Discovery Gaming Community

I take the freedom to write a bit more lengthy, alas my big paragraphs are hopefully forgiven.

Heyoh Freelancer Discovery!:)

What brought me here?
Well some friends of mine wanted to start our years-old LAN community again, including our ideas of a special Varation of Freelancer that only really made sense on a LAN where you have access to each other in person, and so I searched for a database on the web that contained routes for the commodities and something similar to that. One click followed another, and I ended up here! I must say, I?m so damn astounded about the work that has been done in this Mod. This contains so much I originally intended for my own "addition". I downloaded the mod but I have to reclaim my Freelancer Disk to give it a try. I?m incredibly excited to say the least:)

What got me to register myself here and post?
Plenty. Lots of questions above all. But I don?t want to go into detail now, since this is just a polite posting in the "welcome area", thus I?m just hitting the various subjects I have in mind.

1. I saw there are very strict roleplay settings, and I must say I?m impressed with such a high standard. Being a die hard roleplayer myself since fifteen years (Pen&Paper and LARP) as well as creating roleplay elements in various computer games as well, I?m considering to join the ranks of Freelancer Discovery Roleplaying... its just too tempting a thought to resist:)I have a few questions regarding the overall gameplay on the servers as well as questions about my character creation. Where is the best spot to post both things?
   
2. I own the game since the day of the release, and I have been a modder myself in the very early stages of Freelancer, thanks to the support of a generous person with internet access to hand me the "bini" command, to decompress the inis. I had no internet back then, but that did not keep me from modding my eyes out to satisfy the needs of my friends. I have some ideas and fragments of projects left which I?d like to discuss with the (far more) experienced persons here. Perhaps I could share what little knowledge I have and ask for some things that eluded me so far? Where would be the best place for that?
   
3. I read about this mod as being an expansion set which drives the story further... so did you manage to create a whole new storyline in singleplayer mode to play with? That would be the capital "A" in Awesomeness. By chance, is there a way to review all of your plotsettings in previous to far-back versions of the mod?
   
4. Do you have an extended or otherwise modified server were Discovery runs upon? Because the dedicated server program shipped with Freelancer only supports 128 people, but given the vast size of this community, this can hardly be enough? How did you solve that limitation?
   
5. Being a notorious conditioner, and given the fact this project has caught my heart with storm?s fury, I?d like to ask if I may propose my ideas and suggestions (which I certainly will have, as usual) after I tested out the Discovery Mod and got comfy with it?
   

I hope that was not all too much of an introduction posting - yet just saying "Hello, whats up? I?m here now..." is not exactly my style to appear:)

Again, I can only thank the creators of this mod with hands raised in praise, as this is kind of exactly what I wanted to do with all its depth... just being alone and realizing I never have the time to do that, was a huge setback... and the fact I?m impatient every now and then:)
Yet, a triple horray for Discovery! :yahoo:Now I can?t wait to get my Freelancer disc back...
I?m Glad to have found this place and glad to be on board, hope to write much more paragraphs soon if you toss me into the right direction:)

Harper

Hey. Nice to see an RPer. You want to come RP on the server? Well, we want you!

As for your questions - and wow, that's a lot of them, but that's a good thing - here you go.

1. This would be a good place for that. Also, feel free to PM me with any questions. I'd be glad to help!

2. This section is where you'll want to go for anything related to the Discovery mod, and here for all non-Discovery Freelancer modding.

3. It is. The singleplayer campaign hasn't been expanded. Actually, it was entirely removed in 4.85 due do coding issues. Discovery is set 17 years after the events of the original SP campaign. Basically, your character is one person in the universe. The RP server is a living continuation of our take on the "rest of the story". Kusari and Bretonia are at war over territory, and Liberty and Rheinland are nearly there as well over rumors of Libertonian research on Nomads; after the near-takeover of Rheinland after the Nomad Wars, the Rheinland government is understandably paranoid. Meanwhile, a new house, Gallia, has emerged, but this isn't common knowledge. Speaking of common knowledge, neither are the Nomads. That's just a very brief summery; Discovery has some very complex background RP and many layers of stories.

4. Yep. The Freelancer community figured out how to break the 128 limit a while ago, and therefore we can have up to 200 players on at a time. Unfortunately, not even that is quite enough! FLServer can't use more than one processor core, though, so we're working on a solution to that now. Here is the discussion regarding that solution, and here are the server specs.

5. Again, see this section of the forums.


If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Welcome to Discovery!

(Impressive welcome post, by the way)

Welcome to the server! Read the rules again, have fun, and should you have any questions, join the Disco Help Chat in Skype!

Thanks for the detailed answers:)I?m one of the guys who ask stupidly first before crushing into a place and spill all my words around where they don?t even belong. There is no such thing as sleeping in the wrong bed.

ad1; I have a few character concepts in mind, and I will decide which of them would suit best as soon as I got a bit into the Discovery mod, looked at the changes in detail and got comfy with the current state of events. After that, I will look forward to bug you, Denelo, with what remained of the concepts:)

ad2; First and foremost I have to relocate the backup disk I had where the scarce remains of my modding work and self-written tutorials was stored. Many of the stuff I made and tested was lost due to a harddisk crash in 2004, so I only have my own basic tutorials about creating systems, creating stations, creating factions, creating commodities, creating weapons, creating ships and... oh I don?t know what else. Need to find the disk! It felt ironic in the past, that I wrote my tutorials for myself in case I took a break and forgot everything:DAfterwards I will have a look at the section you pointed me to and toss out whatever I worked upon in the past and failed to get it to work:)Hopefully there is one or another idea that the creators will find to their liking. For the Greater Good!

ad 3; that much of the recent events with the powerblocks I read, yes:)Is there a way to review and read what the previous versions had for a storyline or is ALL of Discovery based out 17 years later with two vs. two empires with a fifth (Gallia) faction appearing and vastly expanded Nomad space?

I?ll read up now on the server specs and then make a few phone calls to get my Freelancer fix back.
The game died for me as most of the servers I played upon lacked about everything I longed for, and the best games I had were with friends over LAN. Now that I have come to THIS place, it feels like I can revive the Freelancer in me!

Now, patience will be a killer and the little free time I have will be used to read up in the Discovery Forums I guess!
Expect me when you see several large walls of text incoming:D

Well, welcome to discovery. Its a great place. Im sure you will fit in!

Welcome to the Discovery Community, hope you have fun and play by the rules.

On a side note, join the USI we are in need of eloquent speakers.

Welcome to Discovery! Join the LPI, we make the Nomads look like Squidward!

' Wrote:Thanks for the detailed answers:)I?m one of the guys who ask stupidly first before crushing into a place and spill all my words around where they don?t even belong. There is no such thing as sleeping in the wrong bed.

ad1; I have a few character concepts in mind, and I will decide which of them would suit best as soon as I got a bit into the Discovery mod, looked at the changes in detail and got comfy with the current state of events. After that, I will look forward to bug you, Denelo, with what remained of the concepts:)

ad2; First and foremost I have to relocate the backup disk I had where the scarce remains of my modding work and self-written tutorials was stored. Many of the stuff I made and tested was lost due to a harddisk crash in 2004, so I only have my own basic tutorials about creating systems, creating stations, creating factions, creating commodities, creating weapons, creating ships and... oh I don?t know what else. Need to find the disk! It felt ironic in the past, that I wrote my tutorials for myself in case I took a break and forgot everything:DAfterwards I will have a look at the section you pointed me to and toss out whatever I worked upon in the past and failed to get it to work:)Hopefully there is one or another idea that the creators will find to their liking. For the Greater Good!

ad 3; that much of the recent events with the powerblocks I read, yes:)Is there a way to review and read what the previous versions had for a storyline or is ALL of Discovery based out 17 years later with two vs. two empires with a fifth (Gallia) faction appearing and vastly expanded Nomad space?

I?ll read up now on the server specs and then make a few phone calls to get my Freelancer fix back.
The game died for me as most of the servers I played upon lacked about everything I longed for, and the best games I had were with friends over LAN. Now that I have come to THIS place, it feels like I can revive the Freelancer in me!

Now, patience will be a killer and the little free time I have will be used to read up in the Discovery Forums I guess!
Expect me when you see several large walls of text incoming:D

2. Good luck with that! People in those forums will probably be quite willing to help you out with any questions you might have about modding.

3. Nope, that's just the latest mod version. Each version is one in-game year. Igiss (our mod team lead and basically the Glorious Leader around here) wrote up a Freelancer timeline from the point of view of Discovery Here. It only lists the most major events, though. Anything and everything else is buried around the forums. You should also read the in-game news. It'll give you a good sense for what's been going on.

Looking forward to playing with you!

It will take a long time apparently to fit into the Discovery Universe as tight as I want to fit, so I better start up reading all the ingame relevant facts...! Afterwards it will take some time because I'd like to look at what has been done in singleplayer mode before I decide if I really will go online or not.

So far there are nothing but positive aspects to it. Feels like combining the greatness of Eve online with the fast paced and more player-skill based combat system of Freelancer. A combination I find to my liking:)

Right now, I have TONS of questions and other stuff already... and it is hard to contain them...! Mind if I start bugging you right now with PMs, Denelo? :ylove: You might regret it? :crazy:

' Wrote:It will take a long time apparently to fit into the Discovery Universe as tight as I want to fit, so I better start up reading all the ingame relevant facts...! Afterwards it will take some time because I'd like to look at what has been done in singleplayer mode before I decide if I really will go online or not.

So far there are nothing but positive aspects to it. Feels like combining the greatness of Eve online with the fast paced and more player-skill based combat system of Freelancer. A combination I find to my liking:)

Right now, I have TONS of questions and other stuff already... and it is hard to contain them...! Mind if I start bugging you right now with PMs, Denelo? :ylove: You might regret it? :crazy:

Good idea. Singleplayer has been turned into OpenSP, which is basically just what it is after you finish the campaign normally.

And sure, go ahead. I hope I don't!