Welcome back to another Freeworlds: Tides of War update. "Finally!" you might say. We have indeed been very low on developer activity over the last couple of weeks (or even months). Nevertheless, we are still working on the mod and we are committed to actually releasing it. So dont worry, we are here to stay.
For those who have been brave enough to follow us, be prepared for some more eye-candy: We recently got Normal and specular mapping working! Now, being a gamer that keeps up with the industry you might not be impressed at all. However, we are talking about a now 8-years old game engine based on Direct3D8. This and deferred rendering have been huge steps towards bringing the Freelancer engine to current state-of-the-art graphic levels.
On the technical side, implementing normal mapping was really no easy undertaking, since we had to change the existing Freelancer mesh formats to handle the tangent/binormal data that is required for normal mapping. Normal and specular Mapping can greatly enhance existing models, giving them a lot of depth. You can see the difference in the following dev-video where at some points I switch normal and specular mapping on and off:
Normal maps by Dr.Knickers.
Coming back at our developer activity problem, we are actually searching for interested people that would like to help us out. We've had multiple developers go AWOL and others just being plain busy in real life. However, I think we've shown that we are an ambitious project that is well worth the effort.
Due to our normal/specular mapping breakthrough, we are actively searching for any talented texture artists and/or modelers that can help us out with specular and normal maps.
Also, if any Freelancer developer is listening, we are searching for an .ini coder to help us with mod development in general. We are only looking for experienced Freelancer developers though, since our mod structure has become quite complex.
Finally, we are looking for C++/C# programmers to help us with tools and engine hacks around our mod and Freelancer.
If you're interested in helping us, simply write a short but informative application to freeworldstidesofwar@gmail.com or contact us via PMs here at ModDB or at our developer website.
Stay tuned for more updates!
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Thats fantastic work
Major difference, especially when light sources pass the object (like the lasers in the vid)
Play it i will.
That's what we like to hear :)
Looks very nice, and on a personal unrelated note it reminds me of the U3 UDK engine now with the normals/specular. In a good way.
Hope I'll get to play this at some point, still have to find a copy of Freelancer.
You can find a copy of Freelancer for less than 10 USD on ebay, target, walmart etc.
Thanks for the kind words :)
Sushi, i was wondering if you were going to add post processing effects like DOF, Sun godrays (for partly obscured bigger light sources) or motion blur to the game (from the sun it looks like youve got HDR or bloom in already). Nice work btw, didnt think the freelancer engine would ever be this revamped
It's in the pipeline ;)
We already have color correction, if you look at past updates. Motion blur should make it in, maybe depth of field too. Godrays, not sure because they shouldn't technically happen in space ;)
w0dk4 could give a more detailed reply.
@friendly fire
thanks for the quick reply, sounds good, i suppose god rays could exist in an asteroid rich dust cloud or nebulae where light is more likely to be scattered but sounds good still,
Actually, I want to do god rays but only near to the light-source on screen so that its less of an atmosphere effect but more of a lens-flare effect (it's also easier to implement, actually).
Second video is gone! D:
"This video includes content from partner Sony Music Entertainment, and as such has been blocked in your country by the power of the copyright law."
.. what the **** ;(
That's why we tend to post videos on both ModDB and YouTube so that if the latter blocks videos as they love doing (you can thank big media conglomerates), you can still access and see it on the former.
I have a question; are the planets bigger in this mod compared to vanilla? In the Halo mod for Freelancer, the planets were blown up to real life size, millions of times bigger than the original.
And also, is this for singleplayer?
Ya, planets in this mod range from 25km in radius to over 250km. Not as large as the Halo mod, however.
As for SP, no there will be no SP. However, players will be able to load the mod on their own servers and play via LAN
Nice, very impressive what you've managed to do with the old girl (engine that is ;) ).