(10-17-2016, 03:07 PM)King Boo Wrote: Your thoughts are certainly feasible. All that's left is the most important bit of all. Someone who knows how to create systems very well, and can keep quiet as not to spoil anything. Manpower. Something we lack for anything outside the normal development schema that @Teerin and certain other people help with.
So here's the thing. Having a few more content creators for Discovery is always a good idea, since every now and then one or two of the cool guys that usually do the mod's content will fall away for a while or even stay away permanently. That's just how things are. However, we want this mod to stay alive for another ten years, right? And we want to see it evolving, now and in future as well. The problem is, how do we get new content creators? There are a few things that are a bit of a problem.
Since the idea of a new untamed Omicron corridor really attracts me, I am trying around with system editing for a week now, and you really can do awesome stuff with it. Freelancer Mod Studio is really a powerful tool to use here. And there are a number of other nice programs that still work with the current version of Discovery. However, we're lacking in guides how to use them for Freelancer. A lot of the tutorials we have are incomplete, lacking images since the hoster has deleted them or are just outdated as some tools don't work with Discovery. Not only on this forum, but the same problem is with the starport and other places where people modded Freelancer.
While not all of the developers have the time to write a tutorial now, there is some thing every developer can do, since we live in a time now where everything in order to do so is provided: Recording what you do!
With software like Open Broadcaster Software / Open Broadcaster Studio you can very easily record many hours of your working progress. Upload your recordings to Youtube - you don't even need to comment on what you are doing. It's the easiest way to teach someone what you're doing, as it nearly doesn't cause any additional exhaustion. You just record and load it up. Depending on your monitor size, recording for two or three hours only eats up one or two gigabytes. When you upload it to YouTube, you can delete the file on your computer again and have the space back free. However, this way you can show people how you do it, be it modelling and texturing of new ships and stations, editing new systems, composing new sounds and soundtracks for Freelancer or the usage of Info cards or what not. Just do it! It's better to have too many videos than no videos on how people do it. And if you want to put some more effort into the recording, you can use the comment-tool on YouTube, use a microphone to comment your working steps or even implement the videos to a in depth tutorial for Discovery.
The thing is that aspects other than making systems (for which there is a really good system editor*) what I've found that very few are actually willing to dive deeper into innards, like say logical structures of how say model data is arranged within files they're stored at. Freelancer is a case of a very old games and let's be frank - currently available limited and glitchy toolset is likely all there is ever to be. Yet many of those who say they want to try modding the game are also the ones stuck in this hopeless waiting for a miracle one-button-solution tool to suddenly appear out of thin air that would seemingly allow them to let their creativity unleashed. It's not going to happen, folks. Yet another example: quite a while ago I wrote that guide about particle effects and shortly after followed it by a fairly comprehensive documentation on the particle system structure, describing properties, data types and all that stuff. Nobody bothered to figure this stuff out, I did, but in the end got chastised for taking my time with it. Furthermore outside may be one or two individuals all that information has largely fallen flat and instead all I've been asked is whether there'd be a visual editor tool that would let them do the kind of effects I did but without learning how it actually works. No silver bullets, no magical pills, folks. A lot of times modding, Freelancer isn't exception to that, is dealing with raw data, manipulating it, diving into the structures and connections between portions of data, learning how the engine assembles it all together into functional game mechanics. Even a simplistic mario clone fundamentally has same building blocks (simpler, sure, but nonetheless) as any other game would, there's no way around it. It doesn't matter how many developer titles Discovery can produce, cause in the end you ain't gonna get any enthusiasm to get them on this bandwagon without wheels. Get your act together first, and may be, just may be, there'd be folks willing to go extra mile effort length, but as it stands it is largely a thankless job. And I'd know a thing or two about how deep this goes, as a former 'associate developer' (lol).
* - though despite how good mod studio is for making systems there are still plenty cases where you have to open all those myriads of .ini files to do stuff.
(10-27-2016, 10:29 AM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: ...since we live in a time now where everything in order to do so is provided...
I don't recall anyone providing me with a processor that isn't ancient and capable of recording stuff at a higher framerate than 15 (and a choppy 15 at that).
I did try doing a dev stream thing once. It was a pretty colossal failure, not because of my awkwardness, but because people were more interested in "why/when is faction x getting thing y!!!" instead of the actual technical details behind stuff. All in all it was a pretty disheartening experience.
I intend to draft up a set of guidelines for model submissions as well as a tutorial on exporting them, but teaching someone to model on a competent level is something that takes quite a long time. It's also not something that anyone can do I've come to find, not from lack of brains but because it takes a certain kind of brain to be able to think in 3d. But then, that's one of those concepts probably lost on someone who hasn't done it to begin with. Man, I hate catch 22s.
(10-27-2016, 03:13 PM)Treewyrm Wrote: The thing is that aspects other than making systems (for which there is a really good system editor*) what I've found that very few are actually willing to dive deeper into innards, like say logical structures of how say model data is arranged within files they're stored at. Freelancer is a case of a very old games and let's be frank - currently available limited and glitchy toolset is likely all there is ever to be. Yet many of those who say they want to try modding the game are also the ones stuck in this hopeless waiting for a miracle one-button-solution tool to suddenly appear out of thin air that would seemingly allow them to let their creativity unleashed. It's not going to happen, folks. Yet another example: quite a while ago I wrote that guide about particle effects and shortly after followed it by a fairly comprehensive documentation on the particle system structure, describing properties, data types and all that stuff. Nobody bothered to figure this stuff out, I did, but in the end got chastised for taking my time with it. Furthermore outside may be one or two individuals all that information has largely fallen flat and instead all I've been asked is whether there'd be a visual editor tool that would let them do the kind of effects I did but without learning how it actually works. No silver bullets, no magical pills, folks. A lot of times modding, Freelancer isn't exception to that, is dealing with raw data, manipulating it, diving into the structures and connections between portions of data, learning how the engine assembles it all together into functional game mechanics. Even a simplistic mario clone fundamentally has same building blocks (simpler, sure, but nonetheless) as any other game would, there's no way around it. It doesn't matter how many developer titles Discovery can produce, cause in the end you ain't gonna get any enthusiasm to get them on this bandwagon without wheels. Get your act together first, and may be, just may be, there'd be folks willing to go extra mile effort length, but as it stands it is largely a thankless job. And I'd know a thing or two about how deep this goes, as a former 'associate developer' (lol).
* - though despite how good mod studio is for making systems there are still plenty cases where you have to open all those myriads of .ini files to do stuff.
Just another reason why the few people that actually have the knowledge of modding freelancer should at least record their work to document for the others to show what and how they did it. Watching over the shoulder of someone who already is into the stuff makes learning way easier than figuring everything out oneself. If some people would showcase their methods, it would be a great help to peeps. Yes, Freelancer Mod Sutdio is a very powerful thing, but it comes basically undocumented. Even the tutorials provided in this forum show only so much stuff, most of it outdated, some of it only explained in a way that shows the guy behind it never found out about some features. The images went missing through the hoster deleting the uploaded images and so on.
It's an easy way of showing people stuff. Copying, altering, testing. The best example of what can be done with Freelancer and it's modding tools can be seen in Omicron Major - so far the most impressive thing in the mod, with the unique starsphere, the model of the dyson sphere wall, the tunnels leading to the generator, the nebula showing the dyson sphere from the outside while clouds are hovering over it.
(10-27-2016, 10:29 AM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: ...since we live in a time now where everything in order to do so is provided...
I don't recall anyone providing me with a processor that isn't ancient and capable of recording stuff at a higher framerate than 15 (and a choppy 15 at that).
What's the problem with 15 frames per second? You want to show people how you do it, not show them MLGproskillz in HD quality. ;3
OBS doesn't work when you want to record FL ingame, cause it doesn't work with the old version of directx or however that was called.
My tip, just use camtasia and use the 30 days trial version, there is a way how you can renew this trial day until the 30 days are over. (Better then fraps)
Edit: I posted this, because sometimes the people want to see the results ingame.
(10-27-2016, 04:40 PM)Gerhard Wolf Wrote: OBS doesn't work when you want to record FL ingame, cause it doesn't work with the old version of directx or however that was called.
My tip, just use camtasia and use the 30 days trial version, there is a way how you can renew this trial day until the 30 days are over. (Better then fraps)
Edit: I posted this, because sometimes the people want to see the results ingame.
(10-27-2016, 04:40 PM)Gerhard Wolf Wrote: OBS doesn't work when you want to record FL ingame, cause it doesn't work with the old version of directx or however that was called.
My tip, just use camtasia and use the 30 days trial version, there is a way how you can renew this trial day until the 30 days are over. (Better then fraps)
Edit: I posted this, because sometimes the people want to see the results ingame.
I record my ingame using OBS. It works.
Tell me how pls, because when I start OBS and go ingame, it just records a black screen.