Crossfire - Upcoming changes, upcoming content

I am aiming for a easter release of the next update.

Actually I am far behind the schedule for that and still have lots of stuff that needs to be tested any fixed (if required) but I guess it should be possible.

As in terms of fixes to lights and hardpoints the reported list of ships felt incomplete. Therefore I have digged a bit deeper and tested a large number of ships.

Fixes are done to the following ships:

• Ragnarok Gunboat
• Ceptyr
• Scourge
• Bullpup MkI
• Bullpup Mk II
• Bullpup Mk III
• Hydra Mk III
• Bretonia Battleship
• Rheinland Battleship
• Kusari Battleship
• Osiris
• Transporter "Shavrov"
• Battleship 'Reliant'
• Bretonia Gunboat
• Kusari Destroyer
• Rheinland Cruiser
• Mining Ship
• Claw
• Antares Armored Freighter
• Dragonfly
• Celestis Dreadnought
• Prisonship 'Saladin'

At the moment I don't know 100% how to distribute these changes since it would require to edit chars on the server to apply all the changes. And we are talking about hundreds of chars which use these ships currently. Newly purchased ships would of course have the fixed settings. Old ones are tricky atm. Need to think about a solution.

Further changes will include a reshade update to the newest version and the introduction of the FLsharp plugin.

For convinience reasons I'll just copy/paste what the plugin does.

• Fixed a bug that caused the lights of a trade lane to never turn back on after the trade lane gets disrupted.
• Fixed a bug that caused waypoints to be cleared when the player reaches the coordinates in a different system.
• Fixed a bug that makes the player ship a selectable target for creating waypoints on the nav map.
• Makes the weapon flash particle effect play on all barrels instead of only on the first barrel.
• Fixed a bug for the one_shot_sound not playing when firing multi-barrel launchers.
• Fixed a bug for the ammo count not decrementing correctly when firing multi-barrel launchers.
• Fixed a bug that caused the use_animation entries in weapon_equip.ini to not work, i.e. enables weapon animations.
• Allows a gun's use_animation entry to be played on the parent (e.g. ship) if the animation name has a leading underscore (_); this leading underscore should not be included in the cmp file's animation name.
• Fixed a bug that caused the client to not send the correct engine state of the player's ship to the server.
• When playing on a server, ensure the client sends an update:
  • at least every 2 seconds;
  • when engine kill has been toggled;
  • if after every 0.25 seconds the ship's orientation has been changed to some extent.
• Sets the minimum time between client-server updates to 40 milliseconds (or 750 ms while in a trade lane) such that jitter is prevented when playing with a high or inconsistent framerate.
• Allow ui_music_test to play when the current background music has finished playing.
• Added support for playing the ui_interface_test and ui_ambiance_test sounds when adjusting the respective sliders in the options menu; these sounds should be defined in interface_sounds.ini.
• Automatically prevent crashes while adjusting the interface and ambience volume sliders in the event that the test sounds are not defined.
• While adjusting the ambience and music volume, mute other background sounds accordingly so that the volume can be fine-tuned more easily.
• Allows for up to 127 selectable resolutions in the general options menu; these are automatically determined based on the user's main monitor resolution.
• Fixes the problem where the general options menu can't distinguish two different resolutions with the same width.
• Makes the default resolution button in the general options menu select the user's main monitor resolution instead of 1024x768.
• Prevent Freelancer from running with resolutions beyond the main display's capabilities in terms of horizontal and vertical resolution.
• Sets the user's main monitor resolution as the default in-game resolution.
• Instead of checking if the available resolutions are supported each time the option menu opens, do it only when needed (optimization).
• Allows for the Ctrl + C hotkey to copy text from any Freelancer input box to the clipboard.
• Allows for the Ctrl + V hotkey to paste text from the clipboard to any Freelancer input box.
• Improved the slide-out animation for some UI buttons in the multiplayer menus.
• When the "You must be on friendlier terms to purchase this." message is displayed in the Dealer menus, allow the exact reputation requirement to be printed too. Include %d in the IDS (S 1564, resources.dll) to make it work.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Freelancer process to not always terminate after closing the game.
• Automatically set rotation lock and auto leveling to the default value when launching to space to prevent control-related issues from occurring (e.g. mouse flight not working).

The use of the plugin requires to un-do some workarounds of the past (working on that atm). Furthermore are plenty of edits required to make everything compatible with CF.

Most notable for players will be the weapon animations. For that to work all weapons in the game need to be reviewed and tested. Most certainly new weapon animations need to be created for a large amount of weapons. CF custom weapons already have been remodeled to be compatible and were tested successfully.

Vanilla weapons still need to be tested and fixed if required.

- fix wireframes for custom weapons

- removal of the vanilla FL (legacy) shader option

- fixed the vanilla FL shader option

- fixed a minor misconfiguration of the launcher options

- fixed torpedo descriptions for alien factions

- minor fixes of various ship hardpoints

- improved turret camera settings

- improved mouse input for window mode

- Reshade update

- alternative bug fix of a lighting issue in DirectX

- improved dual mode target screen

- 3d model replacement for Renaisance guns

- 3d model replacement for various Coalition guns

- 3d model replacements for torpedo launchers

- 3d model replacements for cruise disruptors

- 3d model replacements for Codename weapons

- 3d model replacements for Codename MkII weapons

- OpenGL is set to the default launcher option

- player ship status added

- weapon groups toggle added

- included CFUIchanger Tool (switch UI option from installer without using the installer -> for now the only way to make changes or apply fixes to UI without releasing a new installer)

- fixed modern Crossfire UI maneuver bar not having an autohide function

- removed redundant code in modern Crossfire UI

- fixed several wireframe models of player ships

- fixed a minor rendering issue in certain base menus

- partially removed a workaround that was meant to fix wireframe issues but caused LOD issues on low detail levels instead (it is intended to fully remove that workaround with upcoming updates since a better fix was found)

- as result of the previously mentioned workaround issue, 178 ships got updated

- 99 ship hitboxes improved

The update just got released.

As you might see on the launcher, it's a bigger one.

I did not manage to get everything I wanted to change into the update, therefore... another update in May.

One thing worth to mention. If you use the modern CF hud (the golden one), you probably should use the new CFUIChanger tool.

Just select the same option again. This will fix a bunch of under the hood issues with this specific UI choice and also will enable the autohide maneuver bar option for this specific HUD.

Already contacted the server host.

But... yeah its Easter. I doubt that a fast solution can be found.

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Our data center technician found one of the drive as faulty and they replaced it. Currently server can’t boot as booting partition is missing.

Please boot the server in rescue/recovery mode and add bootable partition and do the raid sync.

This is going to take a bit.

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We apogies for the late response, we are currently investigating the server as it appears that its webresetter is not working properly, as soon as we have more news we will let you know.

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After further investigation we have found out that it appears that the RAID array has somehow been broken and the server was running on a single drive in RAID 1, as we can see that the second drive is basic and only C: partition named tools is available, this means that unfortenetly all of the data stored on the main drive that failed is lost, the only solution we can offer you in this case is to remove the currently working drive named tools temporarily so that you can restore the server cleanly with new disks installed inside the server, after the Reinstall is done, we can then reconnect the old drive as USB and you can then transfer your data to the server.

Please let us know about your decision.

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Forgot to mention that our DC technician fixed the issue with the server's rebooting problems, now the server can be successfully rebooted and reinstalled from your side or even booted into Recovery mode.

Tricky situation, especially when you have to rely on writing tickets and misleading instructions to figure out whats going on.

The good news is that the drive with char backups and backups of the CF server installation still seems to be there. I am trying to figure out how to procede from there without losing data.

That's not the point.

Doing the config of the server in case of a data loss takes ages. There is half a million settings. I should have local backups from half a year ago. But still...

No, multiple drives with raid1 configuration for each drive.

This is not for speed up something (it actually even slows it down a bit) but for security reasons, where drives are mirrored.

The system drive C: did die and the mirror for some reason failed. Drive D: as far I can tell is still there.

Drive D: is where all CF stuff is on, including the daily backups of chars (putting aside that for those I have also an external backup server with daily backups).

I told the hosting company to remove drive D from the system, replace it with a different one. Once done I can initiate a reinstall of the OS (without risk of overwriting anything). After that they should be able to connect that drive again via USB port so I can transfer the data to the new drive. (in theory)

IF that works I need to install a few tools, do a million settings and hope that the cf server software starts to run again.

IF so I probably need Huor to help me figure out why the server anticheat flooded the logs with errors, despite correct settings (in my eyes).

again, no

Its not just the mbr. Drive C appears to be completely defect.

But Drive D was still working and there is the CF stuff. I personally prefer to seperate data and not put everything together on one drive. My own PC has 11 drives (4 NVME SSDs, 2 SATA SSDs, 3 internal HDDs and 2 external drives -> I need that )

Well in the past 25 years I probably lost 5-6 server drives (mostly on webserver), two HDDs on my normal PC and maybe 10 USB drives.

That stuff is not meant to last. But probably the use cases are a bit more intense in my case.