Good stuff. Looks nice in the video. Thanks for continuing to work on this, much appreciated.

@Schmackbolzen Always just nice now and then to see what names are still around doing stuff, happy to see you’re one of them. Take care man, look forward to checking this out sometime.

Well this is a surprise, still slaving away after all these years Schmack. Well done.

Haven’t thought about freelancer in a while, but I’m glad I did otherwise I’d have missed this one, look forward to checking it out once you have an English translation, looks pretty cool!

Why don’t you try something a little different to begin with. Import a known game asset into milkshape, like one of those station modules, don’t mess with it too much, export it and put it back in game. You won’t need to edit any text, but it will help you find out whether it’s your export process that’s no good and help you figure out what to do differently if it is.

They look a lot better than the vanilla fair play. Test them in game as you go mind (if you’re not already). Doing a shed load of work and dumping it all in one go will always be a bad idea, no matter how much faith you have

Shattered worlds has replacement asteroids, ripped from X3 I think, you worked on that mod I thought FF.

Asteroids are a little tricky because they have to match with some bases which you’ll want to apply that new texture to, dynamic asteroids, weapon platforms and the band that acts as the visual backdrop to the field itself, so you might want to try and stay as close to the vanilla texture as possible.

Ioncross total war was quite successful once upon a time, condensed freelancer to only a few systems and 2 factions at war, rheinland and liberty. You’d have the same problem as any new mod now though, no community, where a mod such as discovery, crossfire whatever could set aside a single system for duels, combat etc and schedule events.

Asylum51 back in the day had all kinds of kick only systems, red team vs blue team with only 2 bases and a special purpose loadout starflier with big glowing red or blue lights and lasers to indicate team. Race systems, maze systems, capture flag systems. Come to think there wasn’t much it didn’t have, but we were perhaps all a bit too twisted and mental for most peoples tastes, and if you weren’t you would be kicked to a system with disturbing lights, sounds and giant clown face until you either were mental enough and took your meds or quit.

You can have a lot of fun modding this game so go for it if you want to try something, just be prepared to do it on your own and be the only person that ever plays it

What’s really needed is a magical photoshop filter that auto enlarges all the textures and magically repaints them with greater detail, generates the normal and specular stuff and it’s all good.

I’ve been searching for one for years but alas, no joy!

If you were so inclined, you could always make some small modules in a similar style as vanilla, then attach them to things like space industrials etc, like the habitats and solar panels (but smaller cos they’re mahoosive), chimneys with smoke and what not, vents with gases whatever, just to make them more interesting. It’s the lack of variety with these things that makes everything look a little samey and bland.

Not talking about that stripe, are we watching the same video? I’m sure you can see far better than I can in a video though.

Yeah, that’s introduced some different lighting issues now hasn’t it, faces on the tanks are lit incorrectly with the bottom triangle of the face showing highlights and the top not, and large parts of the base showing highlights which should be in shadow at times. You’ve got your work cut out with this fella! Keep at it and you’ll crack it eventually I’m sure.

Yeah, that’s fixed the lighting, top job, your hard work is paying off in spades my friend!

That’s made quite a nice difference, subtle but effective, well done.

Grind or pay, grind or pay!

Looks okay in that last video, fix those tanks and you’re in better shape there I think. Does look far better in video than screenshots so well done.

It would be easier to form a proper opinion if you didn’t have different coloured light sources, something that never really made any sense to me in freelancer if I’m honest, but each to their own as it’s purely an artistic choice. If it were made per system, gas cloud, or purely dynamic effects like gas jets, station lights, laser beams etc I’d get it, but it doesn’t work well for my eyes when adjacent surfaces of the same station are lit in sharply contrasting colours.

It’s as sizer says.

That colour, the goldy stuff is bleeding like crazy throughout the scene.

Especially the storage tanks, like they’re coated with alien slime or some sh-it They look more plastic than metal, but that’s because the same levels get applied to every object I’d imagine, just like unreal engine 3 always has glossy everything.

I think it’s really great that you all continue to push this game well past its limitations, you’re a determined bunch and I hope the rewards are worth your efforts. I keep visiting just to see what crazy thing will be made possible next.

I think FF said a few years ago that without a complete retexture the dx9 wrapper wouldn’t make much difference to vanilla, beginning to see a lot of sense in that statement now. It’s the same as freespace 2 open, the models and textures are just so old and basic that normal maps don’t really do them any favours.

It’s hard to tell just looking at screen grabs I guess, do you think it’s a real improvement when you’re playing Schmack? Does your mod have plenty of custom models with better textures?

Fair play that’s looking mighty good for a 13 year old game, you wouldn’t know it at all. Nice Hud.

So will using enb dx9 converter solve the problem?