Freelancer 2 (?)

Guys, I think it’s a bit too late to still talk of a [mythic] Freelancer 2. If someone actually wanted to make one it would’ve been done ages ago. FL2 is the reason i started learning 3D, because I wanted to be part of the team making it but looks like there’s no team making it , so that sucks.

Yes, this age old topic comes up every now and then.

We won’t have a Freelancer 2 to be sure, unless someone at Microsoft has some form of awesome aneurysm.

To be honest Freelancer is getting to the point now where there are very few players who aren’t modders and those who do play, play on modded servers and probably mostly for the community.

We have yet to create a mod that shows all the things we have all had a part at some point in doing, that is in my opinion a shame - all our advances are spread across multiple mods.

Most people here still wish for a game like Freelancer or a Freelancer 2 and I think other people have given up and moved on because they have realised it isn’t going to happen.

I personally have played this game on and off over most of the time it has been out, I was a player and a modder. For a smaller MMO this game has been around for the better part of a decade thanks to us, right up there with World of Warcraft but with far fewer numbers.

Its not about the graphics its always been about the community we have so I think its time a collaboration took place, yes we all have different ideas about what a mod should be/have and all that and arguments and incidents have happened.

I want this game to last, there isn’t going to be another unless we make one, with the current state of the gaming genres no company is going to create one for us as its not financially viable when compared to the type of games that are in the mainstream right now (FPS games).

Microsoft doesn’t seem interested in allowing a digital form of Freelancer to be hosted anywhere, my thought was to get it on Steam which I believe there have been comments regarding this.

My other thought was to try and get it on a site such as curse, with its own section and mods able to be hosted and downloaded from there, at least we would have the traffic from people who play WOW and other MMOs with sections on there.

I personally am going to wait until the DX9 modifications are out and then work on something like my original project, my feeling is that this pretty much will be our final attempts. If things get in the way again I don’t think I will have a Freelancer to come back to and at that point it will be truly dead, a game we would just play for the single player or group of close friends on private LAN servers.

I really do not want this to be how Freelancer dies, I really hope I’m not alone in this!

First, i think freelancer 2 is a right way to have EPIC FAIL GAME. Twould be like crysis2, more more more and… fail.

Second, I think the best way is making Freelancer HD. Remake of old 2003 freelancer on dx13 etc. Only after this have a try to make the second FL.

dreaming :x

Essentially my project is sort of that, a re-mastered HD version of the vanilla game. Basically a lot of the advances we have been able to create, there will be an aspect from every mod that revolutionized the way we play Freelancer today.

PS: Theres only DX11 which is the latest, however there is only a (so far) prototype DX9 wrapper. If they could do DX10 that would be awesome!

tbh. DX9 is all a space shooter needs, most of what’s new in DX10/11 is stuff like water reflections, interactive water and so on. All stuff completly useless for a game that is entirely set in space.

SilentAssassin82 wrote:
tbh. DX9 is all a space shooter needs, most of what’s new in DX10/11 is stuff like water reflections, interactive water and so on. All stuff completly useless for a game that is entirely set in space.

Ohh Im not sure. The most important feature of DX11, tesselation, would be awesome because it allows almost unlimited detail for space ships. And since we dont have that much geometry in space, we can go in a lot of detail because we dont have to worry so much about terrain and stuff like that.

In any way, I think the problem with any FL2 is that everybody has a different vision of the game. You can see that with any “FL2” project, either the visions of the involved people clash or the involved people want to implement every feature they can think of and fail because of that.

I think Openlancer to this day still was the best and most advanced approach to a Freelancer 2, it died however.

Surely people can get past these clashes and are mature enough to continue on a project that would have the possibility of Freelancer having some form of renewed future, is the community really that selfishly driven still?

Zyos wrote:
is the community really that selfishly driven still?

That depends who you ask.
The egos hanging about are much too big to work together without butting oversized heads at any given moment.

w0dk4 wrote:

SilentAssassin82 wrote:
tbh. DX9 is all a space shooter needs, most of what’s new in DX10/11 is stuff like water reflections, interactive water and so on. All stuff completly useless for a game that is entirely set in space.

Ohh Im not sure. The most important feature of DX11, tesselation, would be awesome because it allows almost unlimited detail for space ships. And since we dont have that much geometry in space, we can go in a lot of detail because we dont have to worry so much about terrain and stuff like that.

In any way, I think the problem with any FL2 is that everybody has a different vision of the game. You can see that with any “FL2” project, either the visions of the involved people clash or the involved people want to implement every feature they can think of and fail because of that.

I think Openlancer to this day still was the best and most advanced approach to a Freelancer 2, it died however.

Ah, I always thought you had tessellation in DX9, I just had a read up on it there though and DX11 will actually tessalate the meshes for you where as DX9 you actually have to have an already tessalated mesh for tessallation to work.

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:

Zyos wrote:
is the community really that selfishly driven still?

That depends who you ask.
The egos hanging about are much too big to work together without butting oversized heads at any given moment.

Then this game is going to wither and die

Actually tesselation is nothing new, it’s been around since DX 7. But until the advent of DX 10 it has never been supported directly by MS (geometry shader). Before that you had to use the SDK provided by the video card manufacturer and it was limited to that specific manufacturer’s cards.

Tesselation was specific to ATI cards and was extremely slow. Only with DX11 is it usable.

Don’t give up hope … u might get wat u wished 4

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:

Zyos wrote:
is the community really that selfishly driven still?

That depends who you ask.
The egos hanging about are much too big to work together without butting oversized heads at any given moment.

Well, I have to admit I have a huge ego but still I’m willing to put in unlimited work hours in such a project if a REAL one was to ever take place … however I’ve been willing to do that for many years now, yet all such “theory” projects never survived for more than a few months, due to various reasons, ego being one of them hehe.
This is actually one of the main reasons I’m keeping a close eye on LancerSolurus’ game, because I want to see how far the game gets cause in theory it has all the things that could make it great, possibly the best project that could ever get close enough to being called FL2.

We need to overcome our egos and realize that everybody could get their idea into a new game if only we get together to make it happen.

The reason why modders are not coming together to make Freelancer 2 is mostly because they disagree on the plot. Nobody wants to give up his/her plot because it is so important to how the world looks like.

I have read the stories of some here and I think all are great. I’m good at modelling and particles. But I’m horrible at texturing because I don’t have a touchpen and have never done digital painting.

I also think I would only be ready to join a Freelancer 2 project if we migrate to an engine that will cover our butts for the next 2 decades. I’ve been talking about CryEngine 3 for a while and I really think it is great and with the know-how, you could re-create the Freelancer world.

The most difficult part would be to program all the NPCs and how they travel as well as the dynamic trade system. But mods like Hamburg City Server which improved the trade system, show that people DO have the know-how.

So it all boils down to ego and when all sides are going to realize that the Freelancer Community is shrinking and we’ll soon have no other choice than to do one mod together or no mod at all.

Creativity is power.
But about plot, it must be standing in the last. It’s nothing in comparison with a making game-engine, shaders, models, AI and a lot of program code .

Bringing all together in short times with leading towards ambitions only is not good idea. Without great knowledges in coding C++/C#/asm/Whatever - everything is nada. Till there’s no genius who can code just anythin’ - FL2/FLHD remains a dream =(

wait a mo, “till”…, “until”…, i don’t get it…the way of using it xD

True. Without some software engineers, Freelancer 2 won’t make it. It’s kinda sad that Microsoft just dropped Digital Anvil despite the fact that it was the best in its class.

Part of what has made Freelancer last this long is the ease of modification (in some areas) so you’d need to find an engine that has the capabilities needed that is almost as easily modifiable.

Otherwise you end up with a new game yes but at the same time finite in lifespan.

In my view nothing should change with the plot, only how it is presented in terms of music, textures etc. Not changed just improved and repackaged as if it was a newly released game. Thats my intention anyways, and part of that will require programmers due to the launcher needed and the FLHook segments, we already have all the required knowledge spread amongst us.

It will just take time…

Freelancer is probably the closest I’ve ever found to the perfect kind of space game - one that isn’t bogged down in pointless and depressing realism, that doesn’t force you to grind a trade route for days before you can have fun, one that understands most people are looking for a romantic style of space combat over a highly simulated one. I agree it’s not a question of how to patch the faults and gaps in Freelancer, but why they haven’t been patched yet. Things like player cap ships, jump drives, bigger universes, better AI, to my knowledge these are all possible and in existance across a number of different mods, but each mod I’ve seen in Freelancer misses the almighty point by a noticeable margin and focuses on the wrong kind of experience. Obviously there’s an element of differing opinions to consider, but I really believe most people want what I want from this game - the fun, easy-to-learn hard-to-master gameplay of Freelancer, set in the same kind of interesting, engaging, visually beautiful universe, but enhanced and improved to its limits.

I’d love to make it, but I’m not a tech guy. I could write you pages and pages of how to design this perfect FL mod, but I have no clue how to actually tinker with the game itself. And that’s sad, because I know it’s possible, I’ve seen elements of this perfect mod all across the community of Freelancer, and I’d love nothing more than to see them all brought together and make this game something really special; all it takes is the right design focus and some co-operation, and we’d have it.

If anyone ever wants help with designing that kind of project - please, let me know, because I’d love to see it become a reality.

First port basic freelancer to some new engine(like BUDU_KRATOK tried), that’s the first step to save FL.

Feel sad about openlancer and hopeful about GE.

imho