Request and ideer

Sun Aug 28, 2005 6:08 am by Holzbein

Hi there,

i wanna start a mod from scratch this mean i wanna use as less as possible of the original content from freelancer, i read a lot of tutorials but most of the cover the using of allready existing stuff and not the building from scratch of bases, planets, ships, effects, chactermodels, effects .. etc.

at least the most of my problems are based on the fact that its extreamly difficult for a beginner like me to get an overview about the whole ini-system and keep it mind.

it would be fantastic to have completly to the minimum stripped down mod, to learn things by adding one after another instead of altering the masses of existing ini's provided by the SDK, is there mod like this?

at least:

2 systems connectet via a jumphole
2 bases, one in each system
2 warring factions
1tradelane
1 base in one system a planet in the other one
1 wappon&equipment of each kind (gun,missile,turret,truster,powercell,scanner,tractorbeam,?engine?)
1 ship
an example mission at each side
--------------------------------------------------------------
visuals (models,icons and effects):
a selfmade sun
a selfmade planet
a selfmade station
a selfmade dockingring
a selfmade tradeline 'ring'
a selmade charctermodel
a selfmade ship
selfmade wappons & equipmewnt
a selfmade jumphole

(?an in color and design 'alterated' interface?)
--------------------------------------------------------------

complete clean "info-dll's" (just te necessary stuff for this mod)
well commentated ini-files

this mod should just show the possibilities in an examplary way, so noobs like me can easier step behind the system of fl-editing and it would reduce the count of questions like: "how to ad a ship, system, weap, ..."

dont understand me wrong but i get tired of reading topics with intresting headlines (to me) and lean nothing on the 2 given answers, mostly they not realy cover te question at all or they not answered in the way it should be for beginners ...

PS: sorry for my rusty english

Sun Aug 28, 2005 6:19 am by Argh

Please see my mod, Warriors of the Sky, Beta 1, for a good example of how far you can take "stripped down".

Sun Aug 28, 2005 7:50 am by Holzbein

this insn't made from scratch:

[BaseInfo
nickname = BR07_02_Base
start_room = Cityscape
[Room
nickname = Cityscape
file = Universe\Systems\BR07\Bases\Rooms\BR07_02_cityscape.ini
[Room
nickname = Bar
file = Universe\Systems\BR07\Bases\Rooms\BR07_02_bar.ini
[Room
nickname = Trader
file = Universe\Systems\BR07\Bases\Rooms\BR07_02_trader.ini
[Room
nickname = ShipDealer
file = Universe\Systems\BR07\Bases\Rooms\BR07_02_shipdealer.ini
[Room
nickname = Equipment
file = Universe\Systems\BR07\Bases\Rooms\BR07_02_equipment.ini

nice that u used a bretonia systems and bases as 'framework' but what the hack has your mod to do with the original freelancer, no offense but i think noone else than u know how your mod 'works' cause the names u use as names for your objects have nothing to do with your ingamenames ... that makes it realy hard for others to use your mod as a base ...

Sun Aug 28, 2005 8:02 am by Argh

Erm... yes... well, I didn't say it was easy to strip everything down. And, truth be told, WOS was never, ever meant to be "starting place" for anybody else's project. Beta 1 is dirty, nasty code chunks all spliced together with a big roll of binary duct tape- it was a tech demo built on numerous previous tech demos.

I just thought you might want to see how far you can really take things with the game engine. Don't limit your conception of what the FL engine can do.

If it makes you feel any better, I corrected the coding inconsistencies you mentioned in Beta 2, but it hasn't been released yet, because I'm still waiting on getting certain custom SURs done for it. Which requires the assistance of other people- it's been sitting on my HD collecting dust for several months now, which I've been spending working on the XML Toolkit- which is designed for newbies to pick up and use- although it's not aimed at system builders, since most newbies gravitate towards FLE for obvious reasons

And uh... just one last note: there is no Br07 System in the original game- that title was left over from the original setup for Oceania, which I did very sloppily with FLE and then spent ages fixing up by hand

Edited by - Argh on 8/28/2005 9:04:32 AM

Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:34 am by Holzbein

[qoute
dont understand me wrong but i get tired of reading topics with intresting headlines (to me) and learn nothing on the 2 given answers, mostly they not realy cover the question at all or they not answered in the way it should be for beginners ...
[/qoute

yeah it happen again ... -_- :rolleyes:

Mon Aug 29, 2005 1:55 am by Argh

Sorry, I'm not here to spoon-feed you. I guess I could've saved a lot've my time (but left you without anything to go on) by just saying "nope, what you're wanting doesn't exist". Sorry, but there aren't any "one of everything and nothing else" mods in existence.

There are a lot of reasons for that, but mainly it comes down to this: totally removing a lot of the original FL content is very, very difficult. The original Free Worlds team has probably come closest to truly removing everything that was in FL- and I think that Warriors of the Sky is as close as anybody has come to totally re-purposing the game engine. You may not "get" why I showed you that... but that's just a sign that you have a long way to go. Don't fault me for giving you an answer that's difficult to understand- if modding FL that extensively was easy, everybody would do it

You should go get my XML Toolkit 1.2, read through it carefully (it does have a lot of documentation aimed at newbies, written in an easy-to-understand way), to learn how to code XML and INIs... and then study how how build custom Systems. Build a single System, then you're going to need to go into the Mission code and take out all of the System references that refer to the other Systems. Then integrate OpenSP, which will hopefully get rid of issues with Content.dll's control over what files FL is looking for/at when it starts a new SP game. That's... the shortest answer I can give you. Actually achieving your goal is going to be extremely difficult. I wanted a mod like what you're describing some time ago myself, but after looking at the sheer difficulty in achieving the goals... decided that I might as well just live with the problems inherent with leaving FL's core content intact, and working around the problem, not hitting it head on.

Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:41 pm by Bejaymac

Here's a couple of pointers for you:-

1) How big's your mod team (5 or 6 expert freelancer modders to get this project out in about 1 year.

2) How much of your life are you willing to give up to acheive this.

3) The guys like Argh, Chips and Accushot to name 3 are among the top freelancer modders, so if they say that as a noob you have no chance of doing it please believe them. These guys have helped most of us understand how to mod Freelancer, but even with all their experience there is a lot of this game that we still can't mod, which means that a Total Conversion (TC) mod is the best you can hope for.

Rebalance 3.5 Dev. Team
rebalance.blue-ion.net

Mon Aug 29, 2005 8:36 pm by Argh

I should note, for the record, that there are a huge number of things you could get rid of without too many problems:

1. You could get rid of all but 3 Loadouts.

2. You could go to one Shiparch.ini entry.

3. You could get rid of all of the Equipment, aside from an Engine.

4. You could get rid of all but one Dockable Solar. This would require extensive changes to every System, but it's doable.

The difficulty is getting rid of Systems. Mbases and the Missions and the Systems are all tightly integrated with one another. Getting rid of all of them would be a major undertaking- I'm not understating this, trust me

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