The NPC names are all stored in string tables in the mod content dlls, I was lazy and generated them all from the top 100 male names, top 100 female names and top 100 surnames I got off some popular names website - from this I generate 20000 names. When creating the factions data for encounters, the list of possible names (one list for female, one list for male) is set as a range of addresses of these names, the game engine then picks one of the names in the range at random to assign to the specific NPC that has spawned.

So, in simple terms, I can create empty or blank names, or insecty-type names specifically for the Thargoids. I will study the vanilla code to see how nomads are set up to eliminate the comms and chatter.

Just added HD textures for everything except the stations and ships (as these were already high quality as provided by Gibbon), running on my development machine - and it is a marked improvement in eye candy 😀

Lave Station in Glorious HD

Stunning pics Stormprooter 😎 I must try and get Freelancer running.

Agreed - very nice looking, but I'm stuck with 1024x768 for the forseeable future.

I'm not getting much chance to do much gaming at all due to a busy work life (11 hour shifts, 3 hours travel each way = very little time to do much apart from sleep...), but I'll get stuck in on my days off and once the job finishes up.

Credit goes to RadiantGFX for the HD textures for planets & other objects, and to Hunon for the star backgrounds

This will still improve the graphics on 1024x768 resolution. The original textures were limited so they could run smoothly on a 16MB graphics card, even on low-end modern graphics cards these new textures will run fine. I believe they can be taken even further in resolution which would yield a very high level of definition for objects close up.

Anyway, links to the downloads below, I will be bundling these with the next release of the mod.

HD Textures by radiant
HD Starspheres by Hunon

These will work with the vanilla game also.

The Starspheres pack also includes some Nav Map mods.

I've been given a heads-up by a friend that the moddb download is still corrupt.  He's tried to download 3 times today and it's given an error message in FLMM every time.

This is just a suggestion, but why not upload here so that there's an alternate location for people to get it in case one of the download locations is broken?

Just downloaded it from moddb and extracted it fine using WinRAR. Don't know about using FLMM.

How do I upload it here?

Go here - http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/files/ - and just below your username you'll see a button saying "Upload file".  Simply click that and follow the instructions.  It might take a day or two to get approved by the sscadmin, but it should be good as long as it doesn't corrupt on upload.

Most people tend to "drag & drop" Freelancer mods into FLMM, so it might just be that FLMM itself is having trouble understanding the exact compression you're using for some reason.

Could be, I used 'normal' compression in WinRAR to make a zip ???

Anyway, I've uploaded the zip only to the downloads section - all anyone will need to do with this is unzip it to their FLMM mods folder, then run FLMM and it should be there.

Ive tested it twice with FLMM 1.3 and it works for me. I think it may be an issue with the filename "MostlyHarmless0.2a.1.zip.flmod" having too many dots - but I'm not sure. I thought it may be a stray ampersand(&) in the script.xml - xml don't like ampersands you have to put in & - but that's all fine.

OK, I'll let him know.  Thanks for looking into it.

Always happy to help 🙂

These kinds of issues are good to know - it helps towards making the next release more stable.

Agreed - I've put a review up for Mostly Harmless here now that it's been approved fro download (thanks Pinback).  It does reflect the (currently) early nature of the mod but should hopefully encourage a few downloads.

Cheers Gun, and you make a very good point about the witchspace systems & multiplayer - I will have to assign each of them some kind of ID (e.g. Witchspace #IS7F) or similar - they still need some element of anonymity (I think), but at least if they can do that and still have a unique name - it's helpful. The ID will also help identify the location, in the example I have just given, IS refers to 'Iron Stars', and 7F, means from the top left of the universe map (1, 1). 7 systems across, F (hex for 15) systems down - so ending at location (8, 16).

I've been fiddling with 3DS Max trying to make some progress with retexturing a few things, but really getting nowhere with it at the moment, so I have decided to get back to what I do best - programming.

List of items to do as follows:

Changes

1. Remove names & comms chatter from Thargoids

2. Include HD textures with next release

3. Sort out the 'bug' (really something annoying me) Each witchspace system has a colour, the colour of the nebula from which you get to that wichspace system should be the same colour as the witchspace system - it isn't at the moment, and my OCD is kicking off about it 😀

New Stuff

1. Asteroid/Debris/Mines/Explosive Gas Pockets/Radiation Zones Fields & Mineable areas - also make the existing nebulae & witchspace even more hazardous, but also more rewarding

2. Pirate/Unlawful bases (depends on 1 for hidden locations)

3. Pirate Patrol Paths, including tradelane attacks (depends on 2 as pirate patrols must start/end at a pirate base or jumphole)

4. Lootable Wrecks full of goodies

Up to this point, this will make the mod pretty much on a par with the original game as far as general content goes

Beyond this point is where things start to get really deep into modding the more tricky stuff

5. Navy Battleship Stations - there'll be a few scattered around, here you will pick up large scale battle missions against the thargoids, and pirates - you will not 'Be alone out there', you will be part of a large fighter group, taking on a large group of enemies - this may take some time to do so.

There's loads more to come as well, and that's before I get into the mysteries of leveraging FLHook events in multiplayer. Though I will look to integrate the anti-cheat and admin features of FLHook l when I get to item 4 on the list.

In an ideal world you'd have a larger team than just yourself working on this, but perhaps once word gets about you might get some people volunteering to help out.

Just about the only thing that I know has been implemented in other Freelancer mods and was also in the original Elite is a cloaking device (although I think in the original Elite you could fire while cloaked and you can't in any of the Freelancer versions) - I'm sure that could be implemented through stashing it away as a lootable object somewhere in the galaxy - perhaps on a wreck deep in one of the witchspace regions.  The same could be done for any additional ship upgrades you want to implement but don't want to be too well known.

In an ideal world you'd have a larger team than just yourself working on this, but perhaps once word gets about you might get some people volunteering to help out.

 

Just about the only thing that I know has been implemented in other Freelancer mods and was also in the original Elite is a cloaking device (although I think in the original Elite you could fire while cloaked and you can't in any of the Freelancer versions) - I'm sure that could be implemented through stashing it away as a lootable object somewhere in the galaxy - perhaps on a wreck deep in one of the witchspace regions.  The same could be done for any additional ship upgrades you want to implement but don't want to be too well known.

I definitely need help with modelling and texturing and so on, hopefully someone will offer to help out on that score, I'd really like to push the texturing detail up another level again.

As for 'special' equipment - yes, I do have some ideas for these, but not going to say much at this point as it may be a spoiler 🙂 Cloaking Device could be one, prototype research energy unit (power plant) could be another, who knows?

Perhaps even have a flyable Thargoid ship tucked away (as in First Encounters) - Naturally such a thing should be limited to server admins and - logically speaking, should make all human forces & bases hostile to whoever is flying it.  (Easily done in multiplayer with flhook as you can set faction reputations based on equipment).  For single player it's trickier to keep the reputations fixed.

Naturally to make things fair for anyone who got one there could be a little Thargoid installation tucked away somewhere they could repair at - perhaps a small staging post every few witchspace systems.

Interesting - one to add to the list...

What about a flyable Thargoid ship too for an OSP game? A reward perhaps just like in FFE. I do like the idea of mods flying Thargoid ships in the MP game though. That would be cool.

It could be possible for OSP - using scripting in FLMM, I can set up various starting scenarios - Standard, Pirate, Thargoid, whatever - you'd choose one of the options when applying the mod and that would set up the initial world and reputations. As for flying a Thargoid warship as a human - well that could be done, it would have to be very difficult to get though - probably by completing loads of missions for the Galactic Navy, and then only available to buy at a very high price from one of the Navy Battleship stations I want to set up. I will probably have to create a new faction specifically for this (not a problem) Galactic Navy Special Division or something like that.

On a side note, I'd like to confirm that the upload here seems to be working perfectly and hasn't produced an error message for me at all yet.

EDIT : I'd like to add that doing things the "normal" way in FLMM by dragging the archive to the window comes up with the error message "Access to C:Program FilesFreelancer Mod ManagermodsMostlyHarmlessDATARANDOMISSIONSdiff2money.ini was denied" - the file's set to "Read only" for some reason and simply unchecking that under the file properties fixes that issue.

On a side note, I'd like to confirm that the upload here seems to be working perfectly and hasn't produced an error message for me at all yet.

EDIT : I'd like to add that doing things the "normal" way in FLMM by dragging the archive to the window comes up with the error message "Access to C:Program FilesFreelancer Mod ManagermodsMostlyHarmlessDATARANDOMISSIONSdiff2money.ini was denied" - the file's set to "Read only" for some reason and simply unchecking that under the file properties fixes that issue.

Nice one for spotting that Gun!

I have fixed for next release. The error came about because I accidentally deleted the development version of the file a while back, and copied an already 'deployed' version back (which had the read-only flag set).

I will probably do another upload today, which will include the HD textures - though will increase the download size considerably.

Also, in Vista/7/8, C:Program Files and C:Program Files (x86) are 'special' folders with very strict permissions on them, and getting the game to apply a mod can be tricky. IIRC I had to set folder & file permissions for my user account to "Full Control" on the Freelancer folder to get it to work.

No worries at all.

Given the current lack of any servers at present I'm going to try hosting one myself and seeing if making it internet accessible will give people somewhere to test the multiplayer.  The only downside is that I'm on a 3G connection and I know quite often servers hosted on mobile internet don't appear for anyone else, but it's worth a try.

I'll have it running for most of today & tomorrow, then from 8pm to 5am for the coming week (essentially it'll be up whenever I'm at home so I can keep tabs on things)

3G - eek!

A good way to run it would be via Hamachi - but people would have to know the virtual network name you use for that.

https://secure.logmein.com/UK/products/hamachi/default.aspx

It's a good way to run 'LAN' games over the internet - you can also password your virtual network - useful for other older games no longer supported with online servers.

If I could get away with it, I'd set a FL server up on our office server, but I don't think the boss would be too happy about it 🙂

It could be worse - if I lived just a few metres to the west it would be a GPRS connection - I'm literally at the edge of the 3G reception area, lol.

The server is showing up fine, but it's got a ping that's off the scale - showing as ???? in the server list. Thought that may be down to a lack of an available echo service on your internet connection, but cannot connect anyway due to a timeout.