Something special

[zcout]

Hey guys,
first, I'd like to say that I ain't playing Discovery currently and I'm not sure if I will anymore, but I like this mod and I like activity of the community here. So far these forums is the place where I've found answers to most of my questions about Freelancer in general. I was playing this mod some time ago, you could meet me in-game as Kaspi, but I've been still around here.

Second, I'm not much experienced in modifying Freelancer, actually only thing I've tried was the Freelancer Explorer. But I've been doing some 3D graphics lately.. with Alternativa3D, Crystal Space, IrrLicht and most of all the Ogre3D engines, using C++ mostly (but also Python, C# and the ActionScript 3) so I've got some basic understanding about things that may happen in Freelancer.

Third, it's been long since the original Freelancer came out. And I guess it is hard to extend it without Microsoft's assistance. I've already seen some petition about making it's source available, but I haven't seen such an answer from MS, which imo, doesn't care much. On another side, I always wanted to play Freelancer on Linux, since I'm very addicted to that system:Pbut I had no luck running it under Wine.

It's been so long and people are still playing, don't you think it's time to do something with that? I actually think the time is.. But I'm not sure if there's a way. What crosses my thoughts is how the World of Warcraft's community developed their own open source WoW server, so they weren't forced to play on the official servers only.

Now, do you guys think it would be possible to remake the Freelancer's client? I've heard that Freelancer uses the DirectPlay protocol, which should be documented on MSDN. If there were any doubts, I believe Wireshark could help. It would be a lot of work, which would require a lot of will at first place, as well as knowledge and time.

Is here anyone interested in such a thing?
(sorry if posting to a wrong forum)

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If you know, you must teach. And if you know, you must lead..

[Corsair]

Legal stuff is the primary obstacle. Look at the Hard-Light Productions forum. They have the source code for Freespace 2, but the license for the game is held for Interplay. Microsoft holds the license for Freelancer since Digital Anvil collapsed. Even if we managed to get the source code on our own, Micro$oft would likely come down on us like a ton of bricks. They don't care about us until we begin to mooch their product, however old it is.

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[zcout]

I'm talking about writing the source code from scratch, in other words: writing own application. Microsoft has no right to order people what apps they can write and what ones not. I'm not talking about stealing or modifying some existing code. They could just blame us of using their game content (models and stuff) or for using the DirectPlay (depends how this thing is licensed, I wasn't looking for it yet). That all in case we would distribute the created software as commercial. The game content could be re-made, then MS couldn't say **** imo. And I don't even think they would, because this is not supposed to be commercial.

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If you know, you must teach. And if you know, you must lead..

[zhihao420]

Writing the source code from scratch might have been possible at within two years of Freelancer's launch since there had been way more of enthusiasts and modders around then. But the chances of writing it now with this community is close to zero since we don't have many talented people who'd dedicate at least a year to produce a similar game engine to Microsoft's Freelancer for no profit.

Writing the source code from scratch might have been possible at within two years of Freelancer's launch since there had been way more of enthusiasts and modders around then. But the chances of writing it now with this community is close to zero since we don't have many talented people who'd dedicate at least a year to produce a similar game engine to Microsoft's Freelancer for no profit.

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