Frist off. The reason why people mod is to make the game more interesting in their own view. You get to see many other ideas from people around the world. It also boost the amount of people who play the game and makes the game last longer then what it would without mods.
Like myself, a lot of people like to work alone becuase they enjoy working on everything in the game of freelancer. Ships, Maps, Addons, Weapons etc.
Now not to sound rude. But I've never played TNG, I've heard good things from it. If your wanting to make the mod better, then go out and test it and give your feedback to the maker of the mod. Tell him if there is any bugs. That always helps modders when someone gives their feedback.
If you can mod, ask the guy if he needs any help with anything. Alot of modders are looking for ideas and help.
Me? Well I am looking for ideas for systems from people, becuase I tend to make systems dull from time to time becuase of the lack of ideas, but I sometimes come out with a great maps to make.
So ask around and see if you can help.

Opps forgot your other part.
It depends on what your going to do. To add ships into ini. files, not scripts, it sometimes takes me 2 hours to make everything. (Add info cards, add the ship data, add it to the goods, test it, change it and fix it up and then prepare it into the base or planet you want it to be.)
I watch T.V while I mod in my free time so it takes me about that much time.
Now weapons are the easyest things to add in the world. lmao
I remember when I frist looked at the weapons file, I freaked out becuase it all looked like it was going to take days to make.
But it is just plain fun to mod, I use to play mods and see all the ideas and thought to myself, "Dang I wish I could so that.". I found lancersreactor and my wish came true.
But info cards are a pain to learn how to do at frist
But it is a very nice hobby to do for fun.

About people making their OWN mods, its because not all mods are good for everything. I personally am making a Halo mod, and its so different from any other mod out there we could not use ANY of them. We change the entire focus of gameplay for gods sake! Additionally, all mods are the intellectual property of their creator(s) and as such you can only use them for your own mod if you get their permission and give them credit. If you want to improve a mod, join the mod team. If you can't mod, but have ideas to contribute, E-mail the contributer.

I'm open for more mod team members *hint hint hint*


FL:CE Mod Team Leader

Ok thanx for ur reply...i see my english is very bad.
I understand ur point, i just asked why so much people try to build an own mod...like we have millions of unfinished mods in the end cause everyone is talented in somethin else...u know? And the TNG mod wont be finished because one of the starfyre guys "Reynen" (who did a great job with the mod...i mean TNG really rocks) has very heavy private problems. At least thats what the news on starfyre page tell, i guess he´s quite very busy with fixin his private problems and thats why the mod wont be finished.Well if i could mod...i would mod TNG and send my adds to starfyre and ask them if it´s ok to make it available for everybody. And i really understand ur thing with ur thoughts u had when u looked in weapon files the first time, i had same...at least i gave up cause i havent got the time to get familliar with those things and if i ever will, Freelancer 5 will be out. I mean i just have no clue with mod things...But i think more people should build groups and make mods together cause then the chance of buildin somethin great...umm...is higher. (god...my old english teacher would kill me for this text...)
However i would like to see people workin on TNG mod cause it´s a great mod with just a few bugs and a few lil changes and maybe adds would make it sort of perfect...not perfect enough for modders i guess, but for me as a player..hehe.
Mörser out

Left to themselfes, things tend to go from Bad to Worse...

Maybe i should say that my post was No Offense! I just...umm...think players should bring ideas together so that we can improve the good work and stuff like that...? And what if the mod ...ahm... maker...the modder...the one who made it (lol)...is not available and/or cant finish it?
Mörser out *a lil unsure if people understand*
btw...nice site Blackhole...i like the shipmodels

Edited by - [ChaosMörser on 9/23/2005 3:38:28 PM

Edited by - [ChaosMörser on 9/23/2005 3:41:01 PM

Well... it's not like I'm not often sorely tempted to go into other people's mods and re-balance them so that their game-balance doesn't suck. But I don't, for three reasons:

1. A mod is a work of art. I wouldn't re-interpret another person's art without their specific permission, unless they said very specifically that they didn't care whether other people used their work. I know how much work it takes to make a mod- I've done plenty of them And I'd be pretty peeved if somebody treated my work with disrespect, so I'm very wary about the idea of going around "fixing" other people's work.

2. Most fans of the mod would probably not like it if I put my biases into a mod whose gameplay they like already, even if that gameplay has horrible, obvious flaws in terms of game balance.

Every game designer, even very good ones, has biases that influence their games. For example, I am very heavily biased towards skill-based play- iow, players of my games who aren't very good at flying and fighting (which are, let's be real here, the main activities of FL)... generally find my mods too hard, even though I go out of my way to make sure that the AI doesn't get any unfair advantages. For the Toolkit Mod, I've been very gently tuning everything to provide appropriate levels of challenge- "appropriate" ranging from "very easy even for people who've just started playing FL" for the first Mission to "wow, that's really hard even though the AI isn't cheating" for the last ones.

Some game designers are big fans of "gadgets" that alter gameplay (Epsilon springs to mind). Some are concerned with creating a gameworld that feels very internally-consistant (Free Worlds and TIE Universe are probably the best examples) and some game designers like secrets, hidden things, and little jokes (Monkey Universe springs to mind).

I've helped various mod developers with their game balance, and written reviews of various major mods, but in the end... everybody likes different things. There is no standard of "good" in gameplay, at the high end of design- which is why games as diverse as Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike, which are both First Person Shooters where human-shaped 3D avatars attempt to score points by killing each other with various weapons and accomplishing various objectives... can be considered to be "good" games. Or not. It's really just a matter of taste, in the end.

That said... game balance is much more of a science. All computer games can, at the end of the day, be broken down mathematically. Math doesn't substitute for reasoning, but it does supplement it, and it can quickly show a designer where a given area of a design is badly flawed.

It's pretty obvious that a multiplayer game about flying around in spacecraft and blowing each other and AI-controlled spacecraft is broken... when everybody who's serious and competitive flies the same ship and uses the same weapons mix, for example. "Vanilla" Freelancer is not quite that broken in MP, but it's close. Solving those sorts of problems is pretty difficult, but it can be done, and many mods have come up with a variety of solutions that work pretty well.

3. Last but not least... a big mod like WTS... is tens of thousands of lines of code. Ok, so it's INI code, not something really complicated, but it's still one heck of a lot of code to go through.

And, when it comes down to it.... there are very few people who know enough about the art and science of game design to fix broken mods properly... and they do not (unfortunately, in my case) have unlimited free time. We all work for free here

hell this sounds like philosofie...
I´m just gettin tired of endless pvp and all the action in the end lies in 4 out of 200 boats. I like atmosphear and stuff...and sure nobody has enough time to spend in playin or moddin, cause if u spend some time...u wanna spend more and more. I just think if more mods would be worked out by many minds "together" (umm...team like...u know?) we would have many very good mods with even less bugs and stuff...but like i saud...just my 2 cents.
Everybody´s free to do whatever he wants...but in the end the most important thing on a Game or a mod is...to guarantee long time fun. I mean just make a mod with about 10 light fighters with power equal to each others, umm...like 10 or more different lookin boats with nearly same power and handlin of each class (Battleship, fighter, heavy fighter, cruiser, super cruiser/battleship...)...i just can tell yer...i come home from work-wanna play freelancer, wachin a star wars movie-wanna play freelancer, read critics about other space games-wanna play freelancer, even sometimes on work...a lil time to spend-wanna play freelancer.
I believe that people think of mods like...a beautyful thing...look, it´s breathin ...
It´s a kind of art...and i as a player really like to become part of that everchangin life in this art...
Mörser out




Left to themselfes, things tend to go from Bad to Worse...

---

I personally am making a Halo mod

---

Forgot that was still going on (I was one of the guys who started it). How close are you to release?

Well.... Not very, i'm afraid. We are making progress, however, most of the progress is in planning. We have been gathering huge amounts of information. The first PUBLIC release is still a ways off, however, soon we will be releasing a special alpha to our forum members for testing.

FL:CE Mod Team Leader

Edited by - Blackhole2001 on 9/24/2005 1:40:02 PM

Um... well... I guess that what I was trying to say here was that philosophical + practical reasons are why I don't just go around like some wandering digital monk, fixing mods up. If anybody were to pay my bills, get me a butler, and give me authority to willy-nilly recode all of the cruddy mods that get released, I'd probably do so

...lol...Thats a word . Thanx for the reply´s guys.
Anyway, maybe i learn the mod thing someday...
Best regards
Mörser out


Left to themselfes, things tend to go from Bad to Worse...