Outcast, I have some good news/bad news for you.

First off, it turns out that my mod is compatible with Xerx's OpenSP mod, which turns single-player into something that's a lot like multi-player, including getting rid of the missions.

Here's a download link to get this mod... just enable it and my mod, and start up a single-player game.

The bad news is that I've seen a couple of graphical glitches, having to do with the sky, that probably have something to do with the modified common.dll file. I've flown around and taken a few missions, so I know that stuff works, but it's not quite as pretty as the multiplayer experience. Still, it works

brilliant!

thanks alot argh!

i dont care about graphics, i run FL in lowest graphics mode as my comp is slow. i get loads of glitces, like white triangles in asteroid fields, white bands in space.

im gonna try it now

I've tested it a bit more, and found several other things aren't working right, mainly having to do with Zones and other arcana. I've already written to Chips about the graphical glitches, and I'll get back to him about this, and see if a "purer" version of OpenSP could be made. I'm sorry, but that is really beyond my skill- I'm going to be hard-pressed enough to write custom Infocards and the like

ok after testing it i'd like to point out a few things

1. You can go thru the sea.

2. Without tradelanes it takes ages to get anywhere.

3. You constantly have to hold down the thrust key to go anywhere.

4. As you said, the sky is a bit glitchy.

5. No Plane NPCs as of yet.

Ok, here's a reply:

1. The Ocean not working ONLY happens when I have OpenSP installed. It works just fine in multiplayer. Really. I'll try to figure it out, but the good news is that even if I don't... in the next Alpha, I've put a Death_zone beneath the Ocean and high in the sky (to improve game performance and prevent the AI from doing some odd things), and it works perfectly, both on players and the AI, hehe.

2. Tradelanes will stay out. Eventually, it won't feel so utterly empty, and I'll make bases closer together (I'm planning for them to be 25K apart, on average).

3. Holding down the thruster button is the price that the mod paid for nerfing Cruise.

I thought about just giving ships a higher rate of speed (with the same slow acceleration curve) and then removing Thrusters (so players would use Accelerate, Decelerate, and Reverse Thrust to change their speed, but not Thrusters), but I think I like the current solution better. I prefer the way that the current setup gives me control in battle.

4. I'm hoping that the next Alpha will feature a fixed sky in OpenSP, but we'll see. SP is not a priority, but I'll do my best.

5. When you take a mission against the Rogues, you don't see Rogue aircraft? Let me know if that's not working, I didn't test it

Oh, and final note: with a top speed of 433, the default fighter is actually a lot faster than the original game's Cruise. If you haven't already done so, I strongly suggest looking up StoneD's tutorial on how to hack the no-cd version of the Freelancer exe so that you can see the true speeds of things. Don't ask me where you can get a no-cd version of the EXE, because I won't tell you, for obvious reasons...

wait i forgot the most important one! (stupid me)

when i take a mission, i get to the waypoint and the enemies spawn about 30,000k away almost straight up. yes 30 thousand k.

hey, thats 30 million metres, or 30 hectometres or 3 megameters

i know 433 is alot faster, but NY is one of the biggest system, with 70k between stations.....

Edited by - Outcast 1-1 on 11/12/2004 12:26:49 PM

1. Don't worry, I'll shorten the distance between stations. Really It'll get done as I head into Alpha 3. Right now, I"m mainly worrying about spawning behaviors of ships/hovertanks, and replacing a few models to get my beliefs about how things are working to reflect reality

2. 30K?????? Hmm. I'm going to fire up the third Alpha right now and see if that happens in Multiplayer (I have NOT touched the paid-mission variables, as this goes well beyond what I understand how to do), and see if I can replicate that bug. I suspect that it has something to do with OpenSP. I haven't heard back from Chips, so I'm going to ask on the main Editing Forums about this. Sorry that such an ugly bug is occuring... I'll do what I can, given that there aren't any servers for you to play on.

Some very exciting news here: I have gotten a custom cockpit working, finally, after being in Modder Hell for nearly 4 hours here... so players will have crosshairs on their screens, as an aid to aiming. Check it out:

not 30k. 30 thousand k.

Erm, sorry. I wasn't thinking kilometers, I was using the k as a symbol for thousands. That may just be an American thing. At any rate, no word yet... I'm going to test Alpha 3 with OpenSP here in about 30 minutes and see if this is still happening. If it's not, I'll put up a new version of Alpha 2 (let's call it Alpha 2.5) for you to download and playtest. Thanks for your willingness to serve as ad-hoc guinea pig

....comes back after some beta-testing and RL things....

Basically, while my new version is very sweet for MP, OpenSP still doesn't work right, period. The Mission spawn-distance problems you were talking about are still occuring, random Encounters aren't working at ALL, and basically, this just isn't working right.

I've tried to back-hack the mod to the point of working with SP again... but after an hour's worth of work and failed experiments, I don't think I'm getting anywhere worth going. So, unfortunately, unless somebody with deeper knowledge of FL modding than I is willing to take a look at these issues... I'm afraid SP is right out. Very sorry to have to report this, but I've just made too many radical changes to the way that the game engine is doing things. I even tried replacing the Li01 system with a stock version, deleting the MISSIONS directory (where I have a ton of custom stuff) and other things... it didn't work, period. Very disappointing, but not totally unexpected... when you do really groundbreaking work on a mod and aim it at MP, then you're bound to break things, and I did

so i'll have to wait until somebody starts a test server. damn.

If you make it your mission to find a server operator who'll put up Alpha and Beta builds of the mod, I'll mention you in the game's credits

Really, it's to nobody's advantage that there isn't somewhere to play this online. But let me get Alpha 3 working to my satisfaction before worrying too much about it. Alpha 3 will have most of the most important features/concepts working, so it'll be a base on which to build the content. Alpha 2 looks very crude, comparatively speaking, and it's what, a week old? Still, I've learned and done a lot in a week