Cool thing Argh!

I like the idea of different thruster colors for different factions. Would be a good addition for my mod (also have the Nomad Thruster and a Robot Thruster).

Keep going on like this! Your recent ideas are great

Black Eagle

Hey Argh, do you have a job or what?? When do you find time to do all this research??

Job? *scoff* Who needs a job??
He's Argh - he is leet. Simply put.

Ha, no, but in all seriousness, Argh, very nice work lately, researching and testing so many things. I've not had the time to mod too much because of all my finals in hte past few weeks, but I'm planning a mod for the summer. I know I've seen and learned a lot of stuff from your informative posts. I've racked quite a few ideas that were inspired by a post you made or something you mentioned while explaining something else.
So thanks for that You're the type of modder that helps keep TLR going.

Ro9ue
_________________________________
"Do or do not. There is no try."
- Jedi Master Yoda

Really, I just find these things as I stumble along. I don't work fast, but I work on mods just about every day- making games is my hobby- just visit my website to see some of my other work from years past. Tricks are just learned as I go. For example, I had to invest about 4 hours to get the basics of THNs, and that with generous help and explanations from Aldebaran. The Thruster trick was learned while I was incorporating the Nomad ships into my XML Toolkit Mod as part of the next release. I've been adding a couple of ships from the original game every night, and figuring out the Nomad stuff was part of the work. I'd worked with weird Thruster variants before as part of building Warriors of the Sky (B2 will be released when certain technical means are perfected), so re-exploring this territory- in short, re-learning what I'd done to solve problems with that design- gave me new ideas.

But I have a life and stuff. Not that that's really anybody's business but my own.

I make my discoveries as I go along, and I don't think I'm more "leet" than any of the experienced modders out there- actually, I know less than many of them do about FL. What's different is that I tend to share and explain, because when I got started modding here, there were soooooo many things that people had already done (like custom weapon models and cockpits) and the people who did these things didn't bother documenting their procedures or explaining why they'd done things the way they had. I found this ... irritating... and vowed that I would repay everybody who'd helped me and the future members by writing things down.

As I have experience writing documentation both professionally and as a hobby, it seemed natural to extend this to everybody else- that's why a Forum like this is for, right? I mean, if I'm going to bother documenting a procedure for myself (which I do frequently- my memory isn't godlike by any means) I might as well post it, and preserve it (at least insofar as information here is preserved, which given the nature of the Web means that it's probably pretty iphemeral, unfortunately).

As for my "cool ideas"... I dunno what to tell people about that. Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) once said, "People always ask me where I get my ideas. My response to that is, 'if you don't have any ideas, you must be dead'". He was stating a basic fact- we all have ideas . Some of us can realize those ideas... some of us can't. Some ideas are great... some aren't.

I'd never have tackled Free Worlds, for example- while I have great respect for the Star Wars universe, and really enjoyed the LucasArts games, I have an inherent bias against using other people's ideas in my game designs. It's not that Free Worlds is bad mind you- it's just not what I do. As a consequence, my projects are often less popular than others' work, but I'm not building things for the glory... I'm building the games I actually would like to play, as opposed to what I bought.

FL modding was my choice 7.5 months ago because I was unhappy with the way that it was built in many respects (I have spouted off about this topic at length elsewhere), but I liked the overall quality and feel... and it had a fully-functional modding scene. I am not a good low-level hacker, so I don't mod things that require intimate relationships with hex-editors... that's waaaay too much like work It's too bad that most games don't have communities like this, and that developers/publishers frequently abandon their products after release. DA got very, very lucky with TLR.

I just look at things and take them apart, and try to visualize all of the possibilities inherent in a given structural componant in a game engine- I write things and see what makes the code break, and often that leads to new insights and surprises. It's an old habit that I picked up long ago- I learned very early on that most game designers, even the brilliant ones, tend to really miss out on the full implications of what they build. Some of this is stuff that never got developed fully, some of it is stuff that looked cool but they couldn't get working properly (like FL's audio issues with multi-fire guns, which is solvable with gentle massage of the audio INIs), and some of it's just the fact that a very large codebase for a modern game is being worked on by so many people at so many places that they just can't see the forest. I suspect that the lead designers of this game are probably very pleased that so much has been done with the game engine, and if they bother reading these posts (which I doubt very much) they're probably just as surprised as we are when somebody discovers something weird that can be done with their code.

But the Thruster thing definately wouldn't have surprised them. I'm sure that other mods have customized Thruster flames in them already, but the designers didn't bother telling anybody. It's quite clear, though, that DA intended for custom Thrusters to be in the game at one point, though... and then took them all out of the game (while leaving enough of their remains behind for me to find). If you go a-hunting in the Audio files, you will find intriguing references to a lot of things that weren't in the game at release, including some things that may even still be in the code (like, for example, Random Missions where you escort ships). Audio's a mess- but just like the convoluted model structures of the capships (where you can almost hear somebody calling out new LOD specifications because a milestone review has set back release by another 6 months)... it's an interesting mess, because we can actually see some of the development process.

Most games do not contain this much material that is never seen in the game. We modders got extremely lucky with FL- MS's QA dept. apparantly decided that since the gold build was stable and ready for release, that they'd just get it out the door (either that, or DA decided to leave this stuff in to help modders solve the initial puzzles... but I don't get the impression they were thinking that far ahead, given how many times this game was nearly cancelled).

I just wish that they and MS had done a better job of supporting modders from the get-go- think how much farther we'd already be, if they'd just sent a simple email to us about the structure of SUR files, etc.... but that's a soapbox I've shouted from before, so let's move on

I'm not really doing much that's new , in the final analyses- I'm just standing on other people's work... and from that height, you can sometimes notice things you couldn't see from ground level

Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh, quit looking over my shoulders while I am working. lol
Finally someone else who enjoys 'tinkering' and who is not afraid of those dehabiliting phrases that some forum members use,"it can't be done", "it's impossible", "you need the source code for that" etc., etc.

Contrary to many beliefs, there is a lot more that can be done to enhance the
FreeLancer experience through modding. You are helping to lead the way, Argh.
Bon voyage.

Note Bene:

Oh by the way, I have done the thruster thing in my mod for the Sabre.
I have also created "warp holes"-and one 'transporter\teleport hole, am now creating new 'jump_effects and trying to get the Black Hole- that I placed in a new system,-to work-like a BlackHole.
I'm always ready to share the info, re above, with other modders.
Sorry, but I did expect people playing the "Webrunner Mod" to ask how things like the above were accomplished. To date no-one has. So, I was wrong.

Edited by - falcon 2 on 5/13/2005 3:35:12 PM

Edited by - falcon 2 on 5/13/2005 6:36:49 PM

hi, I've been messing with these too and i have found that if you use trail instead of fire you get a better effect

regards

Buck Rogers
Server Admin
Colours Elite UK
www.colourselite.co.uk

What? a black hole is suppose to work like Me?

What will it do? Suck the enthusiasm out of the players?

hey Falcon, I would be very interested in what effects you have created for your black hole, I have one in my mod and all it does is sit there and look pretty, unless you approach it of course. It would be nice if it could do something more meaningful.

Buck Rogers
Server Admin
Colours Elite UK
www.colourselite.co.uk