FREELANCER was left wide open for a sequal at the end of the story.

In short: The gamers were drooling for it and wanted it;
MS pushed it to be released and wanted their moneys worth;
DA was forced to leave it in it's unfinished form.
Then, DA left.

so they left it to us to make freelancer 2. in my eyes every mod in the lancers vault is freelancer2 in its own way. we all have kept this game alive and its a great game lets keep modding it.

Freelancer Strikes Back!

Ok, i never knew Digital Anvil dropped out. Thanks guys.

But still, they should finish what they started and not let other people finish it for them, it a bit like cheating in your school work: You get somebody else to do your work, next day there is a pop quiz and you fail.

So, say, if we forced them, we could force them to create a Freelancer 2. Does anybody know Microsoft Game Studio's head/main e-mail?

I'm not sure if DA actually "dropped out". I read in one of the official news releases that after(?) FL was released, MS bought the company and then pretty much let all the programmers go.

One of the mods aval out there is by Starfyre Co/Games which I believe is or is run by the old DA head guy.

no DA was not involved in mod development

yes DA was bought by MS then the developers worked on different other MS projects or left DA
finally DA was closed by MS (about 1 year ago)

Would it be possible for DA to reopen as another company and start a Freelancer 2 just calling it a different name, and different engine etc.

“SISU”
(Pronounced: siss-sue)
(Meaning)
Guts, Tenacity, Steadfastness, Courage, and an Indomitable will to Succeed, and Survive.

yeah but would it still be freelancer then?

I would think that if all the objects found in Freelancer were the creations
of DA, then yes. It would still be Freelancer..even if it were a different game
engine. Perhaps a different game engine would produce better results than
the one used by MS.
One of them particularly is npc's ignorance of collision detection in MP presently
giving many of us modders grief with capital ships.

We could not "force" anyone to do anything as far as that goes. It would be up to
somebody's graces to undertake a project of that magnitude.

one thing you forgot
EVERYTHING is copyrighted
the story, the characters, the models, the textures... simply everything
to change the name and a few obvious links to the original FL wont help

Well if they could rip Privateer off as much as they did to make Freelancer...

Obligatory Openlancer plug...

OL is designed to fulfill the vision of what we want FL2 to be but legally it cannot be FL2 and the TLR community cannot create FL2 without formal license from MS. Starting from scratch with a new canon also gives us far more freedom and flexibility, theres no debate over what is on canon or off canon. If a canon change is generally accepted by the community then it becomes official as part of the canon and is cataloged on our wiki. Its a wide open world, writers are free to invent new stuff, build on stuff, get community feedback on their ideas to fine tune and perfect every aspect of the canon.

With everything being free open source under GNU GPL we have the flexible to work with other projects, make common development needs a joint venture between projects and share entire game engine subsystems, models, music, canon material, design concepts, and even developers. All of that and more is slowing being organized under OpenGameForge.org.

I know some people scoff at our lack of a demo but we've had bad luck with programmers and thats changing now with OGF. Some people didn't get along with Blackhole, he left back in June to focus on high school and says he will never return. Some don't like the idea of abandoning the FL canon or adding FPS gameplay or increased RPG gameplay or an RTS system or any number of other things - thats fine, just hurry up and wait for MS to develop a FL sequel, or try another FL2 petition, or something...


-Burn

Lead Designer and Webmaster,
Openlancer Project

What?????
Blackhole quit?

uh yeah he quit early this year. BH is a diva, I believe that the team can only get more done without his undiplomatic, programming illiterate posterior around.

people who want to build games, should learn how to code.... period. BH was like a slick business man with lots and lots of talk, seemingly endless amounts of hotair to blow - i'm sure he'll be a highly sucessful time-share pitcher someday. I wish good luck to the OL team, they certainly do have a solid foundation of documentation.... which is pretty much all i know about them right now