[kaem79]

hi! I have just discovered this truly amazing freespace open project. so I've got an crazy idea, that I wanna play freespace2 and mods like you play freelancer. with a mouse and a good rear view of the ship. so, have anyone made a freelancer mod to freespace 2? or is it possible to get almost the same gameplay without modding?

[Droid803]

no and no

Noone has ever made a Full-blown freelancer mod for FS2.
And you sure as hell can't ****ing get anything but freespace gameplay without modding. 

[Dragon]

Without modding, nope and you may need pretty advanced LUA scripting to pull this off.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, but it may turn out difficult to do.
There's a script for better mouse controll, but I don't know what it does, since I don't use mouse for flying.
As for Freelancer TC, it would be great if somebody attempted to make that, so far, nobody did.
If anybody ever starts such TC, I'd volunteer immidately (I've played Freelancer a long time ago, but I still consider it one of the best games I ever played).

[kaem79]

hmm!

[Nuke]

Freespacelancer

[Enzo03]

Ah I've heard of this stuff.. like a couple of days ago :-\
I was under the impression that someone was seriously, albeit quietly putting together a Freelancer into Freespace thing.

I play Freelancer online a bit but I only recently got it :-\

[Dragon]

I knew you had most likely done such mouse control, Nuke. 

[Sushi]

To get rear view of the ship, just use numpad-*.

To get Freelancer-like mouse control, use this:
http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Script_-_Scripted_Mouse

Alternately, if you want to switch between the Freelancer-like mouse and normal mouse mid-game, use this:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74435.0

[Nuke]

i never really intended to do a freelancer mod (i didnt like the game that much). i was really just investigating was to control your turrets while also flying your ship. at first i used the mouse to control the turret, but that was kind of a difficult arrangement. then i thought about trying the freelancer methodology, which actually worked quite well. using free-look was another thing i tried and it sorta worked, but was difficult to aim.

anyway im not even sure if i have the script anymore, its probably lost in my convoluted script_dev folder (which has become a black hole of sorts for old scripts that probably dont work anymore). should actually be easier to recreate now because of new functions that make turrets easier to move. you would probably also want some camera code for better external views and some input code. then it would just be a matter of supplying mod data.

[potatochief]

Sorry to resurrect this very old thread BUT... i've waited countless years and several iterations of HLP for an implementation of the same thing Btw, I've restarted FS after being gone for over 6 years I think and daym! 3.6.12 rocks! then the mouse annotyance creeps in again...

Serously, for those who havent tried freelancer's controls, you'll find that their implementation of that control is the evolution that FSO should have implemented for the next series of Space Sims IMHO

PS. I do own a joystick but the finesse required at aming at ships brings me back to the mouse, not to mention my flight stick connects to a midi port that is extinct for quite some time now (logitech wingman interceptor)

[jr2]

Hmm... link in my sig for mouse joy script.

[Nuke]

Sorry to resurrect this very old thread BUT... i've waited countless years and several iterations of HLP for an implementation of the same thing Btw, I've restarted FS after being gone for over 6 years I think and daym! 3.6.12 rocks! then the mouse annotyance creeps in again...

Serously, for those who havent tried freelancer's controls, you'll find that their implementation of that control is the evolution that FSO should have implemented for the next series of Space Sims IMHO

PS. I do own a joystick but the finesse required at aming at ships brings me back to the mouse, not to mention my flight stick connects to a midi port that is extinct for quite some time now (logitech wingman interceptor)

freelancer had interesting controls but it most certainly is not revolutionary. it is not something i would like to see implemented in freespace, even though ive actually already done so. my intention was just to make a demo for scripting to try to promote the scriptin system to those who wanted some kind of freelancer mod. since my gaming prime was in the late 90s, smack dab in the middle of the joystick era, i am quite proficient in their usage. i put far more effort in making a decent mod testbed, which was in itself halfass (and likely the only time anyone ever converted a quake map into a pof).

[potatochief]

Ok... I appreciate the replies and such...

As far as the default mouse implementation goes, the constant "scratching" movement in pointing at SF dragons is a real pain.

With the mouse scroll and toggle switch trick, I do like it.  It provides the precision of the default mouse controls with the added roll that the keyboard numpad permits without lifting my hand to reach for the numpad... of course if these two features would be intergrated into one fluid dynamic, it would probably be better

I wish i could code

Update: re-read the description of the freelancer mouse controls and the scripted mouse is precisely how MS implemented it's controls... my memory did awful trickery on me It used the spacebar to toggle the modes....

[gslack]

I think the concept of the Freelancer mouse control scheme is gotten but in practice its quite different than what we have in either the scripted mouse or the toggleable mouse control we have in the latest patch. The difference for me is not about the toggle or the indicator, but rather about the translation of the movements. I will try and explain the difference if I can..

1. Freespace mouse controls - The ship nose moves with the mouse movements precisely. Meaning if an enemy goes fast off screen in any direction to make the turn to reacquire that enemy one has to move the mouse to the edge of his pad, lift and move again. This can result in very slow and choppy movements due to constant lifting and  "scraping" of the mouse to make fast or sharp turns. A good way to think of this would be to imagine a full sphere around the ship and everywhere you move the mouse corresponds to a point or degree in that sphere. So to turn 180 degrees one would have move the mouse that comparative equivalent distance across the pad.

2 Freelancer mouse controls - The mouse moves the ship and the gun turrets simultaneously which changes via a toggle switch (spacebar et al). The cursor moves all over the screen and the ships turning speed will increase the further that cursor is from the center HUD and related to the speed your ship is traveling at. When the toggle is off the cursor aims the guns and can be used to select interface items in the HUD directly via a click on them. WHen the cursor is on a clickable interface item the gun reticule goes away and it becomes a pointer.  When the toggle is active and the ship is in mouse flight mode, the cursor points the guns and steers the ship in the manner i mentioned previously. You can only select interface items via mouse pointer with the toggle inactive. This allows for fast movements and no "scraping" of the mouse over the pad to turn, higher precision and the ability to select HUD items, and various other things while the ship is in a maintained flight path and speed, without having to recall many keyboard commands. Which for an old man like me is hard to do in a fight.

Im no programmer so I cant tell you how exactly they do it, but I see so many people saying the scripted mouse and or toggle is just like freelancer when it clearly is not. I hope this helps clarify.

[QuantumDelta]

You seem to be 16 months late.

[gslack]

Yeah noticed the date was 11' instead of 12' after the post..Oh well, the mouse control is still an issue..

[QuantumDelta]

I would infer that this is simply because you are bad.
There are plenty of extremely excellent mouse pilots past and current.

[jr2]

Eh, thing with the mouse is, some people turn the sensitivity down as this makes it 'easier' to use... now, honestly, you really want the sensitivity as high as you can possibly take it.  Yes you will suck for a short time, however, this will be compensated for by the fact that you can actually (almost) hold your own in a turning dogfight. (You still run out of room even on high sensitivity, so you're at a disadvantage there).

The same holds true on the desktop in windows/mac/linux ... on higher sensitivity, it takes some getting used to, but you can get so much more work done it's not funny, because instead of dragging the cursor around all day, you can cross the desktop in one movement, and still have the precision to be able to do detailed work (with some practice, that is!).

[Nuke]

steering a ship in freelancer is a lot like controlling a cat with a laser pointer. but anyway theres scrtipting, and there are scripting examples for mouse and turret control. have fun. i sure as hell aint gonna do it for you. (besides the fact that i already did but if you want to bring my 3.6.9 era script up to 3.6.14 standards and get rid of the dirty hacks, youre better off just writing a new one from scratch)

[gslack]

I was trying to explain the differences in the two methods of mouse control...