about nebulas this time.
audio/contains the music and sound effects of the game.
missions/contains all files to do with encounters and NPC’s for missions and normal game.
random missions/contains all info about random missions pay, loot and more stuff.
Missions/mbases.ini - contains information about NPC’s on bases, including their names, whom they are etc, rumours (via ids numbers), secrets, bribes on offer, whether the NPC’s/ The BASE give out missions, and the level of those missions

NPCs ships, missions and behaviours

missions/npcships.ini - contains information about the ships that the NPC’s fly, linked directly towards the loadouts.ini file, and also the faction_prop.ini file. Basically - npcships.ini file links these files together for the faction_prop.ini file to use as “encounters” and stuff: Also holds the npc ships difficulty level.
Shiparch.ini
Loadouts.ini (or loadouts_special.ini etc)
pilots_population.ini
formations.ini
shipclass.ini

The others interlink kind of

missions/Empathy.ini file - contains info about how the factions react to YOU when u do mission for a faction etc, and shoot them/please them, as well as how all toehr factions respond to you doing it for one faction etc.
Missions/faction_props.ini file - contains info about the formations, names, voices, legallity, scanning of cargo as contraband/wanting it, ships to fly etc, and the factions names, how they are reffered to (voices) and more. EXTREMEMLY closely linked to NPCships.ini
missions/lootprops.ini - contains info about the drop rates of stuff by npcs
missions/news.ini - contains the ids links to text for bases as news items.
missions/ptough.ini - money and level area
missions/formations.ini - formations and their “design” - basicalyl the ships positions in formations, and where the player joins them

random missions folder:
rmlootinfo.ini - stuff dropped by npc’s when killed in random misions
diff2money.ini - mission (random) payouts to difficulty levels
Killablesolars.ini - types of missions given out by the NPC factions. The ones with faction name appearing in the lines for them are giving that mission type. Don’t worry if you don’t understand, you gotta learn to walk before doing a marathon!
The rest you needn’t worry about at this time. Its not important
Cockpits folder - contains all cockpits for ships - basically contains the turret cam info, and rotation speed etc.
Thats more than enough for 99% of modders.

To make systems, your universe folder contains the systems folders. each system has its own folder, along with the system file inside that folder.
So:
Universe/systems/li01/li01.ini ;contains information about liberty system New York
Universe/sytems/Rh01/Rh01.ini contains all systems inofmation for new berlin.
Okay, inside these folders (systems folders) they have a bases folder, whre the file for bases are contained. These files only contain links to the “rooms” of the base, which are contained inthe rooms folder (inside bases folder). The rooms foler contains links to the backgrounds, music played, character position (by points on the CMP for base) and other things. It also contains the links for the buttons inside the base etc.
Going backwards, the audio/sounds.ini contains the links to sound files (sound effects) for the game. The music.ini file contains the music links.
The FX folder contains the files that deal with the effects of stuff. The main effects.ini file deals with the weapons, wormholes etc etc etc.
Beam effects are the actual stuff SEEN in the game by the guns, but you MUST have them referenced inthe effects.ini file to work.
explosions.ini file is also in here, and obviously contains links to the effects for different types of explosions used in the game.

Minimize mod Reload and Simplify error identification in mod dev

1. install freelancer

2. Install your WORKING mod with FLMM

3. Run a search on the Freelancer folder searching for filenames that include “flmmbak” and delete them (up to 8000+files or so).

4. Making a “mod-base”:
Make a rar archive of the Freelancer folder now with your mod loaded inside, and drop it in a folder you call “my mod on Freelancer folder Reload”.

5. Start making sub-mods by copying the parts of your mod that you wanna work on and setting them up in FLMM as small mods.

Now you can Reload your mod without having to install FL and without Re-FLMM’ing ur mod, just unzip the rar (or winzip) to replace the “microsoft games/ freelancer” folder when it gets corrupted.

Error checking is easier, just unload your sub-mod and check if it was creating the error

or make a sub mod replacing the part of your mod that you think is creating the error.

When you get to finish your mod paste the sub-mods onto ur Mod-base.

Admin sub-mods:
Make a mod of the Universe.ini where you replace all lines saying:
“visit = 0” with “visit = 1”
this makes all systems visible from start, you could name it “admin.show all systems” .

Remember to delete the Restart.file located here:
my games/Freelancer/acts/singleplayer
Allways delete this after loading mods.

SUB-MODS FOR THE WIN!!

Ras

•Back to Good Modding practice
Windowed mode
Run FL in Windowed mode helps working on stuff while playing:
1- On your desktop right click on the freelancer shortcut and chose properties.
2- In the line “Target” just add " -w" after the command that’s already there.
Its supposed to go like this:
“C:\Program files\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\EXE\Freelancer.exe” -w

Ras

Heres the Ini file Hierachies so u can see what influences what, this may all seem a bit complex but just go slow and start by modifying one little thing then the other and it will get easier…

Good luck and remember…Patience…patience…patience oh and patience.

Ras

S’pose i better weigh in on this one… lol

I only have one piece of advice and it comes from many years of tinkering inside this little game we all love…

“Be prepared to fail”

this don’t mean you will… or should… just something you should have in your head when you start, Freelancer can throw some unforeseen things in your face… alot & until your 100% comfortable with all your data tree’s and overall structure of whats needed where you’ll loose a fair whack of your sanity unless you… prepare to fail first… then when stuff works, great joy does it bring… but when it don’t your prepared to get stuck into “why” without the oppressive weight of failure hanging over your head (and sometimes seriously clouding your mind).

You’ve come along at a good time too… way more information is available these days than a few years ago, and some awesome extensions/hacks and other goodies are around as well… truly a glorious age to mod Freelancer.

Best of luck