So when did space become so full of... asteroids...

[TheBlackPixie]

Since when did asteroid fields form in random clumps in space?

And everything in the game is in spheres of asteroids or randomly placed planets and FAR TOO MANY STARS.

Basically, all of the systems in Freelancer and thus Discovery, don't follow any of the laws of physics or even make an effort to LOOK like real Star systems or asteroid fields...

It's a shame, but I wonder what gameplay would be like with for instance: all asteroids are found in a ring around ether a large gas giant, destroyed planet (with core remaining) or orbiting a star at varying distances...

I wouldn't mind seeing a system added to Discovery that was near scale or at least believable...

like Crossfire has Sol, we could have something different but still realistic?

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<In Space No One Can Hear You Scream>

[HuggieSunrise]

Actually the sectors themselves are large spheres with wallpaper on them. The dynamic is esier for the engine to generate rubber bands of "posters" that turn into the randomly generated debris of choice when you fly closer and infact in some of the background of the vanilla systems you can see that.. (had you ever ran freelancer in low settings) that these rubber band posters of debris can be turned off leaving only the background to hint theres rocks or debris in one direction.


in tau 29 is probably the best case.. from baffin go there.. and turn everything down.. then turn it to high. youll see the spraypainted asteroids on the background.


Its eye candy.. a deliberate system to implement the greatist impact per actual work/time investment that youd find in a title released in around 2002.


As for realistic.. i hope not cause cruise engines would have to be bumped up from 350-400 to 250 000 000 just to be playable.


While i cant speak for the skill set for the current devteam when I was making systems with txt and XML tools all you really have is what was done before.


Im sure theres been better tools release since then if other mods took a stab at it. but those are other mods.. Here.. well..disco is disco. it keeps to the original freelancer pretty well.


but if you REHEHEALLY LIKE REALISTIC... try "orbiter"

[SA_Scavenger]

Freelancer and realism, yea no. Moon is 360000kms, often times more, away from the Earth. All suns in freelancer are much closer than that to livable planets. If realism played a role, Manhattan would be crispy. Or you would just take eons to get anywhere.

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[Camtheman]

Its scaled down.

What's so hard to understand?

People don't have time to cruise over 9000 years to get to a destination.

The real title to this topic should be "So when did space become so... big"

[Lumik]

I doubt you want realistic space in game. Why? Because it would be sooo boring. Most of the systems will be empty, or they should be very huge to be real. Were you in 4.85 in Newcastle? It was huge as hell and even that I doubt it was realistic. And what it bring? Nothing, it was just annoying. Freelancer is an arcade game, not a simulator. You can say about many things that are not realistic. Star systems/ships/stations/planets/moon scale, ramming huge ships by fighters without beying destroyed, ships don´t need fuel etc. you can go on and on. It is like this to make the game simple, because simple = fun for lot of people. Is Need for speed realistic? Definitely not. But it´s fun. And fun is the key point in games.

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[Echo 7-7]

Binary and Trinary star systems do exist.


In the scheme of things, there is greater realism if you "zoom out". To explain what Huggie said, systems in Freelancer are part of much larger nebulae, and the "empty regions" between them are open pockets within those nebulae - not the other way around (pockets of asteroids in open space).


Also, realism is far too much effort to execute in Disco. There is a certain suspension of disbelief required to play Freelancer that continues on in the mod.

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[Thunderer]

Space is a giant piece of vacuum. Or nothing, as some people define it. There's nothing to transfer sound in space. I think nobody would like a game without some sound effects...

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[TheBlackPixie]

I know what you all mean, I agree, but I would like if asteroids only formed ONE ring around ONE object, like they do in maybe 2/100 systems...

and if the Suns were all moved 30k away from the edge of the map, like in Kappa, you get a sense of a giant sun and not being able to just fly up to it or round it, (although some systems look very pretty with there central star)

I put some thought into how a mod for Freelancer might look and function with 'realism' in mind.

The sun's would be almost backdrops to a system, so far away you would not have any reason to get to them.

Planets and features would form in orbits around these, essentially you might have a system with a sun in the bottom left and part of an asteroid ring cutting accross the map from bottom right to top left.
Then maybe a few planets, possibly a giant one way off in the distance as another form of backdrop.

but keeping the distances of bases and planets within reason.

Another Idea I had (similar to implemented in Crossfire Sol System)

was to have a 'Slingshot' style 'Trade lane' where you would dock with one end at one planet (a ring or whatever) and there would be no extra rings between that and the destination.

So you would not want to come out of the trade lane half way unless you knew there was something there, otherwise it will take some time to complete the journey without there being Trade Lane Segments floating in space.

So each planet would have an object as a Trade lane pointing toward each other Planet or large solar body, you would dock with these like Trade lanes and be fired off toward the next giant planet etc...

Instead think of being in orbit around a giant Planet taking up as much space as half a regular system, where battles and stations would sit the same relative distance apart and travelling between planets was more like travelling between systems in Discovery...

You could up the speed of cruise to compensate for larger distances, increase scanner and draw range...

You know if the game engine could handle this? Planets this big? systems this big?

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&lt;In Space No One Can Hear You Scream&gt;

[shcore22]

Sol system???? Get over it man..... -_- ...

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[Prysin]

Systems in freelancer are to my knowledge limited in physical size to 1000x1000x1000k this means you only got 1,000,000,000k3
space to operate within. Now considering hattens size is around earths size, it needs to be 37k wide, and the sun in that systems needs to be around 800k wide..... That means we cant wven scale things up.

Even doubling the size of planets and suns would kill off systems like newcastle due to their sheer initial size.

FL is practically impossible to scale up due to the limitations of the engine itself.
The best we CAN do is creating better starspheres to make things look more realistic. And add small planets or clouds close to the end of the map to create some weird kinda fweling that something is out there. But adding stuff means more stuff for our pc's and server to keep track off, and as a small private gaming server we are also limited by our own hardware and its compability with the outdated software this game is based upon

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