Freeworlds: Tides of War - A Starwars Total Conversion Mod!

As a side thought, I wonder if you could actually generate a few thousand players for freelancer. Could you reach out to star wars fan forums, not necessarily related to gaming, there’s a hell of a lot of them surely and fans don’t come much more hardcore. Show samples of your work and videos and see if you can attract yourself a rather large fanbase. Could be worth a shot. Cheap game to buy now and no monthly subscription fee, win! win!

oh you might want to check ModDB, we have quite a following there (576 watchers as of now).

thanks, w0d. i doubt, all of these are regular freelancer players we see on discovery and crossfire but new players we prolly have not seen yet on FL or who left some noticable time ago. it is initial for the survival of FL, that modders like this stay part of the community. ofc it might be useful and efficient for them to join others, too, but leaving FL now, in the golden age of limit breaking is what we have to avoid if we consider the game worthy of survival.

I was thinking more like this:

forums.starwars.com games section

and this:

starwarsunited.com - star-wars-gaming-discussions

Sushi’s already taking care of updating a lot of different sites when we post new stuff. We’re doing our best not only to make a great mod, but also to attract players from outside the FL community.

From past experience, I can tell you that a good mod with a strong IP behind it can seriously drive numbers up, even if those people have never played FL before. It’s entirely possible to do it.

@timmy: You’re not thinking this through. The only dated thing about FL is the graphics. UDK is all about flashy, but where’s the persistent multiplayer framework? Where’s the character creation/storage? Where’s the economy? Where are the NPCs? Where are the missions?

The graphics engine is the first thing you see, but it’s definitely not the most important. Rebuilding FL from the ground up using UDK would take a very long time and demand huge resources specifically because all it has is a FPS framework. It’s got nothing of the RPG or near-MMO structure that FL does. It’s also not easily programmed by people who’re only used to INIs. You must remember that modders in FL are just a bunch of people with high knowledge in very specific areas. Transport them in an actual game development environment, where actual programming skills are required, and most will fall flat on their faces (not to be insulting, it’s a fact). They will most probably learn and adapt, but the required time, dedication and patience are just not worth it when the mod itself is already more than half completed (which is the case with Freeworlds and with most other mods which could possibly have the resources to start such a venture).

Further, tying us down with the UDK would prevent a lot of developments in the future. If I ever see a FL clone popping up from some member of the community, I truly hope they use open source or at least permissive engine licenses that do not require players to buy anything.

Wow! Almost 600 watchers and there are ~250-300 which don’t own a account on moddb…

A BIG thanks to the team!
Awesome work, keep it up!

MfG

I know you guys use Moddb and have quite a following there, but there are other sites where even more traffic can be generated once you have a download. Moddb is not the be all and end all of places to advertise a mod. I generate over 10x the downloads on Strategy Informer than i do on Moddb. I have no idea why, it’s just how it is for my mod. Maybe advertise there as well, bring in some more folks. More the merrier i say. An example, on Moddb i have over 1000 downloads, which isn’t saying much really, on Strategy Informer, nearly 13000 which is a huge difference

Good info Gibbon!

13000 downloads is impressive.

just can repeat, that my first flmod download was the discovery mod 4.84 from strategyinformer. only a few days later google pointed me to the moddb. even today i sometimes look over there as many minor modders post their mini-mods there, all unknown to the moddb community but still worthy of mentioning. btw, some older versions of both freeworlds and tides of war are uploaded on the strateyinformer.

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/freelancer/mod/29542.html

Old Freeworlds version has about 11k downloads…

btw, where is the current freeworlds to download? this thread’s link calls 18.31 (and is down as far as ive tested) and the “old version” on strategyinformer is 18.44.

Strategyinformer has a lot of hits because its one of the first entrys for a google search on “freelancer mods”.

If more mods would be listed in our Wiki (click on Freelancer Mods on the left navigation) Im sure we would get more traffic over here.

Gisteron wrote:
btw, where is the current freeworlds to download? this thread’s link calls 18.31 (and is down as far as ive tested) and the “old version” on strategyinformer is 18.44.

Seriously now! What IS the latest version? I tried to search but I didn’t find any information or link (I’m a bad searcher).
How old is this thread?

@ w0dk4

All the more reason to make sure the new version gets on there. I hear what you’re saying about there should be more mods listed on the wiki but you can’t force people to go there to find out mod information. If people do a search and the first hit they get is strategy informer, that’s the first place they will go, it’s really that simple.

FriendlyFire wrote:
@timmy: You’re not thinking this through. The only dated thing about FL is the graphics. UDK is all about flashy, but where’s the persistent multiplayer framework? Where’s the character creation/storage? Where’s the economy? Where are the NPCs? Where are the missions?

The graphics engine is the first thing you see, but it’s definitely not the most important. Rebuilding FL from the ground up using UDK would take a very long time and demand huge resources specifically because all it has is a FPS framework. It’s got nothing of the RPG or near-MMO structure that FL does. It’s also not easily programmed by people who’re only used to INIs. You must remember that modders in FL are just a bunch of people with high knowledge in very specific areas. Transport them in an actual game development environment, where actual programming skills are required, and most will fall flat on their faces (not to be insulting, it’s a fact). They will most probably learn and adapt, but the required time, dedication and patience are just not worth it when the mod itself is already more than half completed (which is the case with Freeworlds and with most other mods which could possibly have the resources to start such a venture).

Further, tying us down with the UDK would prevent a lot of developments in the future. If I ever see a FL clone popping up from some member of the community, I truly hope they use open source or at least permissive engine licenses that do not require players to buy anything.

Hey, that’s what you’re here for, to think things through when I don’t! Nothing new there eh!

I’ve seen a lot of pie-in-the-sky, shiny-rainbow ideas that quickly die off because people didn’t quite realize how much work was actually involved. Just remember, anyone can have ideas, but only a fraction will manage to realize even one of them.

The first thing any project should do is evaluate the amount of work required to finish. Sometimes that’s enough to show the project is not worth it.

+1, FF
i remember in my early modding days i promised one version after another, required at least 2 months more than i promised due to buggy work and nonetheless brang out 4 versions of the same starter’s mod using foreign work only, even models featured in other mods already (it was a closed community, no download, only direct installations from my usb device to the client’s machine), including freeworlds btw. when i then had innovative inspirations, raising the quality, the quantity, making a mod that is worthy to be called so and that i could call my own and upload on the world wide web, i came up with digging through files line for line using huge amounts of time. i thought i’d be ready with it until independence day and now i am in desperate hope i can hold the date of 2010 i was about to mention in the trailer.
and this is modding, working on the same i worked on before, not learning something new from scratch.
now i know, before i take new ideas, i do plan how much time the overall concept will require, set a date, work and if i am being done earlier, than i am open for suggestions for minor changes and additions.

What IS the latest version?

This is Freeworlds’ latest version
http://www.freeworlds-tow.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8592

but it has full deactivation capabilities, does it? last time i installed a freeworlds i needed to clean up my FL manually after deactivation.

Just a heads up:

We will release the open beta on Saturday, April 12th!