***The Test Server is now DOWN*** as of 7:26 AM CST. It will remain DOWN until further notice. Sorry to be vague about it, but I need to go to work, and then sleep, and then review what's in store for Alpha 4. Some good stuff, some bad.

Everybody... I now know for certain what's screwing up SP. The big problem? It's the SUR file used by the Ocean. Even with "Phantom_physics = true" enabled, nothing will spawn, and Missions are all screwed up. Dunno why it works perfectly in MP but not SP, but it's the cause. Anton's done his level best to help me with this, but to no avail...

I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about it. I've tried the following:

1. Other SUR files. If I use small ones, then everything works, but the Ocean will only draw if it's center is on the screen

2. Using Nebulas instead of a CMP file. Framerate drops are unacceptable, even on my rig, and they never, ever draw quite right, no matter what I do.

So, I have one last experiment to try... if it works, it'll result in lower game performance... and a few visual flaws here and there, probably. If it doesn't work... well, nothing lost and nothing gained. I'm trying my very hardest to get SP working for y'all...





Alpha 3 is now ready for consumption, after a week's solid work on code, content and technical issues. Special thanks goes to Anton for his work on FLModel Tool, which has made the current iteration of this mod possible, as well as to everybody who's chimed in with bug reports and feature requests.

Click here to download the new Alpha
...and click here if you liked how hard the AI was in Alpha 2 (note: this requires replacing the files in the main mod with these ones with the same names)

New featurelist:

1. Ships are now enabled, and you can buy them at NY, NY. Ship Encounters are also enabled, but they're not very exciting (yet). You can duel Junkers if you wish... I don't recommend it, but you can do it

2. There are now shipdealers at every location. WARNING- the shipdealer at Rochester is currently causing CTD every time it's opened. I haven't resolved this issue as of release.

3. There are 3 new things to drive around- the CSV transport ship, the Pirate Freighter (which is a heavily-armed and armored warthog of a vessel, although it's a little on the slow side), and the Police Fighter, which is an elegant swift aircraft that boasts just two guns... but they hardly ever overheat, even with Liberty Justice Mk. 3s. It represents a "compromise class" of fighter, that has inherent advantages that outweigh its relative lack of raw firepower. A ship of finesse, not force, but very dangerous (as well as attractive).

4. The AI has been rebalanced a bit, to make it less utterly intimidating. It will hit you less often, but when it does, you will feel some pain.

5. The Li_Freighter has been rebalanced- it was a little too powerful, and its HP have been lowered to 10,000 from 16,000.

6. You can only equip up to 5 Nanos now. It keeps things a little more reasonable in combat, without abandoning FL's surreal premise that people should be able to drink "potions" and magically heal themselves.

7. NY, NY has been replaced with a "dockable island". Please... bear in mind that this is an "Alpha island", and its behavior is a little erratic... for example, flying too close to it can result in sudden death from invisible parts of its SUR file... you've been warned...

8. The cockpits have been all replaced with my nifty crosshair, which makes aiming much easier.

9. Finally, the water is will stop bullets, but won't stop you. Flying lower than 5 meters below the water is bad for your health, though... This was done to resolve some very complex issues related to the spawning of objects in the game, and I'm afraid that there will always be a "slightly underwater but not dead" area in the ocean... but as players can still see you (the engine renders ships last)... you can't hide there like a llama, so I don't care

Disclaimer
==========
This is an ALPHA mod. And no, "Alpha" is not a bad sitcom from the 1980's, it's a state when normally a game is so buggy and ugly that nobody gets to see it unless they're paying for it and want to know why the milestone is late

Normally, I wouldn't release an Alpha, but it's fun, and I think that the FL community might get a kick out of it. This mod is virtually *garanteed* to have bugs that I haven't discovered through blowing stuff up... uh, I mean, "careful beta testing". Please install FL SDK 1.3 *before* activating the mod- it's not garanteed to prevent problems, but hey, it's how I run things here, and I haven't had this mod crash on me in ... oh... about 24 hours. This mod is in *NO WAY* compatible with FL's single-player campaign- I garantee you will insta-crash if you try to start the campaign, because I've messed with virtually everything important in the New York system, including moving planets, removing Trade Lanes, and totally removing all Jump Gates and Jump Holes... among other things.

Screenies:




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