Out of interest, Stormprooter, how long do you think it will be before you're able to implement multiplayer in this?

If you want an extra pair of hands to test things out I should be able to get things going on a LAN to see how it pans out.

I have no idea on timescales for multiplayer - it's not an aspect of FL development I have looked at in any way as yet. I have not had time to do any more work on this since I released it back in June - so I really don't know.

I think I have to get familiar with server stuff like FLHook and other bits to do with anti-cheat - will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I hope to get back onto development in the next few weeks.

No problem - While I've not done much in the way of flhook coding, I have experimented with the plugins that are present in the Discovery 4.86 mod and it seems straightforward enough.  Just give me a nudge if you're needing help and I'll see if I can work it out.

Any news on this at all?

I know on your facebook page you mentioned that work is in progress on Multiplayer, which was on my wish list for it.

No problem - While I've not done much in the way of flhook coding, I have experimented with the plugins that are present in the Discovery 4.86 mod and it seems straightforward enough.  Just give me a nudge if you're needing help and I'll see if I can work it out.

Still in the planning/research stages at the moment. I have managed to get FLServer running with the mod on my development machine, but I am struggling to find time to add in FLHook (something I will have to learn). There are also a few additions to the mod I want to add. These are asteroid fields & pirate bases (pirate bases should be hidden), adding these will then allow me to add pirate patrol paths & trade lane attacks. There are other bits and pieces I need to sort out to make multiplayer work completely properly - config files for starting a multiplayer game and the like. I have made some progress though, I have managed to get the Thargoid Warships to start appearing again (I lost them when fiddling with difficulty settings and state graphs and nasty things like that, that don't make much sense to me) Also fixed a bug where it was impossible to buy turrets for the Python.

With the recent releases of BF4 and CoD Ghosts, I am somewhat distracted at the moment 😀

I will probably spend a few more hours on this over the weekend, but I do intend to get this completed - then I have to find a place to host it...

Sounds like you're making promising progress on this.  I've mentioned your last post to some of the team on the PTC server who are one of those looking for a new mod to host due to being dissatisfied with the direction the Discovery Mod has been taking and yours was one of those that was discussed a while back.

Remember that I'm more than happy to help you out in whatever way I can.

Sounds like you're making promising progress on this.  I've mentioned your last post to some of the team on the PTC server who are one of those looking for a new mod to host due to being dissatisfied with the direction the Discovery Mod has been taking and yours was one of those that was discussed a while back.

 

Remember that I'm more than happy to help you out in whatever way I can.

Well, if someone is interested in hosting the mod, I'd better get cracking! 😀

Thanks for this, it has given me some extra motivation to find time to get on with it.

How's this for a plan:

I will get the current 'fixed' version as ready for MP as I can and send it to you to have a look (probably via my dropbox) - perhaps you can get FLHook configured on it, and also perhaps submit it to PTC for them to try out.

One possible extra change will be the starting money and commodity prices - I have had some feedback on this already, that not enough cash can be made on commodities quickly enough - so I may multiply all prices by 5, and increase staring cash to 5000 Cr to make trading more worthwhile - not entirely sure about it though.

I can probably have this ready for next week. If you could get FLHook sorted, and send me back the relevant files, I can then have a look and work out what is going on with it.

Meantime, I will add the extra bits I want to add (asteroid fields, pirate stuff etc), then publish the new version when it's ready. (End of this month / early December - perhaps optimistic, but probably do-able)

Admittedly the PTC team will have tech people with more experience in modifying flhook's data than I have (My experience has been mostly sorting out developer foul-ups in the plaintext ini files and finding obscure bugs ingame nobody else seems to encounter), so the odds are I'd probably request their help along the way with anything I get stuck on.

Adjusting the restarts and funding for them is relatively simple - virtually every server host does that themselves anyway.  Commodity prices (in Discovery anyway) can also be adjusted server-side using flhook too - usually with "event.ini".

I'll get back to you on this next week (If I can remember to do so), if I forget, just reply here and I'll get an email alert 😀

Pretty much got everything sorted pre-FL Hook - just got an outstanding issue with player levels for OpenSP/MP - player status is always reporting next level requirement as 'Mission' and it is impossible to rank up. I have posted a question on the RIP forum (where I got the TCM Starter Pack which my mod is based on) - just waiting for some reply on that.

Staring money increased to $5000, commodity prices all now x5, return of the Thargoids, also buffed Thargoid Warships as they were a bit too easy to destroy.

I want the levels to work properly so that I can add Adoxa's ranks plug-in - this will allow me to report a player's rank along with their 'Elite' ranking - i.e. Harmless, Mostly Harmless, Poor, Average, Above Average, Competent, Dangerous, Deadly and - = E L I T E = - . I will then be happy for it to go to multiplayer for 'testing', before I add the other stuff in.

Levels and Ranks are now sorted for both OpenSP and Multiplayer. I have disabled the widescreen hudshift by default (this was causing a few problems for a few users) - I will update the destructions document to show how to re-enable it for 16:9 screens (it's just uncomenting one line in dacom.ini)

The current version is ready to be server-ized, so if PTC are interested to test it out, I am happy to let you guys have it as it is - just let me know and I'll upload to my dropbox account and send you the link.

It runs as multiplayer OK as far as I can tell, but I have only used the FLServer.exe program as is, without using FLHook or anything else server-side.

Cheers

New version has been uploaded to MODDB and should be available for download in the next 24 hours. Just has to be approved by MODDB admins.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/freelancer-mostly-harmless

Excellent video Stormprooter 😎 😎

Great to see our favourite naughty bugs make an appearance!

Looking good.

Due to my connection setup, I'll see about downloading from ModDB a week on Wednesday (when I top up the web allowance) and have a good poke through it  

I know that flstat - a program which reads the game files and shows a spreadsheet with all the item locations and best selling points - works with the older version, so I'm sure it'll work with the update.  I'll check that Freelancer Server Process Manager and Server Account Managers (2 server admin tools) work with the new version once I've got it.

Been looking at FLHook and plugin development and it is now starting to dawn on me that any hopes I had of having a 'life' are now shattered. FLHook is a pretty nifty bit of software, developing some of my own plugins will allow me to put some more features of the original 'Elite' game into my mod (at least for multiplayer), things like displaying the "Right On, Commander!" message every 25 kills, awarding bounties for killing NPC pirates and Thargoids, perhaps even scripting some 'Special missions' - Constrictor Hunt and the Cloaking Device ASP attack for starters

Besides getting all excited about that, I still have much to do with this mod to make it a more immersive and coherent experience - re-doing all the voice stuff is one massive task in front of me (looking for a decent text-to-speech engine/api for this), re-modelling all the stations (may have to get some help on this as I have failed three times already to get anywhere with it) so I can get them to rotate and still work with the docking procedure is another, then there is all the extra content I want to add. One feature I really want to get to is a mission type (like in one of the Oolite OXPs) which is a massive battle against the Thargoids, which will include other 'freelance' npcs, Galactic Navy npcs and Battleships.

With FLHook now in the mix it will also be possible to make the online game universe much more dynamic - I have so many ideas my head is going to explode! I just wish I had more time to work on this.

One thing I will suggest is including a copy of an adjusted version of flserver to run with the mod, as most people wont be aware on how to correctly edit their actual flserver program to match up with the mod version via resource hacker and similar programs.

Good point. Will do.

EDIT: Job Done, update posted to MODDB, may not be available for a few hours until the admins authorise it.

As of this moment it's up and available for download.

I'm sure we can expect the odd Mostly Harmless server to appear within the next few days.

As of this moment it's up and available for download.

I'm sure we can expect the odd Mostly Harmless server to appear within the next few days.

Cool, I will keep an eye out

Some police-themed screenshots - these are the sorts of scenes I used to spend hours drawing on paper when I was a teenager. One of things I loved about ELITE were the simple straight-edged ship designs, so even I could draw them so long as I kept the ruler steady 😀

Just as a heads-up, your latest upload to moddb is downloading fine, but FLMM is coming up with a "Archive may be corrupted" message - a manual look through it using Winrar seems to show a lot of missing files too - including flserver.  (3 different downloads, all identical results).

Thankfully I've got my own copy of flserver modified to work correctly, but I don't think it'll show up online due to my connection being 3G based.

I did get some screenshots myself of a mission where I had to go & wipe out some pesky Thargoids.  I'll just share the one here, but the other 2 are on the Frontier forums.

I know - the sharp-eyed among you will have noticed the human names by the thargoids.  This may be tricky to remove for just the Thargoids alone - especially in regards to mission-spawned NPCs.  As a result they also have human comm chatter too.

Cheers for the heads-up Gun - re-uploading now. The archive on my local drive is fine - must have corrupted on upload (not the first time that's happened).

And yes, at this stage the Thargoids have 'human' names, and speak english perfectly, this is what we game developers call 'white boxing' 😀 This is where you use place-holder assets for a game so you can make it work, while the real assets are still being developed.

In the case of the Thargoids, I need to create some insect-like animations for when they communicate/taunt you, also I need to re-create all the voice stuff in the game (which is no small task), then I can do the Thargoid chatter as being like the Elite lore, where it is badly translated and makes no sense, like "Eat goats like sensual poet". Until I can get the voice stuff done, no real point in doing much else.

I know that in Discovery (and possibly vanilla Freelancer too - it's been a while since I played it without mods) they just have blank names for the Nomads, but the latest Discovery mod has its own (sizable) custom name database.  I'm not too sure how you coded in the thargoids in this, but perhaps looking at the NPC setup for the Nomads in normal Freelancer could get you an idea on how to minimize the human names & chatter for the Thargoids until you've got something else arranged for them.