[MOD-WIP] Freespace - Mod

[Lc4Hunter]

[MOD-WIP] Freespace X - The Rebirth



Foreword of the foreword:
I know, Rebirth is still relatively new at the market and no necessary modtools were released, yet.
But i´m sure they will come in the near future, so i decieded to do some work for a later project.
Of course it could happen that X-Rebirth will never be the game we want it to be and that it makes not much sense to modify it - but the basement, the engine, is really good and, as i can see, mod-friendly.
I already made a post at the german forum (so please excuse my english-skills if you want to correct my mistakes here, please let me know ) and i decided to do a post here, too.
As i can see Rebirth adopted some spaceship-designs from other games, so it also can get a little bit of Freespace.
I hope i can make some people happy with this work.



Foreword
When i played the first Freespace at the end of the 90´s, i became a fan of the game. Unfortunately the series was ended after the Freespace 2.
I started early with creating ships from Freespace and importing them into X3 but that was a too huge project for just one person.
Now i will start another try, with a new basement in form of X Rebirth, which allows to solve some major problems of X3.



Planned features and goals:
To begin with - all features following have to be possible with the engine, things can change!

Of course the ships will be a huge part of the Mod. There are also new weapons planned, new systems and new enemies - who knows freespace will know what i mean

If possible, the mod will also contain the typical warp-effect from freespace. The animated texture for that still exists and was already used in X3. A bit boring, but here you can see how it worked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd15pDueDmI

Another goal, of course, are the beamweapons.
Here another Video from a X3 beamweapontest (older video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo7OLutIRvM

Further goals in bulletpoints (need some time to see if and/or how they can be realized):
- Creation of a (short) plot that includes the new content into the universe
- New commands for better control of fleets (there are enough people working on it, so it maybe can be just added)
- New personal for the different weaponsystems (for exampe some kind of a beamweapon-officer)
- Modifiability of capitalships, meaning that you can change parts of their weapons (for example replace a laser turret with a flak)
- Subsystems to make fights more tactical
- Change of the playership
- Bridge/CIC for capitals (low priority goal, takes too much time, makes no much difference ingame)
- New races/fractions, maybe the ships will be added to an existing race like in a ship-only mod.
...
Further things maybe follow, we will see whats possible or what ideas we will have during the creation.

I know, these goals are very ambitious - and yes, they´re ambitious.
The greatest part of the shipcreation will be done by me, but help is of caourse always welcome.

If you want to help, please just met me know.
There is always need for further models and textures



Here you have a small preview of what i´m talking about:

Reworked models (but still WIP! )
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Models from the beginning in 2006
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Credits and special thanks:
I want to say thank you to the Freespace2-SCP community which made a few great ships which gave me a lot of inspiration to create my ships.
Special thanks to "Hades" for his version of the Orion and the Deimos!



News/Updates:

04.12.2013 - Added 2 new pictures with Orion, Deimos and Fenris
06.12.2013 - Added Iceni-WIP picture
11.12.2013 - Added new Iceni-WIP pictures

[Deleted User]

aren't beam weapons already in-game?

[johncage]

freespace 2 ship design was ahead of its time. they used radial symmetry and goblins(random pop out details on the hull suggestive of size/space management) when most space games still had the typical buck rogers rockets and jet fighters in space look.

[Lc4Hunter]

aren't beam weapons already in-game?

Yes they are, but not that kind of beamweapons we need here
Rebirth-beams are ok, Freespace-beams were awesome.
If the modtools will be released and we´re able to modify/create those beams, you will see the difference

freespace 2 ship design was ahead of its time. they used radial symmetry and goblins(random pop out details on the hull suggestive of size/space management) when most space games still had the typical buck rogers rockets and jet fighters in space look.

I totally agree. The designs are timeless - in my opinion, and thats the reason i started reworking alle my models i´ve made.
The Orion already has about 70k polygons, the Deimos 40k and the Fenris about 24k (including turrets and other surface elements).
Well, i hope i can realize everything and make some people happy with that

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Edit 6th December:
Started upgrading my old Iceni-model:
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Grey= old parts
White= new parts (just the lower Engines till now )

18th Dec:
Update of the Iceni:
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[Lc4Hunter]

Bacause it´s Xmas

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[DarthVain]

Looking good

[CotillionRope]

This looks great, can't wait toget my hands on it!!

[ezra-r]

loved freespace, good luck with this!

[Deleted User]

how about a pic of those beams?

[Varimatras]

shut up and get to work!

playing "Blue Planet" atm again, Freespace is just awesome.