Posts by Blake00

Hmm yeah while yes in the past it made sense to play out the current real worlds problems on the alien races instead of the Federation, they have gone through a lot in the 24th century. Multiple borg invasions, a military coup, war with the Klingons, war with the dominion (that apparently resulted in millions dead, hundreds of ships destroyed), a Breen attack on earth & starfleet HQ itself, and could have lost earth entirely to a Scimitar thalaron weapon attack from the leaders a Romulan Remen military coup. After all that a isolationist Federation is actually quite plausible even if it's not Gene's original vision of a Utopian Federation that can endure endless trauma.

In fact I actually think they should have aired the first 2 episodes together as 2hr movie sort of thing as some of the events in ep 1 that looked like plot holes or lazy writing were actually plausible events explained properly in the second episode. I guess the writers wanted fans to share Picards confusion but in reality they problably alienated a lot of people who thanks to the limited info given were likely left frustrated and think "I'm not watching any more of this confusing cr*p" lol (I've seen comments like that across a few forums).

Speaking of episode 2... here's my thoughts on that...

so yeah I'm enjoying it (more than Disco) but I'm still a bit worried about something things haha.. need to see more.

Oh and if it interests anyone apparently CBS has posted the first episode of Picard on YouTube for a limited time. So, if you dont have All Access and want to check it out, you have til Feb 7 to watch it for free. Naturally it's region locked though urgh.

Can't have a 'STD' thread ( ) here without a Picard one. So what does everyone think of this one now that it has started?

My thoughts (SPOILER ALERT) :

Second season was a big improvement over the first for me.. although that was probably more because of the excellent casting of Pike & Spock and all the Enteprise stuff but it was still filled with weird confusing moments (like the stupid watching torpedo in enteprise kill admiral through a glass door scene). There must have been a good 4 scenes across the second series where I was almost screaming at the TV "JUST USE THE F*CKING TRANSPORTER FFS!!!" lol.

Surprised this place doesn't have a dedicated Picard thread as I suspect many more people will like that show than Disco. I'll go make one lol...

Agree with SWAT and most of the other comments here.

I've enjoyed the new SW films to a point as they certainly look good and sound good.. but because I have a habit of thinking about things too much I find myself quickly building a list of annoyances related to plot, story, & characters haha.

The line "Which way is up sir?" pretty much summed up the amount of brains behind the new film for me lol.

The spin off content has been way better. Rogue One was brilliant, Solo was pretty good, Mandalorian was excellent. So yeah they can keep making horrible main SW films if it means we keep getting all this great spin off content as far as I'm concerned haha!

Agreed! Not that I was in a hurry anyway as I doubt my old PC would run it anyway haha.

Glad to see I was wrong. The whole rogue like randomly generated galaxy put me off playing the last one but it sounds like they're going proper open world detailed pre-made galaxy like good old Freelancer this time around! And the planet surface areas look awesome too! Kickstarter total looks a bit worrying though but hopefully they get there over the line!

EVERSPACE 2 by ROCKFISH Games — Kickstarter

This guy has done a good video preview of it:

YouTube

Here's some sexy screens I found around the place:

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

why not?

scroll up.... Picard is back

RED ALERT! We've got another new trailer. The beard is back! The old uniforms make a cameo! 7 or 9 is doing her Ronin thing. And we introduce the most hated admiral in Star Trek history haha!

US:

People like me outside of US:

Sadly it looks like they decided not to show that private E3 gameplay demo however they've made a new 15min 'Deep dive' video for Gamescon followed by a half hour Q&A session with the Devs. Man that nethacker whip thing looks awesome!

Amazing! Only a couple of weeks ago I was excitedly posting here about the release of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and now someone over in the Freelancer Facebook group posts a video of yet another very Freelancer like game called Starpoint Gemini 3!

I'd listed the previous Starpoint Gemini games over in my old Freelancer Similar games thread here as they had space combat, trading on stations and even some planet landing stuff however they still felt a bit different eg more of a big ship tactical combat game. However for this new game it looks like they've totally gone in a pure Freelancer style fighter game direction (which I think has upset some of their past fanbase but hey its great for us FL fans haha) with all the cool FL stuff like landing on planets and space stations to trade and visit their seedy space bars for work! It also has an interesting (unfinished) side game where you take control of a small probe infiltrating derelicts and space stations avoiding security systems that sort of reminds me of some of X2 – The Threat’s side missions.

The game is still in early access on steam so naturally it lacks polish but is already looking absolutely gorgeous!! The only fault I have with its otherwise stunning graphics are the very plastic mannequin like people but apparently the devs have said they'll be fixing that.

This guy has done a good video preview of it:

YouTube

Here's some sexy screens I found around the place:

Stunningly gorgeous much like the first one.

I'm guessing it has a randomly generated universe instead of a set galaxy again? Still not sure how I feel about that. Need to play it to make up my mind lol.

I haven't played the first RG game as I was a bit put off by the big gunboat and cap ship play as that doesn't seem very Freelancer to me.

However this new game looks bloody good though. They've switched to fighter based play, named the main character Juno (surely a tip of the hat to FL), and those gorgeous planetary landings is a big tick for me as hardly anyone has done that since Freelancer!! Will definitely be adding this one to my Freelancer Similar games list as it has the potential to taker the number 1 spot for most similar!

This guy has done a good video review of it:

Here's some sexy screens I found:

Yeah I almost never preorder anything these days either. But these guys got me haha. I'm shamefully on the hype train lol.

Apparently the full big gameplay footage they privately showed at E3 will be out soon publicly at Gamescon. Can't wait to sit down and take it all in like I did with the last big 45min one haha.

Quote from Martind Forlon

Hello blake, nice collection you have. I think you may like many smaller and bigger improvements done for the Crossfire mod

Yeah I'm really excited about exploring all the new worlds of Crossfire that you guys have put together. Gaming to do list is epic so god knows when I get to it though haha!

Quote from Michael

Maybe a Tour of Crossfire worlds next as a goal ?

Oh it is mate.. if you look at some of the end cards on those videos you'll see I made a 'World of Crossfire' tour link in preparation for that very idea.

Quote from ringotwin

I shall return to watch them all.

Nice collection mate.

Thanks mate

Well it looks like it was all for nothing sadly. Just over a day to go and the Starflight 3 crowdfund is barely over halfway. 30 years waiting for a sequel and its fails due to not enough media attention. So many thousands of SF fans out there (SF1 was apparently the first ever game to go platinum with 1mil sales back in the 80s) that never got to hear about this. Such a shame!

But there's still hope as Greg & Anthony said in a recent podcast that they'll look at improving the demo and may try a crowdfund again in the future or secure a publisher. If you're a big Starflight fan and you come across this thread long after it's too late, come join the starflight facebook group and they'll let you know the next time anything happens with SF3 (if there's a next time *sigh* ) plus the group is following a rather impressive Starflight 1 remake from a ex-bethesda employee so all is not lost for us old SF fans!

5 years ago I created a video series for my Freelancer Tribute Site of all the cool landing sequences, pads, bars and shops on Freelancers planets and some of the ships/stations. I always loved exploring all the worlds and visiting all the space bars to read the news.. almost more than playing the actual game haha. It was so immersive.

I was mucking around with a few mods and fell in love with a darkened ENB mod (regular ENB mods just made everything too bright and foggy) that enhanced all light sources while darkening other stuff to create some really moody lighting and atmosphere. I also used an HD texture mod although I think there are better ones around these days. I used my graphics card at the time to force some anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering too.

At some point I hope to do a video of some of the fan made mod worlds as I've seen some pretty cool ones in Crossfire. Does Discovery have any cool and different to vanilla worlds too?

Been meaning to post these here for ages but kept forgetting.. some may not like it but if you're someone who does then enjoy!

(Note: I deliberately brightened the video thumbnails as they looked awful against the default youtube white background so don't judge the videos by them, hit play lol)

Part 1 Liberty

Part 2 Bretonia

Part 3 Kusari

Part 4 Rheinland

Part 5 Hispania, Neutral, Pirate & Unknown

Showing my age here but are there any 80s/90s Starflight fans here?

It's quite possible I wouldn't be the Freelancer addict I am today without Starflight as it was the first ever space exploration, action, sell stuff and upgrade your ship kind of game I ever played and owned. Of course in reality Elite had far more in common but sadly I never got to play that as a kid so for me it was Starflight haha.

I came across the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) Starflight as a kid and eventually managed to own a copy that I played for years when I was around 13-14yrs old. I used to love getting out the galaxy map and working out where I'd explore wondering what aliens I'd meet and what sort of planets I'd find to land on and explore.

Didn't find out until years later (when they invented this little thing called the internet haha) that I had been actually playing a remake of an old 80s PC & Amiga game and that there was a Starflight 2 sequel out there too. Like so many great old game series it's been dead for like 30years now and then suddenly out of the blue a crowdfunding campaign has been announced now in 2018 headed by the original SF1&2 lead designer Greg Johnson!

They've started a 'kickstarter like' funding campaign over on Fig (never heard of Fig until now but it seems okay) here:

Starflight 3: Funding Now on Fig

Announcement vid:

And now that I've finally noticed that feature, its gone haha. AZ09 if you sent me any more chat msgs I'm afraid I din't see them lol!

Quote from AZ09

New Mission: To find OP

lol sorry man I only just saw your chat msg. This forums a bit 'fancier' than most forums so I'm still getting used to where I need to look for alerts. Didn't even know there was a chat mode hahaha

Quote from Michael

Ok, not only its a nice idea, but... on that FB page you added your original Freelancer tour videos, watching them felt so melancholic and beautiful in its own way, it really touched me... reminded me a bit of why its the only game I actually bought twice (mostly because I thought I lost the original, but still worth getting it again). Pic of it's spanish cover version included xD

And a tip, the FB banner image seems a bit streched and out of bounds (for me at least), would be nice to fix for its size.

PS: I actually discovered a game I never heard of in the Freelancer related and similar games file you added there!

Thanks man, yeah I had to fill the group with 'something' and being Freelancer addict I've already got a website full of pictures and videos so I figured it was better to rip myself off instead of someone else to 'sex up' the group page a bit hahaha! And yeah I made those videos for people to enjoy but also for myself to enjoy for years to come. I just love putting them up on a big screen tv and just watching all the landings. I enjoyed the space combat but for me my favourite part of the game was visiting planets and space bars etc. Made you feel like you were part of an amazing universe. I'd been meaning to post the videos here but keep forgetting haha.

Oh and yeah I recently bought myself a nice boxed copy of the game off ebay too haha! Couldn't find my old early 2000s disc and I think it may have been a pirate copy anyway (whoopsie!). I also managed to get my hands on the collectors disc 2 that came with some copies of the game which has that cool extended intro and a making of the game video which is pretty cool to have.

Yup I just rushed that banner in there.. I'll fix it up soon.

Quote from AZ09

Interesting, makes me wonder what we would need to do with CF's page on there.

Thanks man. I didn't know CF had a page but I've just managed to find it. I was just talking about this exact issue with another fellow who joined last night. Looks like there's a bunch of Freelancer pages on fb but not groups.

The best one is this one which I've followed for years..
https://www.facebook.com/FreelancerGame/

Discovery appear to have one too.
https://www.facebook.com/discoverygc/

However they're all dead as they all have the same problem in that they're a 'fb news page' instead a 'fb group' which means its just 1 or 2 dudes posting news to subscribers, and their fans can only make posts that are hidden away and not seen by other fans (due to no notifications & you have to go to a separate community wall section that nearly no one bothers to look at). Groups are so much better as you can actually create a lasting community. The page admin can still post news about their respective project (if the group is about that) but the fans can post out in the open too leading to lots of good discussions. Even if the admin goes inactive the group lives on. You just can't do that on a news page and as a result they just die out...

Also found that groups makes a handy backup for ageing forums too. For example I'm a big Starflight fan and in 2015 the SF forum community was in bad shape (thankfully the Freelancer community is in MUCH better shape). 3 of the big 5 forums from the 2000s were gone and the 2 left weren't looking too good either. As a passionate SF fan I didn't want what was left of the community to die off especially as they were working on the Starflight 3 fan game (a pipe dream but a good one) so I created a Starflight facebook group and invited all to drop by and sign up as a backup. Naturally there were several people who said they didn't have fb or that it was evil etc lol. Well.. those guys are gone now.. lost forever.. we don't know where they are.. as last year the last of the SF forums went down and the fb group was all we had left. Fortunately most of the community had signed up by then. Just recently we hit the 170 members mark and were able to get together as a community on there ti track down and get in contact with the admin of the old SF3 site to get him to bring the forums back online and even get the SF3 project going again. Without the fb group, that probably wouldn't have happened and the forum would have just disappeared into oblivion along with the other SF forums. Sadly these days fan game forums come and go all the time but fortunately facebook (love it or hate it) is not going anywhere and its a cool tool for keeping game fan communities going. The other cool thing that happened was new people or old members who hadn't visted the SF forums in years found the facebook group just by doing a fb or google search for starflight and then used my forums links on the fb group page to go and sign up at the forums or return to their ancient forum accounts when they saw some life back there. We had one guy appear who no one had seen on the forums in 10years show up at the fb page lol!

Needless to say I've put links to the Starport, Crossfire & Discovery forums in a pinned group post lol! Oh and if any of the admin here wanna join, pm me who you are and I'll make you an admin there. That way if I get hit by a bus you guys can keep it going lol!

Hey guys,

I've tried hunting a few times over the years for a Freelancer Facebook group as it seems wrong that such a great classic of a game doesn't have a proper presence on social media. Doesn't help that the word 'freelancer' brings up a gazillion other unrelated groups in the fb search box lol!

I found a post at the starport mentioning 2 groups but the link is dead and I can't find any trace of the other one they mention.
The Starport - A Freelancer Game Fansite :: Freelancer joins Facebook... again! - Freelancer Community News - News

So in the end I decided to make my own as over the years I've created groups for other ageing classic like Starflight, Master of Magic, and Sid Meier's Colonization which have been going quite well and have grown into nice little communities. You can find it here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/freelancergame/

If there are indeed some existing Freelancer FB groups please let me know where they are so I can join. If there's some really big good ones out there that I've failed to find then I'll get rid of mine as they'll be no need for it!