Crossfire - Upcoming changes, upcoming content

last patches prior xmas:

Earlier this week I pushed out once more an update to the shaders (just a minor bug fix).

This week no updates to station interiors but instead 7 nomad structures got some improvements.

Additionally based on 2 recent bug reports I tried to isolate a glitch on various ships. Unfortunately, I was not able to reproduce the issue on my PC. The screenshots submitted however clearly showed an issue. Based on the evidence and a rough theory I patched 63 ships and 16 solar objects with something I would at this point consider a potential fix. Further tests will show if it worked.

Due to xmas preparations it is unlikely that there will be an update next week.

still bothers me

dunno whats wrong with it and why I have no issues when testing the ship(s)

oncyl.png

There have not been updates during the past 2 weeks simply for the reason that I badly needed a break.

I have the intention to get back into the weekly update cycle now.

On top of that RedComrad (from our discord channel) has provided lots of update/improved content that needs to be reviewed and will be added to CF soon.

I have to take a closer look on all that stuff prior publishing it to ensure 100% compatibility.

The amount of stuff that has been improved is a bit overwhelming and certainly will take some time to get reviewed and published.

Also worth to mention is that I have just recently been contacted by a CF player who also is modding for Skyrim about the possibility to implement AI generated voices into CF. I only briefly looked into this topic half a year ago and added it onto my long-term todo list. Esentially it would be possible to replicate existing voices (e.g. King, Juni, Trent, Orillion, ... ) for use in cut scenes.

In the "Crossfire Updates 2023" thread I already mentioned the intention to take a closer look at the voice samples as an optional improvement. Potentially this will be done sooner than later.

oncylshell.png

First update this year just got released.

1. Content is a complete rework of jump effects. The idea was to have a significantly higher distinction between the different existing effects depending on on their classification and also on their location.
   The in total (now) 16 different effects will have a very unique look and feel. 14 of these effects are currently active in the game. The other two will become available at a later point when the faction review of the systems will be done. Right now only Liberty and Bretonia have faction specific jump effects. Kusari and Rheinland therefore will follow.
   Others are for generic jumpgates, jumpholes, asteroid field jump holes, sol/coalition jumpgates, the rift, hyperspace, dk jumpgates, gmg jumpgate, renaisance jumpgates/jumpholes... etc.
   The stuff in my eyes really looks very interesting now.
2. Also have all shield effects been updated with a more techy version.
3. Shaders got another update which fixes a few things and adds some minor new features.

another update was just released updating some pirate base assets

I might release another tomorrow. Dunno yet. Trying to make up some lost time.

nope, tau will remain this way due to story reasons

I just pushed out the final update for this weekend.

Some additional reworked stations and cityscape/planetscape backgrounds which either got replaced with better variants and old versions which now are available in 4k resolution. Looks to me like a significant quality improvement in this area but I am not 100% if this will cause side effects on older hardware.

Some feedback would be welcome if you notice issues.

was not a thought yet

Next update will most likely be published sunday.

Content requires a bit explanation.

I have the intention to update feature plugins used in CF both for SP and MP. This took a lot of comparisons of what's already in use, what's working correctly, what is not working correctly, what has been updated/improved and what might be useful for future content.

Result are going to be a few bug fixes for already existing features and the introduction of some features that did not exist in CF yet.

But ok lets see what we have so far.

• a better implementation of widescreen support
• a potential fix to the random Lost Paradise jumps
• atmosphere burn effects by ship class; this was already in the game but not correctly configured; currently the configuration is complete but I still need to work on new effects -> dunno if I can finish it this weekend but it is definitely something that will be finished very soon
• the bars for hull, shields and energy now show a color gradient; this also was in CF already but the config until now was incomplete
• support to use the scrollwheel of your mouse in menus has been added
• scroll bar configuration on certain UI elements has been improved
• in MP it will be possible to use the ship filter icon to cycle through NPC/Player/All settings by clicking the icon multiple times
• in MP private chat message window will display faction affiliation
• in settings you can go to the "minimize hud" setting which by default should have a primary key set to "backspace"; if you add "strg+backspace" to the secondary key setting of this function you can disable the hud completely using this key-combo (no need to use CFNoHud.exe anymore if you want to take screenshots without hud.
• when open the nav map and switch to the universe map, then hold the shift key and click on the "player location" icon you can now see the system you are currently in but instead of a top-down view you can see a view from the side. Not a perfect feature since waypoints and tradelanes etc. are still display in the top-down view but it might be useful to get an impression of the vertical alignment of system objects and zones.
• some further minor bug fixes to existing features (way too many to list them all)
• an update to FLs render pipeline which will improve the way how planets are displayed (this is a first step to improve the overall quality of planets, in a 2nd step cloud layers will be improved -> will be updated later and already is on the todo list)

I already decided against the use of 8 plugins which I consider not really useful and in several cases even harmful to the gameplay. Two features which are very interesting will be introduced at a later point of time since the configuration and implementation requires a bigger mod update.

Furthermore have I prepared multiple changes which currently can not be introduced since the stuff needs to be put into the mod installer (unless i find a clever way to securely patch it via launcher - dunno how to do that atm). So when all the other work is done and a full release is going to be published you can expect improvements to some refresh rates of UI elements, Sound improvements and a borderless window mode.

Most likely I also will get the refresh of the Pirate base interiors completed this week. (a few liberty and rheinland interiors still need to be done and then kusari... slow but steady progress)

update got released

including the atmosphere effects; for fighters and freighters everything for sure will fit, for larger ships the scale might not perfectly fit (going to work on that later).

hopefully everything else above is working correctly

the update process was a bit more difficult since this is also a server side patch which required adjustments to settings and anticheat.

a small rollback

the newest version of the randomjumps has caused multiple server crashes

I went through the documentation but was not able to isolate the issue yet. The config seems to be perfectly fine. I just did a rollback to the old version on this one until I figure out what caused the crashes.

Just a small showcase of the texture detail improvements done (left side original, right side new version):

Detailcomparison.png

Detailcomparison2.png

(yes, its upside down... that's due to the texture type and my laziness of not flipping it for this showcase)