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For those finding this post in 2022, this project is not dead. Most if not all the things shown in the screenshots and videos have been scrapped since it's been modelled and programmed when I was starting to learn both of these things. As I mentioned, this was an exercise to get me into game development, both my 3d and programming (including the blueprints UE4/5 uses) has improved quite a bit, and to be honest, most of the code I can't even look at anymore, let alone use. Things are being reworked from the ground up, I've also decided not to use Discovery assets, or even the vanilla Freelancer models. A new update video showcasing what's to come will follow in the coming months. - 27/08/2022


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Content:
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Introduction
Features
Implemented
In Work
Planned
Systems
Media
Release



Introduction:

Hey, thank you for your interest in this Project. All this originally started of as a coding exercise I did to gain some skills with the Unreal Engine 4, suffice to say that plans changed a little since then. I now intend to rebuild Freelancer from ground up inside this new engine and improve as well as expand it as best as I can. This will be based on the Discovery Mod, systems and factions will be taken over and recreated to some extent as it offers a lot more content as a foundation to build on.
A project of such scale will take a lot of time to complete, and I’m just one person working on it in his spare time. That’s why a proper release might be over a year away. I will however set up a section later for how people can help me out on this project to shorten this time. I'll also regularly provide updates and pre-releases.



Features:

Implemented:
Features, which foundation has been completed.

Basic Flying - Pretty self-explanatory, I’ve recreated the original Freelancer flight mechanic to a large extent with some changes. Note: I plan on overhauling or completely replacing this system with something more ‘modern’ / something that gives your ships just a little more personality.
Walking - While the original freelancer gave the player a fixed camera perspective on stations and planets from which they were able to interact with NPCs, I’ve decided to give the player just a little bit more freedom by allowing them to freely move around on
stations and planets.
Planetary Exploration - While many of the original planets will stay true to their 2003 counterparts, a good portion of them as well as many new ones will have an freely explorable area for the player to fly and walk around on.
Cruise - A basic Cruise-System has been set up, while it definitely leaves room for improvement it does what it’s supposed to. Also it's currently missing it's effects. But it's working.

Ships - Multiple ships the player can pilot with unique stats and handling. While currently only the Osiris and Anubis (as well as a secret third one) are flight-ready, the system is in place and I just need to import and set up additional models.
Tradelanes - Tradelanes have been implemented with sound and fandy effects, while they’re currently only consist of the two end pieces at the start and finish, they fulfill their function. I’ll eventually look into adding these middle pieces once all basic basic features have been set up.
Stations - While ‘Walking’ already mentions Stations (and they’re also seen in the preview videos) I’ve recently scrapped them in favor of a system which doesn’t require me to manually place everything for every station. They’re also a lot more optimized since their interior only exists when it’s actually required.

In Work:
Features I’m actively working on. One could argue that I should focus my attention on one feature at a time, but this is how I avoid burnouts.

Spaceship Interiors - While some ships in the discovery mod already have a basic cockpit delivered with them, I’m currently building Cockpits. More precisely I’m currently still working on my 3D Modelling skills before I actually implement anything final in this regard. Bigger ships will also contain additional rooms such as personal quaraters.
HUD(s) - I’m currently working on two HUDs for the game, a classic one closely resembling the.. well… classic one and a modernized version. However, these will only be visible in 3rd person view as most ships have more or less unique 3d HUDs in their cockpit. These are comparable to the ones seen in Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen. Maybe just not as refined (yet).
Music - I’ve also got additional soundtracks in the work that will hopefully blend in seamlessly with the original soundtrack, or to be more precise, my dad is working on some. Please feel free to check out his channel, he’ll be able to upload more and better pieces of music once he was able to upgrade his hardware.
Weapons - While they already appeared in a video, the system just wasn’t optimized enough so I decided to scrap it.
Nebulae - was nice enough to give me free access to his extremely gorgeous nebula plugin (thank you! Smile ), though I’m still working on the implementation.
Asteroids - Again, I already had a simple system set up. However, the generated fields had a perfect square shape with no way to adjust it and were poorly optimized so they had to be scrapped.

Planned:
Features I haven’t started to work on, but definitely plan to implement at some point. This list only contains features which I will 100% be able to pull off.

Mining - Good old mining. This is definitely something which could be improved in regards to the vanilla mechanic so I’m open to suggestions.
NPCs - NPC spaceship, crew, citizens, etc. Probably one of the biggest challenges that are coming up.
Ship to Ship combat - Whether in space or on planets, this is by far one of the most important and fun aspects of the game, unfortunately also a very challenging one. Especially due to that fact that I got absolutely zero experience with AIs in Unreal Engine 4 (or anywhere else).
Ground combat - Fight NPCs while capturing ships, raiding planetary bases or clearing dungeons. This one might actually be a lot easier to pull of than the above due to the amount of reference material and tutorials available for normal FPS AIs.
Player Owned Bases - While there’s currently no planned multiplayer support, I still plan on giving the player the ability to build customizable bases which will serve a multitude of functions from research to commodity and ship storage.
Anomalies - I do plan on bringing back anomalies, which will have many different effects, e.g. Draining Shields, Amplifying weapons, warping the player into a different sector, etc.
Fuel - Ships will consume different types of fuel, this can either be restocked at stations or be refined with specialized ships or POBs.
Wrecks & Salvage - Upon destruction, ships and stations will leave behind wrecks which can be salvaged and turned into raw materials. There is also a small chance that larger capital ships have been abandoned prematurely and thus can be towed to a player owned shipyard or be repaired on the spot.
Crew - Most capital ships will require a crew to operate effectively. A crew will either be given to the player by the faction they’re a part of or can be hired at certain stations.
Companions - While they probably won’t be voice-acted unless I get volunteers who are fitting for the role, I do plan on giving the player option to get companions. These would be unlocked through special missions and events. Once acquired they will give the player boosts to stats and assist them in combat.



Media:

Images:
Click to open high-res version.

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Planet Akabat - Orbit
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First Station Turret Prototype
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Ship Turret Prototype
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Anubis Cockpit v2
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Main Menu
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A charged up Jump Gate

Videos:



Release & Help:

At this time, there is no planned release date. I will however upload a playable demo at the end of this month, or somewhere around the beginning of August. Though all you can do is fly around, dock at a station and run around a little bit.

If you want to help me out on this project then please wait a little longer, I don't feel comfortable with just accepting help when I don't have anything to offer in return. That's why I want to wait until I've uploaded the first playable demo.
TL : DR'd it but damn nice footage.
Freelancer makes a great start for any kind of game development stuff to mess around with. I love it regardless of how it compares with the current game or other similar attempts.
Also I'm drunk rn.
Good night.
Love you!

Oh and erm... good effin luck with the net code if you ever get around to multiplayer xD
You used Milkshape to export those ships, so they are now microscopic in the hangar (just an assumption)

There are at least 10 projects like this that attempt to port FL to another engine (three for Unity, three for UE4, another three which have their own engine code like LL, a german one and others).
So far, this looks to be the only one that lets you move around the base interior with a 3rd person view, so congrats on that.
I'm just a bit... disappointed that people don't want to work together to make ONE working thing, instead of 10+ separate attempts that mostly lead to nowhere. The nature of the FL community has to be one of the hardest to work together on anything, it turns out. While games like Skyrim have a following that make complementory PBR Graphics mods (that work with most other mods together) and even a MULTIPLAYER system that is mod-compatible... in FL, we can't even band together for a game remaster, not to mention a platform build-up from scratch.

Enough of my banter, it looks good. Hope you go far with this, time will tell
Even EVE online doesn't have walking inside stations (anymore), that is quite impressive.
(04-20-2019, 08:41 AM)eigos Wrote: [ -> ]You used Milkshape to export those ships, so they are now microscopic in the hangar (just an assumption)

I did, actually. But I'm surprised to hear that that's an issue, my exported ships always had the perfect size. Maybe I use another version of the .cmp importer? (I'm using the 2.7v from lancers reactor). I was always a little surprised by just how large the original models were and that they basically had a pretty realistic size seeing that even in another engine, the default character size perfectly fits into them.

(04-20-2019, 08:41 AM)eigos Wrote: [ -> ]I'm just a bit... disappointed that people don't want to work together to make ONE working thing, instead of 10+ separate attempts that mostly lead to nowhere. The nature of the FL community has to be one of the hardest to work together on anything, it turns out. While games like Skyrim have a following that make complementory PBR Graphics mods (that work with most other mods together) and even a MULTIPLAYER system that is mod-compatible... in FL, we can't even band together for a game remaster, not to mention a platform build-up from scratch.

The project was never intended to be an official remaster, or even an actual remaster at all. It is (or at least was) a coding exercise for me so I can get used to the engine before I try making an actual game on my own. Also, as I mentioned, I don't exactly intend to just straight up port Freelancer into the Engine. I'd be a shame to waste the power of a modern Engine on these small Freelancer systems. Also I never saw another Unreal Engine port attempt on here.

Okay to be fair, there's one thing I'll definitely port once I got the foundation set up which is the game's original story. But I digress.

TL:DR - I didn't intend on sharing this in the first place and just do it as a coding exercise.


(04-20-2019, 08:41 AM)eigos Wrote: [ -> ]Enough of my banter, it looks good. Hope you go far with this, time will tell

Thanks though, I'll do my best to keep up the work.


(04-20-2019, 08:58 AM)Swallow Wrote: [ -> ]Even EVE online doesn't have walking inside stations (anymore), that is quite impressive.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to get my 3d modelling skills high enough to actually make some custom interiors. (At actually get help on that once like said.

And thank you, too.
I actually am scared of that part, but It'll be worth it!

Planetary Landing & Tradelanes




Two days which I spent working non-stop - I'm not even kidding, I can't stop working on this - lead to a functioning Tradelane prototype and the first Planet you can land on with a very sudden transition! Take a look at the preview video below if you want to see it for yourself.



I'll also use this post to talk a little bit about multiplayer, which I was sure I'd be able to implement. However, Unreal Engine has a maximum level size of 20 x 20 kilometer, which may sound like a lot, but for a game like Freelancer it isn't, cause that level cap could be reached by 20 Ish'tars doing a Conga Line.

The solution: Level Streaming.

The downside: No multiplayer.

Level Streaming as far as I understood it basically links multiple levels together into larger ones which is exactly what I need, but the official documentation also clearly states that this breaks the default multiplayer component. To fix this I'd have to do some things with dedicated servers etc. - Stuff I don't understand.

Another solution would be to just downsize the models, but that would take away some of the authenticity. I'd prefer to just scrap multiplayer for now, even if it hurts my soul to do so as I already dreamed about going out into the new freelancer universe and doing missions, exploring derelict stations etc together with friends, but there isn't really a choice. I haven't made a decision yet so if someone wants to share their thoughts on the topic they're welcomed to do so. I'd be happy to hear some other peoples opinion on this.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the preview below if you haven't already.



PS: I'm also taking suggestions on how to name both the Station & Planet in this system as this isn't really a copy of an existing system.




The video might stutter here and there, there's too much cr*p going on for my CPU to handle it and the recording flawlessly.
Wow, man... that is even more impressive, what can I say... The speed at which you developed it is also impressive as well!

EDIT: Kinda motivates me to pick up modeling again and finish some of my stuff, just so I can see it imported into your UE engine to see how it looks.

Do you fancy trying my asteroids? Just for testing of lighting and PBR mapping

https://p3d.in/iCjqa

https://p3d.in/ozSbf
Wait is that your own project or is this part of what Alley is doing rn?
(04-22-2019, 06:37 AM)Commissar SnakeLancer™ Wrote: [ -> ]Wait is that your own project or is this part of what Alley is doing rn?

His own, Alley is working in Unity.
(04-22-2019, 06:41 AM)eigos Wrote: [ -> ]
(04-22-2019, 06:37 AM)Commissar SnakeLancer™ Wrote: [ -> ]Wait is that your own project or is this part of what Alley is doing rn?

His own, Alley is working in Unity.

Na I'm on UE4 as well.
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