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

Thanks for the kudos, Gibbon. I appreciate it. Ya, I know movable turrets aren’t new in FL modding, but they’re still fun to show off for the SW fanatics out there. It brings a tear to my eye to see the A-wing/Y-wing and all capital ships, for that matter, have movable “real looking” turrets.

As for the custom cockpits, they’ve been in the mod for a few years, just no one has showed them off.  As I’m sure you all know, flying around in cockpit mode is quite restricting. But, with the implementation of the new physics system I’ve started to fiddle around with, those die-hards XvT/XWAers just might use them

Anyways, once again, thanks for the compliments, fellas. A lot of our work is due to this forum with all its lovely people and tutorials. I know we wouldn’t have had these pretty engine effects without the help of this community.

No worries, Why. I know that many SW enthusiasts were disappointed in how FWs performed. I think the entry in my developer blog will show you want exactly I’m trying to accomplish for 2.0.

Unfortunately, my work isn’t something that I can film/screen shot, it’s more along the coding lines. For starters, I’ve made each ship have its own customizable engine, laser, shield, and thruster. What this allows for is better balancing between the ships. So, for example, if you have a Tie Defender with 6 lasers and the E-Wing with 3 lasers, I can balance the ships out by increasing the damage power on the E-wings guns to match the T/Ds damage output. Or, if we find the E-Wing isn’t powerful enough with a matched damage output, T/D too for that matter, we can increase its power to be greater than the T/D.  What’s even better about this customizable setup is that this increase in damage output of the E-Wing’s laser won’t affect any other ship but the E-wing…so you can start to see the power it gives us in terms of balancing ships out.

Anywho, after getting the ship speeds developed by Sovereign, I went to the drawing board and calculated what values I needed to edit to get the speeds Sov specified and the physics I wanted. And, for the 6 different “classes”, and I use that term very loosely, I think I’ve come up with something that most people will hopefully enjoy. Basically, interceptor class vessels will have very high speed thrusters, giving them an additional 20 MGLT units. However, this high speed comes at a cost; the thruster will only run for 5 seconds. A heavy bomber, on the other side of the spectrum, has a thruster that gives them an additional 7 MGLT but lasts for 20 seconds.

In addition to all this, I’ve been working hard on the fighter physics. Being a big fighter jock, I wanted something that everyone would enjoy. My inspiration for this development has come from XvT/XWA - which ToW did a great job in reproducing. However, I knew some FWers out there found that style too restrictive. So, my goal was to find something “in-between”. Now, this wasn’t an easy task mind you; trying to bring these two universes together is like trying to meld apple and oranges together. So, I guess you can say, what I’ve made is, well, juice

Now, for the physics side of things, I’ve reduced engine kill significantly from FWs standards. You know how when you hit engine kill, you can drift forever? Well, that’s what makes FWs, well, FWs. ToW, XvT, XWA didn’t have EK at all. So, what I have done is make each ship class have its own specified time drifting. That way, it makes dogfighting quite interesting depending on what style you choose. To give you an example of the numbers, an interceptor class vessel will be able to stay drifting for 3.75 seconds. For a fast, quick ship, I figured this would give the interceptor the edge in maneuverability to make up what it lacks in hull hit points and weapon power. The heavy bomber, on the other hand, has EK that lasts for about 0.5 seconds. It allows for a bit more agility, however, bombers will be tanks in terms of defense and weapon power.

What is also nice about this setup is that’s it’s canon; it’s in the Lucas Arts new TV show If you really want to see more, Why, hit me up on the FWs forums and I’ll send you a DL link/Give you access to our boards - like I’ve done with Forsaken and Arvis . Maybe you could find a way to spruce up FWs FX a little with your amazing stuff (Note: this offer isn’t related to whether or not you’d be interested in working with us)

edit: I forgot to mention, I’ve removed reverse thrust. What I did was put a negative value on the reverse thrust ratio, at -.66. So it stops that uncharacteristic “jittering” technique that shouldn’t be in SW.

Just wanted to show you all some of the work that is being done on our forums. This was made by Qi.

This is what he based his models off of:

Basically, a planetary ring. Qi, went to work and used Aldebaran’s Modular Stations as a base to develop his work off of. He made several different sized models, around 4km in length.

This is what he produced in game:
Kuat Shipyards FW 2.0

Just to give you some dimensions, the planet there is 52km in diameter. This circumference of his structure is approximately 188.4km long.

Thanks for the compliment, I will pass it along to Qi!

Also, just so you all know, we’re trying to make things as close to canon scale as possible. Here’s an example of the Corellian Corvette and the ISD

@Why485:

I’m sure several people who have heard me rant on once or twice will know that I really did not like Freeworlds. In my eyes, whenever I needed an example of a great idea with failed execution, I could say, “basically that.” However anytime I see screens of Freeworlds 2.0, I keep asking myself, “But what if it’s good?”

(I know that was a pretty terrible thing to say, but I really want to emphasize how much a 180 you guys appear to be doing.)

Frankly, that looks amazing. I really applaud you guys on the large scale models you are working on. The Kuat ring left me speechless. It takes real guts to try such a thing. I’m keeping an eye on this. Ever since Sushi posted that blog article that he is working on making the game play actually, you know, good, I really have been keeping a close eye on this.

To be honest, I know many people have said that about FWs. It’s sorta sad, really, but true in many rights. I always used to call FWs a FL mod with SW ships, rather than a SW mod for FL.  But now, I think we’re working on something truly epic - I don’t mean to sound too egotistical here. Â

With FW and ToW merging,  we really have brought the best of both “universes” together. Also, using SVN - for those of you that don’t know what it is I can post a tutorial - it has tremendously saved us time and effort.  I think why 1.66 failed was that Aldebaran was the sole coder of it all. To make a mod of the magnitude he wanted, you need more than one person.  Luckily for us, we have both Alde and Dev on our team to generate ideas and help us troubleshoot issues.  Furthermore,  I have a great team of coders behind me working on this project.  What has been really rewarding to me is taking people who know nothing about Freelancer and Coding (like me 8 months ago) and see them doing things that I drool over (Oma, Qi, specifically). Â

Anywho, Why, as I’ve mentioned before, I will gladly give you permission to our Dev forum if you want to help us generate ideas on the mod to make it better than it already is.  We’re currently discussing changing the way we travel in Freelancer as well as Engine/Shield/Weapon balance and how to make it more XWA-esque.  I wouldn’t mind some of your ideas as it seems you have quite a few on the way a SW mod should be done. Â

@rsabatino:

i love what you guys are doing. one thing though you really took alot out of my favorite ship the x wing fighter i love that ship. but the new model lost a lot of its punch

I’d have to adamantly disagree with you on this. The X-Wing here: is much better than FWs has ever seen before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oTe0YKVcvA&fmt=22

The Freeworlds: Tides of War mod team have been working incredibly hard over the past few weeks getting the pre-alpha stages of mod work completed. We have over 90% of 104 ships in the game now and are nearing completion of our X-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project importing. A bulk of the team is now focusing in system development and are looking to have the preliminaries of the entire FW2 universe done within the next month. After which point the mod will be focusing on adding new visual effects to all the systems. We hope you are enjoying the ongoing saga of the FW:ToW development!

For more information about our mod please go:
Forums: www.freeworlds-mod.net
ModDB Site: http://www.moddb.com/mods/freeworlds-182/

This project was made by Qi, the modeler/builder and Solostaran the texturer

I have used Solostaran’s textures for the Mon Calamari shipyards.

The canon source:

The big bracket holders will be put in-between the ring levels.

It’s awesome to fly between the decks.

To give you some orientation of the size of this monster, the planet is 60km in diameter. The parts are about 10km out. He covered a 1/3 of the circumference, so the length is around 84 km.

It’s still in development.

@cheese:

Expect to see it in 2012 rsabatino!!!

Sushi ^^

LOL…ass