My main gripe is they put in ambient lighting, instead of having it 100% starlight or whatever. Mostly aesthetic but it was going to be a fairly big part of the game.

What about havin clearer topic names?

And if there's a disappointing aspect (besides the repetative speech), how did it effect the whole experience? But since no one ever said he/she was disappointed I presume these bad aspects didn't have that much influence in the overall game experience...





Thanks go to Mad Dog for hosting this pic!

OKay, you may think this is corny but so far I really have not seen anything to make me complain.

I think it would be cool to have some first person shooter RPG action on bases and planets. But that has nothing to do with what the game is.

Mandrill, you are probably right about the topic names.. I will make them clearer from now on..

TO TACHYON...

Is there a toggle to switch the ambient lighting off?

Well the retail version went into reproduction before the PR copies were released, so it's unlikely it'll be changed now! (excluding a patch, of course).

I can't believe so many people have the marketing betas. I got one because I actually work at an EBGames, they were only supposed to be for store employees, but I guess some stores have been giving them out to customers. Come to think of it we got like seven copies and we only have five employees right now, so if other stores were similarly overstocked I guess they decided not to waste their extra copies - probably not what Microsoft intended, but luckliy they had the foresight to include that "bug" that won't let you get past level 10.

Anyway to answer the question, the repetative dialogue doesn't bother me (you can only fit so much on a CD), the graphics do, but it's very specific parts of the graphics. However, before I go off on a tangent I want to say this: THIS GAME IS AWSOME! and deserves to be in any space fan's library. That being said, I'm going to make some harsh comments on the graphics, but don't be put off by them; as the game definitely makes them up in other areas.

First of all trilinear filtering - mipmap lines are ugly and considering trilinear filtering is like a 1% performance hit for today's video cards there's no excuse for not giving an option to turn it on.

Texturing - if there's one thing today's game have proved it's that detailed texuring really, really makes a difference. Take Max Payne for example, it actually wasn't that detailed in terms of polygonical complexity, the characters and world only had a few dozen more polys than your average Half-Life enemy or level. The difference was that they used photographic quality, high res textures that never looked, blurred, fake, or out of place. Developers have since caught on to this and realized you can make some incredible looking games without the need for lots of modeling detail. Freelancer on the other hand has some textures that look they're from an N64 game - literally. Worse is that it makes use of a lot of generic textures. Eg. Your first fighter just kind of has this plain hex grid texture on its hull, there's absolutely no detail on it and it doesn't line up with the windows or edges of the fighter. The fighter basically looks like it was made out of really bad wrapping paper. It's a big contrast the kind of specific detail we're used to seeing on fighters in games like Freespace, Starlancer, or hell, even Wing Commander 3. Some ships are better, others are worse. It's compeltely inconsistant, almost like some ships were designed from the beginning with a clear focus and they made specific textures for them, and others were just quickly thrown together with any old texture.

Lastly, I really like the blurring starfield effect used in the Freespace and I-War games; this sadly has not been implemented in Freelancer, but I guess it's more of a personal choice thing really.

Actaully those are my only real problems with the graphics, other things like the particle effects, and starfield detail are great. Also I was surprised that while the characters don't look so realistic their animation is suberb and convey a fluidity of motion that I've rarely witnessed in a game before.

I know all gamers like to say that gameplay is the thing and graphics don't matter at all. That's partly true, but the unfortunate fact is that graphics do matter (try playing the original TIE fighter today and see if it's as good as you remember it to be). Let me clarify that I don't expect Freelancer to compare to the likes of Unreal 2 or Comanche 4, because those are different games with different goals (graphical spoogness being a main focus); but I do expect it to compare to past space games, and unfortunately it doesn't fair so well at least in terms of graphics. I-War 2 is vastly prettier than Freelancer in many areas, and even Freespace 2, a 3 year old game, is about on par with Freelancer in the graphics department. Still when I play the game, I completely forget about the graphics and just have fun, which is something that few other games can claim these days.

Anyone reading my post, please keep in mind I'm basing my observations on the beta, they may have fixed that stuff in the full version. Even though the beta has been recently distributed, keep in mind it may have been a version made long before the retail version.

Although I have to admit that I do not have the beta release, I cannot agree with your comment about the graphics.

I know Freespace 2 and I-War 2 and MaxPayne in motion and all had superb graphics at their time.

Comparing textures in MaxPayne to the textures in a SpaceSim is a bit difficult, because in a FPS you are surrounded by these textures while in a SpaceSim they are on ships which are usually quiet a bit away from you. Spending a lot of memory for textures for the ships would be pointless since you rarely see them.

IMHO, the beauty of a SpaceSim lies in the particle, lightning and weapons effects.

You mentioned the effect that old games become more beautiful in memory - Have you played I-War 2 or Freespace 2 recently? As I said, Freespace 2 was beautiful at its time - but as I recently watched some of its screenshots I was slightly disappointed: Both, polycount and texture resolution was far away from Freelancers beauty. I-War 2 is still beautiful, I am currently playing it, but I doubt that it has more detailled textures than Freelancer. Play it and take a look at a planet when you are close, or choose an exterior view and you will notice that in fact most textures are quiet blurry.

From what I have seen Freelancer surpasses both games in polycount, texture detail and effects. However I must agree that espacially the civilian and pirate ships seem to be designed a bit under pressure causing them to be below Freelancers average level of detail. In addition I think Freelancer has an inferior graphic engine compared to upcomming rivals such as EVE and especially X².

What bothers me a bit about Freelancer - from what I read and heard about it - is the fact that it seems to be rather short. 20 hours completing the story plus perhaps 10 hours doing random missions to earn enough money might be ok for an FPS, but is it so much easier to add a mission to a SpaceSim than to design an additional FPS level! There should have been much more things like more kinds of random missions, hidden quests, skripted missions, unique items, etc.!!! If the single player campaign is over after just 30 hours I will be somewhat disappointed!

The only bummer i can see in game is that cant sell info on planets and such to other players

30 hours is fine for me. I remember Wing Commander 3 and 4 seeming like long games and they can easily be beaten in 5 or 6 hours of harcore, no break playing. It's not an RPG so it doens't need to be ridiculously long. Just my opinion.

I have to agree with El Poyo. 20-30 hours is a pretty long game in my opinion. Of course, I am not a very hard core gamer (I usually dont play for more than 2 hours at a time).

Of course, keep in mind, the multiplayer will add to the total playing hours if you like that sort of thing.

Also, some of the "hard core" gamers here have logged over 200 hours of game time and are still playing and enjoying the game and seem to be still discovering new things.

As for the graphics, I also think they look pretty good. I just hope it is smooth.

There is no toggle. It was a gameplay decision, because in any particle field or debris field it was always pitch black, and a lot of times you were just fighting black shapes, basically shooting at the lead indicator.

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but I doubt that it has more detailled textures than Freelancer.

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Well you may want to take a look at this:



This ship probably does have more polygons than your average Freespace ship, but notice how its texture consists of little more than that hex wrapping paper I mentioned?

Edited by - ElectricBrain on 18-02-2003 00:45:17

@stevedroid

I prefer smoothness over texture quality. Take a game like "The Thing" for example. The texture resolution of this game is pretty low, but it still looks great because it runs totally smooth and has great animations and fire effects. Then again take Unreal 2. The texture quality is really great, but it's kinda j.e.r.ky in some spots, hence destroying the illusion of really being there. You know, reality has a perfect framerate and if a game starts j.e.r.k.ing the immersion factor is reduced very much.

@Maniac007

I'm playing Freespace 2 right now. Believe me: the graphics look still great.

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"In all likelihood you're going to die out there. We're all going to die out there, but none of us needs to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed."

Edited by - Lev Arris on 18-02-2003 01:03:45

Just to stand by Freespace 2, the game still looks amazing. Some of the textures on the ships (such as the G'Quan, part of the Babylon 5 mod) are stunning.

Of course, Freelancer still looks good, just kinda outdated. I wish they stayed without ambient lighting. It would have made the game look much better. Just look at pictures of Deus Ex 2, which will now be the first game with no ambient lighting.