Thats not possible in a FL mod. It can only be done in FL by modifying the game engine, which requires either reverse engineering or the source code.

Openlancer will include all of that and more. Its a new, free open source, game engine.


-Burn

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

basicly it would be possible to do this with an external server management tool which shouldnt be that hard to create

it would be much better to create such a tool than to wait 5 years before openlancer will be released

Seems like Open Lancer will have "everything", even pink donkeys with wings.

Anyway I won't even remember Freelancer by the time OPen Lancer or FL2 is released.

EDIT I do know that Colours server uses a char picking program for their server, you pretty much pick which faction you want to be on and ship and each one has a differnt looking guy.

QuEsTiOn AsKeR
Last Hope MOD
NEXT MOD!



Edited by - Question Asker2044 on 6/17/2006 7:15:41 AM

No, it would be better to put that effort into working on Openlancer so it can be released faster. I'm not sure where people get this notion that its going to take years to develop Openlancer. We're using extensive amonuts of procedurally generated content, simply put that means OL's development cycle will be orders of manitude shorter than FL. We're also using a lot of middleware, this further reduces the development time line.

The problem is we don't have a static full time development team. People come and go as they please. This means its impossible to nail down any kind of timeline or a release date, it also means the more people working on it the faster it will be done.


-Burn

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

Question.
Then why drag more people in when you have tons of more people leaving within months? Sorry to be harsh, but I've pretty much seen the project open since Blackhole started planning it about a year ago, his ideas changed and so did the way he talked about it, so it became more harder to see what he was really aiming for with really nothing to show.
Frist he said it was going to run with FL which is very hard to see, then it changed to a "whole new game" and then it's now a whole new game that isn't going to have anything from Freelancer in it. Becuase of all the copy right stuff.
I've also seen over the pass year coders and good people leave the group. I don't know C++ or any of that fancy computer languages, but I can understand why people who do know why they wouldn't want to get into something that hasn't really proven it's self to be working out that well or starts to fall apart when a problem has poped up.

All my opinon though, no hard feelings.
As if FL2 is ever going to come out, we got a better chance of seeing that pink donkey. Still if you guys can pull this project off, you would make me eat my words. O well life isn't fair I suppose.

Anyway this topic has gotten off topic.....

I don't mean to fault Blackhole but things have changed since he left the project. Its focus has stabilized and I'm transitioning project management over to something more democratic. Openlancer needs community support to be successful. That support needs to come in the form of people actively working on the project. Effectively the community is the development team. But first the community needs to realize this is the only shot they have at getting a FL sequel. MS isn't working on it and I doubt it will ever happen commercially. We must take the initiative to do it ourselves.

The development time line is directly dependent on the number of people working on it. True, skilled C++ programmers do rapidly speed up the time line but everyone makes a difference no matter how small their contribution.

Waiting for a commercial sequel could mean waiting 5 years or waiting forever. The only alternative is trying to find a similar commercial game. The only other games available either don't have multiplayer support or don't even scratch the surface of what FL has to offer. They might have improved graphics but that rightfully secondary to improved game play. Thats the benefit of creating our own game, we can do literally anything we want with it.


-Burn

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

im not a fan of openlancer either
after 1 year of development not a single result came out of this (and i know what im talking about coz i worked on a similar fan project a few years ago)

but this thread is definetly not about OL... it is about how to improve FL
(actually people want to play FL and not OL)

No this thread was about a faction making program, which no there isn't a good one out there. I think people will just have to spend their time making one for 200 people.
Plus no I don't want to improve FL, I rather dump FL and make a differnt game without the idea of FL in it, the story of FL was sort of bad in my opinon.

Freelancer was so badly made, but in it's own way it's a perfect game for people to jump into the modding world without having to crush their own brain under the pressure of all the complex files. I should know this was the frist game I'ved modded and led me to mess around with other games.
I still mess with the game, becuase it is interesting to see how many NPC you can fit in a 3 k zone before it crashes or to mess with the forbidden item of the Liberty goverment.

If they were going to make a new FL I would want them to dump Trent with Juni in a blackhole somewhere and start the story around a bounty hunter or a student who get's out of flight training. Then they can make the game look so much more real, real hair, makes me start to think about the Zelda from the N64.

We can alway wait til they give up service in 08' for them to release the code, but I'am not going to wait around to edit a 6 year old game, I'll be messing around with what new space games the future has to throw. (It's going to be good I say, no no not DS1 silly. )

What other space games are in development? Other than DS1, Infinity, X3, a few other smaller open source games, and of course Openlancer, what else is out there?

Creating a new canon is a community decision but also a TLR management decision. They have the most to lose here so the canon is their choice. If we create a new canon then it needs to be done by the community. I agree that the Lancers canon is not a master piece by any measure but it is the one thing people can agree on as a basis for creating a new storyline within that canon.

If the bulk of TLR members want a new canon then by all means, create one. Create something we can call our own and that everyone in the community can support. You can safely use Freelancer's “technology” as a starting point. Its only the storyline, lore, history, factions, characters, and locations thats infringing. The canon tech, physics, and general “rules” aren't copyrightable, the bulk of it is used by a half dozen even larger scifi canons anyway (e.g. jumpgates, shields, tractor beams, docking rings, etc).

Its easy to get the same feel to the game world without having to worry about copyright issues.


-Burn

O well.
I guess I'll just have to log onto EVE and get my Alliance to camp a gate cloaked waiting for pirates to come and blow up thier poor ships to make my self feel better. Opps I said cloaked, my bad.

O dear, could those signs mean FL is dieing? My my the time does fly, I remember BF1942 being the big buzz around the gaming world, 4 years later it is a pretty dead game, only the laggy servers and total modded servers are still around, but Freelancer? How could this have happen to this game? "gasp"

Fl is still in it's stage where we are scared to talk about cloaking, since FLshell and FLhook came out it isn't possible to get away with it. I do know of a server that gives cloaks, but have a rule saying your not allowed to shoot with it. Becuase if someone is cloaked and kills someone cloaked it's going to show up on FLshell or hook on in-game.
I think once the game starts to improve on this idea and other forbidden things that the game will be at it's best.Just like Swat says we should improve on FL. BTW I do know about the awful cloaking scare.

I think a lot of people who know modding are not willing to come into the OL project becuase they feel it isn't a project worth their time or feel they do not know modding enough to make a differnce, or some modders are just full of themselves to help out.

The people who don't know how to mod it is really the same, since they only know little to nothing about computer languages or the game, they feel they can't do much to move the project around. Some like myself don't got the time to spend hours in a day to come into a huge project like this, I am only able to spend min. time modding the game and the computer.

Yea the project is suppose to be supported by the community, but sadly you might have to forget about it being from an idea of FL and come out with a new story that has nothing about FL and stop falling back on FL for every addon, like FL doesn't got dockible player flown bases! But OpenLancer is going to have it. Fl can't have weapons that will make their own jumpholes, but Openlancer will have it. It might have all that, but since people are use to looking back on FL and saying this is impossible it makes your project look the same, even though you have the C++ writing etc, and know it's not the same. You might have to change your push on how you want to show your project, yes it can still be an idea from the game Freelancer, just not saying all the impossible things in FL will be there.(even though it will be there, it won't...get it?)

All of what I wrote is not to put down to your project or the game Freelancer, I just think you need to think of a differnt plan to tackle your project. I am sure you have gone to other sites and asked for help on this project and I am sure there are people out there willing to give a hand, but the key is to know a little of what goes into the project, just like modding. You see all the time people wanting to come out with a mod, but yet have only know how to make weapons.
I don't know what you know, I don't know how many people you got already on the project, I might have to go take a look at what has been updated.
Don't get me wrong, I do think your project is a good idea.

Meh, I know some people might not agree with what I said, but ol' well. Long post, but I have nothing else to do but rant.




Edited by - Question Asker2044 on 6/18/2006 8:53:07 PM

Thank you for the insight. I didn't really consider people dismissing the project just because it makes everything impossible with FL modding fully possible with a new game engine. It is kind of odd but at this point it doesn't surprise me.


-Burn

Well it's like saying pigs can't fly in this world, but in this "new" world they can, people aren't going to believe it unless you got proof.
That's really where FL is, unless you hack and tear apart the EXE file, you can't really do it. Sort of blame it on Microsoft for holding down games for awhile, but anyone tends to blame them for everything eh? "Sky is falling? ah, damn those Microsoft services!"

As you said it's not going to be a master of work, but I've seen some of the Free game engine games that people have made, some of them really look nice. Space ones can be made even nicer .
I do know how hard it is to start up a project and work on it, I've seen the start of GL and Forgotten hope on BF42' and they tore the game apart to pretty much make it a whole new game(maybe that is what Blackhole was aiming for?) , took them months of their lives to pop that mod out. Better thing about those games is that they don't give as much for people modding their games, hints the modding tools they pop out with for some of their games.

Really there isn't anything you can do but get more people interested and find people from differnt games to see if they are interested into making a new space game. Never know you might get the project working better that way, I am sure there are people with free time on their hands.
Anyway good luck I am sure this topic has gone down the drain from a faction program to the Openlancer project. lol

Keep it civil, and keep threads on topic with regards to the original posters questions.