Realistic scaling

Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:37 am by raycrasher

It always bugs me that objects in FL aren't quite up to scale. I mean, the planets are too tiny, the battleships aren't that imposing, and distance is too compressed (it takes humans about 8 months for a earth-mars trip in reality, while you can go to other systems in less than a minute in the game). What I want to do is to introduce some sort of realistic scaling to... everything!

For example:

HUGE HUGE HUGE!!! planets. If you have played Nexus: The Jupiter Conflict before, you can see that they have no "planet" object, just a huge planet drawn into the starsphere. This way, you can't target the planet directly; you can only target objects orbiting it or the planet's beacon.

Redefine the concept of systems. Instead of the "star in the center, with multiple planets around it" concept, our "system" can be defined as a logical area of space: For example: The Earth Sector has several "systems": Earth Orbit Sector 1, 2 and 3, Earth Lagrange Point 1 and 2 (jump point), etc. We can even have a "city" system, where one enters the planet through a stylized jumpgate (mass driver or orbital elevator) and enters a "system" with a Dyson-sphere like surface with dockable buildings! (Its certainly possible, seeing that the great Argh did it with his WOTS mod...)

A "system" can only have one major object (planetary orbital elevator, bases, gates, points of interest, etc.). For example: a system dedicated only to the Earth Lagrange 1 gate terminal, the Los Angeles City sprawl, or the Saturn C-Ring Alpha mining station complex. (no prob with this)

Warships and bases are HUGE, and have multiple docking points. Large turrets also fire really BIG shells that rip through your shields in one hit. (no prob with this.)

Finally, stellar-sized objects. They will need to be so distant that one cannot reach them, nor target them. I don't know if bright objects can be incorporated into the starsphere...

Heh, big dreams for a starting modder. Any ideas? suggestions?

Final thought: Sirius is a f****** star, not the whole galaxy!

Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:09 am by Cold_Void

combine your efforts with an existing mod project, instead of creating yet another mod lol

mephistophles' Sol mod is probably the closest to what you're looking for- a redesigned universe with each planetary area as a system, and a nice new navmap background too

it is abandonware now - a very ambitious project that's just lacking the details that would make it playable

Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:32 pm by blackhole

Many projects have tried to do that. Its simply time consuming, is what it is, and very annoying when you start hitting the borders of FL's capabilities. It is worth noting that many recent opensource space sims (openlancer, eternity project, aerotech, YASS, FS2 if you count it as opensource, among others) have made a point of making realistic scales. Almost all current commercial games also have realistic scaling as well.

Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:22 pm by Cold_Void

big whoop. wannna fight about it?

OL sucks - oh wait, it doesn't exist. har har dee har

Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:41 pm by raycrasher

Thanks for the input.

Sol mod, you say? If it has been abandoned, can I continue it? (with permission, of course...)

BTW, where/how can I get/create this:

Custom starspheres, or at least very, very big planets (does FL model resizer work?).

A very large "ground" surface, just like the one used as the Dyson Sphere surface. I may use the Dyson Sphere, but is it large enough to fit in the smallest possible system?

Suns that can't be targeted, nor reached (visit=128? very large death zone?)

Creating an Earth-like environment/look for a system (blue sky, shining sun)

Gravity (not required, but it looks wierd when loot on a planet surface just floats in the air)

And... how to erase ALL original systems (without crashing FL Explorer, or FL itself.)

Thanks a bunch!

Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:52 pm by Rankor

you're right about Sirius being a star. (maybe most of use figured that out..heh)

But, In theory..you could always name it something else as in a whole different star system in some other galaxy. Perhaps going even as far as using extended math B symbiology for the language rather than english. (just a suggestion)
When I first started playing Freelancer, I was scared to death of going into the other major house controlled systems simply because I had no clue as to what language they were going to use.
German for Reinland, Spanish for Hispania, Japanese/Chinese for Kusari..etc, etc...
Imagine my relief to find out it was all in english. LOL
But...GADZOOKS...imagine a Freelancer world where all the house languages were in their native tongue and dialects. (Of course with translated subtitles as an option)
An interesting thought would be to "scale" the velocities in a way to give the game that "realistic" long way off feeling. That if you chose to take "free-flight" to the outermost planet or station in a system instead of a tradelane...it would take you months to reach it. (but hell....where's the fun in that??? You'ld be an old man by the time you reached Detroit munitions...and I don't think you'ld still be interested in playing Freelancer any longer by then....LOL)
But, here we are, some 800+ years into the future in Freelancer.
Space travel should be rather "quick" I would think if not for intantaneous "jump" travel.
Expanding an already existing "mini-universe" into additional heights would give it more realism as well as lets say...just relocating this whole ball of wax to another galaxy (renaming things) . Why not just take the future way out there, say 100,000 + years or more.
Ahhhhhhhhh.......the universe of ENDLESS possibilities.

Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:22 pm by FriendlyFire

Freelancer: Combat Evolved already achieves some of those goals. While not exactly having an atmosphere system and multiple orbits, it does use a true to life scale. All things, no matter what, are following the same scaling (1/20th of their true size). This means that everything can be reached, if you want, but they'll be extremely far away. The stars, for example, are so far you'd have to travel for days to reach them. And you'd probably have shaken to death by then anyways...

Of course, we had to scrap some things, like you can't actually reach the Mars area directly, you need to jump to it (Else, the shaking is too high, and the object limit would end up being an issue). But other than that, we have made something that is very true to a real life scaling (Yes, Earth is huge, and Jupiter is just insane).

You can check the mod out by going here.

Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:58 pm by fadius

Our Requiem mod, which is currently in development, is also using larger scal for planet sizes and syetem sizes. However, we wnat people to actuall interact which a mod or universe where it takes you days to get somewhere would not really allow.

I for one am all for realism, but that is the nice part of a game based on the future, your imagination can make things and technologies make travel much faster and easier.

You can check us out Here

Requiem: A Total FL Conversion Mod
http://mod.pff-clan.us

Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:02 pm by lancerlover

oooooh freelancer... you were never finished but you hold so many tantelizing capabilities...animated ships and such. but do you hold the secret of gravity?

Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:43 am by raycrasher

@ faduis:

I checked out your mod, and the ships just look *AMAZING*. Good work!

@ FriendlyFire:

Awesome mod, really awesome. Too bad its built for multiplayer. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I really would like to play FLCE online, except that my FL gaming PC has no net connection (yeah, I know, its crap playing alone). I also dont fancy playing OpenSP - its fun for a couple of hours, after that, it gets quite pointless. Keep up the good work.

Know any good TC SP mods to play out there? If not, well, I guess I'll make my own

Wed Jan 03, 2007 2:41 am by magnet14

But what about the subtitles?

Only thing I've ever heard about them is something about a IDS line.
Has someone used subtitles in a mod?

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