Except that we don’t recommend using the SDK 1.5b, it’s buggy. Either use 1.3 SDK or JFP (Jason’s Freelancer Patch.)

As for the rest of it, tl;dr.

If you’re trying to help people out I applaud your effort, but remind you that there are people here who have been modding Freelancer since it came out, and you’ll be able to find all this information already in the forums by use of the “search” function.

How to do this requires use of FLHook, as I understand it.
This particular method I know is for creating player flown dockable carrier, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be adapted to do docking to orbiting planets.

• Use FLHook to create some sort of command, say /dock or something, that only works when you’re targeting a particular planet and inside a maximum distance. Or, if you’re good enough, set up a Hook to do the same job when you hit F3 at an orbiting planet, but I don’t know how possible that is.

• Make this command teleport the player to inside a base that sits somewhere in the system (you’ll need an extra base per planet, in the system). These base rooms will appear to the player to be the rooms for the planet they just docked at.

• When you undock from aforementioned unreachable base, have FLHook teleport you back to in front of the planet.

I’m sure you can see how this works for docking to a player-flown carrier, just replace the planet with a player carrier. (Docking to the spare base allows players to be able to launch if the carrier they’re docked to dies or leaves the server. They just get arbitrarily dropped to wherever you want, either in front of this spare base, or to some location or somesuch.)

Hope this helps, but sadly I only know the method to do such a thing, not how to actually implement it.

It’s called FLHook mate.

I’m a cap jockey, always have been, always will be. I’m OK in a fighter on the side, nothing special, but I have fun.

FriendlyFire wrote:
I haven’t disappeared from the face of the Earth, Avenger

I wouldn’t have expected you to, 'cause I would have felt Hell freeze over.

Anyway, thanks for the replies people, I’ll now be taking a few days to have a good look over the mods you’ve suggested, then several more months of waiting until my final exams are finished.

Many thanks.

Hi all,
Since the discontinuation of Freelancer: Combat Evolved (Halo TC that’s lasted four plus years FYI) a short while ago, I’m looking for a new MP mod to take it’s place, and I’ve run up against my stalwart-sticking-with-a-single-mod syndrome and I haven’t really got a clue what MP mods are still out and about, and what’s worth trying.

I’ve had a quick gander at the mod advertising board here and it seems that only Freeworlds and Flak '88 are really kicking, unless I’ve missed some, and no offense to the UnderVerse team but Riddick just isn’t my thing.

So please, tell me what I’m missing by not playing ToW or Flak, or any other MP mod.

Also, if it matters at all (IE: if any of my skills would be useful to a MP mod) I can also create ALE files (I’m a little rusty), code general .ini files and I’m a good writer for infocards/backstory/short stories etc. to boot. As is obvious, PM me if samples are required.

Many thanks,
Avenger
(Former Fleet Admiral, Vice Admiral, Rear Admiral of the United Nations Space Command Defence Force Navy)

I haven’t personally experienced it, but yes I know of the 32 gun limit. I’m not sure if a workaround is available, but I know that practically every single mod I’ve worked on has worked inside this limit, rather than just making the limit higher, if that is even possible.

I don’t know what the mechanics are behind it, but I’m sure some of the more knowledgable people of the forums will have an answer.

I would like to offer my services as an ALE editor and also as an .ini editor. I’m not quite in the league of Why in terms of epic ALE effects, but I know my way around them, and if we’re looking objectively at this, I can act as an intermediate point between people completely new to ALE’s and the epicness of Why.

Specifically, I can assist with the following.

ALE effects and associated .ini coding
TXM textures for ALE’s
Everything on the equipment, weapons etc. side of .ini coding

My contact for both email and MSN is “the_soccer_guy_01[at]hotmail[dot]com” (w/o quotes and obviously the correct symbols in place of teh square brackets.)

Well, I used to go by the name Chestomagnetic (and many still know me as chesto), which came from someone at school. It’s a shortening of my last name, Chesterton, and I’ve got no idea where he pulled the magnetic from. Anyway, I needed a name one day for a forum and it popped into my head.

Later on, it became untenable for me to continue using that name, so I cast around for another.

I’d just started using Avenger as a shipname, and it seemed to fit, so I started using it.

Nothing too special about it, really.

Lots of win in this Why! Great work as usual.

I’m gonna have some fun looking through the various bits of code and just watching the ideas flow in a torrent. I won’t use a direct port of your effects, because I don’t believe that solves anything or helps me learn new things, but I’ll certainly be using them for inspiration.

Well, I thought I may as well post the video of my latest foray into ALE effects.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=-IuP5a11evw

The missile effect before the explosion is my plasma torpedo effect, while the actual explosion is the one I’m showing off. Me being lazy, or resourceful, whichever way you look at it, just added the const effect and the explosion effect to the Javelin missile for testing purposes.

The effect itself is the explosion of a nuclear weapon, and I’ve used a custom texture for the main explosion as well.

Comments as always please peoples.

My deepest and most heartfelt condolences go out to his family and friends.

Not that I knew Unicornz personally, but I’d say most people have benefited from his great work in the Freelancer community. We’ve lost one of our finest, and may he be able to rest in peace now.

Regards to all friends and family,
Avenger

Well, here’s the most up-to-date video of my, still unfinished, plasma torpedo for Black Dawn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sr99SDhaus

It’s not much, particularly compared to some of the other stuff in here, but I like it enough, and when you’re piloting a UNSC warship and you see some of these flying at you, you 're going to be too busy going “ahhh, run away, run away” (plus or minus several explicitives) to take a really close look at it.

Cheers, LS. But sarma.txm has only one MIP texture.

Still, I’ll try adding in the alpha channel, which I was wondering about but as you can probably tell I’m not a very graphicy-texturey person.

Well, I’m making a completely new ALE effect, but I’m only replacing the MIP0 data with my imported targa. From what the image information in Paintshop says it should be exporting at 24bits, and 16 million colours.

“Pixel Depth/Colours: 24/16 million” is what is said in the image information.

I’ll try just with a 512x512 texture attempt now.

Well, I’ve managed to get past the CTD issue by just resizing the picture canvas from the stock FL size (something like 32x32 or 64x64 from memory) to 1024x1024, but now I can’t seem to get the texture to actually display properly in-game.

The texture displayed in-game appears to still be the stock texture from sarma.txm.

I"m gonna look into a possible maximum size issue, both in file size and texture size.

Hello all,
In my travels into the world of .ALE files I have run into a problem.
The problem I’m having is that I’m trying to create a new 1024x1024 texture for one of my effects, but when I import the image (which is saved as a .tga file and made in Paintshop Pro 9) into the MIP0 section of small-flare in sarma.txm (using UTF Editor v1.4), and boot Freelancer up, it crashes just before it’s about to load the menu.

I looked at FlSpit and get no error message at all.

I haven’t made any new references in .ini files to it, the only references are those that were already in FL.

The image, when saved as a *.tga file is 1.10MB.

Any help is very much appreciated, and if you need any more information say so and I’ll try and do my best to oblige.

Cheers,
Avenger

Well, I’m working on a nuke explosion at the moment, and I’ve done a quick recolour of a Rheinland engine to make an ion engine. It’s nothing compared to what Why485 and others have done, but I’ll post some images as soon as I’m fairly happy with it/finished figuring out things.

Also, awesome work Why!

is crest-fallen I’m very sorry to hear this.

You’ve done a lot of the FL community, and we’ll miss your work and tools.

Actually, I just went and had another go at editing server.dll and I do believe I have got the extended range working correctly. I was aware of editing .ini files, but I guess I just forgot to mention that. lol.

Thanks for the reply, and I’m fairly sure I have started to get the hang on it.