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Privateer The Reckoning OpenSP 1.21 beta 9 Comments & Fe

Here you can find news, get help and comment about the Privateer / Wing Commander Total Conversion called ?Privateer: The Reckoning? and accompanying Mods

Post Mon Aug 09, 2004 9:34 am

rambie:
I'd like to add Cargo missions, just not sure how it can be done.
All of the missions are coded into the main program.
About all than can be changed is factions, and the loot.

Yepper!
Our textures are more detailed, and the models do have higher poly-counts.
But then, again, if you compare our ships to the stock ships, you'll notice that there's more to them.
The smallest ship we have, the Epee, has 4 fins, 2 engines, and then the standard cockpit and fuselage.
And the Tarsus, with all of those tubes, engines, radar dish, etc...
Or the Centurion with 4 engines, 4 fins, bent wingtips, etc.
The Paktahn with it's 4 fins, offset cockpit, etc.
When you get to the Broadsword, with all of it's wings, and things, the poly-counts can't help but go up.
If you do a side-by-side comparison, the stock ships are fairly simple by comparison.

Watch your 6!

Post Mon Aug 09, 2004 5:18 pm

Yes, your models do look great and I understand the higher count. My computer is just a little too old and is barely powerful enough to run the MOD.

Cargo Missions: Dang, I was hoping that most of the coding was in the game, just disabled becuase they hurried the release. Too bad someone doesn't know one of the programmers and have them make a unoffical upgrade to add cargo missions... better yet, get MS to decide on an offical upgrade.

Post Tue Aug 10, 2004 7:25 pm

rambie:
There are a lot of things that they originally planned on placing in the game, but were later pulled.
For example: ECM and on-board Repair robots.
And coding is there to allow you to replace your engines, but they removed the code that allows you to remove the old one.
(There's even a voice message that tells you that you have no engine.)
Juni mentions that she's going to have a tractor beam installed on your ship, in the Ashcroft mission.
They are removable, as are sensors.
(Complete with a voice message warning if they're not there.)

A lot of it was not because they "rushed it out," but because, IMHO, it was to much like Privateer, to begin with.
(To much chance of a lawsuit.)

Watch your 6!

Post Fri Aug 13, 2004 7:29 pm

I was just checking on how you are doing with this mod. Again I enjoy the overall feel of it but a bit buggy to play all the time if you get my drift.

Don't give up my friend as you have done a wonderful thing by bringing us something new to the table to oggle at.

I assume you are working on those things discussed so far in this forum and we will soon see a new version of this release to test and let you know about.

Again good work keep at it winners never quit and quitters never win.



all the news that no one reads

Post Fri Aug 13, 2004 8:31 pm

I have not played Freelancer for months. The only thing that will get me back to playing the game ... this mod. Keep up the good work.


sSsSsSsSsSsSsS

Post Sat Aug 14, 2004 8:38 am

YYYYEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Finally got it to run. It even works with All Pals which IMMHWO makes it even better.
Really enjoy flying around & checking things out & hearing the ole P tunes again.

And as stated before I am not complaining, only pointing out bugs as requested.
Started with a Dralthi. Stats say 3 guns, 4 are mounted. even when changing out #1 still shows Laser.
Landing at Mactan NP but when leaving get CtD. Tried with a mission same situation. Even though not wanting to change ship bought Talon, Medium. Same results.

QUESTION: Has cruise speed been increased? Seems to have been.

Keep Up the AWESOME FANTASTIC Work!!!!!

It is hard to soar with eagles when you fly with turkeys.

Post Sat Aug 14, 2004 9:10 am

Hello guys, I am coming back to the community to finish helping out with graphics.

I am moving to NYC in a couple weeks, and will have some free time to finish doing texture work then.

Otherwise, warzog, everyone, glad to see there is still some life left here. I havent had a chance to download this latest version.. but I will in a couple weeks once I get my own computer put together. Keep working warzog, you are one hell of a great guy to give so much of your time and effort into this.

Post Sat Aug 14, 2004 12:24 pm

Quote Warzog "A lot of it was not because they "rushed it out," but because, IMHO, it was to much like Privateer, to begin with.
(To much chance of a lawsuit.)"

I thought MS purchased the rights to all the Origin games when they bought Origin. If not, it's not the Privateer owners have done anything with the license anyway.

Post Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:48 am

It was my understanding that they had hired Chris Roberts to work on Freelancer, but when they noticed how much like Privateer it was, there was a parting of the ways.
And then MS went through and reworked it to make it less like Privateer than Roberts had made it.

Well, I could be mistaken, but I thought it was Electronic Arts, or Activision that bought what was left of Origin.

It really doesn't matter...
Whoever has the rights, whether they use them, or not, can sue over them.

I tried writing a program based on an ancient board game by Avalon Hill called "Magic Realm."
I mentioned it in a couple of forums, and got a nasty email from Hasbro, who now owns the rights to Avalon Hill's stuff.
Basically, I was told that I could make it for myself, but if I ever released a copy, even for free, they'd sue me.
As I was hoping to eventually make it a multi-player game, that kinda shot that project to death!

Some companies are not so mean.
Others, Like LucasArts, have already sued people.
(Even for doing "Fangames"

Watch your 6!

Edited by - warzog on 8/15/2004 2:56:59 AM

Post Sun Aug 15, 2004 2:53 pm

I knew the rights owner(s) could sue. But it seems like a weak case as Freelancer isn't a direct copy as it doesn't use the original code, story line, etc. Eric Roberts made most/part of Freelancer and his brother Chris made Privateer, and the early Wing Commander games. That would also seem like a weak point to sue over. Then again, IANAL.

Yes, Freelancer would have been similar in that it is a sci-fi based game where you can be a pirate-trader-mercenary but it was developed independently. Plus, it wouldn't be competing with a Privateer property. As Privateer, or Privateer 2, are no longer for sale plus they may not even run on modern computers.

Well, whomever owns the rights, I wish they'd make a new version of Privateer.

Edited by - rambie on 8/16/2004 4:00:04 PM

Post Wed Aug 18, 2004 2:27 am

EA retains the rights to Wing Commander, and has since they purchased Origin when Privateer was being developed. They haven't done anything with it since '98, though. There were a number of planned MMORPGs planned during this time (this was in the heyday of Ultima Online and Everquest), and three seperate projects that each died seperate deaths (Privateer 3, Privateer Online & Wing Commander Online). Origin assigned Andy Hollis to the second one, only to lose him when the project was cancelled.

The only real remnants from this era are the Privateer 3 design document, describing a Freelancer-ish multiplayer game that continued the storyline from WCIV, fitting in between that game and Prophecy, and Privateer Online, a WCP-era MMORPG. The files are sixteen and twenty megs, respectively, and worth every bit of it. Besides actual technical things (like modular ship design, player guilds, ownable space stations, and clan logos), there's all sort of fantastic background drafted up - who knew Origin planned for Privateer Online to have pirate Kilrathi (the "Crimson Fang", or individual pirate clans?.

Incidently, there were also plans for Privateer TV series, which would have tied in both with Wing Commander IV and the second and third Privateer games, creating a multi-media video game series years before such things actually happened.

The story presented by these two documents is fantastic, but also a bit depressing - it illustrates one of the many 'what-ifs' that seem to plague the history of the Wing Commander franchise. Imagine what could have happened if Jerry Pournelle had taken the job to write the Privateer novelization... or Andrew Keith hadn't died, but gone on to write the follow-ups to False Colors.

Edited by - Bob McDob on 8/18/2004 3:44:03 AM

Edited by - Bob McDob on 8/18/2004 3:54:00 AM

Edited by - Bob McDob on 8/18/2004 4:02:20 AM

Post Wed Aug 18, 2004 9:55 pm

I did hear the rumors of Privateer 3, and I'm saddened that it never materialized.

A great series of books is "Night's Dawn Trilogy" series by Peter F. Hamilton. It's a series of 3 books, "The Reality Dysfunction", "The Neutronium Alchemist", and "The Naked God", they are so big that each book is split into two parts each. Well, they are split into two for the paperback editions, I think the hardcovers are one book each.

I also loved the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons, also split into multiple books. Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. Also, though not directly related to Hyperion, his book Ilium was also an excellent read.

Post Wed Aug 18, 2004 10:29 pm

I had Privateer 3 on order for 6 months before it was cancelled.
I tried getting into the Beta testing for Privateer Online, but it was a closed testing.
IIRC, Origin got sold, and both games were cancelled, all around the same time.
I remember rumors that they blamed Chris Roberts for the High Budgets of WCIII & WCIV.
(And of Origins subsequent demise.)

Watch your 6!

Post Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:58 am

Origin wasn't sold, but much of the core people for the Wing Commander/Privateer games left around the same time the Roberts brothers did (back in '96). About half of them went with the Robertses to form what would become Digital Anvil, and the other half joined Warthog, which had developed Privateer 2 and would later do Starlancer.

As for Roberts getting canned because of the later Wing Commander games, that's probably true - WCIV cost $7 million dollars to make, which was a crazy huge sum to spend on video games back in the day. Much of the cost was probably related to the fact that unlike WCIII, which used greenscreens, WCIV used actual sets, and at the speed production moved at the crew didn't have time to consider rewriting the script for budget concerns. Of course, Roberts also did things like build a full-scale mock-up of the Confed shuttle (which only appearsedin one or two scenes), and the game ended up being delayed and released in February '96 rather than Christmas '95 like it was supposed to. In short, it didn't break even.

After WCIV, the remaining WC members did Prophecy and Secret Ops, but by then the big thing wasn't Full Motion Video anymore, it was MMORPG - Secret Ops didn't even feature any FMV sequences. So development started on Privateer Online ... and then, in 2000, Origin cancelled it. No one reason killed it, but it was probably done in by the space-sim market crash, the poor box office performance of the Wing Commander movie and EA's increasing jitteriness at financing games not produced by their creator.

Since then, EA (which dissolved Origin earlier this year and moved the remaining staff to California) has been pretty mum about new additions to the Wing Commander franchise, though Prophecy Advance for the Game Boy Advanced proves they aren't necessarily adverse to limited licensing of Wing Commander. Rumors put Chris Roberts as being in talks with EA over development of a new WC game, (apparently called Genesis and focused on the opening days of the Kilrathi War), but at the moment he's fairly busy with his film career, having produced the Punisher movie and directing a WWI air combat film called American Knight. So even if and when Chris Roberts and Wing Commander get back together, it likely won't be a Privateer game.

Post Thu Aug 19, 2004 4:37 am

I am finally back in the U.S. after spending a whole year abroad in Germany (trying to build a new life there). But because things didnt work out with my job/education I was forced to move back home.

Right now I am sitting at home on a fat new PC I just built:

Amd 64 2800+
GeForce 6800
1Gig ddr400 ram
and other goodies.

I am interested in continuing textures.. what plans have we in store for additional ships to be in the mod? What is the current status of the mod?

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