Yeah a prequel would be primitive. How about have the story taken up again right where it left off, go on for several hours, then the player as Trent will die a heroic death fighting the nomads or others, then the player will have to play as someone else because Trent died. Ooooor, have Trent get married and have kids, a boy and a girl, and then comes a 15 year interval then you play as one of his children, while he fades into the background. Or forms the lancers guild, or dies heroicly anyway.
Fifteen years later we would have the technology to enter the hypergate, faster engines, etc. Trent and the gang gather together one last time to see what's on the other side....and they jump to a new sector. Just as jumpholes and jumpgates connect systems, hypergates connect sectors. They find no nomads in sight, and so the factions of Sirius start to jostle and fight about who gets the new space and resources, and a race begins. Rhineland, being in the know about these systems, completely relocates to the farthest, juicyest sector it can find, and locks itself up sulking about the fact that they woke up the nomads. The other houses might even get their own sectors. New sources of Cardamine are found, giving the Outcasts more range. The systems once inhabited by nomads are deserted, and no one can find them anywhere. Finally, all 6 sectors are "spoken for" by the houses, corp's, etc, except one. The last hypergate only allows organic ships to pass through it........
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New Storyline Mod?
This is a free discussion forum on Freelancer. This is the place to discuss Freelancer issues NOT covered by the other boards!
57 posts
• Page 4 of 4 • 1, 2, 3, 4
Wed Jun 13, 2007 4:43 pm
Starfox writes:
> There may be interest in a prequel for those who like the story, but as a gamer I
> wouldn't want to play it. I want more toys (ships guns, etc.) with a story mod, not
> less.
You're underestimating the concept, or I've explained it very badly. Certainly I don't mean immediately before Freelancer begins. But say 300 years before that. Or 600 or 800.
In effect, you get a whole ton of neat new weapons, neat new ships, new enemies, new dangers, new flight dynamics, new everything.
Take weapons for example. I mean, in terms of framing device, they're "old" in the sense of "retired by the time Freelancer begins." But in terms of gameplay they're totally new. Think, totally different/new weapon types with totally new behaviors. Different types of shields too.
The same with ships. Maybe you'll be flying the B1, the precursor to the Cavalier. Maybe something even older.
In terms of story, lots of potential for new stuff. You're colonizing the sector; it's not already charted. I'm sure there's more border worlds, their jump-holes having collapsed long before the time Freelancer begins. Maybe it's more of an empire-building game like X3. Maybe the main plot involves the war between Rheinland and the GMG.
Indeed, I suggest prequel because there's *more* new stuff, not less.
Edit: one more thing: aliens. Almost every single space game is plagued by the "aliens introduced sometime during Act II" cliche. A prequel has the benefit of entirely avoiding the entire expectation. I want a human conflict. They tend to be more... human... in spirit. "Us versus Them" is too easy, from a moral point of view. A story with two sides is a real story. We watch "us versus the aliens" on the news every night as it is; I'd rather make the game more nuanced than that.
Edited by - breslin on 6/13/2007 8:07:49 PM
> There may be interest in a prequel for those who like the story, but as a gamer I
> wouldn't want to play it. I want more toys (ships guns, etc.) with a story mod, not
> less.
You're underestimating the concept, or I've explained it very badly. Certainly I don't mean immediately before Freelancer begins. But say 300 years before that. Or 600 or 800.
In effect, you get a whole ton of neat new weapons, neat new ships, new enemies, new dangers, new flight dynamics, new everything.
Take weapons for example. I mean, in terms of framing device, they're "old" in the sense of "retired by the time Freelancer begins." But in terms of gameplay they're totally new. Think, totally different/new weapon types with totally new behaviors. Different types of shields too.
The same with ships. Maybe you'll be flying the B1, the precursor to the Cavalier. Maybe something even older.
In terms of story, lots of potential for new stuff. You're colonizing the sector; it's not already charted. I'm sure there's more border worlds, their jump-holes having collapsed long before the time Freelancer begins. Maybe it's more of an empire-building game like X3. Maybe the main plot involves the war between Rheinland and the GMG.
Indeed, I suggest prequel because there's *more* new stuff, not less.
Edit: one more thing: aliens. Almost every single space game is plagued by the "aliens introduced sometime during Act II" cliche. A prequel has the benefit of entirely avoiding the entire expectation. I want a human conflict. They tend to be more... human... in spirit. "Us versus Them" is too easy, from a moral point of view. A story with two sides is a real story. We watch "us versus the aliens" on the news every night as it is; I'd rather make the game more nuanced than that.
Edited by - breslin on 6/13/2007 8:07:49 PM
Thu Jun 14, 2007 7:22 am
In one aspect of the mod I've been working on:
Following a quasi-story line sequal...
It's been about 20 years since the story line and the nomads were defeated
at Dyson City...
Trent and Juni both had kids: Lance Trent and Miko Zane, but this was not because of a union between them. They went on about their own lives and married separately.
.Trent is now living among the Outcasts somewhere in the Borderworlds since he has a connection (and a lead) to Benitez missing son.
.Juni, went on with her career and eventually was promoted to Chief of Intelligence with the LSF.
.King met his untimely demise at the hands of the nomads during a fight in the Badlands.
.Hovis met his untimely demise when he collided with a stray asteroid that crossed his path during one of his famous races.
.President Jacobi severd two more terms, then retired to a newly terraformed planet within the Texas System.
.Orillion, in a fit of madness dissappeared through the hypergate above the Dyson Sphere. Kress now has command of The Order.
.Tobias, resides in seclusion somewhere in the Cambridge System.
.Sinclair and Quintain continue research on the mysterious artifacts on Planet Cambridge.
.The Domkavash have a keen interest in their artifacts. They will pay handsomely for them or kill for them without hesitation.
.In the Sol System, the remnants of the Coalition were taken over by the nomads
and they spent the next twenty five years traveling to Sirius to land in the Edgeworlds. They are now allied with the nomads and their ships reflect some of these changes.
.A previously unknown and dying race of beings have been taken over by the nomads. These Drex (known as harvesters) are also allied with the nomads.
.Lord Hakkera became Shogun and led his people through 10 years of prosperity and peace until his assassination at the hands of the Golden Chrysathemums.
Now, The Blood Dragons are at war with the GC and a state of Civil War exists in Kusari. The GC control the Kusari Navy, Samura Ind, Bounty Hunters and the Hogosha. The Blood Dragons are now allied with the Kusari Police and Kisiro Tech.
----anyway..you get an idea.
Following a quasi-story line sequal...
It's been about 20 years since the story line and the nomads were defeated
at Dyson City...
Trent and Juni both had kids: Lance Trent and Miko Zane, but this was not because of a union between them. They went on about their own lives and married separately.
.Trent is now living among the Outcasts somewhere in the Borderworlds since he has a connection (and a lead) to Benitez missing son.
.Juni, went on with her career and eventually was promoted to Chief of Intelligence with the LSF.
.King met his untimely demise at the hands of the nomads during a fight in the Badlands.
.Hovis met his untimely demise when he collided with a stray asteroid that crossed his path during one of his famous races.
.President Jacobi severd two more terms, then retired to a newly terraformed planet within the Texas System.
.Orillion, in a fit of madness dissappeared through the hypergate above the Dyson Sphere. Kress now has command of The Order.
.Tobias, resides in seclusion somewhere in the Cambridge System.
.Sinclair and Quintain continue research on the mysterious artifacts on Planet Cambridge.
.The Domkavash have a keen interest in their artifacts. They will pay handsomely for them or kill for them without hesitation.
.In the Sol System, the remnants of the Coalition were taken over by the nomads
and they spent the next twenty five years traveling to Sirius to land in the Edgeworlds. They are now allied with the nomads and their ships reflect some of these changes.
.A previously unknown and dying race of beings have been taken over by the nomads. These Drex (known as harvesters) are also allied with the nomads.
.Lord Hakkera became Shogun and led his people through 10 years of prosperity and peace until his assassination at the hands of the Golden Chrysathemums.
Now, The Blood Dragons are at war with the GC and a state of Civil War exists in Kusari. The GC control the Kusari Navy, Samura Ind, Bounty Hunters and the Hogosha. The Blood Dragons are now allied with the Kusari Police and Kisiro Tech.
----anyway..you get an idea.
Sat Jun 16, 2007 3:53 am
Breslin, I'm putting on my Gamer hat for a moment.
I don't buy an expansison pack for games I don't like. If I didn't like it to begin with, I don't want a bigger, better version of it.
I do buy all the expansion packs, follow on products, etc. for games I do like. And since I liked the game to begin with, I want to see some of the same things from the original that I liked, coupled with some new things, and built around a new storyline.
The new things should include a few new characters (along with some of the old), a few new "toys" (i.e. ships, guns, missles, etc.) along with most of the old (I don't want to have to learn about all of the new toys right away to be able to have fun playing the game), new places to go along with most (if not all) of the old, and I want some new "capabilities" (i.e. wingmen, cap ships that can "launch" fighters, computer to "hack" my rep myself, etc.) along with all of the old capabilities.
What I suspected (and you've confirmed) about your prequel idea is something that doesn't easily follow that line of progression. Note that you could follow it with a prequel that didn't go back too far that still had some of the same "toys" that have just been invented, and had older "toys" available as new entries.
If you wanted to go back several hundred years (the 600-800 years you mentioned), you could start with the Starlancer "toys" as a baseline and achieve the same effect, as well as closing the gap between the two storylines.
But you still lose something on the "places to go" and capabilities sides of the game experience as you necessarily have to lose places that no one's been to/built yet, and the capabilities would have to be similarly limited to no more than what's available in the "future".
OK, writer's hat back on. As you said, "from a writer's perspective" a prequel could be interesting, since there are quite a number of unanswered questions about past events. I also agree that the storyline tends to be somewhat predictable in the aliens vs. humans thing, but the humans vs. humans thing didn't necessarily play out much better in the Starlancer prequel.
But hey, why listen to me? Make you mod, post it to this site, and see how many people download it. Just remember, most of the folks who upload and download mods from here are gamers, and that, my friend, is why the mod focus has been on the "toys", the "places", and the capabilities, and NOT the characters.
It also takes imagination to write a new storyline, whereas it only takes time to write a mod for all the other things.
I don't buy an expansison pack for games I don't like. If I didn't like it to begin with, I don't want a bigger, better version of it.
I do buy all the expansion packs, follow on products, etc. for games I do like. And since I liked the game to begin with, I want to see some of the same things from the original that I liked, coupled with some new things, and built around a new storyline.
The new things should include a few new characters (along with some of the old), a few new "toys" (i.e. ships, guns, missles, etc.) along with most of the old (I don't want to have to learn about all of the new toys right away to be able to have fun playing the game), new places to go along with most (if not all) of the old, and I want some new "capabilities" (i.e. wingmen, cap ships that can "launch" fighters, computer to "hack" my rep myself, etc.) along with all of the old capabilities.
What I suspected (and you've confirmed) about your prequel idea is something that doesn't easily follow that line of progression. Note that you could follow it with a prequel that didn't go back too far that still had some of the same "toys" that have just been invented, and had older "toys" available as new entries.
If you wanted to go back several hundred years (the 600-800 years you mentioned), you could start with the Starlancer "toys" as a baseline and achieve the same effect, as well as closing the gap between the two storylines.
But you still lose something on the "places to go" and capabilities sides of the game experience as you necessarily have to lose places that no one's been to/built yet, and the capabilities would have to be similarly limited to no more than what's available in the "future".
OK, writer's hat back on. As you said, "from a writer's perspective" a prequel could be interesting, since there are quite a number of unanswered questions about past events. I also agree that the storyline tends to be somewhat predictable in the aliens vs. humans thing, but the humans vs. humans thing didn't necessarily play out much better in the Starlancer prequel.
But hey, why listen to me? Make you mod, post it to this site, and see how many people download it. Just remember, most of the folks who upload and download mods from here are gamers, and that, my friend, is why the mod focus has been on the "toys", the "places", and the capabilities, and NOT the characters.
It also takes imagination to write a new storyline, whereas it only takes time to write a mod for all the other things.
Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:38 pm
I see what you mean, that an expansion might be best as a sequel.
I was thinking about a fully new game, not a mere expansion. That might be better as a prequel, or indeed it might be better as "800 years later still." Hell, a Freelancer-esque game set in the time of Starlancer might be pretty cool. There's a few logistical problems, but it might be possible to work it out.
I was thinking about a fully new game, not a mere expansion. That might be better as a prequel, or indeed it might be better as "800 years later still." Hell, a Freelancer-esque game set in the time of Starlancer might be pretty cool. There's a few logistical problems, but it might be possible to work it out.
Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:22 pm
why not just reset the clock and say FL never happened? pretend its a different universe where some waveform probability collapsed the other way, and the alliance won(or whoever the baddies were - i never got into SL) - what would happen? for me arguing over this kind of stuff is a real headache, because story always takes a distant 2nd to actual gameplay, and no one ever has anything original to say about gameplay except 'i want a joystick' or 'bots should/shouldn't use repair' - phaw! I want a game to challenge me from mission one straight to the end - IMO the game's storyline missions are too easy/difficult - the first three missions are *yawn* boring and impossible to fail *yawn* and the last three require so much shooting/evading one wonders if reinforcements to the enemy will ever stop spawning. its good for playing through once or twice, but quickly loses its kick as the dialog repeats mechanically and the player is forced to go through tutorial mode again. any storyline mod needs to jump into the action immediately and skip the crap like unlocking tradelanes and jumpgates and introducing characters.
if we had a mission scripting program (how hard could it be really? i've created my own SP missions using the available tute - surely a basic program could be written to generate triggers and place enemies/friends) we could quickly create missions minus the storyline dialog and cutscenes - thats most of what's in the missions an they are VERY verbose with all the added dialog and listening-triggers for end-of-dialog. if you left out dialog and replaced it with simple windows creating a new storyline series would not be all that hard. Also, I notice the way the whole mission trigger thing works does not seem to preclude branched mission results -> eg it appears that you can win a mission in more than one way if its allowed for in the mission code and possibly carry on that trigger to affect the next mission, however i haven't tested this theory.
if we had a mission scripting program (how hard could it be really? i've created my own SP missions using the available tute - surely a basic program could be written to generate triggers and place enemies/friends) we could quickly create missions minus the storyline dialog and cutscenes - thats most of what's in the missions an they are VERY verbose with all the added dialog and listening-triggers for end-of-dialog. if you left out dialog and replaced it with simple windows creating a new storyline series would not be all that hard. Also, I notice the way the whole mission trigger thing works does not seem to preclude branched mission results -> eg it appears that you can win a mission in more than one way if its allowed for in the mission code and possibly carry on that trigger to affect the next mission, however i haven't tested this theory.
Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:56 pm
Breslin, you've got the bigger picture now, and if you work out the new storyline and post the mod, rest assured that I'll download and play it just to see what you've come up with. Just don't expect a lot of others to do so.
Heck, I'm still trying to finalize a 25-mission campaign in Mechcommander2 that parallels the Mechwarrior4 Mercenaries timeline near the end of the Fedcom Civil War ... but that's another story.
Rankor, I love all the threads you've thrown down for your stab at a new story line. It should be quite interesting weaving all of that together into a new chapter of the Starlancer-Freelancer saga. It should be especially interesting how you explain Orillion's final comments to Trent at the end of the original SPG. (Don't tell me now, I want to wait for the mod!)
I just hope that you're going to take it all the way to a new SPG instead of just writing new news stories and rumors as several other modders have done. Just one point though; unless there is some totally out of left field event, like the union of the Xenos and the GC at the highest levels of both organizations, it makes far more sense for the Hogosha to assassinate Hakkera than the GC. And have the Bounty Hunters play on both sides of the civil war rather than making them choose sides. Their profits will be higher that way.
Anyway, just my opinion. As I've said to the others who have said that they want to do a new storyline as part of their mod, if you'd like some help with the story, I'd be happy to help.
Heck, I'm still trying to finalize a 25-mission campaign in Mechcommander2 that parallels the Mechwarrior4 Mercenaries timeline near the end of the Fedcom Civil War ... but that's another story.
Rankor, I love all the threads you've thrown down for your stab at a new story line. It should be quite interesting weaving all of that together into a new chapter of the Starlancer-Freelancer saga. It should be especially interesting how you explain Orillion's final comments to Trent at the end of the original SPG. (Don't tell me now, I want to wait for the mod!)
I just hope that you're going to take it all the way to a new SPG instead of just writing new news stories and rumors as several other modders have done. Just one point though; unless there is some totally out of left field event, like the union of the Xenos and the GC at the highest levels of both organizations, it makes far more sense for the Hogosha to assassinate Hakkera than the GC. And have the Bounty Hunters play on both sides of the civil war rather than making them choose sides. Their profits will be higher that way.
Anyway, just my opinion. As I've said to the others who have said that they want to do a new storyline as part of their mod, if you'd like some help with the story, I'd be happy to help.
Sun Jun 17, 2007 3:35 am
How many modders that have posted here is willing to work on this as a community project. We have many Ideas and more are still coming in which is very good. We have many talented mod makers here as well.
So if you would like to help get this monster started please post here.
Now when I say community project anything used in this mod is for the whole community and all rights are given to use the content within the community mod. Of course, credits should be given to all the content used as well. We may also learn some very new modding techniques as well. Many things some of use are stumped on someone else may know how to clarify that issue. This could be a great learning experience for all of use, improve our skills as well as giving more updated tutorials as we go along, and find new things to add.
This will be a very large project and we will need dedicated modders to get this project completed. Many hours and headaches as well plus working with others as a team so if you would like this to go to the next steps sign up now.
So if you would like to help get this monster started please post here.
Now when I say community project anything used in this mod is for the whole community and all rights are given to use the content within the community mod. Of course, credits should be given to all the content used as well. We may also learn some very new modding techniques as well. Many things some of use are stumped on someone else may know how to clarify that issue. This could be a great learning experience for all of use, improve our skills as well as giving more updated tutorials as we go along, and find new things to add.
This will be a very large project and we will need dedicated modders to get this project completed. Many hours and headaches as well plus working with others as a team so if you would like this to go to the next steps sign up now.
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