**Project** : Tradewars like Modification

Wed Mar 12, 2003 7:18 pm by vovin

I like what I've seen with Freelancer MP thus far. One thing, however, was the incentive built for playing Freelancer MP other than the direct conflict of PvP interactions.

When I first heard of Freelancer I was thinking along the lines of Tradewars (anyone still play this?) and though how cool it would be to actually have player owned planets, with "Citadels", Mine fields, Randomly generated Universes (ala TW & Allegiance), various classes of vessels, "banks" to deposit money, "Corporations" instead of groups, etc,. Basically Tradewars using the Freelancer engine. How many others think the Tradewars would kick but using the Freelancer engine?

Given the apparent editability of this game I imagine creating an application to generate a random Universe is becoming more and more accessible. This is something I plan to look into as I get a better understanding for how the Freelancer universe is glued together.

I imagine Mine Fields and concievably player owned planets are possible. Banks and corporations probably aren't considering the requirement to put these in would be more of application support and not simply .ini editing. We know we can change what ships are purchasable, costs, hard point data, etc,. Heck, as it stands, other than the 3D Hulls we can basically build our own ships. In the future I imagine we'll be able to hack in our own models for ships and new weapons.

Thoughts?

-V

Wed Mar 12, 2003 8:35 pm by Monele

Never heard about Tradewars but it sounds good. Of course, I think anyone has dreamt of having his own planet or station. In any opened game I've played, I've always looked forward having my home. Would it be a little house or a huge planet ^_^

Anyway, I think it's possible in Freelancer, as long as it's not dynamic (at least with INIs). It just needs to be configured as friendly to your faction, and maybe add a few weapon platforms for protection (or anyone would land on it, whatever their allegiance).
Now if it had to be a capturable planet or something, I doubt it'll be possible unless people start modifying the core engine.

Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:38 pm by Sarpedon

I loved Trade Wars, but it would be incredibly difficult to implement many of the things Trade Wars had in Freelancer, such as limited items to buy at stations, fighter defenses of planets, citadels, robbery, bounties, etc.

Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:58 pm by vovin

I agree about implementation. Some of the things about it I think could, such as creating mine fields, random universe creation once we get a better knowledge of it's construction but perhaps most of the things that made TW so much fun may be difficult.

-V

Thu Mar 13, 2003 1:49 am by kaldurak

If you know anything about tradewars, you should recognise my username.

( default PW for the thieves guild )

I agree. the soul reason I got drawn into this game was because of its TW2002 aspect. I can't wait for the mods to come flooding in.

Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:50 am by HumbleHawk

Ohhhh what we lost when we stopped playing Trade Wars. This game had the "Trade Wars" type of appeal to me. It already has many of the great features implemented in its multi-player system. The only thing that it's really lacking is the "Home" feeling. Sure, you can't rob a port, but you can rob a transport. You can play red or blue like in TW, the anubis is a helluva replacement for the ISS

I haven't played TW in probably 5-6 years. Its very unfortunate that people stopped playing text based games like that... then again, how many MBBS's you see still around?

Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:05 am by Robert Olsen

http://www.dtserver.com/cometbbs

If you want to play tradewars again, there's an outlet.

There's a Java Telnet app on that site that will allow you to connect to the BBS via telnet. Personally, I don't play it anymore, I just run the BBS out of nostalgia... Believe it or not, BBS software is still updated, as are some BBS doors...

But I would LOVE to see a TW mod for FreeLancer.

Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:25 am by Lord Valdus

You all know that the company that made/makes Trade Wars still runs a few copies of the game, directly telnet-able, right?
And that you can download a Win32 TW2002 server app and run your own game?

Thu Mar 13, 2003 4:49 am by kaldurak

I still play. there are tw2002 telnet games all over the net.

Someone should make a Interdictor Cruiser mod for FL - not a pilotable one, but a battleship that roams each system, and you can't goto cruise speed when it is within 10,000 metres or something :bigthumb:

Thu Mar 13, 2003 5:58 am by vovin

Humble: That's exactly what crossed my mind. There's incentive in Freelancer as far as trying to become the highest ranked player but there's not a sense of Home and not the same strength of "Rank" that you got in TradeWars.

I'm sitting down right now gathering info on building systems and planets and trying to work out the details of generating random universes. I'd at least like to see some randomness to the Freelancer universe. Hopefully they can work out the details so that a client doesn't need the same .ini files but even if they don't the client could perhaps always use the same seed number to generate the same universe on their end.

Next (or first) would be a way to easily edit the ships in a GUI format, save to .ini.

I can think of a whole slew of useful utilities just based on my TW admin past.

Rob, Lord Valdus, kaldurak
I've run the Tradewars server for Win32 as a service for some time for a few personal close friends. It's great and best of all runs on any win32 system.

-V

Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:25 am by ReVeNaNt

Oh man, talk about nostalgia. I have many fond memories of my pre-internet BBS'ing days. Playing games like Barren Realms Elite, Falcons Eye, Legend of the Red Dragon, Trade Wars. Good ole days. I miss em.

Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:33 am by ReVeNaNt

on that note, anyone know of some BBS's that still run the games i listed below? How cool would it be to start those up again after 7 years layoff. Are there even ANY active BBS's that users play those games on?

Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:41 am by vovin

ReV:
Havent checked (I remember Legend...) but scan google. Perhaps someone ended up making a telnet based front end for them like they did TW.

Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:43 am by Robert Olsen

All of the games you listed, plus a lot more, are on my BBS.

http://www.dtserver.com/cometbbs

Thu Mar 13, 2003 3:11 pm by emo1313

HA! Tradewars kicked... I used to run a multi player TW 2002 Gold BBS some time back... It was much fun... The trade wars universe how ever was much much larger than the FL Universe in excess of 10,000 sectors to travel around in... I dont know if any of you recall, but the one thing I would like to see in FL/Tradewars would be the randomly moving planet...
It was basically a Planet where you could obtain good for super cheap, high level equipment, etc etc... But every night the planet moved to a random sector, the chances of actually locating it by looking for it were very very very slim, however some times you just kinda ran across it and you would be able to make crazy money for a short time...

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