Real life physics set up would be more trouble than worth. There use to be a dinky space craft lunar lander type archade program that would introduce similar physicas. It made it extremly dificult to control. Welcome to TLR.
Sodas are in the frig.

I think I had that lunar lander program. Gave up after constantly crashing.

If sims were realistic, they'd be like a u-boat program I gave up on after spending a couple of hours trying to learn how to sail a real u-boat.

Thank you for the welcome!

Actually, when I said "real physics" I was thinking more along the lines of dummied down inertia. Kind of like what they had in Spacewars (heh, I don't know if anyone will remember that old one ).

I guess it would be similar to having "Kill engine" permanently turned on. You keep going in one direction until you accelerate in the new direction, in the mean time, you can spin in any direction.

That's how ships acted in the Babylon 5 TV series. I loved that show and how things moved in space was one of the reason.

But, now I am playing Freelancer. I love it for what it is.

Any beer in that fridge?

No luck mate its a family site so no beer

"Sorry, friend. All we've got is Liberty ale."

Yuck ... hope American beer is better than it is now.


p.s. Why did you hate Privateer 2? It clearly was misnamed, but it had some fun missions amidst all of the fancy film scenes.

First, to defend "American" Beer. If you're speaking of Budweiser or Miller, you're absolutely correct, it's bat's piss. However, just about every area of the country now has microbreweries making extremely fine beers using best brewing techniques and ingredients. So, puleeze don't limit "American" beers to Coors, Bud, or Miller, they're crap. Try a Samuel Adams, or a New England Breweries India Pale Ale. It'll change your mind quickly about beers brewed in America.

Anyway, back on topic. When I spoke with the developers about using Newtonian phyics, they reminded me of MS's Space Simulator which was a DOS game put out in the early 90's. It used Newtonian physics, and was the damnest hard flight based sim I've ever tried. Extremely frustrating. One of the items was to dock two orbiting capsules in space. It took about 50 tries to finally get it. Yes, it was extremely realistic, but I'm not planning on going on a Shuttle mission anytime soon, so I don't really need the training.
The sole mission of the game engine in FL is to promote gameplay, and not about what's "real" or "not real". The game's made to for the player's enjoyment, not about how accurate the physical universe they created is.

W00t man, FL rocks, it rocked when I just had it (first game of this kind I ever played) and it rocks still (mostly thatnks to some excellent mods tho) and it will continue to rock ten, twenty years from now. I hope somewhere in the future some sentimental gamers, who by then have become gamedevellopers, decide to revive Freelancer and make some sort of FL tribute game.
Ofcourse I'm hoping for something a bit sooner but that's unlikely.

Anyway, Snuffleupagus, take your time with the game and make sure you've tried out everything you can in the original game, before you decide to go online and/or install modifications. You will apreciate the game, and have more fun if you first discover everything yourself.
After that, there are some great Servers for you to play on, either modded or unmodded (read their descriptions and rules), the roleplay servers are the funnest.

If you're a fan of a tougher kind of Freelancer then I suggest you try out Ioncross Total War who totally redid the game and made the gaming experiance totaly new, unlike any Fl mod currently in circulation. I know of guys who bought FL just to play that mod, so that says something imo. lol, they enter the game and the first thing they do is ask how to use their thrusters, classic

Btw, have you played Starlancer? It's somewhat the sequal to Freelancer and is an excellent game, totaly unlike FL but very good. Nice graphix and a kick ass storyline too. You need a joystick for that one tho. Check the Starlancer section on these forums for more info about that.

Oh, btw, I've got a few beers behind the counter, if you're interrested
It's better then that Liberty Ale stuff

Edit: Damn spelling

---------

possible definitions of the word Diskette:

1- Female disk
2- The practices and forms prescribed by social convention or by authority regarding disks

Since NASA has just landed a probe on Titan, I may as well put in a plug again for one of my favourite games ... Hardwar. Hardwar is an FL type game that actually takes place on Titan! The story line is that earth coloniised Titan centuries ago, but for whatever reason communication has been lost. Since then there have been clone wars and the Titan populace has divided into factions. You start out with a basic level ship and have to decide to be a scavenger, trader, bounty hunter or pirate. You quickly discover an alien mystery as well. Oddly enough, it was game of the year in 1998 or '99 -- but wan't a money maker. Thus no sequel. But at about US ten bucks on eBay, it is certainly worth a shot if you like FL.

Sort of fun looking at actual pics from Titan now after playing the game.






Edited by - Puke Barwalker on 1/18/2005 3:45:48 AM

Hey Nickless. I thought Freelancer was the sequel to Starlancer. Didn't Starlancer come first? I bought Starlancer a year or so ago and enjoyed it okay, but I don't like closed storylines. You play it, you "beat the game" and that's it. And, despite the unmentionable lack of joystick support, I prefer Freelancer'. I would like to be able to use some of those Starlancer ships in FL though...

I played the MS SPace and liked it for it's "realism." What I had meant was I would like to see something that had dynamics similar to the one used the Babylon 5 tv series, just enough to fool you into thinking "real physics" was involved. It is not too far fetched to imagine that flight control will be computer assisted so that flying will not be as tough as it was in something ultra realistic like the MS Space Simulator.

But I am not bashing Freelancer. I love it actually. And yes, I did not like Privateer 2. I did not like the idea of merely flying escort to freighters. The greatest appeal of Privateer and Freelancer to me was that Han Solo / Millenium Falcon aspect. You get that flying your own cargo, being the carrier or smuggler. You can never get that flying escort duties. Privateer 2 was a good sim, but it was not for me.

I haven't played Starlancer. I have just recently found out the game existed and will need to track it down. I loved the original Wing Commander series so am really looing forward to getting a hold of a copy.

I have played Hardwar. I will need to go through boxes and boxes to find my copy, but I do have it somewhere.

P.S. My beer of choice is Harpoon IPA followed by Guinness and Bass.

Well, it was released after SL, has the same kinda name (lancer) and deals with the same factions, but not all. Does that make it a sequal? I personally don't think it does. It's a new game, in a new place, about a new subject, with a new environment, new playstyle and different grafix and engine, so in many ways it's a totaly new game. I'd rather call it a spin-off then a real sequal. But that's just me.

Edit: Puke's got me interrested in Hardwar...

Edited by - Nickless TW on 1/17/2005 12:52:13 PM

Do a cut and paste of this link. Hardwar had an interesting mix of Brits and Yanks. Wonder how folks lived on a small planetoid for centuries and kept their old accents seperate.

http://www.huzatron.freeserve.co.uk/hardwar/

Jose Chavez: "Trent! It's good to see my kind of scum."

wow, the full game is over a gig...
What's hardnet btw?

@Snuffleupagus:

You might want to try the Hunters Mk II MOD I have in beta right now. It add quite a bit of inertia back into the flight physics. A large number of new ships, commodities, systems and bases will also be available.

Because I have not quite finished adding all the infocard text and balanced everything the way I want I have not uploaded here on TLR yet, but you are welcome to come by my forums and pick up a copy of the beta and play.

http://www.sccommand.com/hunters/ - Main webpage
http://www.sccommand.com/phpbb2/index.php - Forums

Anyway enjoy the game wherever you play.

-Achilles