With phase 1 of the MODDB awards coming to an end, the FW:ToW worked very hard over the past several days to convince you why you should vote for us.
In the past 10 days, we've been putting out image after image of our new DX9 engine and some tweaks that have gone a long way making the game look even better than before. FriendlyFire has been working, even when he should be studying for exams, at making this nearly 10 year old game really shine. Below is some of his work with summary of what he did:
Planets
FriendlyFire wrote: One of the key points was to make planets actually look like planets and not foggy, blurry spheres. In order to do this, we scrapped the old-style Freelancer atmospheres and implemented a custom atmosphere shader which reacts dynamically to the lighting and viewing angle, after which we implemented normal and specular mapping support for planets.
With this accomplished FF went at work at figuring out how to apply normal, specular and glow mapping to the planets to really make them look even more drop dead gorgeous. The results below speak for themselves!
Glowmapping
Although glowmapping has existed in Freelancer for some time, the glow maps never really "glowed". They were a brighter texture than the others, however there was something missing. FriendlyFire figured out a way to bring this missing piece of the puzzle to the DX9 engine for our mod. Below are the samples of his work:
FriendlyFire wrote: Glow mapping takes certain parts of a texture, usually called the "emissive texture" since it appears to emit light even if it is not illuminated by anything, and blurs them out, reapplying the result on the image. This gives the impression that the emissive texture is much brighter than it would otherwise appear to be.
Specular Mapping
W0dk4 instituted specular mapping a number of months ago now. However, with that being done, there was still some tweaking to do to get it to really bring our models/textures to life. FriendlyFire again went to work to see what he could...and my lord did he do some excellent work. The video below captures our new and improving specular mapping/lighting:
If you like what you see please don't hesitate to give us a vote for the MODDB awards!
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Stop teasing us with this Epicness :P
Oooh, you've seen nothing :D
I can't wait to see more i ordered the game and now im waiting for it and then ill be waiting for this mod to come out
Awesome. That's great news. Please play the vanilla version of Freelancer, I'm sure you'll like it!
Nice work as ever guys, and well done on getting to phase two of the MOTY Awards, once again you have my vote as I see you as one of the premier Star Wars mods out there. Now that I've buttered you up let's see about borrowing some of your gorgeous Mon Cal cruisers.
; )
Talon, if you ever need anything, just let me know. Seriously. :)
Amazing what you've done to one of my favorite games of all time. Can't wait for the release.
Thank you! Just wait, though, we have some more amazing things coming down the pipe ;)
How about adding some guest space ships?
Buck rodgers, Klingons, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc?!
Excellent work btw. Can't wait to play! :)
Maybe as easter eggs or admins ships :)
Thanks for the kind words.
Nice
I'm dreaming or not! incredible
Realism is definitely number one for this mod, and it is going to get a massive amount of people to play this mod. I can't wait for it to finally be released, I'm starting to dust off my Freelancer game as soon as I get home.