Crossfire - Upcoming changes, upcoming content

Ok, the new Order (NPC) ships are now fully functional and correctly spawn where they should. The pilotable version (event reward) will be done with the update right after this one (as I want to see how the event is working under real conditions first)

We are moving closer to a release of this update now.

Things still on my to-do list:

• Fixing a bunch of minor bugs... well... more like cleaning up a bit.
• Including the modular station parts for Renaissance (yes, I also decided to release this now)
• Balancing the first version of the new server event system
• a few minor tests and rebalances
• maybe testing the new method of switching from main story mission to bonus mission and back (dunno yet if I'll make it part of this update)
• writing the launcher update instructions

I stubled a bit into a crash issue these days in certain systems. Cause was a new plugin that I wanted to use to fix a issue with fonts.

Dunno really how to get it done without it yet.

But I made some progress on the Renaissance modular station parts. There are still a few minor issues to be taken care of but most of it seems to be working.

Btw.

Did the tradelanes always tilt to the side this way? This is not intentional.

There have been multiple complaints in the past about Nebulas being too transparent in CF.

The fog draw distance was increased by x10. I would consider to reduce it to x5... keeping transparency but essentially reducing it by 50%.

I can include it relative easily into the upcoming update but need a bit more feedback.

So what do you think?

its not about the draw distance of the nebula but the fog density

Freelancer 2024-05-07 19-19-10.png

It wasn't me. Dunno how that happened.

Joke aside.

The new update is almost read for release.

Atm I am still a bit busy working on the Bonus mission stuff and the return to the main mission issue.

Essentially I am trying to simplify the whole struture to something "simple" like this:

Bild_2024-05-09_180559254.png

I've done first tests and results are promising but not perfect.

The watchtriggers carry through to the end and would allow to return to the point where you have left the main story.

But that is unfortunately only the case if no savegames are loaded in the meantime. Savegames seem to "forget" the watchtriggers which explains why for some players returning to the main mission was perfectly possible while for others it failed.

I might have a solution for that in which I let savegames reload watchtriggers depending on their previous state and pass them through to the next save point. (tech babbel). If the tests are successful this might turn out to be the solution to finally fix this issue.

Furthermore there are going to be changes to the entire storyline of CF.

There are several thousand text elements displayed during the missions. ~400 of them are mission descriptions, personal logs, pop-ups telling part of the story, etc.

These ~400 story elements have been rewritten. This will not change the story as a whole but it will add further detail to the story, correct mistakes and provide a better reading experience with more variety and less spelling mistakes.

This stuff is all ready and done, just has to be included into the update now.

Additional change included is that the area in which the first side mission triggers now is 50% bigger, making the search less tedious.

That being said and done... the update would almost be ready for release.

Two more tasks need to be done.

1. creating the instructions for the launcher to distribute the update

2. creating a server version of this update (there are adjustments needed for it to run on the server)

So probably a release can happen somewhen next week.