If your looking for a fan-made sequel, check out www.openlancer.com, they need some help. Of course, its not a mod, its an entire new game. I believe someone else is also working on some kind of "expansion" but i can't remember its name.

Thats the general goal of the Openlancer project.

The copyright is a major concern through. I tend to doubt M$ would care one way or the other but if the game gets popular enough they might sue just to rain on our parade. Rather than petitioning for Freelancer 2 people should be petitioning for MS to turn the rights over to TLR or just release the entire canon to public domain. Then any project can use the setting and storyline without having to worry about getting sued. 9000+ people signing something saying they want a few million dumped into a new game project isn't nearly as effective as the same number saying they want the community to have the legal authority to do it themselves.

We'll probably have to wait another two years or so. According to the M$ product support site they're discontinuing support for FL in 2008 (March if I remember right). Maybe then they'll give us the source code, not likely but if it happens at all its more than two years off. Openlancer will be released before then but without the copyright it'll be “off canon” just enough to avoid copyright infringement.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

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Rather than petitioning for Freelancer 2 people should be petitioning for MS to turn the rights over to TLR or just release the entire canon to public domain.

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Tried that allready, Was Promptly Ignored by MS.
MS wont pay any attention unless you carry a sizeable amount of weight unfortunitly.

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it'll be “off canon” just enough to avoid copyright infringement.

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If you do that you will loose a LOT of the critical Points we all like about Fl....

Edited by - Zedicus on 6/5/2006 8:59:31 PM

Yeah, petitions are probably pointless.

I doubt it but alright, what are the critical points in the FL setting and storyline that we need to worry about?


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

To much to list, but Familiarity would be a main one.

& besides, I doubt changing just a few names etc would stop MS from suing, you need look no further than googling "MikeRoweSoft.com" & "Lindows" for proof of that.

I suppose you'd get in trouble if you had Bill Gates as a Nomad host bent on ruling the universe.

He already is trying to rule the world. We could request permission to make a expansion pack under the microsoft's flag, and all the work is done by the folks of lancer reactor.

You mentioned MikeRoweSoft.com, but as I recall, they sued, but got kicked out of court.....

MS didn't sue, the kid settled before a suit was filed.

I hate to break it to you guys, but there will be -NO- sequel to Microsoft's Feelancer inless someone illegally reverse engineers the engine, or one of you developers has atleast 2 million bucks stashed away and damn good marketing skills.

I've worked for several companys that had multi million dollar budgets over the past decade and they tryed like hell to get developer licenses and documentation from Microsoft on there products and architecture with only pretencious replys, most times the letters and emails never even made it past secratarys.

Microsoft is a elite software company to say the least, creativity means nothing without profit to them, and freelancer didn't bring mutch money in do to piracy, hence the abandonment.

I've actually talked to a few developers who where involved in the digital anvil project. They basiclly said it, and all the products developed under it, where threw in some dark broom closet and the developers where all put back in other departments.

The only significant thing that can be done with freelancer is to enhance the storyline in single player. I stopped playing it years ago because I thought and still think all the mods are mediocre or in other words; poor quality. From the looks of it OpenLancer is vaporware, probably do to poor staffing desicions.

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freelancer didn't bring mutch money in do to piracy, hence the abandonment.

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Actually Piracy had very little to do with it, 98% of the ones who downloaded FL Illegally went and bought the game in hopes that it would encourage a Sequel.

If I had a dime for every time I heard someone Blame Piracy for the downfall of FL I'd have enough money to Buy out MS & Call the Shots mysellf....

Timzor,

Thank you for the input. I take it you registered to post that reply. I hope you stick around the community for a while.

Its good to have some insight into the state of the commercial side of the Lancers Canon. Knowing there is no chance of a sequel is the main motivating factor for creating Openlancer. I think most of us have basically known this for a while now but some still seem to have hope no matter what.

As Zedicus noted, piracy was not Freelancer's downfall. I paid for two retail copies of it, my first copy was destroyed by a faulty drive. I 'm sure there are a few others around with multiple retail copies. Most server admins probably have two copies of it too.

Those dollar figures might be accurate for licensing the Lancers Canon from Microsoft but there is no money involved with Openlancer. Development team members are volunteers and all required to have their own software tools (most of which are open source). Our middleware is all open source or free for non-commercial use. We have no operating costs, no production budget, and no publication expenses. This isn't a commercial game.

Calling Openlancer vaporware is premature, there is no stated release date and development hasn't even started yet. Planning is nearly complete and development will start soon. For the time being I'm working on building a fair use case or otherwise finding *something* to resolve the copyright issue. If you're referring to the lack of activity in the Openlancer forum, thats due to moving all discussion over to the Openlancer Project website. The website is still under construction but the forum is fairly active.

There does seem to have a lack of will in the community to develop a sequel to Freelancer. For the most part I think this is just not knowing how. For some it might be holding out hope for an official sequel. For others its clearly a time issue, many people on here barely have enough time to play FL much less work on creating a sequel. A lot of people are worried about the copyright issues, which is a major concern. No one ever said this would be easy but I can say it won't cost us any money, just a large amount of time.

Openlancer is our best shot at creating a sequel. I, for one, will continue working on Openlancer until its released. I know a few other members of the development team feel the same. With more community support Openlancer can become a reality much sooner than later. It will be released one way or the other, its just a matter of time now.


-Burn

Yep, allways good to see new members Timzor, didn't mean to come down so hard on you but that line gets old in a hurry.

I've mentioned before that I had to buy a second copy. A friend borrowed my first copy and liked it so much he refused to return it. Now that is piracy!

p.s. Reminds me that I need to send the Bounty Hunters after the SOB.