In this news we are giving details about our ingame travel concept and the upcoming open beta!

Posted by w0dk4 on Dec 13th, 2012

This is our second news for the final MotY voting phase and as with the last piece we give you more gameplay footage and information. Thanks again for your votes and please keep voting by logging into your MODDB account!



Dynamic Hyperspace Travel Concept

Our hyperspace travel concept has been established since a long time, however we never got to the stage of actual implementation. That has changed. The travel concept makes use of two known Freelancer gameplay mechanics, tradelanes and jump gates. But since we don't like to cater to the limitations of the Freelancer engine we created dynamic versions of the two for a more interesting travel gameplay. Next to the static hypergates and hyperlanes it will also be possible to plot a manual course by setting a waypoint, in-system or inter-system. Suns and planets cast gravity wells which limit your choice of possible paths and creates chokepoints for players. The following picture shows a nav-map with visualized gravity wells and possible hyperlane paths:

Also, creating a dynamic hyperlane or gate will make you very visible for other players and there will be significant build-up and cool-down times so that spamming hyperlanes and gates will not be possible. The actual gameplay limitations and restrictions will be subject to change throughout our open beta, but here is an early ingame video showing off the technology:

Movement Improvements

Next to hyperspace travel we also work on improving some of our issues with overall movement which are due to limitations of the Freelancer engine. We improved capitol ship spinning by limiting the change in angular velocity. That means, cap ships are no longer be spinning uncontrollably after a collision with a tiny fighter. Also, we improved the netcode by updating ship positions more often. This results in a more fluid gameplay and, since network speeds have improved, is well worth the additional bandwidth.



Call for Testers and Open Beta

As already mentioned, we will have an Open Beta. Since we have a bad track record of meeting deadlines, we will not give a release date. We want to release the mod sooner than later and are hard working on getting the core features finished so we can start public testing early next year.

We are still looking for some dedicated testers with plenty of time on their hands to work out some of the critical bugs of the mod. To apply, please send a MODDB personal message to our development group.

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If you like what you see, and have been playing, please don't forget to tell your friends, your communities you frequent and social sites like REDDIT/Twitter about this mod. Player word of mouth goes a long way and we'd appreciate any of the support we can get for this mod of ours! Thanks everyone!