Mostly Harmless

[Geraldine]

I don't think there is anything wrong with self-sufficient Tharglets, your building your on take on Elite after all Stormprooter so a couple of changes from the original games is totally fine in my view for your mod. In fact it gives it a flavour all of its own!

[Gunbladelad]

In this I'm inclined to agree with Geraldine regarding the tharglets. You do have to work within the limitations of the Freelancer game engine after all. I do have a random thought though - which may be a way around your rotating stations issue. In Freelancer it's possible to enable the planets to rotate. Perhaps you could get the corolis stations assigned as planets and essentially have an invisible docking ring in front of the bays. The main downside to this is how Freelancer treats planets and ships "under" the surface (insanely high radiation to cause near-instant death)

[Stormprooter]

In this I'm inclined to agree with Geraldine regarding the tharglets. You do have to work within the limitations of the Freelancer game engine after all. I do have a random thought though - which may be a way around your rotating stations issue. In Freelancer it's possible to enable the planets to rotate. Perhaps you could get the corolis stations assigned as planets and essentially have an invisible docking ring in front of the bays. The main downside to this is how Freelancer treats planets and ships "under" the surface (insanely high radiation to cause near-instant death)Yeah, the tharglets thing is a "nice to have".That's a good idea about the stations though - but I doubt it will work, unless I can find a way to skip the docking sequence animation. I think Nightstalkers mod does it with shipyards where large ships can dock - so I'll have a look at that for some clues. It may work out

[Stormprooter]

I don't think there is anything wrong with self-sufficient Tharglets, your building your on take on Elite after all Stormprooter so a couple of changes from the original games is totally fine in my view for your mod. In fact it gives it a flavour all of its own! It's just my OCD kicking in. Tharglets spawning from thargoid ships is one of the signature features of the original game, so I would be inclined to at least explore the possibility of replicating that feature. If it turns out to be impossible, or just too time consuming to get done, then I'll still be happy with what we have already. On the issue with ship names in the intro animations - the way this is done in most mods is to have a basic 'sign' model, and then textures for the text. I have 'obtained' some sign models and applied my own textures and tested, and it's not overly time consuming to get them done - so this is now on the todo list

[Geraldine]

Yaaay! :girlcrazy: The intro will look fab! Well done Stormprooter! :queen:

[Stormprooter]

And the updated intro..... 

[Stormprooter]

And the weapons overhaul preview - with soundtrack by AC/DC  

[Geraldine]

More Lasers!!! :girlcrazy: Nice one Stormprooter. Music was a perfect choice, perhaps when your testing the missiles may I suggest you use "Heatseeker" ? Would be awesome if it were possible to easily add custom music to the game. :party:

[Gunbladelad]

It is possible to add custom music to the game - all you essentially need to do is encode the music to the same format and give them the relevant names. In fact there's a couple of mods out there that do just that - the hidamri sound mod (tweaks the sound effects & so on) and the Metroid Prime music mod (replaces the ingame music)

[Stormprooter]

It is possible to add custom music to the game - all you essentially need to do is encode the music to the same format and give them the relevant names. In fact there's a couple of mods out there that do just that - the hidamri sound mod (tweaks the sound effects & so on) and the Metroid Prime music mod (replaces the ingame music) Yep, it's do-able, but time-consuming. It would be very low on the list of things to do for me. The in-game music already in Freelancer is actually very good, and it's not quite as straightforward to think about adding custom music - within the game, each musical piece has a context and purpose - the three main categroies are ambient, danger and battle, there are a few others for specific encounters as well. In my mod, I have replicated usage of these themes, but mixed them up a bit, but when in battle you will get batlle music, and the same goes for the other categories. This means the music you get at any point during play fits your current situation. That's not to say I will not add other music - but it will need to fit and make sense within the context of where and when it's heard in game. And that means it needs to be carefully thought out, planned and tested - all of which takes time.

[Gunbladelad]

Not to worry, I was mostly answering Geraldine's comment about custom music. I'm currently using the Metroid Prime music mod with Mostly Harmless anyway. Whoever put it together certainly picked the music well for the situations they come up in.

[Stormprooter]

Other mods that change music, fonts, the HUD and other generic things should generally be compatible with my mod (but I cannot guarantee it ). The ones that won't work are those that change ships, weapons, equipment, systems and things like that.

[Stormprooter]

ECM & Torpedo effects update my original battle video which youtube didn't like because of the music (Freebird - Lynyrd Skynyrd) .... skip to 2:45 for all the actionhttp://www.moddb.com/mods/freelancer-mostly-harmless/videos/flmhwepspreviewfreebird[/url]

[Gunbladelad]

I really like the new ECM looks

[Stormprooter]

I really like the new ECM looks Good, I spent 4 hours trying out various available effects, and finally picked that one

[Geraldine]

You picked well there Stormprooter, its a nice effect! Also good to see the Police are as crazy mad as ever. Now that is a hallmark of Elite! :girlcrazy:

[Stormprooter]

You picked well there Stormprooter, its a nice effect! Also good to see the Police are as crazy mad as ever. Now that is a hallmark of Elite! :girlcrazy: Yeah, they seem to like their new weapons, and I've got them on 'easy' mode at the moment :DTo be fair, the whole weapons damage and shield/hull strength balancing is still yet to be done - I'm currently writing some code that will analyse all the stats and help me find a decent balance across the board. The mod has gone from 8 different weapons to about 35 including variants.

[Stormprooter]

I present the Ingram ST99He4 "Furnace" Plasma Accelerator One of the new weapons for my mod. Apologies in advance to anyone in Germany, youtube has gone and blocked access because of the music I added to the video - sorry, it tends to be a lottery when doing this. Alternate video here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/freelancer-mostly-harmless/videos/ingram-st99he4-furnace-plasma-accelerator[/url]

[Geraldine]

Hot stuff! :girlcrazy:

[Stormprooter]

Dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's.I have found a way to make the bounty system from the original Elite game work in Freelancer: Mostly Harmless. When you destroy any outlaw ship (including Thargoids) they will drop an Outlaw Ship Ident Chip which you can tractor in and sell at any commodity trader. The Ident chips take up no cargo space, so you can collect as many as you like.There is one more (just one more, honest!) feature I want to add before doing a release. This being when you destroy another ship, there is a chance you will get to tractor in some of their weapons. This mechanic will allow players who are bold enough to get hold of Thargoid weapons - The Thargoid Laser, Thargoid Turret and Thargoid ECM System. Thargoid weapons deliver x1.5 damage compared to their military laser equivalents, but at almost zero power usage (so kind of the equivalent of Nomad weapons in vanilla Freelancer). The Thargoid ECM System gives 99% reliability in outfoxing homing missiles and torpedoes, and makes a rather 'spooky' effect when used.