Freelancer RTS Mod

Plausible?

from Sins Forums
Ok bare with me on this as its all just coming to mind. :p

I'm sure there are others who have enjoyed Freelancer as much as I have, but I'm curious if there would be any interest for a sort of 'Freelancer RTS' mod that would mimic the gameplay from that game but in rts format.

For instance, the map in the game that had all the planets in the universe could easily be made into one giant map for Solar Empire. missions (trade/combat) could be done by getting near a planet or space station and a modded menu window pops up that offers simple missions. When you 'activate' a mission, it creates the enemy(s) at a certain location for you to complete.

Essentially you load up the freelancer 'universe' map and begin with a small scout ship and travel the star systems doing missions to gain 'xp' and money (resources?) to buy a bigger ship. Someone would have to create an 'xp' bar and the mission windows, but unless it sounds too far fetched, I think this type of mod could work based on the freedom we should have with the mod tools.

You can even go so far as to have servers host 'persistent' freelancer universe maps that you can continue at a later time. How this could all be done I don't know, I'm not the mod type heh. But I would kill to be able to play something similar to Freelancer but from a top down perspective. ;)
modding
68,851 views 28 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I have already made a complete map for the freelancer universe.

Its a work in progress and I will be expanding upon it as needed.

I have the info so far on another forum for a freelancer server i will be admin for: http://parallel-universe.webbjack.com/portal/

granted its not what you have in mind...but still the tip of the iceberg for freelancer things =)
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I also started on a freelancer map, using stars instead of planets. While the engine never complained about 50 stars, it didn't look great ingame. It was described as looking like someone threw up a bunch of skittles. A giant mass of colors when zoomed out regardless of how far I put them apart.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I made a map replicating my Freelancer mod and was seriously considering using it as a basis for a more complete mod. I don't know how well the base game would translate to an RTS though but it would be fun to have the different houses and factions in there. Considering how old Freelancer is you could probably just rip the models right out of it and drop them in Sins without having to worry about the poly count or anything like that.

Oh, and if you're in the process of copying the freelancer map remmeber that the 'x' is inverted between Galaxy Forge and the game so all your systems will be backwards if you don't take that into account.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I had just finished putting the last of the stars in when I saw a forum post mentioning that. I spent half an hour in notepad using "replace all" to fix it.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I'm a huge Freelancer fan (and lead writer for Openlancer :D ) so I've also been trying to make a Freelancer map (with TEC Liberty, Rheinland, Bretonia, and Kusari, Advent Outcasts and Corsairs, and Vasari Nomads), though its difficult without the game handy to check my map positions. Using phase lanes to simulate both trade lanes and jump gates (I got around the limit on interstellar phase lanes by creating all new planets in the New York System, then dragging them into orbit around other stars) although I'd really prefer a jump gate model to just using dead asteroids for them. If I ever finish it, it'll come in two varieties - one just after the sleeper ships touch down, with one-planet colonies for everybody, and one around the time of the game, with all the factions having their proper planets.

I was planning on using wormholes to represent jump holes (and giving wormhole tech immediately to Outcasts and Corsairs) but I've yet to see one in game, so I'm still not sure how they work. I would certainly be happy to help with a "true" FL mod.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I wonder if it would be possible to mod in a sort of 'fog of war' on the large universe map. So we don't see the huge amount of planets eating up our system resources. It would only show planets to a certain range, thus allowing for much bigger maps like that for freelancer.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
From my understanding, there's no in-game scripting of events, so having dynamic missions may not be possible right now. If spawn points for ships are available that could be one workaround. I'd be curious to see how a cruise missle would be implemented though, since there are phase lane inhibitors, but a freelancer ship would have it's own cruise engines rather than needing to rely so much on phase lanes.

hmm, imagine if pirates could disrupt transit through a phase lane, like you could in freelancer. would add another dimension of strategy for any RTS space sim.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I was messing around this morning and I brought a few freelancer and SOASE ships into 3dsmax. The scaling is very close to proportionate (Likely both developers used real world units for their scaling). Here is a render of a few ships in their unscaled size, note the similiar fighter sizes.+

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Very cool Maimer1. ;)

Definitely keep up the work. I'm still hopeful in seeing some sort of freelancer mod, in some form or another.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
I've been thinking about Freelancer since I first heard of SoaSE. Can't wait to strike down upon the enemy with my "Goethe" and "Schiller" battleships (...and be foiled by 3 puny fighters with torpedos...)
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
i'll be making a freelancer total conversion mod for SoaSE once i perfect some of my skills, like texturing :) ill be assisted by arillias ;)




-Tidus97
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I'm a huge Freelancer fan (and lead writer for Openlancer ) so I've also been trying to make a Freelancer map (with TEC Liberty, Rheinland, Bretonia, and Kusari, Advent Outcasts and Corsairs, and Vasari Nomads), though its difficult without the game handy to check my map positions. Using phase lanes to simulate both trade lanes and jump gates (I got around the limit on interstellar phase lanes by creating all new planets in the New York System, then dragging them into orbit around other stars) although I'd really prefer a jump gate model to just using dead asteroids for them. If I ever finish it, it'll come in two varieties - one just after the sleeper ships touch down, with one-planet colonies for everybody, and one around the time of the game, with all the factions having their proper planets.

I was planning on using wormholes to represent jump holes (and giving wormhole tech immediately to Outcasts and Corsairs) but I've yet to see one in game, so I'm still not sure how they work. I would certainly be happy to help with a "true" FL mod.
End of quote



lol. all your terms in there brought back epic memories.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I run a game server on my home network, and it still hosts freelancer. Including myself, 12 of us still regularly connect to the host. I've been a harcore fan for several years, and I fully support any Freelancer Mod for Sins. If there's anything I can do to assist in freelancer modding efforts, please let me know.

Just to let everyone know, I'm an avid modder. I've created my own 28 MB Galactic Civ 2: Dark Avatar mod which includes: 42 new starship designs, 61 new planetary improvements (with graphics), an expanded tech tree (from 258 original techs to 502 techs), cost & bonus rebalancing (for all in-game components), 28 new starbase modules, and a host of other features too long to go into, all while carefully maintaining game balance, functionality, and component usefullness. Anyway, the point is, I take modding efforts seriously.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Here is the Liberty Battleship ingame. The specularity is a bit off and it only has one texture, but those are the limits of the 3dsmax exporter right now.



A collaboration would be to everyone's benefit. My MSN and e-mail is Maimer123@hotmail.com and my x-fire is Maimer if anyone wants to work together.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Holy cow you guys are already doing awesome things! I've actually made a Freelancer map too. I'm just tweaking the distances between systems and planets now. For some reason, the map mirrors ingame.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I'm working on the mod with Tidus, and I agree that collaboration is probably a damn good idea. We're currently working on getting hosting for a web site and forum that we can use to discuss the project. If anyone whose web design education DOESN'T predate Y2K wants to help out with the site design, that'd be great as well. Ideally, we'd like it to grow into a general Sins modding site, sort of like what TLR is for Freelancer.

Also, we'll need a domain or subdomain name for the site. We'll either be getting full domain hosting (for those of you who don't speak Internet, that means an address in the form "www.[Site Name Here].com") or an OGF subdomain (i.e., "[Site Name Here].opengameforge.org") depending on how much we're willing to contribute. The name's all we need to get hosting going, so I'm currently taking suggestions.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Just throwing out suggestions but here are a few ideas to get the brainstorming going. ;)

-FreePort 9
-Sirius
-Space Lane
-Outer World
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Freelancer looks like the ideal setting for a mod for sins
(at least not another me too SW,ST or B5 mod)

4 major powers
2 sophisticated pirate factions that are a menace to all
X several local criminal/renegade factions that harass the major powers in their area

So are we going to play the 80year war in some distant future ? :d
Good luck with your efforts !

here my suggestion for a name "Sins of a Freelancer" :LOL:
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
actualy, 5 major powers; including Hispania. :)

other than that your posts sums up what i had initially planned for my teams mod. don't take my word on it though; our team is yet to agree on anything like that :) thats just to give you a general idea ;)
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Tidus and Maimer have set up a forum for the project here:

WWW Link
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Registered on your forums Arilias. Looking forward to your developments. ;)
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

hey is there a freelancer universe total conversion  mod out?? if so could you please post a link for me that'd be awesome. i'm so stoked to play a freelancer universe, loved FL since it came out, and when i bought this game, i could not stop thinking about it!

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Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

*Cough*...this was a four year old post.

It never got finished. 

On the other hand, it is an easy mod to start model-wise as the models are pretty easy to get  into the game.  Somebody just has to get it going.

The pics above are just a few meshed models that were pasted into the game using already in-the-game entity files.  Not a lot of "modding" was done yet--abilities, balance, world types, etc.

The Nomads would be fun to set up.

Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

1* Successful Necro of a 4 year old thread without being flamed!

I made a Freelancer map based on some massive mod of Freelancer a couple of years ago... only 50 suns and about 500 worlds.  There were a few lag issues.