Crossfire continues the epic adventures of Edison Trent. Get ready for a brand new experience in a breathtaking and extraordinary environment. This mod is the unofficial sequel to Freelancer with the most stunning graphics and worlds you have ever seen. Jump into an atomspheric universe full of surprises, challenges incredible adventures. Experience the awesome gameplay, highest quality and unique features of Crossfire. With several hundred thousand downloads, four Mod Award Nominations and it's very large fan community Crossfire has developed to one of the most favorite Singleplayer and Multiplayer mods for Freelancer.

Post news Report RSS 20th Freelancer Anniversary with Crossfire

The SWAT Portal will organize a special in-game event on 4th March next year on the official Crossfire server to celebrate the release date of the game 20 years ago. Depending on feedback and general interest of the players we might even prolong this event to the entire weekend. A special in-game reward will be provided to all the participants. We invite you to jump back into the cockpit and have great weekend with us. 4th March, 2023.We will provide detailed information about the anniversary ev

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20th Freelancer Anniversary with Crossfire



On March 4th, 2003 a long awaited gem among the computer games was released. Microsoft Freelancer. Many of us loved and still love to play this game, both in singleplayer and also together with others.

Now we are heading rapidly towards the end of the year and into 2023. Not long and we again reach March 4th. Freelancers 20th Anniversary.

To celebrate this milestone multiple Freelancer communities are going to be part of an anniversary event in which active mods and FL related projects are being presented in various livestreams. More information about this event and a streaming schedule is going to be released in January 2023.
You will be able to find detailed information about the event on the major FL community websites and the various Discord channels.

The SWAT Portal will organize a special in-game event on 4th March next year on the official Crossfire server to celebrate the release date of the game 20 years ago. Depending on feedback and general interest of the players we might even prolong this event to the entire weekend. A special in-game reward will be provided to all the participants.
We invite you to jump back into the cockpit and have great weekend with us. 4th March, 2023.
We will provide detailed information about the anniversary event on the Forums of the SWAT Portal in January.

blackstarfleet

With the Freelancer anniversary in 2023 the decision was made to give Crossfire a complete overhaul. That means not only the Black Star fleet content finally is getting released but also many existing parts of the mod get a makeover. The best news is that this process has already started in September 2022 and the Mod is currently receiving weekly updates, improving many aspects of the game. Just alone is the past few weeks about 2Gb of updates have been pushed out to the players via the Crossfire launcher. This is just a tiny fraction of what is still waiting to be released.
The weekly release cycle is intentionally chosen to ensure highest quality. Potential issues can be easily spotted and player feedback can be considered this way. Furthermore is the kind of content that gets released prioritized to ensure no conflicts between the different improvements will occour.

Freelancer 2021 12 01 19 49 12


So what can you expect for this "Freelancer Anniversary update" for Crossfire?
The initial focus of the first bunch of updates is on detail improvements and graphics. The big thing people talk about these days are HD quality updates, high resolution textures, etc.
To be honest... that is all nice and fine but is is not good enough for Crossfire. Crossfire always had an outstanding look which now is brought to the next level with the upcoming updates. To achieve this, more than 3500 textures (so far) have been reviewed, carefully edited and significantly improved. The level of detail of these custom made improvments exceeds every AI algorithm based upscaling. A good number of textures even were newly created from the scratch.

New Berlin 2.0

But the improvements do not stop there. Crossfire 1.0 was released on 8th October 2004 and many years of hard work went into this project. The mod changed with the years. Content was added and other content was refined with new versions. Still the mod has assets which date back to the early days and meanwhile do not meet the high quality standards of the latest releases. This is going to change. Every ship, every station, pretty much everything in the game is going through a review process. I demonstrated what this will look like on a fan favorite line of ships which has been part of Crossfire since the very early days. The Bullpup series.
Many assets already have been rebuild in a similar way and will be released soon. Many more will go through this review process and get their updates in 2023.

Furthermore detail improvements of the star systems will have a priority in early 2023. The Lost Fleet update showed that so much more is possible in terms of system design. Therefore the Crossfire Systems in Sirius Sector, Sol Sector, Inner Core and eventually also Altair will also go through a community driven review process to ensure a consistent lore focused layout. Big focus of this review will be on the local factons and how they interact. This will improve the variety of assets used. Special sceneries will be added, new loot and more secrets to discover. Every system will be worth to be explored again.
This system update has high priority because it is going to be the foundation of the new dynamic server events tied to the Black Star Fleet content.


Coalition space in Altair will get a major update in terms of system layout but also assets used. Many of the space stations there have been completely remodeled and the Coalition as faction got some important design updates. The vastness of the systems will be filled with much more content to explore and Coalition Rogues will play a much bigger role in these systems.

Freelancer 2021 12 01 19 49 12 Freelancer 2021 12 01 19 49 12
Freelancer 2021 12 01 19 49 12

The Renaissance Space of the Sol Sector suffers a few technical problems at the moment which have top priority to be fixed. Once done the Renaissance faction will receive new assets (already finished) to improve the the variety and lore of the faction. The Bonus story missions which currently end in Renaissance space will get at least two new missions and the dead-end jumpgate will open to a new area of the Sol Sector where the Blackstar Fleet content will eventually will be introduced. As already teased, this will involve dynamic server events with unique rewards as result of the event of the new story content.


As mentioned already on the Mod development Forum there is an optional content update (this highly depends on how fast the other updates can be released). The Canis Sector currently does not serve much of a purpose other than having a short visit there during the Crossfire main storyline. The secrets of the mysterious sensor echoes never has been lifted.
Who knows, maybe we can squeeze this additional content into the 2023 update cycle.


Putting aside these big junks of content updates we of course have plenty of minor updates.

  • All game assets will be put onto a "workbench" to improve the LOD settings and make butter smooth transitions.
  • Environmental textures will get an improvement.
  • Improvements of voice samples for the story campaign (optional)
  • Quality updates for cockpits.
  • Improvments of effects.
  • Some rebalances.
  • Improvements to planets with cloud layers.
  • Two story misions of the main campaign which sometimes cause troubles will get a rework.
  • Taking care of all the player feedback that was submitted to our Ticketsystem.
  • Plenty of bug fixes.


As you can see we have big plans for Freelancers 20th anniversary year.
Many updates already released, many updates in the current weekly release cycle and lots of stuff for 2023. Overall this is going to be the biggest content release since CF 2.0.
I think this is exactly the treatment Freelancer deserves after 20 great years.



Last but not least I'd like to ask you for a favor.
Just like in the years before Crossfire participates in the annual Mod Awards. 14 times meanwhile Crossfire was nominated to be one of the best 100 game mods. That is an outstanding achievement which shows how awesome Freelancer as a game still is and how dedicated the players of the game are.
Your support would help us greatly to get another chance to be nominated. Especially with the upcoming Anniversary we can show how great the game still can be and that the players still love Freelancer.
It just takes a few simple clicks to vote and support us this year. Just click on the ModDB banner right below, then scroll a bit down and click on vote. That's it.

Mod of the Year Awards

Thank you for your support.
I wish you a Merry Christmas, a safe flight and hope to see you at our anniversary event in March.
It would be great to see you back in Cockpit.

Post comment Comments
Mobius89
Mobius89

Congratulations! The developers of this project did an astounding job.

Reply Good karma Bad karma+3 votes
Blake00
Blake00

Great job guys! I gotta visit the forums again as it's been a while!

Reply Good karma Bad karma+2 votes
crisher888
crisher888

This mis is preyty nice!

Reply Good karma Bad karma+1 vote
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