Plans for ASoD
Alrighty, ASoD will be on the back burner for a while, I am working on a new Freelancer mod Moddb.com that requires my VB.NET skills. I want to extend freelancer to have the ability for clans to capture systems and make it so when someone dies, they lose their ship.
What is taking the attention away?
So, I am working on a server tool called "GreenDuck" to edit the server-side saves in real-time to allow for these behaviors.
Here's how it works:
- When Executed, GreenDuck will load in all the server side player saves and convert them to plain text. Then it will parse them and look for commodity identifiers. It will sum up the points and determine clan using my server's forced clan naming convention (=CLANTAG=|Name).
- It removes the commodities in question from the players, and alters the Server side freelancer DATA folder to change player built station/jumpgate as well as clan NPC patrols to the winner.
- GreenDuck then packages the parts of DATA that define these things into a FLMOD. It then sends it to an FTP server.
- Client versions of GreenDuck check for updates when Freelancer is launched. They will download and apply patches from the FTP server.
- The player connects to the server.
Currently, GreenDuck can use flcodec.exe to parse saved games, and I am working on the player death penalty code.
Don't Panic!
Please, don't panic. ASoD will not die as a project and development on it will probably only be halted for a few weeks. In the mean time, why not send some feature ideas to me? Currently, the only thing left to do in ASoD is add 9 more solar systems and some factions/ships. I will be totally honest, that is not my idea of exciting development.
Therefore, lets spice it up. Send me ideas for new features in ASoD! masternerdguy@yahoo.com is my email or you can send here. Otherwise, some more systems will just get slapped in and ASoD 1.0 will be released.
Are you a mad coder?
If you want to help speed this up, why not join me in my GreenDuck coding? It would speed up development on this tool by days. In addition, it would allow multiple perspectives on the program.
