Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:50 am
Freeworlds 1.66 Development
Just a nice little note to let people know how the development of Freeworld's 1.66 Multiplayer Total Conversion mod is coming along:
As it stands at the moment, the following changes are going into the mod and are heavily in progress:
Approximately 200 Star Wars Ships (over twice the number of ships in 1.65): Recently we have had a flood of talented modellers producing a large quantity of very nicely built ships. The final cut off date for new ships to the mod is a couple of days away now and the massive task of testing all of these ships and getting them balanced is well under way. Each ship has their own resized sur file that is as close as Burnout can make it without a custom sur file maker.
Ship rescaling: One of the complaints about previous Freeworlds is the scale has been off between ships (especially larger ships like the ISD's compared to other vessels). Extensive research has been conducted into official Star Wars scales and the ships rescaled to one another so they are the correct size to one another. This does however make the Eclipse Super Star Destroyer (12k length) absoloutely enormous; it has to be seen to be believed!
New Systems: Five new systems have been added to the mod bringing the total number of systems upto sixteen. People have queried in the past about the number of systems in the mod, but the mod development team are sticking to a 5 systems per version expansion rule for three reasons: a) smaller numbers of systems mean more interaction between players, b) more attention is paid to each system, making each a unique system and c) more attention is paid during testing in ironing out the bugs and errors. The five new systems in 1.66 include Naboo, Yavin, Alderaan, Beshqek and Mandalore.
All Freelancer Stations removed from the game: A Modular Station project has been used on Freeworld's 1.66, totally replacing all original Freelancer space stations with new designs. The modular part of this project has also enabled us to A) resize sur files to fit space stations cleanly and
make each and every space station unique, no two space stations are alike in 1.66.
Mild Aestetic changes: Some minor changes have also been in the systems, for example, we are currently deciding on whether we like the new maw colour or not, along with the addition of a couple of new stations in existing systems, more defence platforms in orbit of important worlds like Coruscant and ISD's in orbit of Bastion etc...
Capital Ships: After much debate about whether to include Capital Ships or not in 1.66 due to the issues with lag, we have decided to finally allow more player flyable capital ships. These will still be limited however on the main Freeworld's server, but it will enable more players to get behind the controls of these now correctly scaled behemoths.
Weapon Systems Rework: Several modifications have been made to the weapons systems for 1.66. One example of a new weapon system is that some capital ships will be able to launch fighters to make kamikaze runs against you.
New Factions: All the factions in Freeworlds previousily replaced the Freelancer factions with Star Wars Factions (such the New Republic and the Empire). 1.66 however see's the addition a few new Star Wars factions whom you might run into, including the Naboo, the Mandalorians and the Death Watch.
PvP Duelling arena: In addition to the normal systems, there is an isolated PvP duelling area in Freeworlds 1.66. This system is cut off from the rest of the systems and has 70 bases selling every single ship in the game. Though currently being used in the tests as the ship testing area, this system will enable admins to move players to this area if all they want to do is play with the new ships and challenge one another fights without taking part in the roleplay that is encouraged throughout the rest of the server.
We fixed the map! - There is no longer that annoying spelling error of 'Unkown systems,' on the galaxy map.
phew... and as if that wasn't enough....
Still to come before release:
A complete rework of the Freeworlds economy to include the new systems and many more new commodities.
New Base NPC's: Now I've learnt how to alter the Base NPC's (the first of which, a female Twi'lek, is now included in the test version), several new Star Wars races will be added to bars to accompany the various Storm Trooper and Mandalorian Warriors that previous Freeworld's Developers had already built.
New Cockpit designs: A couple of new cockpit designs and Capital Ship bridges will be added to the mod to go beside the custom designs already in the mod.
Easter Egg's and Gimmicks: Can't tell you about the Easter Egg's (top secret stuff that is), but there will also be a couple of Gimmicks in there, like flyable Mandalorian Warriors (just a man in his armour with a zero-G jet pack on his back) and Astromech Droids.
Interface Change: Nothing cement yet on this one, but we are looking into further modifying and customising the already unique look interface that Freeworld's possesses.
Anyway, enough talk for now, I guess it is time for me to go and do some more coding to try and get this ready for release at some stage.
More info available at http:\\www.freeworldsmod.com
Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station
'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'
As it stands at the moment, the following changes are going into the mod and are heavily in progress:
Approximately 200 Star Wars Ships (over twice the number of ships in 1.65): Recently we have had a flood of talented modellers producing a large quantity of very nicely built ships. The final cut off date for new ships to the mod is a couple of days away now and the massive task of testing all of these ships and getting them balanced is well under way. Each ship has their own resized sur file that is as close as Burnout can make it without a custom sur file maker.
Ship rescaling: One of the complaints about previous Freeworlds is the scale has been off between ships (especially larger ships like the ISD's compared to other vessels). Extensive research has been conducted into official Star Wars scales and the ships rescaled to one another so they are the correct size to one another. This does however make the Eclipse Super Star Destroyer (12k length) absoloutely enormous; it has to be seen to be believed!
New Systems: Five new systems have been added to the mod bringing the total number of systems upto sixteen. People have queried in the past about the number of systems in the mod, but the mod development team are sticking to a 5 systems per version expansion rule for three reasons: a) smaller numbers of systems mean more interaction between players, b) more attention is paid to each system, making each a unique system and c) more attention is paid during testing in ironing out the bugs and errors. The five new systems in 1.66 include Naboo, Yavin, Alderaan, Beshqek and Mandalore.
All Freelancer Stations removed from the game: A Modular Station project has been used on Freeworld's 1.66, totally replacing all original Freelancer space stations with new designs. The modular part of this project has also enabled us to A) resize sur files to fit space stations cleanly and
make each and every space station unique, no two space stations are alike in 1.66.
Mild Aestetic changes: Some minor changes have also been in the systems, for example, we are currently deciding on whether we like the new maw colour or not, along with the addition of a couple of new stations in existing systems, more defence platforms in orbit of important worlds like Coruscant and ISD's in orbit of Bastion etc...
Capital Ships: After much debate about whether to include Capital Ships or not in 1.66 due to the issues with lag, we have decided to finally allow more player flyable capital ships. These will still be limited however on the main Freeworld's server, but it will enable more players to get behind the controls of these now correctly scaled behemoths.
Weapon Systems Rework: Several modifications have been made to the weapons systems for 1.66. One example of a new weapon system is that some capital ships will be able to launch fighters to make kamikaze runs against you.
New Factions: All the factions in Freeworlds previousily replaced the Freelancer factions with Star Wars Factions (such the New Republic and the Empire). 1.66 however see's the addition a few new Star Wars factions whom you might run into, including the Naboo, the Mandalorians and the Death Watch.
PvP Duelling arena: In addition to the normal systems, there is an isolated PvP duelling area in Freeworlds 1.66. This system is cut off from the rest of the systems and has 70 bases selling every single ship in the game. Though currently being used in the tests as the ship testing area, this system will enable admins to move players to this area if all they want to do is play with the new ships and challenge one another fights without taking part in the roleplay that is encouraged throughout the rest of the server.
We fixed the map! - There is no longer that annoying spelling error of 'Unkown systems,' on the galaxy map.
phew... and as if that wasn't enough....
Still to come before release:
A complete rework of the Freeworlds economy to include the new systems and many more new commodities.
New Base NPC's: Now I've learnt how to alter the Base NPC's (the first of which, a female Twi'lek, is now included in the test version), several new Star Wars races will be added to bars to accompany the various Storm Trooper and Mandalorian Warriors that previous Freeworld's Developers had already built.
New Cockpit designs: A couple of new cockpit designs and Capital Ship bridges will be added to the mod to go beside the custom designs already in the mod.
Easter Egg's and Gimmicks: Can't tell you about the Easter Egg's (top secret stuff that is), but there will also be a couple of Gimmicks in there, like flyable Mandalorian Warriors (just a man in his armour with a zero-G jet pack on his back) and Astromech Droids.
Interface Change: Nothing cement yet on this one, but we are looking into further modifying and customising the already unique look interface that Freeworld's possesses.
Anyway, enough talk for now, I guess it is time for me to go and do some more coding to try and get this ready for release at some stage.
More info available at http:\\www.freeworldsmod.com
Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station
'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'
every tried to open ure bottle of bud with ure lightsaber??