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The day has finally come that Freelancer Mod Studio has implemented real models. With this it is now actually possible for modular station editing and in general makes correct object placement in systems way more easier. However shapes have still their place in Freelancer Mod Studio as those help finding tiny objects like fighter ships. There are also a bunch of other improvements so check out the changelog!

Download and FAQ (please read): https://github.com/AftermathFreelancer/FLModStudio
Official thread: http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2174&forum=10

Now mod away the system of your dreams

PS: Screenshots taken from a system of Discovery 4.86

@w0dk4:

I see, well at least you are able to finally use Freelancer Mod Studio haha

@Cougan:

Glad that you like it.

I agree that those features would be nice to have along many many others. Unfortunately I just don’t have the time to implement them.

Anyway I already thought about those two things in the past and concluded that reading/displaying the strings from the ressource dlls could not be easily done in a satisfying quality.

However I have been meaning to add a search function for the longest time so this could happen sometime in the future;)

hey,

I am glad that you were able to fix this issue however this sounds like a problem with your .NET 3.5 install on your OS. Maybe installing .NET 3.5 SP1 might help?

Also I am using a modified version of HelixToolkit which does not need .NET 4.0 and targets .NET 3.5. The reason why I would not want to switch the framework is that .NET 3.5 is already on many machines starting with Vista by default.

Or maybe we will find out why your .NET 3.5 doesn’t like it, seeing the error message would be greatly appreciated.

If anybody else has this issue please let me know

Version 1.2 is up!

Bobthemanofsteel wrote:
stfx my love, the new versions of FLMS are lovely, with FF’s modifications even moreso, but still one annoyance remains.

Haha thanks. Hopefully I was able to reduce that annoyance somewhat by allowing you to specify a default DATA path in the settings in case the DATA path can not be found relative to the opened file. This includes finding archetype file as well as model files. Thanks for the idea.

@FriendlyFire:

I was able to fix rotating the camera while flying at the same time. If I would not have been able to fix it properly I probably would not have changed it as unpredictable behavior is much worse than restricted functionality - well at least in this case I think but anyway it works now so all is good

About that strange exception, I was just assuming that you are one of the very few people in the world to have that error. And the cause seems to be the OS so I would rather not add random exception catch code just for that.

Btw I added the object move functionality probably more different than you expected but I played around with it quite a bit and decided that this was one of the better options. That aside you might be interested to see how I implemented it - also changing it to what you had is now rather easy.

Finally the code to allow choosing from archetypes/loadouts is not really usable as you already mentioned and I don’t plan on writing it properly as this would be a massive task. So it is unlikely that it will make it into the official repository - thanks for letting me see it though

@sumanuti:

Version 1.2 added support to read/write comments from/to ini files. However all comments within a section will be written at the end of that section and therefore possibly losing their context. So keep that in mind when writing comments - you can also write them from within Freelancer Mod Studio. I think this situation is much better than removing them completely - which you still can by specifying that in the application settings btw

There were some other nice additions and fixes in 1.2 so make sure to check out the changelog and re-read the FAQ before downloading the new version and playing with the source

FriendlyFire wrote:
For the first one, I get three exceptions on this line every time I run the application. I tried to diagnose it (it’s saying the culture “gu” is not installed…) but couldn’t figure it out, and since the program runs fine without it I decided to put a try/catch around it just to stop the constant annoyance.

Would you mind trying the following patch: https://gist.github.com/stfx/a3e9cc8f44f8731cfe69

If that does not help maybe http://stackoverflow.com/a/3978814/209649 might help fix this issue as it might be a problem with your OS.

Wow, very nice, thanks a lot.

Could you maybe explain the changes in ViewCubeVisual3D.cs and DockPaneCollection.cs a bit? The first I don’t understand and I think the last one is a crash fix which I have seen once or so but I am not able to reproduce reliably and therefore understand. Maybe you have a bit more info, like which revision was the first you encountered it?

Also why are you setting the culture to en-us? Writing/parsing is done with invariant culture so it should not have any effect on those things. Is it because of your object key move changes? Because there you have double.parse without invariant culture (see Data/Parser.cs::ParseDouble)

I also wanted to allow mouse look to work while moving in fly mode but there is an issue that you speed up considerably when rotating the camera by moving the mouse while flying at the same time which I have not been able to resolve yet.

Also I just went ahead and implemented the faster fly movement using SHIFT slightly different by multiplying with whole delta instead of single step. This gives a more immediate feedback when holding down SHIFT and gives actually any feedback when releasing SHIFT.

Thanks again for your contribution

FriendlyFire wrote:
Sounds good, I’ll give that a shot then!

Your program is definitely a breath of fresh air compared to FLE

Thanks, please let me know if that still isn’t enough to solve your issue:)

Also feel free to send me your modifications if you think they would be useful for someone else.

FriendlyFire wrote:
One thing we’ve noticed which has been a little irritating is that any unrecognized parameter in an object’s block is stripped out on saving. This means we constantly need to re-add custom parameters when we use your tool.

I’ve modified it a bit in the past (thanks for sharing your sources!) but you could probably answer faster as to whether it’d be possible to keep all lines in a block regardless of whether they are recognized or not.

Yes that is under the known issues in the FAQ. Unfortunately it is not easy to change that behavior but maybe I can look into it in the future, no promises though.

The more direct, easier and suggested solution is to modify Template.xml in the directory of the .exe to include your preferred sections/entries within the ini files. This way Freelancer Mod Studio will also allow you to edit and work with them just like the vanilla ones. Though this will not work with entries which require custom sorting within a section - see first entry of known issues.

@sumanuti: Ignoring comments is actually the third entry in the known issues and is equally hard to solve. No workarounds exist for comments unfortunately.

NovaII wrote:
Great, thanks a lot for your work.
But one thing i’d be glad to see in mod studio - writing to related files when adding a base, like freelancer explorer, thats only reason why i have to combine these tools.
For example, when i create a gate in explorer - it adds end-gate automaticly, when i create a base in system - it automaticly creates all other entries in related files. That’d be an amazing addition.

I am sorry but this is by design. I always tried to design Freelancer Mod Studio very generic avoiding specific wizards that only work for very special things and the like.

Also Copy/Paste is usually good enough to do the same in almost the same time. Plus you always need to change it anyway even if things were created automatically for you.

Finally as StarTrader said, this is not something I have the time to do

I know that many people want an all-in-one modding application and I am one of them but it simply is not possible to do just for one person.

I hope that you can enjoy Freelancer Mod Studio none the less and build some cool systems or edit other ini files:)

So I uploaded version 1.1.2 fixing the last few remaining minor bugs and it might very well be the last version if I don’t find any more issues.

Download, Changelog, FAQ, Source

I hope Freelancer Mod Studio served and continues to serve you well. Have fun)

Skotty. wrote:
To be honest, I really didn’t expect you would implement this

Thank you very much!

Sure, I hope you like it:) Although I think it is faster/easier to navigate using rotation around point, zoom, object focus, pan + orientation cube it also nice to fly around:)

Skotty. wrote:
For “Move camera up” Q or R is better than Space.

Hm not sure, you think so?

The gamer setup would obviously be WASD + space + shift (every finger above one button, middle finger above W+S) however shift alone does not work as it would interfere with other shift key/mouse bindings.

I was also thinking about arrow keys + page up/down but arrow keys also do not work due to limitations mentioned in a recent post.

Anyway I was indeed thinking about WASD+E(up)+Q(down) vs. WASD+SPACE(up)+E(down) but went for the SPACE version as you can use 4 fingers instead of 3 and move into multiple directions at the same time easier.

I got 3D editor key shortcuts to work. I used a minor workaround so that you have to click into the 3D editor before key presses are being registered which you usually do anyway.

Version 1.1.1 added special key shortcuts for the 3D editor including much improved walk-around/fly camera movement.

There are also several bug fixes and improvements in this version so be sure to check it out in the changelog!

I added the new key/mouse shortcuts and some nice workflow tricks to the FAQ to speed up your production:)

Download the latest version or use the updater in your Freelancer Mod Studio.
View the changelog
Really, read the FAQ!

starworld wrote:
No add change the distance and set the coordinates
I am waiting the next update… 8-)

Seriously, selecting objects is good!

Thanks.

Hehe, no this was indirectly solved with the implementation of position manipulation.

To set an object to a specific distance from another do the following:

• Select object A
• View -> Track selected
• Select object B
• Set rotation of object B so that it points towards object A by comparing the angles info of the tracked object (top-left in 3D editor window)
• View -> Position handles
• Move object B away/towards object A using manipulator which points towards object A (should be the blue axis-z one) until distance info of tracked object has your preferred value
• Set rotation of object B back to original values

I have added this and more workflow tricks to the FAQ so make sure to check it out:)

Skotty wrote:
Yeah okay, my mistake. I have to admit I didn’t read the FAQ. One point there I want to say: Try to design the controls as easy as possible. Don’t understand me wrong: It’s a difference between what you can do with the program and how to use the program itself.
I want to tell you that probably the controls could be more intuitive. Besides the “Focus on” method a free camera movement wouldn’t be wrong. In Hammer Editor they solved it the way you just activate it and then move around like “fly”-mode in game. The longer you press W (forward button) the faster the movement becomes. So you have the possibility to move fast or very slowly.
Of course those are just my personal experiences, but I think this is a very intuitive way of moving around a 3d scene.

I agree that better walk-around (or fly-mode as you call it) camera support would be nice to have. However today I checked the code thoroughly and it seems like it is very hard to do keyboard movement with the way the application is built. Unfortunately there is a bug in .NET which screws up focus if you have WPF controls and Winform controls in the same application. And focus is needed for keyboard movement. It works for global menu shortcuts but not for shortcuts just for the 3D editor which is a real pity.

The best solution would obviously be to change the whole application to WPF which I wanted to do since the implementation of the 3D editor. However this would require rewriting massive amount of code and there would also need to be some good/free WPF controls to replace the docking panels, property grid and listview which I have not found yet. So yea keyboard camera movement is pretty unlikely to happen due to the big amount of work it would require.

Luckily we still have walk-around mode using the mouse as written in the last post.

NovaII wrote:
Yea, an amazing and useful upgrade!
May you make a key which acts like Z key in Max (centers camera on selected object) next time?

“View -> Focus selected” or CTRL+F is what you are looking for (Look-at and zoom extends).

Double right mouse click looks-at the clicked object without zooming btw.

I hope this answers your question:)

Thanks guys, means a lot

Skotty. wrote:
You should fix the camera movement in your 3d editor. The controls are terrible. The zoom is not smooth enough. On that way I can’t get close enough to the objects for actually moving them exactly. You also should implement arrow keys for object or camera movement.
I don’t know if you ever worked with level editors like Valve’s Hammer Editor, but that are controls you can work with.

Are you talking about the steps when using mouse scroll zooming? You can hold ALT + right mouse button while moving the mouse to get smoother zoom.

Yes I could implement arrow key camera movement, I didn’t think anyone would need them but if you like them why not.

If what you are searching is some kind of walk-around camera then simply use CTRL + right mouse button to look around and CTRL + ALT + right mouse button to move forward/backward. If you zoom out more you move faster using walk-around movement and vice versa.

Please take a look at the mouse bindings in the FAQ as all this is explained there.

Btw I would not recommend using walk-around camera as it is much faster using “Focus selected”, middle-mouse to offset camera, alt + right mouse to zoom and clicking the orientation cube to orient the camera along the axis to offset the camera along it.

Or maybe I don’t get what you mean:)

Also how close do you want to get? The near-distance limit of the camera and also the zoom limit is at about the size of a player ship. No idea why you would want to get closer than that.

PS: No I didn’t work with that editor but with Unity, Maya, 3D Max and some others.

3D viewer evolves into 3D editor!

After lots of hours developing this ever wanted feature I finally present object manipulation including translating, rotating and scaling.

The beauty of this one is that you manipulate them relative to their rotation, so you can move them in the direction they are facing. This allows you to move them to a specific distance from another object and also complements setting absolute values in the property grid very well. There are a few things which could be improved like automatically updating the values in the property grid while manipulating the objects, or different mouse<->rotation behavior but stuff like that will have to wait for another time.

Additionally selecting objects is now also as easy as it should have always been. If you click on system objects (stations, planets, etc.) you can actually select them through any zones. You can also select paths through zones.

I also worked on some other stuff which you can check out in the link to the changelog below

I really hope you like those changes:)

Download the latest version here or use the auto updater in your Freelancer Mod Studio.
View the complete changelog
Read the FAQ

Due to the upcoming 6 year anniversary since I first started it I decided to add starworld’s requested feature. Also because I immediately liked that feature and it turns out that it indeed helps a lot to align trade lane positions/rotations which was always cumbersome.

From the FAQ: Object tracking shows info of your selected and tracked object like distance and angle between both. To track the currently selected object use “View -> Track selected” or its keyboard shortcut. To no longer track the selected object use “View -> Track selected” again.

Version 1.0.6 additionally also added selection toggling inside the 3d viewer by holding CTRL while clicking on a model.

I hope you like it

Download the latest version here or use the auto updater in your Freelancer Mod Studio.
View the changelog
Read the FAQ

Alright, this is it. The final version 1.0.5 is online. I hope you like it

Download the latest version here
View the changelog
Read the FAQ

Uploaded version 1.0.4

Download the latest version here or use the auto updater in your Freelancer Mod Studio.

Changelog:

• Fixed selection box size of models
• Fixed sometimes not being able to select the nearest/farthest object
• Fixed model not being removed when set to invalid archetype after version 1.0.3

• Improved model load speed by caching the models
• Fixed a crash in the universe 3d viewer
• Fixed memory leak in culture changer

Just preordered