alot of random (yet very good) ideas for improving the game

[kersch_wasser]

to start things off i really dont mind..infact i rather like the tau conquest idea....its like the sirius version of world war 2...adds some needed excitement to things


1..character image...i noticed when you make a character...it brings up the 3d character mapping of trent...i was thinking...why not add a little module of code..that allowed you to choose which basic character model you wanted?i know it would be abit of work for making the female voices but it wouldnt be too hard considering that fl`s audio library comes pre packed with most of the stuff needed...and i know this may seem too hard to do at first...but when your making an fl server...it has a module for the server lord to choose what the starting character will be for new players....so i think if someone uses code from that module it would work out nice

2..completion of audio packets for the newer discovery bases?....possibly of very minor importance..but i find it abit weird when im having a pre rendered conversation with an npc in the bar and suddenly silence for 15 or more seconds.....this would require alot of new audio recording...but i know that a very large portion of the discovery community would be willing to provide voice audio sampling.....this would also be a good time to make properly accented characters for diferent nation bases...french accent for french..british for british...german for german...japanese for japanese and so on

3...more mining ships for different purposes...its obvious enough...scrawl thourgh the lists...there are 25 or more ships for most purposes each...even hauling..yet when it comes to basic mineral mining that number drops to about 5 or less depending o nthe situation.....maybe make some more mining ships to balance the variety abit?....like big ones with less cargo and more guns...or big ones with multiple mine or countermeasure slots....you know not too big a dif but something to help

4...more realistic laser weaponry.....i know fl is set up to use bolt projection method for virtually all weps...but lets be a wee bit more realistic here...mining lasers...laser turrets....beam cannons.....they need to be actual beams....this isnt very hard at all because ive seen plenty of mods that attempt to or actually make solid beam lasers.....its in the spirit of things like the bluebell chain gun.....there are two ways to make solid beam lasers

4.1...you can make a solid beam laser by making a weapon with ultra low dmg per shot...but uber refire rate...25.00 is usually the minimum for getting the beam efect

4.2...uebr massive projectile.....you can also make a gun that has somewhat low refire rate...but has a very large projectile...that goes through a sort of stretching out process as it travels to a maximum distance then dissappeares....

4.3...this is a simple one....but take the graphics of the various colors of cargo tractor beam and tighten them up abit...good idea for a laser weapon cause ya got everything you need there

4.4...and the final idea for lasers.....ok...make some kind of super bright weapon shot....that when you press fire....extends out from the weapon to a maximum distance...loooking like a big super bright rod of light that you slam into ships to hurt them....yet with a light strobing effect for the laser gimick


5...make jumpholes more realistic,hence random access.....well if you played the single player fl vanilla alot like i have..youll notice repeated reference to checking jupholes for phase alignment or no go.....i propose adding some kind of variable that makes jumpholes random access.....perhaps giving jupmhole a lifebar that is drained little bit each time someone uses it...then when life bar drained no one can use said jumphole until it recharges...sually only afew minutes but enough to make things interesting...concept reference tradelane take outs....except make it so weapon fire doesnt efect it...so that way only people juping willl effect it

---

Dropping from the 3rd-story dorm room I'm in would be painful.

[aerelm]

1. The Character Image is not really important, is it? You'll only see the char in Bar or Equipment Dealer, and no matter the outfit of the Char, Face and Voice would still be 'Trent'. You can also choose your Char Outfit when activating the Mod, but will effect your own server, not the GC one.
   
2. Been discussed over and over and over before, and It goes in a circle... Never really got anywhere as far as I remember.
   
3. Check the Other thread you made, I'll post my opinion there.
   
4. Beam Idea is another one of those ideas that was discussed so many times. Back in older versions of the Mods, Chainguns (BlueBell, Purple Goddess, etc) Were actually Chainguns, with 16.64 (Or somethin!) refire rate. But they made the Server Lag so hard that it would even crash. So the refire rate was reduced. The other ways of making a Beam is discussed as well, like the 'Long Projectile' idea. But IIRC the issue with that idea was that when you fired a Weapon, the projectile would stay in same place, but you would move away. Looking more like how Excalibur looks, not like an actual 'Beam'.
   
5. Random Access Jumpholes were Also discussed before many times. Some Support the Idea, some Flame it! And Devs haven't really commented on this matter afaik.
   

[Seth Karlo]

to start things off i really dont mind..infact i rather like the tau conquest idea....its like the sirius version of world war 2...adds some needed excitement to things
1..character image...i noticed when you make a character...it brings up the 3d character mapping of trent...i was thinking...why not add a little module of code..that allowed you to choose which basic character model you wanted?i know it would be abit of work for making the female voices but it wouldnt be too hard considering that fl`s audio library comes pre packed with most of the stuff needed...and i know this may seem too hard to do at first...but when your making an fl server...it has a module for the server lord to choose what the starting character will be for new players....so i think if someone uses code from that module it would work out nice

It's an interesting idea, but would require lots of new audio files, and several EXE hex edits... You'd have to ask Cannon.

2..completion of audio packets for the newer discovery bases?....possibly of very minor importance..but i find it abit weird when im having a pre rendered conversation with an npc in the bar and suddenly silence for 15 or more seconds.....this would require alot of new audio recording...but i know that a very large portion of the discovery community would be willing to provide voice audio sampling.....this would also be a good time to make properly accented characters for diferent nation bases...french accent for french..british for british...german for german...japanese for japanese and so on

Again, interesting idea, agreed it should be something to look into, Cannon is the only person I can think of who could do it.

3...more mining ships for different purposes...its obvious enough...scrawl thourgh the lists...there are 25 or more ships for most purposes each...even hauling..yet when it comes to basic mineral mining that number drops to about 5 or less depending o nthe situation.....maybe make some more mining ships to balance the variety abit?....like big ones with less cargo and more guns...or big ones with multiple mine or countermeasure slots....you know not too big a dif but something to help

New ships require modellers to make them, texture them and hitbox them. This takes time.

4...more realistic laser weaponry.....i know fl is set up to use bolt projection method for virtually all weps...but lets be a wee bit more realistic here...mining lasers...laser turrets....beam cannons.....they need to be actual beams....this isnt very hard at all because ive seen plenty of mods that attempt to or actually make solid beam lasers.....its in the spirit of things like the bluebell chain gun.....there are two ways to make solid beam lasers

On a mod as busy as Disco, the idea of Laser Beams makes me shudder. Freelancer is incapable of adequetly producing a solid beam. Sorry, it's just not going to happen anytime soon. Only sensible way of doing it I can think of is messing with the .ALE files, which is difficult to do.

4.1...you can make a solid beam laser by making a weapon with ultra low dmg per shot...but uber refire rate...25.00 is usually the minimum for getting the beam efect

*Shudders at thoughts of the lag*

4.2...uebr massive projectile.....you can also make a gun that has somewhat low refire rate...but has a very large projectile...that goes through a sort of stretching out process as it travels to a maximum distance then dissappeares....

What I said.

4.3...this is a simple one....but take the graphics of the various colors of cargo tractor beam and tighten them up abit...good idea for a laser weapon cause ya got everything you need there

Nice idea.

4.4...and the final idea for lasers.....ok...make some kind of super bright weapon shot....that when you press fire....extends out from the weapon to a maximum distance...loooking like a big super bright rod of light that you slam into ships to hurt them....yet with a light strobing effect for the laser gimick

Umm, I'm not really sure what you mean here.

5...make jumpholes more realistic,hence random access.....well if you played the single player fl vanilla alot like i have..youll notice repeated reference to checking jupholes for phase alignment or no go.....i propose adding some kind of variable that makes jumpholes random access.....perhaps giving jupmhole a lifebar that is drained little bit each time someone uses it...then when life bar drained no one can use said jumphole until it recharges...sually only afew minutes but enough to make things interesting...concept reference tradelane take outs....except make it so weapon fire doesnt efect it...so that way only people juping willl effect it

There is already a jumphole recharge in effect. Also, the randomness was discussed, but was decided against, due to the annoyance factor of being sent the wrong way. Or perhaps Cannon thought of other stuff to do. Not sure.

-Seth

---

Signature by Sleipnir.

[kersch_wasser]

yes...i kinda of agreee.....


but i think that it is just a matter of time before te discovery mod pretty much mods all that can be modded...


its all in my critical mass theory....discovery mod is growing...and extremely rapidly too...

cause critical mass theory states this "any variable that is growing independently in a system will continue to grow at an exponentional rate until something stops it.....and if nothing stops tis variable`s growth then eventually a containment limit will be reached where the system can no longer sustain the variable unless the system itself is changed...usually in a very violent..chaotic..and traumatic way.."


eventually you see the discovery mod will grow so much that the building blocks of freelancer will need to be changed......a massive undertaking that would require reverse engineering on a mindblowing scale....

for discovery to continue existing like it does there needs to eb things to continue to mod

though seth i think with your input...refinement of the tractor beam graphic would be the best bet for making laser weapons....as it has been proved over and over again that there is almost no limit to how many tractor beams can be present at one time

---

Dropping from the 3rd-story dorm room I'm in would be painful.

[Not Espi]

from what i understand, decoding the FL game source code would take years, and even if it would happen i fear disco community would suffer of some sort of legal consequences from microsoft. there are only so much things you can mod, you know.

[kersch_wasser]

da?

who says it has this massive undertake has to be freelancer no?


everyone involved in disco and the like..from cannon to jihadjoe and all the other admins...even the moddlers

we have all learned many lifetimes of skill and knowledge via our work in freelancer....

why not use that skill and knowledge to make discovery a game all of itself no?


example: man shows you way to fish by hand....he has somehow copyrighted this way of fishing (hypothetical just bear with me)....you use your knowledge gained by this to invent the fishing rod..and thus fish alot more efficiently...without breaching copyright...but infact still fishing

space and starfighters and laser bolts is just that....you cant copyright space or starfighters.....so why not make discovery genesis?

(on a side note...ive studyed law to some degree...and if it was possible for disco people to be sued for copyright infringement...it wouldve happened by now)


we have already layed the foundation....the single player was disabled...so many things have been changed from vanilla that very few more things need to be changed before we can make discovery its own game

this would be an awesome project....it would require many years of developement....but whether through concept or actual code....now is the time to start....by building our own source code from scratch over many years....we can do things that were never dreamed of in freelancer....from titanic ships the size of planets...to fleet battles that dwarf galatic quasars....down to the smaller magical things like planetary environs that you can be in and socialize with other players and do stuff.....

a titanic undertaking that would require people of unrelenting skill and dedication....the entire output of the discovery community from the biggest coder down to the person with the smallest ideas...our entire community of crowd sourcing is more powerful than any corporate juggernaut of code

i say now is the time to start working on this whatever the pace may be

---

Dropping from the 3rd-story dorm room I'm in would be painful.

[Birdtalon]

Because us freelancer enthusiasts want to play a freelancer mod. Not a completely new game. The whole thing which is great about this mod is how we work around the game Freelancer. We don't wish to chsnge the game so much that it ceases to become Freelancer. Or we might as well all go and play EVE.

Edit: In response to your edit: We have lives to live. We aren't all game developers. Some of us have jobs, school, families. You surely can't expect people to lay down everything and sit infront of a PC all day. Plus 80% of us wouldn't know where to begin.

---

[kersch_wasser]

the whole spirit of modding is to see how far you can go with the original idea...i have perfect example for you



team fortress started out as a halo mod.....then it became so popular that it grew into its own game...and became released as such....while still being everything it was originally


i dont really beleive the issue of speaking to micrsoft about this has really been explored...since this is mainly a non-profit operation i think it would not be so hard to aquire a decent liscence for developement and software distribution.....microsoft is quite generous.....

take for example the web series red v.s blue...it became so popular that instead of microsoft issueing a cease nd desist order which was in there right...they saw the great chance...and they not only allowed the red vs blue show to grow....but they supported it financially and wiht programming code..adding gimicks to halo releases to help red vs blue makers


in response to your edit: pssst.....like i beleive that....cannon jihadjoe..hoodlum and all the other backers and developers for discovery have layed down more of there lives and money than was EVER CALLED FOR just to support discovery.....


also...what i mean by all of the community being involved...even with the 80% that you say dont know how to code....i say we can use those 80% for ideas..concepts....more information....

we can all suggest things in this group effort i speak of....from big ideas like new systems or political theorys...to small ones like new commoditys or a shinyer ship....

its the principle of a hive mind......all of the body no matter how small all working towards a greater goal

in practice this principle when used right is virtually undefeated

---

Dropping from the 3rd-story dorm room I'm in would be painful.

[Not Espi]

we want people to enjoy the game, not to make a new one for free (which obviously takes months of time)

[Birdtalon]

But you speak of creating a whole new game. As far as I'm aware. Joe, Hood and the other admins are not developers or programmers. They're just administrators for a small gaming community.

Also, please back up your claims about Microsoft with some evidence.

---