[Freelancer Mod News]Updated DX9 Engine for Freelancer

the emissive textures are much more advanced than vanilla FL. They cast glow a lot more and can be more detailed.

I see what you’re doing with those glows and it makes sense, but forgive me for thinking they look a little over done, on that mc80 anyway.

I must have clicked back and forth the two images 1900 x 1200 fifty times just to make sure, but the lighting is just so soft it looks more like the bloom from a star or an engine than an artificial light source. Doubt there’s much you can do about it really though.

Now, now FF, I’m just saying, I don’t want any trouble!

I agree with with Timmy about this, looks more like bloom. You’re forgetting that on modern gfx cards a number of effects can be forced onto FL, mine looks like it already has DX9 on it sometimes with the effects i have added. What’s really missing is the shader support which thankfully you’ve already added. I’d be careful about going too nuts with this glowmap effect, personally i’d wind it back a bit but that’s just my opinion. At least make it scaleable for users.

One other thing i find odd is the reflection of the sun on the planet, it’s not a billiard ball, what would the light reflect off of in the first place? The detailing of the texture however is exemplary

Um… Perhaps water? Just a wild guess.

Doubtful as atmospherics would reflect the light which is why you won’t see this effect in reality and why it doesn’t look very good in games. Seen this in many games and it always looks wrong. On stations and ships it’s fine, but not on planets. Anyway, make it an option if you can, then people can choose it if they wish.

I think it won’t work. What you need on the planets is diffuse reflection not specular.

Are you guys working on clouds for the planets? That would be really nice.

I like it all and can’t wait to see how it’s all done. Bravo, Freeworld’s dev team. +1

If you don’t like it, don’t use it guys, but if you want to bring realism in a game about space ships flying at FTL speeds…

Hey FF, is the new mod being released this month because on ModDB it looks like Q1 2012.

I’m going to jump back in to modding when I have my new beast of a PC in 1 or 2 months. Then you can show me all that cool new engine stuff

Guess what, i’m trying to explain about why CMBR comes to earth today to a guy in a chinese nntp server. Good i will not be bother with that problem in here hehe.

And Liked

Yeah, we’ve had to push back the release to Q1 2012 for a variety of reasons.

I can understand that, better to put it out when your happy with it rather than put it out when your not.

Are you guys going to be doing more work on it afterwards or is this your final mod?

We’ll of course be maintaining it, considering how much of a beast it is. We might also do larger-scale “expansions”, though nothing set in stone for now.

With your awesome abilities of reverse ingeeniering exe&dll to make FL on dx9, isn’t it easier to make your own engine which would be exact copy of original FL?

Looking forward and waiting. cool t’see graphics improvements.

I have discussed that topic with Wodka quite a while ago and the problem was he didn’t have enough knowledge of how to develop an engine. Since I am developing one myself I have to say it is easier. If I had the time I would have finished it way before them with all the features plus more. But as you might have noticed concerning the .obj -> .sur converter my developing speed is not that high due to time restrictions

Some internal stuff but as long as you can’t really use it I never saw a sense in making an official video or pointing out to everyone that I am developing an engine (like certain others do ^^). If I am at a point where it is usable I might think about it to attract people helping us developing content for it. Currently I am working on rendering and file format optimizations. Network physics sync is finished and seems to work stable. I could post images but I don’t want to much attention. Let’s just say the graphics are about at current game standard level. Of course you need good models and textures plus material settings to get really good pictures.

Schmackbolzen wrote:
Of course you need good models and textures plus material settings to get really good pictures.

I just discovered for myself that Freelancer has no any shaders. :-?

AI, Render and NPC animation/motions contolled by AI… game dev-ing is a real fun. Bit by bit you make an engine, long proccess though.

@ Schmack - why not convert some FL models to use in your engine. This would give you an idea of exactly how FL and your engine compare to each other…