=Alex= can you be more careful with words in future? Posts like one above don’t really help to make the mod you’re running look better in others’ eyes. In fact it does the opposite. No more “you all fail” or things like that please.

Don’t think that I’ll collect all I can say at once - so here’s the first portion, things that I remember firstly.

1. Way how FLDev works with file paths.

I’m somehow unable to store paths to files in the 1st tab of the program. Maybe it’s my local issue, but I found that copying FL installation onto its default location, and copying the mod files I want to edit (dll files in particular) to the same location is the most convenient workaround. But it’s not the most convenient thing to do…

2. Infocard import/export: error upon entering numbers that are too large.

Obviously, if you input a number that has 7 digits in it (didn’t do extensive testing of other ways to cause it), the program displays an error message. It should ignore values like that.

3. Infocard import/export: Checking integrity of the file that’s being imported

Right now, using ; is impossible, and it’s not very good since it’s needed for formatting. There are some other occasions, usually when the infocard import file is not “formatted” correctly, when the infocards are not processed properly. Since it’s impossible to check each one with hundreds of infocards imported, it would be great if FLDev could report which sections of the import file it cannot use (except for comments). And for what reason.

4. Infocard import/export: Reliability of import operation

I have a quad-core so I don’t experience -severe- performance problems, however, to ensure 100% correct import, one must leave the PC alone for the time of import and close all processes that utilize CPU/RAM/disc activity. If this is not done, some infocards are simply ommitted for reasons unknown, and some may be imported incorrectly.

There were cases when I used the very same file to import from, and yet it took several attempts to create a “complete” dll by FLDev. No errors etc. are reported, infocards are simply missing. This can be checked easily by Freelancer Companion after import.

stfx, thanks for the reply.

But I guess that most users still prefer to enter the values manually since you cant define it that exactly - e.g. I prefer setting it to a “nice” number like 16000 instead of something like 15989.

Never cared about that one actually - it doesn’t matter, main thing is that the object looks nicely in the system, and this usually requires some coordinate fine-tuning.

That means I wont drop the visual editor and will not concentrate on systems only. I will try to improve the tool in general.

Not asking to drop one of course (it’s needed to edit systems anyway). It’s your tool, you decide

About the order of the saved properties. You are right that modders are not accustomed to this order of properties and it is harder to track the changes from vanilla. But you could save every vanilla file using the studio so you will again have the same order of properties. Well as you may have realized they are somewhat ordered by name so I thought it would be easier to find a specific entry. But it is not a big deal to change it you just have to edit the order of those properties inside Template.xml in the app folder. Well … nevermind I will do that for you and it will be implemented in the next version

Depends on how this will be done. It’s not like there is one unified order of entries for all files…

It’s actually one of the crucial issues - whether files are comparable or not, and whether they are in the same format (even if the order of entries is irrelevant and “format” is purely cosmetic). In fact for some files the order is relevant, and we may not know about all of those cases since we rarely change the order. Within one entry - it’s surely cosmetic and doesn’t affect anything, but readability is important too - if you worked with the ini files of the same format for years, it’s not that easy to adopt reading the entries in a different order.

As for the direction controls for wrecks. Thats why ships and jumpgates look like pyramids. Because you can see, based on the tip, the direction it is looking to.

Maybe highlight the “tip” somehow? I didn’t get where that tip is when I first looked, maybe wasn’t attentive enough…

And yes I will also think about a way to make selection easier. If you have some more ideas how to do that please tell me.

The obvious way is to enable selecting smaller objects “through” aerial zones. So that you select the object you need by clicking on it, even it’s within a zone (zone is easy to select by clicking anywhere else on it). More precise controls for zoom in/out will also help.

But FL Explorer likes to wipe out commented stuff. Really annoying when testing different values.

Never said that Explorer is an ideal tool. Quite contrary, it has its drawbacks. Amd I don’t use comments in systems so I didn’t consider that part.

In any case, I keep the “master” mod files apart from the folder edited by FL Explorer, and apply changes in a selective way. And recommend the same to other system modders.

Also it always makes fields display as debris on the minimap.

Yes, true. But it’s easy to edit manually if you have a table with correct values for varied fields

My goal here is not to praise FLEx but to recommend implementing useful features from that tool into the new one… that’s it.

I’ve just tried the editor. First question - is the 3D editor actually functional? No idea how to move the objects around.

As for the more strategic approach. I’m not sure if many modders have a demand for visual editing of ini files. Some text editors provide collapsible ini file entries for compact view, and using ctrl-f for searching things is something we’re all accustomed to. Implementing an error checker for all ini entries, and for links between those entries… well, could be useful, but it will take a lifetime. Plus, there are pretty good error checkers available around.

Generally, if I were you, I’d concentrate primarily on the 3D system editing part.

Which leads to the next question. Right now you can open and view the system, change coordinates in “properties” and observe the result. There are several drawbacks here: first, you cannot move them in 3D mode (which was already mentioned), second, there are many excessive properties for all objects that are never used (blank) and make it harder to actually find the coordinates.

Also, I tried saving the file with the Mod Studio, and it looks like all the entries for all objects in the system are re-arranged, with changed ini properties order and changed order of objects. I mean… what for would you do that? Freelancer Explorer, with all its flaws, never messed with the code that wasn’t changed (except for adding the line breaks) and placed entries for new objects in the order used in Vanilla FL. With modders accustomed to Vanilla formatting, I don’t think it’s a good idea to change it. For example:

a base in Vanilla starts like that

[Object]
nickname = EW15_11
pos = -66148, 0, 31979
ids_info = 65713
behavior = NOTHING
pilot = pilot_solar_easy
dock_with = EW15_11_Base
base = EW15_11_Base

and base after saving the file in Studio is

[Object]
Archetype = space_police01
Base = EW15_11_Base
behavior = NOTHING
difficulty_level = 18
dock_with = EW15_11_Base
ids_info = 65713
ids_name = 505200

Anyway - just like with Freelancer Explorer, each tool (especially in testing stage) needs me as a system modder to track the code changes that the tool makes - and in this case, tracking changes is hard as hell.

I believe there are a number of really strong features in this new editor - one of them is showing the direction and size of objects in the 3D view. Planet rings, for example - that’s something that can be used for system editing right now (even with the viewer). So, it’s only a suggestion, but why not start expanding in that area? First thing that comes into mind is implementing direction controls for objects like wrecks - so that you could see in 3D view which direction the wreck is exactly facing. If you could add actual models to 3D view - even better, but preformance issues will arise because of that. If it’s done, it must be optional only, with schematic view also available.

So, in my opinion, the primary things to proceed with would be:

1. Concentrate on systems only, at least for now, to do what FL Explorer can do, and do it better. FL Explorer has good “wizards” to create bases and such, so it would be good to duplicate those, but not essentially.

2. Make the editor usable for fine-tuning systems in its current stage, which means that it shouldn’t re-arrange the ini entries at all, editing only the part that must be edited. Like, if you change angle of planetary rings, only one line of the ini file is actually changed.

3. Make selection of objects in 3D view easier. Several ways to do this - make smaller objects within larger ones selectible, creating sortable lists of objects that would allow to group some, for example, to remove all zones from the view, etc.

All I can think of right now.

FLDev: not speaking for everyone, but we at Discovery use it for one specific (and very much needed) task: importing infocard sheets. And since the format that FLDev uses for it is quite convenient, it’s better to make sure that the new tool supports this import as well. But I won’t consider this a high-priority task.

Some more things you could use - I’ve tried creating alternate backgrounds for Freelancer Explorer. Important info they contain are x/y coordinate directions, letter/number sectors, and border (dark red) where the ship is displayed as “out” of the system…

…and system grid with the border of navmap cutoff for the universe map. Even if you implement flexible system placement (which does work), you cannot place systems out of that border.

I think that info could be useful for the editor (as a display option).

That looks great.

Even without editor the 3D viewer helps a lot in defining locations of things, and with the editor that generates clean code… wow. That could be an awesome improvement over Freelancer Explorer.

So, keep up with the good work, I guess there are quite a number of modders around waiting to test how it works!

I tend to agree with R8R that the votes are not manipulated in any way. For example, Battlefield 2 has only one mod in Top-100. Yet, it was #3 in the vote (beating Half-Life a couple of days before the end of the vote).

This is probably related to vote distribution. When hundreds of votes go dozens of less popular mods, it probably works worse than voting for a dozen most popular ones. IMO, it could work better if a dozen mods were selected and promoted by all communities. Being number 2 among games per vote number, we could easily bring some 6-8 mods into the Top-100. But that’s hardly realistic…

Anyway, even having four is a progress, I think FL never had that many.

There are 4 Freelancer mods in Top-100 this time. Which are, Crossfire, Discovery, Shattered Worlds (in Released category) and Freeworlds (in Upcoming category).

List is here:
http://www.moddb.com/events/2009-mod-of-the-year-awards/top100

I think it’s worth a front page news post here on Starport, can prepare one if it’s necessary (about all mods, not Discovery).

Anyway, interesting thing is the number of Top-100 mods for games that were in the Top-6 by the number of votes. I did a brief count, and here’s what we got (bot for released and unreleased):

Half-Life 2 (1st place):
31 mod

Freelancer (2nd place):
4 mods

Battlefield 2 (3rd place):
1 mod

Half-Life (4th place):
4 mods

C&C Generals: Zero Hour (5th place):
7 mods

C&C3 Tiberium Wars (6th place):
7 mods

I post a news item on Discovery forums, including the current game standing by # of votes, and encouraging community members to vote for many mods, possibly for all of them.

Voted for ~20 FL mods myself, most of them not too far from the top of the list. Not sure if we should ask everyone to vote for all mods regardless of how old they are, how frequently they are updated etc. Voting for all mods belonging to one game is probably not what ModDB had in mind when they allowed to vote for many mods at once.

Just imagine what would be if all HL2 guys there would do the same

Yet, I fully agree that we should vote for more mods than our own, and more than few most famous ones. 10-20 seems a fair number.

As far as I remember, Top-100 allowed to vote for 3 mods for the last several years. It will probably be the same this time.

No offense to any mod talked about here, but player numbers doesn’t automatically mean they are the best mods.

Fully agreed. What’s “best” is different for everyone.

We will try this tool too, I had to use one from FLScan before and it has drawbacks (most importantly, cannot create shortest_legal_path correctly).

Is there a limit for systems and paths that it can process?

Bas, the scoreboard is here:
http://www.moddb.com/events/2009-mod-of-the-year-awards/scoreboard

I will also encourage people to vote for multiple mods at once. What concerns me is that - not sure, but it seems so - Top-100 is not simply based on user votes, but is also altered by ModDB admins to have mods for more games present. For example, if the #1 mod for some game receives less votes than #8 mod for Freelancer, it’s as well possible that they choose top 3 or 4 Freelancer mods and remove the rest FL mods so that more games could get in.

Can be mistaken about this policy, but results for previous years (not just for Freelancer) showed that it’s very likely: you see how many votes Half-Life 2 gets, but you won’t have 50% of the list contain HL2 mods.

Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion Release
The development of Discovery 4.85 has taken 1,5 years to complete. Now we, the newly formed Discovery Development Team, present to you the result of our work. The wait is over. After months of online beta testing, Discovery Freelancer 4.85: Reunion is released and available for download.

Year is 817 After Settlement (A.S.), 16 years after the single-player campaign of Freelancer, and one year after Discovery 4.84 took place. A Sirius-wide war is on the brink of engulfing the sector. While Kusari pushes its onslaught against Bretonia deep into the Leeds system, Bretonia attempts to surround Kusari forces in Tau-31. Liberty attacks Rheinland in Bremen and Hudson, and Rheinland has to pull back to defend its own borders. As if this was not enough, in late 817 the Independent Miners Guild encountered a large number unknown ships in the Orkney system. The ships belonged to a rebel group formed within the long-lost House of Gallia, the existence of which remained unknown for centuries.

Welcome Jammi!

And, good that a normal welcome thread emerges after previous was hijacked.

Thanks a lot FriendlyFire. Already fixed the css.

I’m late, but guess that it’s better now than never. Anyway,

Discovery Gaming Community
http://discoverygc.com

Added the dark FLCN bar to all 4 skins used on our forum. Inclusion would be appreciated.