Ok, I've been doing a bit over the past few days, I've got at current Two new members for the Development Team, Avilden (Modeler) and Xephyr (Music Maker). On top of this i managed to fully get Shrapnel Missiles working exactly the way i want them, I even found a stock effect that works really well with it as you can see with the screen shots. I also managed to get Ambient Explosions and the Battledust system's working for some nice effects thanks to Why's Big Huge Effects Pack. And thanks to some creative coding I can have the Shrapnel Missile Chunks Explode and Give of the Battledust which would usually not be possible. Anyway, to do these shots all i've done is increase the density of a certain area (makes more NPC's Spawned) and made the Max battle size 24 and I get these rather Epic battles happening all around, it's really good for Shots, although all the ones you see are where They have all decided that I am a better Target practice dummy then a camera man.

Enjoy the eye candy (well i like to call it that)

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Detail Mapped Vanilla Models v1.1

This is my first blog entry about the Detail Mapped Model pack, but i had made this little addon for freelancer about 3 days ago. This is the second proper release of the pack and includes all the Liberty, Bounty Hunter, and About Half of the Utility ships. In this release i have fixed a lot of bugs in the MAT's. I only realised that their where bugs when Star Trader pointer out that all my string entries where messed up when i was fixing another problem. I have uploaded the file to the-starport.net and am waiting for verification that it has been accepted, then i will post a link to it.

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The Anna V

Here are some picture of the Anna V, a model of SolCommands that I have just put into the Mod, This is the first custom capital ship that i have put into the mod and hopefully it will be the first of many. These are just several pictures taken in game, two just scenery shots and another for being able to size up this ship. This ship will most likely be a Frigate, which will be an anti-fighter capital ship mainly deployed for guess what, swatting those annoying fighters that pick on the Mother Battleship. I am yet to give this a formal name in the game since Anna V is the original name SolCommand gave it, I think i'll change it. SolCommand was kind enough to supply quite a few textures for this model so don't be surprised if you find multiple versions of the ship, i think i'll have one captured by Bandits and given a full rework and a lick of paint.

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A Close Look At: The Shrapnel Missile

Here are some in development Picture's of the Shrapnel Missile doing it thing, hurting anything within a large radius. As you can see their are some quite nice effects happening their, but these where all showing off pictures as you can see from the Frame rate in the corner i was getting 2 fps at best. But thats to be expected when the engine is expected to calculate 2000 objects travelling at high speed with a considerable mass going with them. I have been testing this pretty much for the past week and have found a good number of particles per missile at 50. The only problems i have been having with this weapon is that 1. The actual particles refuse to give any meaningful damage by them selfs which means i need to use a large radius invisible explosion to deal the damage. 2. The nice fire effects that you see only occur if the particle hits another object, I've been working tirelessly to try and get the effect happening to all the particles with no worthwhile results. So going into the Details of the actual weapon class:

• They do damage to a very large area (256m radius)
• They do considerable less damage to a standard explosive round (to compensate for the large radius)
• They are very good at destroying parts off ships (this is especially important because i will be using all the breakable parts of the ships)
• They don't have to be aimed directly at your opponent they will explode when around 10m from the target.
• They will damage everyone including yourself in the radius

Thats about it for the Shrapnel Missile

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Detail Map Pictures

Here's some pictures of the Liberty Dreadnought that i Detail Mapped, it looks alot dirtier than it did originally but it looks like real metal. The only problem with detailing the Whole Model is that the Emissive Textures no longer work, i will have to look into trying to get them both to work together. Anyway here are the pics.

Detail Map's

I've been busy Detail Mapping some of the new ships of Dark Rain, I've Mapped all the custom model's which was quite simple since it only required Mapping one texture per ship. Because i wanted to exercise my new Mapping skills i when't on to map some of the original ships, i manage to get all the Liberty Ships done, as well as the bounty hunter ships, they look quite good if you ask me. I will be uploading them all to the-starport.net for everyone to use.

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Missile's

I've now pretty much finished all the Missile entries for the mod. I am yet to balance them (as with all the guns), i have several new types of missiles which hopefully will become a seamless part of game play. All the missile types are as follows:

• High Explosive
• Shrapnel
• EMP
• Smart
• Multi-part
• Dumb Bomb
• Cruise

They all have specific uses in combat, with cruise missile's being a big part of battleship warfare. As i said i have the balancing to do which is the hardest and the most difficult but they all have their underpinnings finished.

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Uberlancer

Better Ingredients, Better Freelancer

Announcing the official launch of the UberLancer Project.

The UberLancer Project is a community collaboration to create the next version of Freelancer. The Project began a few years ago as an idea to bring the Freelancer communities and players together under one cause. That cause was to use the ideas and suggestions of the community to create a v2 mod for Freelancer. The original goals of the project remain, but we've expanded the agenda to include organizing into an entity that is capable of negotiating with Microsoft and the licensee's of Freelancer to either acquire the code, negotiate it's release as freeware, or if all else fails facilitate its release as a download available from Steam, Direct2Drive, etc. If it's the latter (Steam, etc.) we intend to secure permission to alter the code so multiplayer will point to a global server that the community controls. This will ensure that the multiplayer component (which has kept this game alive all these years), remains strong.

We will have a dev server, but will not be a general open server. We are also not a fansite or resource site for Freelancer. It's important to note this because we are not in competition with any server or site for players or membership. In fact, we strongly support sites and servers such as The-Starport, Discovery FL, etc.

We would like to invite the Freelancer community to join us at www.UberLancer.comto ask questions, make comments, and offer suggestions. We're also looking for folks who'd like to take an active role in the project, see here and here for more info. On the more creative side, we need people who are familiar with coding, server operations, technical writing, and last but not least: really really great ideas!

Join us today and help make this project a success!

http://www.uberlancer.com

Progress so far ...

These are some pictures of the current progress i have made, the first pic shows my successful implementation of effects based lighting which now give me working headlights. The second is my implementation of new trail effects, this was more experimenting with .ALE files but gave some nice results. The ship in both pic is from SolCommands Great work and i wish to thank him here (i will most likly do this for every one of his models i use). This here highlights one of the main things im trying to do, which is make this game shine!

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Welcome

Umm, well Welcome to the official Blog of the Dark Rain Mod of Freelancer that is currently in the works. This is my first blog and i'm hoping to get some interest in this little project of mine. Well, so what is this new mod you are talking about, about then? Well it's going to be a whole new universe based on a story I've kinda pieced together through a couple of influences, its about two states which are controlled by separate Businesses who are on the verge of an all out war (kinda cliche but you'll hopefully like it) The two states are the UATI (United Aerospace Technologies Incorporated) and the CBSU (Corporate Banking Solutions United) i'll go into their back stories once i've figured them out. Basically it's a concept at this point in time, but it will be my baby until i find something else to spend my time on.

Keep an eye on here for some progress

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