To those that have a problem with SS or TNG
People are accusing us of doing the following, I want to make this clear:
a: Trying to copyright our material.
We can protect what is not created by microsoft. That includes ships, artwork, and anything NON-MS related. I'm not even going to bother with the code anymore, I could give a rats ass.
WE ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES TRYING TO PROTECT OUR WORK, YOU FLAME US FOR TRYING, YET YOU DON'T FLAME OTHER PEOPLE WHO DO THE SAME THING. WHY?
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b: Trying to become a registered company.
WE ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE WENT TO MAKE OURSELVES OFFICIAL, WHY ARE WE THE ONLY ONES GETTING FLAMED FOR DOING SO? I DON'T SEE ANYONE FLAMING ANY OTHERS, EXAMPLE: FROST-WORKS
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c: Changing the version number so it is not useable by the original freelancer.
We did this so that people playing the original game would not use TNG servers and crash horribly. Only those with the correct version of TNG can play on TNG servers. Is that bad?
We are also not the only ones to do this, so if you blame us for this you MUST also blame the others who do this, otherwise IT IS DISCRIMINATION
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d: Selling merchandise and making money off TNG
WE DID NOT EVER SELL ANY MERCHANDISE. That was NOT MY COMPANY that made the merchandise, that was http://www.gamesthing.com/
WE DID NOT RUN THAT COMPANY. WE ALSO NEVER SAW ANY MONEY ON SALES THAT WERE MADE, THAT COMPANY ACTUALLY SHUT DOWN IT'S STORE.
WE DON'T COLLECT ANY DONATIONS AND WE HAVE NEVER RECEIVED ANY MONEY FROM ANYONE FOR TNG.
I am NOT complaining about hosting fees, HOWEVER, it is a important POINT. We ACTUALLY PAY for people to use our mod and don't get any money in return. How many of you other modders have spent $1000+ on hosting fees? If you have, then you know how hard it is to recap funds.
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e: Copying from other mods
I want to make this very clear to certain people who like to twist stuff around for their own gain to make people look bad.
FIRST I would like to point out some history to those that have recently came to lancer and know nothing about the modding history. Also for those who like to jump to conclusions without even bothering to check their facts and making an ass of themselves for making assumptions.
Many of you may not remeber, but REYNENMOD came out in March/April with many of the features you see in other mods today. REYNENMOD was the first major mod for freelancer offering this type of material.
1: Player capital ships (battleships, cruisers, gunboats). I am not saying we were the first to come up with the IDEA (Credit goes to wanderer for the first semi-creation of the liberty battleship) HOWEVER Reynenmod was the first mod to incorperate all house captial ships and make them flyable by players. The rest of the mods copied this idea from reynenmod and I have no problems with that.
2: Ship upgrades - We had the first concept and workable upgrades. REBALANCEMOD (which was based on reynenmod with given permission, later created many others, which in turn were given to TNG to use)
3: Beam weapons - We had the first versions of the Freespace 2 beam style weapons which were requested for capital ships, which extended to player ships weapons.
4: Changing the starting flash page. - The artwork displayed by Spawn was the first of it's kind to be used in a mod.
5: Docking rings for stations for capital ships were also FIRST developed and put into play in REYNENMOD. Later on in TNG, DURIEL created the FIRST METHOD where CAPITAL SHIPS COULD DOCK WITHOUT THE HELP OF DOCKING RINGS WHILE MAINTAINING THE DOCKING CINEMATICS. This was not possible before this came about.
6: Later on in TNG, BOBTHEDOG created the first change to the intro cinematics that people see. He also added faction based guns (House guns).
THERE WERE NUMBEROUS OTHER THINGS ADDED AND CHANGED AND I WILL BE HAPPY TO PROVIDE THE ORIGINAL REYNENMOD 1.6 FILES.
Now with the devlopment of TNG, many people contributed to it and we gave them credit in the readme. WE WILL NO LONGER GIVE ANY CREDIT TO ANYONE IN THE README SINCE IT SEEMS TO BE A LIABILITY FOR PEOPLE TO CONTRIBUTE TO ANY MOD. (I wish to thank Giskard who made this clear to all of us)
So in the future, do not blame us for not putting any credit toward contributers because apparently the mod makers do not wished to be named in the event of a legal dispute.
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F: Encrypting our code and not sharing our code with anyone
1: Yes we did encrypt our code to prevent people from cheating. Is that a bad thing? People who cheat in SP OFTEN cheat in MP since it is the same cheat.
2: OUR FILES ARE SEPERATE FROM THE FREELANCER FILES CREATED. You can find the stuff for TNG in the TNG folder.
3: ALL other mods that contributed to TNG make it clear that THERE WAS CERTAIN MATERIAL THEY DID NOT WANT COPIED. We respected that.
So why do we get flamed for wanting to keep certain features unique to TNG when others have asked the same thing from the modding community? I don't see anyone flaming giskard for him not letting people use his special systems, nor at michael dan who does not to share certain features in rebalance mod. What about the ships for new universe, they are not going to share those. WHY IS TNG BEING SINGLED OUT?
4: We ARE WILLING TO SHARE what we have created so long as we get credit for it. Certain people have blantly said THEY WILL NOT GIVE US CREDIT AND USE IT ANYWAY. THIS IS THE MAIN REASON WE WANTED TO PROTECT OUR STUFF
5: I have recently found out some people have stolen our models and our claiming then as their own. Here are SOME examples of the models spawn has created himself. (THIS IS NOT A FULL COMPILATION)
Tempest
Hammerhead
Shivan Capship
Ascendent
Bab5 Capship
So in closing: If you have a problem with me personally then lets get it out in the open and deal with it.
Reynen Starfyre
Project Leader: Starfyre Studios
Freelancer: The Next Generation
Edited by - Reynen on 07-10-2003 00:57:30