Gernot, your absolutely correct about Steve. His site played a big role in keeping the original games (and FFE3D) in everyone's minds, and still does to this day, and his knowledge of them is vast. Like us, one of the original members of the Frontier Forum. B)

And Steve, I also agree with you on a single definitive version of FFED3DAJ; one download that works right from the off, the other versions can still be available too, but it would be nice to have a definitive "Andy" version as he has added and fixed so much. Keeping it as just the one download means Andy can update it when he feels like it, yes a great idea Steve! 🙂
I must have about 6 different FFE3D versions on my hard drive right at this moment as well as GL FFE, GL Frontier, Pioneer, Scout, Genesia, Oolite and Elite TNK! 😀
Love em all! <3

thanks for the info steve, yes i thought it must be that way, but really couldn't remember it.

yes and no
of curse i still have my old installaions of FFED3D some at least, but usually with every, or almost every release i open a new folder for it.
but it's true that's the proper idea and i guess i already did a step in this direction when i uploaded the default installation to my onedrive
it needs a review because i changed quite a lot which maybe not everybody likes, that is mainly to reduce the textures of the ships wherever possible to 8bit.
from my point of view it makes no differene, you won't notice if it's 24bit or 8bit depth in a running game.
the pioneer devs decided once to prefere dxt that's a special "compressed" texture format. now what is this compression? reducing the shit to less as 8bit, to keep i assume at least 32 colors for the grayscale of the alpha channel. in this way it is possible to have a near to 8bit depth "quality" and a useful alpha blending.
personally i would prefere something else. when you create a dxt you have no control over the dithering which is used to convet the 32/24 bit picture and dammit it steals many many bits from a texture. you create a texture maybe in double size of what is needed in the game and finally you have to "destroy" it with such a format and it steals the magic of your work. 8bit/256 colors is ok but i like to decide how i dither it, a alpha channel truely doesn't needs 256colors 32 are really enough for a alpha blending.
i would prefere to split the alpha channel from the 32bit texture for a 8bit texture and to use a greyscale for it, you can decide if you like to reduce it to 4bit depth. it is besides not for all a alpha channel needed, many models have no semitransparent parts.

but i won't decide such for myself, i really would like to know what andy & ittiz who created the new textures thinks of such. it's a vital thing and certainly you loose already much of the "magic" if you convert them to 8bit. personally i feel it makes them crispier and i have no problems reducing mine to 8bit, at least they are loaded faster and need less space, about the rest i can only speculate.

thus if i upload such a clean installation, preferably here on SSC, then i have to use until it's decided, the 24/32bit textures.
it will be split like i did that already, using the "proofed" stuff from old FFED3D as basic installation and the rest are mod packs,
e.g. new buildings, new ships, replacement bld, replacement ships, which are in this case ment as replacement for a existing FFED3D model.
new models can stay as a single mod for a while and after some time you can add the proofed ones to the default install.

this i can offer you already, it won't contain a executable we could still ofer it seperately, because to the default textures and default models won't happen much
they will stay mostly the same, the rest are mods in the way i split that already are all of my models only mods until it's certain they make no problems or are accepted by "everybody". neither i have a problem to keep this, i could still only update "new ships gernot", but i like to have as less as possible mods to exchange, that's why i think a pack is the better solution as 50 single mods.
recently my build is a tohouwabohou because i started to change the models in my installation instead in the mod because i started to get bored of change something then zip it, activate it, test it.
but to use a "fresh" download is no problem.
really that was my intention with the default installation, further i didn't uploaded it here yet because i want to know first if they run fine for everybody.
but ok i can start the same in the download area of SSC (unfortunately without a thumbnail, but that won't matter) unfortunately without the possibiluty to describe them as i did on my onedrive. erm yes it's possible if i open a folder for each i can stuff a description.txt in it you can read before you download xy MBytes to find out that they are not what you want. and very important to see what revision or release date the mod has. AND i have to keep myself to this system, i know it's a bit a boring work to write descriptions and respect always this and that rule, i have enough problems myself with such.

further i like to know how i should go on with my "lightweight" models, i did that because i'm aware that semitransparent cockpits and a tiny humunculus (pilot) use some extra fps, cockpit and all this boosts the polycount and one could say righteously it's not needed because rarely you look at them when you play the game, a black cockpit is as good as one you can see a pilot in. not exactly but almost as good.

back to the splitting of the textures
the disadvantage is i guess that you need a texture more and i see or asked already about a specular map.
still also i would like to get a reply to that and to the screenshots i posted where i simply used the diffuse texture to reduce specularity.
unfortunately i couldn't workout how to use a greyscale, i tried but failed, but i managed it to reuse the diffuse texture as specular map which is a possibility.
not the best one because especially dark blue or black windowparts will loose all specularity while a white building will be glossy.
with a specularity map i can control this and in my humble opinion a specularity map can even replace a bump mapping, not fully but you can produce depth to the texture and that's what is the goal of a bump map if you don't have to cheat LEGO studs, this goes to far imo.

more vital changes, once i started and i personally kept this (i guess) to convert the atmosphere textures to a greyscale i think the result is good (not every sky is blue then while earth's blue sky is less blue then) but even here i'm standing in the desert, i have no idea what the rest of you thinks about such.

further is this not my task, i should care about the model stuff and i'm more then satisfied if i get a specularity map to play around with.

shall we use compressed .png or uncompressed, maybe only targa?
this is a thing of the past, i found out once that a targa is loaded much faster as a.png even as a uncompressed .png, what the reason for this is i have no idea.
(probably that to load a .png the machine needs to know first compressed/uncompressed? .tga is always a simple uncompressed bitmap)
however to have a comparison i started once to conver all textures to targa and i gained on my old (but now even recent) 20seconds in loading time.
and 20 seconds is quite a lot.
recently i'm not sure if that is still the case, andy's build loads quiet fast anyway, i havn't tested this with andy's builds and also i feel it makes no difference, but well i only "feel".

**in general this is what i like to be sure of before i upload a default installation on which we can build up**
- should my models be heavy or light? (with or without use of semitransparent parts)
- does it makes sense for you to reduce the bitdepth of the texures?
- and oh yes, i would like a specularity map, i know i'm close to, but i can't manage it right, whatever i tried the result was a model with absolutely no specularity when i tried to read a greyscale with the shader script. ok i have web now and could learn how to do it right but i'm sure that's not needed, or is it?
it woud cost not to much time to update even the old models with a specularity map, a bit a boring very repetive work but they don't have to be perfect this would cost me to much time
usually a overworked greyscale is ok, it's not as good as a specially made spacularity map, but anyway if you don't hold the project of the texture, you can't do it much better.

and well you will agree that a matte black cobra mk3 looks much better, apart from matte rusty or dirty sections.
that the city floor tiles would look far better without specularity (a little bit i reached this by reuse of the diffuse texture)

in creating the many specularity maps i guess anybody could support me, it's not a big thing just a lot of work

reminder
comparison
without secularity map
![]( "")

with simple reuse of the diffuse texture as specularity map
![]( "")

i know the latter has a slightly different angle but i did best to show at least a little specularity because it really lowers it much

float4x4 viewprojmat; // view*proj
float4x4 worldmat; // world
float4 light; // light source
float4 lightcol; // light color
float4 ambient; // ambient color

int skinnum; // the skin number for this model instance

texture skin; // skin.png
texture spec; // spec.png

sampler s_tex = sampler_state
{
texture = ;
AddressU = WRAP;
AddressV = WRAP;
MIPFILTER = LINEAR;
MINFILTER = LINEAR;
MAGFILTER = LINEAR;
};

struct VS_OUTPUT
{
float4 position : POSITION;
float3 normal : TEXCOORD1;
float2 tex_vu : TEXCOORD0;
float3 lightDir : TEXCOORD2;
float3 eye : TEXCOORD3;
};

VS_OUTPUT Vexel_Sh(
float4 pos : POSITION,
float3 nor : NORMAL,
float3 tangent : TANGENT,
float2 tex_vu : TEXCOORD0
)
{
VS_OUTPUT Out = (VS_OUTPUT)0;

float4 vertex = mul(pos, worldmat);

Out.position = mul(vertex, viewprojmat);
Out.normal = normalize(mul(nor, (float3x3)worldmat));
Out.tex_vu = tex_vu;

Out.lightDir = normalize(light);
Out.eye = -normalize(vertex.xyz);

return Out;
}

float4 Pixel_Sh(
float2 tex_vu : TEXCOORD0,
float3 normal : TEXCOORD1,
float3 lightDir : TEXCOORD2,
float3 eye : TEXCOORD3
) : COLOR0
{
float4 ut;
float4 tx_base = tex2D(s_tex, tex_vu);
float3 diffuse = tx_base * lightcol;

ut.rgb = saturate(max(0.05,dot(lightDir, normal)) * diffuse * 2.0 );

float3 R = normalize(reflect(-lightDir, normal));
float VdotR = saturate(dot(R, normalize(eye)));
VdotR /= 128.0 - VdotR * 128.0 + VdotR;
float3 specular = lightcol * VdotR * tx_base;

ut.rgb += specular;
ut.a = tx_base.a; //Take alpha from skin to allow transparent glass etc

return ut;
}

technique PixelLight
{
pass P0
{
VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 Vexel_Sh();
PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 Pixel_Sh();
}
}

as one can see the use of the code format is a little difficult (hrmpf)
but ok that's how i changed it for the models, the declaring on top for a spec texture is still present but not needed for this
the rest of my experiment i removed except for the reuse of the diffuse texture, which is
float3 specular = lightcol * VdotR * tx_base;
instead of
float3 specular = lightcol * VdotR;

probably my experiment still exists but i'm a bit afraid to show it off

in the 2.nd picture of the eagle it looks quite matt but when you (could) move the camera it gives you a different impression.
the texture uf the eagle is made to be as crispy as possible for such a reuse of a diffuse map, in this simple way for years the pioneer models was shaded,
with the difference that in the script the diffuse texture first has been converted to a greyscale map to lower the specularity.
if i liked to have something glossy i had the possibility to set this in the material i use for a untextured material.

but i'm a absolute beginner when it comes to shader scripts, i did some experiments already many years ago when did my first steps in modelling
i know that i already for the courier changed them back then to have a less synthetic look and i guess i even added the star color to it and removed
the reflection of the thruster flames and such lights loosed therefore the semitransparency.
i used back then the shader output of 3dsmax for it, the output doesn't varies much to what was used for FFED3D.
thus i had at least a idea where to start.

is that common that the beta builds display no tips at start?
i noticed they won't need the lua libraries (apart of not displaying the tips).

right, i will take more care what i will post here.

i see, first i disabled translations, that might be cause no.1, i will see, present should be all it's just a tohouwabohou recently (wherever i go... chaos isn't far)
nah, keep that hat on, it suits.

one last thing, though i have to investigate myself how to use a specularity map

Andy, again thx for the info, i will try this out, i will inform you if it worked out (by a pm prefrably), issue closed 😉

Hi can anyone help me ive tried to download ffe3d from here and i wont download it gets about half way through and fails everytime

regards

Mike

Hi I can download all of the mods and patches ok it wont let me download FFE3d-ittiz and the andyj ones which are the complete ones i have found a working version but its not the modded one but it is in higher res the only thing is there are no videos when you get to the stations/ planets starports but this does not really effect the gameplay here is the link and it works http://ffeartpage.com/ffed3d.htm I have tried to patch this one with the andyj patches but it does not work, but as a standalone its full screen and works quite well and I am running windows 7.

regards

Mike

Hi fwibbler download the one i said in the link then download the patches from here and copy and replace into the ffe3d folders and it works i was obviously doing something wrong and the 3 andyj versions work really well I love the custom music folder its great to have your own tracks playing you will need to edit your mp3,s otherwise you will have to listen to the whole track.

regards

Mike

Hmm I tried to download one of the larger files 'FFED3D-beta3-Ittiz.7z' at work and got a disconnect on both tries around 160MB into the download. I will look into this issue, no one has reported download issues yet. But I find this strange

That’s the exact same issue I had I can download the other files ok but ffed3d Andy j and ittiz would only get so far then stop

I made a few tweaks to the PHP config on the server to increase timeout/size/memory usage, maybe this will help download the full file.

Hi thanks it worked with the andy but not with the ittiz

Hi Just tried it again it got to 210mb the stopped

Hi, I'm also experiencing the abovementioned issue. Can't download neither the FFED3D-Beta3-Ittiz nor the FFED3D_complete; the download aborts somewhere after the first 100mb.

Ok, I added a download area to the main menu. It is crude for now, but I was able to download larger files without issue. I believe I secured the directory up (for you hackers out there let me know if there is a security issue, pls) and I will customize the view a bit more when I have time, let me know if this solves your download issue?

Looks like these WP plugins have issues with php requests timing out or something. I went around that so now your doing a simple http request. Its irritating this issue, because I pay for these plugins grrr so they look more professional and blend into the site well 🙂

Hi Andy, i have a question, you "corrected" the animations for FFED3DAJ 1.12 it seems, due to that there is no second animation possible anymore.
if it's vital i won't mind but it was nice to do things like this:

First i started ffed3daj1.11 (for this clip) and in this release the "second channel" (in principles when there is no animation) still works and i can use it to rotate the engine (part), unfortunately when i start ffed3daj1.12 this won't work anymore.

i'm just asking because if that stays i will have to remove the animations from a few models 🙁 and have to keep in mind that this won't work anymore. recently only two models use this trick, the stud-city ip-shuttle and the kestrel (as far as i remember).

I just like to know if you like to keep it or if you will revert it to the previous state, no matter how i will accept it.

The scaleing of the submodels works perfect Andy!

The Domes have the proper size now after i placed it in the proper directory and after i noticed that i had to size it down very very much.
The Scanner (i assume ECM as well) appears now proper on the Ships, smaller on small fighters much larger on carriers.

True yes it's not ideal and i guess it was never ment to use the time where is no animation as a second channel (i stumbled over this issue), thus it's really not a big thing if it stays like it is for 1.12. If i really like to rotate the engine of the Kestrel i would still have the option to hack this i guess.
As far as i remember it's just rotate over y yes/no, also this would be affected by the stardreamer equal to the rotating engine pods of the courier. For the "StudCity Shuttle" it's really no problem, i won't complete a LEGO FFED3D in this life, maybe in my next and the Kestrel will be a Kestrel with or without this little extra. I neither planned it i just thought, "hey i have for this ship so many unused submodels, let's use at least one and do something with it".

I "abused" the animation for certain stations even i didn't feel really comfortable with them, they are useless imo and as you stated they won't be affected by the stardreamer (i guess the robot can stay but the shuttles are really not to see if you don't go close to them).

----

I like to place a wish or a thought (or two) here, much more of importance as a second animation will be.

I noticed that the Domes have now a collision detection or a collision mesh of some sort, personally i wonder where it comes from because the original Dome submodel are only edges and it has no collision detection, everybody knows you can fly through the Domes. The "mesh" (i assume a bounding box) is quite larger as the model itself, i collide with the dome long before i reach it. Now i was always wondering if collision detection is based on the original geometry or if it's taken from the replacement models. This because i would like to lower or lift certain ships which are positioned wrong now when landed, but this would mean they leave the boundaries of the original geometry, but if it's a bounding box (or diameter) based on the dimensions of the replacement model it won't matter.

I would like to know if it's safe to reposition the ships even when they leave the boundaries of the original geometry.

The second is an experiment i made with the shader, i guess i posted this already last year. Recently i "abuse" the texture to influence specularity of the materaial, this works so and so and neither i know if i did that in a proper way, it works that's all.
But if i use the texture as specularity map all dark colored areas will be flat shaded, dark windows to.
Thus obviousely a specularity map would be the right thing, it's just that i couldn't get this working, whatever i did (last year) when i used a greyscale the model had no texturing at all afterwards or was lit in a strange way from inside, most probably i have no idea what i'm doing.
Already the use of the texture as specularity map makes a big difference, buildings i lowered much in specularity using the shader, for the ships i re-used the texture which let's them look less synthetic with the drawback that i.e. windows will be flat shaded.

I noticed that i have changed one city groundtile in specularity, this i will have to check out i forgot what i did but it looks quite good almost like a bumpmap, the terrain looks bumped (due to varying specularity).
Thus maybe i have a solution but forgot it already, i will have to see.

These two things would make me much more happy as a second animation ever can because they are well to notice and for the specularity it makes a big difference in appearance. i neither would need a bump map, i can replace this well with the effects of the specularity map, a bumpmap i would need if i like to get studs on the LEGO bricks but not to give a surface a certain structure.
As default the shader could still fallback to use the texture as specularity map, certain models will look alright in this way (buildings or stations).

I guess that's all - i will remember what else i thought of when i'm at home where i have no web, as usual.

Ugh, I will try to investigate this issue this week. I have no clue why the server does this? Last week I called GoDaddy and of course they said everything is fine :/ so I will look into some settings. I was able to download the corefiles but I had a failure (2x) trying to download the whole package.

I believe my .htaccess is preventing direct download, so I will look into relaxing that so people can download directly and not have to go through site. I will keep you updated I will make a post in the admin area when I think its fixed.

Update:

See this post: http://spacesimcentral.com/community/ssc-administration/download-area-info/#post-56378

Hi,

FFED3D-beta3-Ittiz.7z is recommended as the base pack for new users to download and install over.

Is this still the recommended thing to do?

When I run it, it has no sound.

The original FFED3D_Complete does have sound.

I am running on WIN7.

PS.

I had to make a new account, because I could not log in. I have all my passwords in keepass, so IDK what might gone wrong.
I could also not ask for a new PW, since I am not sure what email I used for that.

@andyj OK! The link is down!! Where can we find it?

Mantigora2 give Darkone a pm he might be able to sort the passwords out for you, although it might be after charismas before you hear anything back.

@pinback I was talking about the dropbox link!! Is the latest beta available in the DL area?

Don't know all the files for FFED seems to be dated the 2018 innless this version was put was where else.

Very sad news! Thanks for letting us know, Laura!