Wed Feb 26, 2003 9:08 pm
Freelancer Mod Announced
Unamed Freelancer Mod
Concept
Wednesday, February 26th, 2003
==========
Phases:
1. To edit values of all flyable ships for better balance.
2. To allow greater equipment customization.
3. To allow flying of capital ships.
In depth:
1. This will hopefully be easily accomplished once the .ini encryption is broken. Once it is,
all the shield, hull, armor, engine, and other values will be changed for better overall game
balance. For example, Kusari will be fast but weak, Rheinland will be strong but slow, Bretonia
will have huge cargo space but will be slow and have weak weaponry. Liberty will be a mix, a
jack of all trades but master of none, good for doing a little of everything. One specific
change we hope to make is to reduce the superiority of heavy and very heavy fighters. They
should be strong of course, but light fighters generally do not stand a chance against them.
Most civilian and pirate ships will be made weaker, since the military by definition should be
stronger. They will have some advantages, such as increased cargo with better weapons. Other
changes in this part of the mod will possibly be weapons refire/damage ratio. Instead of the
current spray-n-pray, they will be rebalanced to reward accuracy, and have a higher damage
but slower refire. Some weapons will still have high refire because of their nature, however.
2. Originally Freelancer would allow greater customization, such as sensors, radar jammers,
armor, engines, and so on. This was cut due to balancing reasons, but we hope it will be
possible to at allow the parts available to be interchangable onto other ship frames, like
Kusari engines on a Liberty fighter and so on.
3. Not previously a feature of Freelancer, but we hope to allow players to fly various capital
ships. This will be especially good for MP events, such as "Destroy the Battleship" and so on.
We hope to include at least a destroyer, a large transport, and perhaps a battleship. If it turns
out to be impossible to simply add ships, some of the more unused fighters, such as the
Startracker or perhaps others, like replacing ships in Starlancer.
Progress:
The mod is fairly new so very little actual work has been done. Preliminary evaluations of the
game's structure have been done however. Here is what we have learned so far.
1. The primary objective of this phase of the mod is to adjust ship speed and handeling. This
should hopefully turn out fairly easy. The stats of most ships appears to be stored in
encrypted .ini files so once the encryption is broken, these should be easily edited. We may
require beta testers to help us make sure we get the balance just right for public release.
2. This will perhaps be the most difficult part of the mod. We are fairly certain that it will
be possible to allow equipment to be interchangable but this will require changes to the
interface so it is uncertain as to exactly how successful this part of the mod will be. We believe
that most of it is stored in encrypted .ini rather than hardcoded form.
3. Some progress has already been made in this area. It is currently possible to make existing
ships have the same model and texture as capships do (to an extent) but they still retain the
properties of the ship it replaced. Once the .ini encryption has been broken it will be possible
to modify them to "act" like capships, so it should be relatively easy to get functioning capships
in the game. The most difficult part will be mounting them with the right equipment, since capships
have their own special type of weapons that they need.
Information:
The project is broken into three seperate parts: the balance mod, equipment mod, and capship mod. They will
hopefully be usable seperately by themselves, and in conjunction with any of the others.
The project itself is currently in the preliminary phase, which includes studying the game's file structure and
figuring out what is possible and what is not. No release date can be given, since it mostly depends
on how fast the game's formats are broken. For example, we will need access to at least three
different file types that there is currently no way to open. If Digital Anvil decides to release an
SDK development could speed up significantly and perhaps be expanded. If you are interested in
helping development for the mod, please e-mail [email protected] and give some information about
previous projects and experience.
Concept
Wednesday, February 26th, 2003
==========
Phases:
1. To edit values of all flyable ships for better balance.
2. To allow greater equipment customization.
3. To allow flying of capital ships.
In depth:
1. This will hopefully be easily accomplished once the .ini encryption is broken. Once it is,
all the shield, hull, armor, engine, and other values will be changed for better overall game
balance. For example, Kusari will be fast but weak, Rheinland will be strong but slow, Bretonia
will have huge cargo space but will be slow and have weak weaponry. Liberty will be a mix, a
jack of all trades but master of none, good for doing a little of everything. One specific
change we hope to make is to reduce the superiority of heavy and very heavy fighters. They
should be strong of course, but light fighters generally do not stand a chance against them.
Most civilian and pirate ships will be made weaker, since the military by definition should be
stronger. They will have some advantages, such as increased cargo with better weapons. Other
changes in this part of the mod will possibly be weapons refire/damage ratio. Instead of the
current spray-n-pray, they will be rebalanced to reward accuracy, and have a higher damage
but slower refire. Some weapons will still have high refire because of their nature, however.
2. Originally Freelancer would allow greater customization, such as sensors, radar jammers,
armor, engines, and so on. This was cut due to balancing reasons, but we hope it will be
possible to at allow the parts available to be interchangable onto other ship frames, like
Kusari engines on a Liberty fighter and so on.
3. Not previously a feature of Freelancer, but we hope to allow players to fly various capital
ships. This will be especially good for MP events, such as "Destroy the Battleship" and so on.
We hope to include at least a destroyer, a large transport, and perhaps a battleship. If it turns
out to be impossible to simply add ships, some of the more unused fighters, such as the
Startracker or perhaps others, like replacing ships in Starlancer.
Progress:
The mod is fairly new so very little actual work has been done. Preliminary evaluations of the
game's structure have been done however. Here is what we have learned so far.
1. The primary objective of this phase of the mod is to adjust ship speed and handeling. This
should hopefully turn out fairly easy. The stats of most ships appears to be stored in
encrypted .ini files so once the encryption is broken, these should be easily edited. We may
require beta testers to help us make sure we get the balance just right for public release.
2. This will perhaps be the most difficult part of the mod. We are fairly certain that it will
be possible to allow equipment to be interchangable but this will require changes to the
interface so it is uncertain as to exactly how successful this part of the mod will be. We believe
that most of it is stored in encrypted .ini rather than hardcoded form.
3. Some progress has already been made in this area. It is currently possible to make existing
ships have the same model and texture as capships do (to an extent) but they still retain the
properties of the ship it replaced. Once the .ini encryption has been broken it will be possible
to modify them to "act" like capships, so it should be relatively easy to get functioning capships
in the game. The most difficult part will be mounting them with the right equipment, since capships
have their own special type of weapons that they need.
Information:
The project is broken into three seperate parts: the balance mod, equipment mod, and capship mod. They will
hopefully be usable seperately by themselves, and in conjunction with any of the others.
The project itself is currently in the preliminary phase, which includes studying the game's file structure and
figuring out what is possible and what is not. No release date can be given, since it mostly depends
on how fast the game's formats are broken. For example, we will need access to at least three
different file types that there is currently no way to open. If Digital Anvil decides to release an
SDK development could speed up significantly and perhaps be expanded. If you are interested in
helping development for the mod, please e-mail [email protected] and give some information about
previous projects and experience.
