Raise your voices!
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Sup guys.
Hot and serious speech is going to be. And something special at the end.But first of all have to say who am i. Most of you know me well actually - i am Nova, quite scandalous person in FL community some years ago, especially russian one.
Creator of such things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IoPWGqQ9CE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36ZU75z_Po
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJrv1SeOspE
http://oi67.tinypic.com/2mm5npj.jpg
There was much more, some of it you already seen here long time ago, but i’ve lost everything due to time issues.But it does not matter at all in the face of almost ended Freelancer epoch. As well as your personal projects of any type - from having some fun with vanilla bases (sup Jeider) to OpenGL implementations and other heavy coding.
We all have to deal with it.But dealing does not mean throwing. I came here to attempt changing your mind about this situaton.
Time without FL allowed me to make an impartial look on a game. Last year i slowly worked on documentation of mod that is free from any personal wishes including mine, and offer a conglomerate of obejectively best changes to expand potential of Freelancer in every way united by a sequel to vanilla storyline. They are result of heavy personal and discussion analytics of existing mods, potential of vanilla FL and community possibilities. Huge tables, fat docs, concepts, etc. Also building it in another engine is a discussable thing, but i see light in Shmack’s OpenGL project or Librelancer. I’ve tried to find their contacts to personally speak about these things, but they left none.
I’ll try to show docs as soon as possible for a community discussion - i think it will take 2 or 3 more weeks for me not to be shy to show them; last hope is that community can unite and create something that could be called a new life of FL.
Ever after i will publish them, i urge you all too to make your own FL projects an open-source. We have nothing to hide now and any stuff can make FL breathe again. You know that perfect things are result of teamwork - someone is good at programming, someone at 3D, someone at drawing and writing, designing, etc; so i believe that community can be a perfect team.I didn’t come with empty hands now too and have some epic gift for you in the prospect of the changes.
Here is a demo with most of elements clickable. Not every single page is done but there’s all material you need to complete it in a very short time.
Links do not work, of course, but there’s a script to show the pages:- 5 main buttons work as they should
- to see user profile page, click on “Nova” at the header
- to see how it looks being edited, click on “Edit profile” at the header
- to see downloads category content, click on any of them
- full donload item content shows by clicking on item name on that page
- to see forum category example, click on “front news” category
- to see how topic content looks like, click on “XFire Group Chat” topic there; also there is another part of my message
- private messaging displayed by clicking on “Inbox” at the header aswell, and click on subject of first message to browse it
I suppose Starport crew may find a use for these files. I did my best and attempted to fit it in existing logics and style to avoid losing any data, major reprogramming and breaking users habits. Еverything is absolutely handmade and no templates or frameworks used.
Feel free to use it as you wish.
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I am confused.
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While I appreciate your enthusiasm, I am not sure you will be able to motivate enough people. The homepage design looks really nice, though.
Of course I hope that my OpenGL wrapper will be able to get people back into FL, but I am not so sure that this is enough or whether it is not too late for that. I don’t even know when it is ready for release (my target was and still is this summer). Hopefully other tools like the ALE Editor and maybe a better model converter will help here a bit more.
About open source: This is really problematic regarding cheats. None of any client hooks sources have been published because of that and I think it is wise to keep it that way.
Btw. you could have sent us a PM via this forum
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Wow, someone’s alive there
Schmackbolzen, hello! PMs there are extremely uncomofortable compared with any instant messaging service at least because of feedback delay.
Of course new graphic framework is not the only thing that FL needs to be revived, there should be a complex solution that includes advantages in all directions.
We have to start with something, so are you up to test a model on your stuff when i’ll be done with it and its textures?
http://leproimg.com/2568427
If yes, tell me something about maps we can use to properly prepare it for export. -
Actually, if you could do a high-res version of all the vanilla models and textures I would really appreciate that! This would save me some time and would make it look a lot better. For now I developed a pipeline which upscales the textures and uses some advanced filtering (I have a lot of experience in image processing due to my student assistance job in medical imaging) to make them look less terrible. The normal maps are created from the textures, but I have to create the height maps manually (which means ship and some station textures don’t have any yet).
If you create high quality models this of course means the entire workflow can change. I think we can skip the parallax mapping then and use real geometry instead. But regarding that I am really flexible. If you think some maps (like reflection, ambient occlusion etc) look nice I can implement them. The renderer can be extended quite a bit. My end goal is some sort of screen space reflections so that we have real time reflections. Even clustered shading for thousands of lights should be possible. I have been testing it in the engine Skotty and I are developing for some time now and it works really well. But of course this only makes sense if people are really using the wrapper. Currently I am working on polishing and optimizing the code so that all the bugs are gone and the frame drops at certain places, too.
Regarding chat: If you have ICQ or Jabber just PM me your number/id and I’ll add you
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The problem with the original models is that the UV mapping is a bit messy.
Adding details based on the current textures wont be easy (at least not if you want to keep the original look). -
Nice, i’m up for that. I’ve just finished modelling of that freeport and wanna try Substance Painter to make textures - it genereates everything including normal, heights, AO and glossiness/roughness automatically. Here is a screenshot (not final, just testing, i will do my best to fit vanilla bit later)
http://leproimg.com/2568430
So we have to define what maps we will use, cuz SP has a lot of presets for different engines such as VRay or Unity what means different output set of stuff. Reflections are must-have for sure.
But main issue about detailed models is vanilla poly-limit of ~20k as i remember, do you have something to avoid it? Otherwise we will have to rework vanilla bases moduling (what actually should be done and reveals other issues like vanilla-imppossible docking to non-core module, but we can skip that in this stage of mission). This model is about 50k. I’ll try to nerf it a little more ofc, but i suppose average for models will be 20 and we cannot trust a random here.
Okay, i’ll PM about messaging when i register there or maybe we can use skype if you have it. And leave more space here as i still hope that FF will notice a website, but he ignores this topic -
There is a trick to avoid the limit. But I am not sure what it was exactly. There is an internal counter for points (VMeshRef or VMeshData node?), which is a 16bit unsigned integer, means you can have max. 65535 points.
That model looks very nice. I do like the rather clean style (since that stuff can’t oxidate in space) and the minimalistic but existent colouring. The geometry adds a lot to it.
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Ty guys!
If someone who can into 3D is reading this thread and up to help me with remodelling or even retexturing vanilla bases and their modules, PM me so we can organize our work and share stuff using some clouds as models are similar enough. If you’re a guest - register, join and leave a footstep!
By the way, does anyone remember a name of this program?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo8t57hEb3Y appeared at 0:24
One of the ways of expanding FL is refreshing an interface and i think this stuff worth a research. -
For such ambitious plans it would be nearly a waste to concentrate too much on current FL. It would require a lot of hooking and such.
Librelancer or something else might be much better suited since you have access to everything. And I mean not just interfaces.
But that would still need to be finalized. So until then, I know, there is only Freelancer.Btw the link to the interface prototype you had in your post earlier was very nice.
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Skotty., hehe, i’ll show it later with all of the docs, there’s still a lot of work
I’ve told about Librelancer at the main post and would be glad to see its author comment here. I cannot say anything about engines and just will do all what i can. Of course i will attempt to discuss our possibilities with everyone who is up to, as i experience a lack of information and these questions are quite uncomfortable, i think we need some time there to let people see this topic and think about a collaboration
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Regarding the video: I already have MyGui included in the wrapper. But it is another thing to hook all the interface controls of Freelancer. If adoxa or someone else could do that it might work. Also someone would have to create all the designs for MyGui. I plan to use it for the graphic options etc.
I use Skype very rarely. Usually I have Miranda running. If there is a plugin for your messenger protocol I can use it. There is a Skype plugin, but you also have to have Skype running besides Miranda, which is a really bad solution. I only have it installed on an old laptop.
I think you might convince more people when the project is in a more working state, meaning quite a few high poly models with good textures and a working version of my wrapper. But we will see
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When you talk about expanding the univers, I have some ideas of IMG and Gaian ship.
IMG ships can be some sort of Starflier with a vampir look that have yellow tint.
Gaian ships can be organic prototype that look like this to replace the starflier or startracker and something that look like a fusion between wasp, bat or something else that fly for the Hawk.
I’ve made some side viewed concept.
P.S. I hope that I haven’t done an “Out Subject”.
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Freestalker.fr, hi! Nothing can be off-topic in our situation i think, anyone alive is welcome here.
Any concept is good and if you like these factions - feel free to go on. Until i publish a docs i do not know how public will accept them, and if you will find them cool we obviously can merge or replace stuff.Actually my main question about Gaians is: will they exist after few decades? As well as xenos, farmers (alliance and lbw) and GCs? They all have a single base and can be easily defeated by an assault of Navys if they start to make real troubles, or maybe this is wise for them to unite with prime criminals of these sectors? I do not want to remove them neither leave them, but i try to follow logical steps of timeline after vanilla stuff happened, and this question is arguable. What do you think?
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If you want to go on in the timeline, you really should take your time and read all rumours in Freelancer. They provide a lot of material! Like Kishiro working on a ship with jump-drive, as the Osiris already has. ALG fusioning with Krüger Minerals, etc.
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I’ve an idea! If we expand the campaign, it would be cool that Trent would become a starship commander, begin with gunboat class then cruiser/destroyer and finally battleship/dreadnought but he wouldn’t be an admiral and will only execute Orilion orders (woops! I didn’t know I will do this joke before writing this, that was unwanted ^_^’ ).
I have some weapons idea :
We could expand particle weapons, adding proton based weapon like an hydrogen cation canon, electron based weapon that can be called cathodic canon. For the FX the proton canon can use the regular red particle (positiv charge) fx and for electron we can just modify bretonian particle fx and make it bluer (negative charge). As for neutron we can make them exclusively green (neutral charge).I have ideas about shield :
It will not be any longer energetic but armor types and devices. For electric based weapon we can use lightning rod. For thermal based weaps we can use heat shield. For radioactive weaps, wee can use this .That’s just some thoughts.
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Another idea! Making gluon shield that would be good against particle and neutron weapons.
We can extend capship weapons to all Freelancer weapon types and create new classes with available 3D models, for instance Bretonian Battleship could have more classes, one with more particle weapons and another with more tachyon weapons. It could improve ship variety in the gameplay and force the player to scan the ship he is going to fight.
Here is a cool lightning rod :
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Freestalker.fr, variablility in playstyle and team tactics is the primary objective of weapon and shield (not only, of course) stuff, you’re right.
If i start to explain these moments right now, i will have to say everything what i write on a concepts, because every part is relative to another one. But be sure they are very close to the things you said. Maybe naming will differ a lot, but it can be replaced of course. Im thinking about to make a google-doc table for everyone who knows better be able to replace a stuff with their own, especially nationality-colored factions/houses. About battleship weapons, and weapons at all, every ship class shall recieve a unique new weapon types (besides common ones of course) - but some of them require a little coding. Scanning will be absoultely must-have, cuz vanilla table of damage blocking is expanded a lot, also, as you say, factions recieve 2 or 3 of 5 primary weapon types, and you cannot know which one will be used against you, same as shields. I’ve made an extremely cool shield system, where capacity does not equal efficiency at all and it is builded around 2 values - sqrt(cap*reg) and cap/reg, where first one is the real power, and the second one defines shield type and weapon type absorb.
