Help with Modding?

[Oto7]

SO iv'e played this game countless times an completed it before back in the day as a kid an thought why not spice things up abit , however when I search around online I came across an old pc gamer article on better graphics / resolution for this game and also heard of another mod that adds ships which were non playable in the game. However most links that I click on no longer exist or error 404 online if anyone could help point me in the right direction I would be grateful.

Thanks
Oto

[JGZinv]

The FringeSpace team had our hosting dump everything so that would be why the links don't work. We provide files through our Discord chat server. Half the time we have to explain what they do so this tends to work better anyway.

[=NB= StarFox]

What I'm going to say will not directly help, but it might add some colorful insight into the history (part of the history- my memory sucks) of the game in regards to modding. I will apologise in advanced, as jgzinv, Mystic, Decker, and a few others that may have had a much larger hand in trying to save the game than I realized. It was actually believed that Mystic & Decker were actually Devs who often played the game.

When I first started playing TTF, NovaLogic was still releasing official game patches. The problem was, that most of the time, these patches did not work as intended or created other issues that had to be re-patched. If I remember correctly, Devilsclaw was actually responsible for making the game work again after one such failed patch. He also developed a patch that would allow a player to use of a bunch of NPC ships in the arena (Demon, Enforcer, Midge, and so on). Other patches were developed, Hex editors, (quite possibly a texture pack), but definately one to make the game playable on Win XP. But what started happening is that certain other people figgured out how to make cheats (including the use of those extra ships) for use in Base Wars games. Hell, there were even DOS attacks on the server when certain people tried running those cheaters off, and then we had to wait for Nova to fix the server, which took as long as it took- no rush on it. As well, a guy named Vandal started creating maps- one of which actually brought a capital ship into a BW's game. Another was a 7 sector map- took forever for either side to win. Cool stuff right there.

But all good things come to an end. Eventualy NovaLogic pulled the plug on the server. Certain people created software and patches for private game servers, which actually started being developed before NL pulled the plug but thats at about the point that I stopped playing so religiously. Also by that time, jgzinv was working on FringeSpace where texture work was also being done, but I don't know how far they got or where they might be today.

Anyway, sorry for the long winded story. Now, there is an extremely small chance that I may still have TTF patches & tools on some old discs, somewhere, coppied from an XP based system, yatta, yatta, yatta but I dont think the stuff would be any use running windows 10. Nor do I even know how many are self standing exectuables.

[JGZinv]

I'd be interested in seeing what you have at least. I'm pretty much the last Tach modder standing.

To fill in some gaps based on what I know.

Decker and Mystica don't register as Devs for as much as I've tried to hunt them down and they pop up once in like 3-4 years. I've talked to a few of the Devs over the years, I turned down one offer of files for the well being of the Dev at the time, kinda been kicking myself ever since.

Most of the Dev team had left Novalogic by the time it shipped. It was a napkin idea that they got minimal funding for and then blew up larger than anyone expected. Due to several things going on, the devs left for greener pastures, but there were 2-3 that were still there and being a passion project, they tried to fix what little they could of the worst bugs, such as base wars or the ammo reload glitch. As the files will show there is a lot left undone.

DevilsClaw did seem to do the no-CD patch, and a handful of ships like the Demon. He mostly provided support for other Nova games like DeltaForce. Though he closed his site, you can still see his tools and patches here or there. He had a patch that was to fix several things like the direct X mouse lock, the widescreen resolution, and he was working on the server IP patch like I was, before he vanished. I found him and messaged several ways, but he's clearly not responding anymore.

Sonic was responsible for several big mods that added maps and his sets of ships along with a custom launcher. He also made custom huds and had a fan site that was a hub for a while.He helped with a lot of old information no one else had.

Bloodstar made ship packs, and I am vaguely remembering he might have had some maps but he definitely had the pack with the demon and manta. People hated it because it was too strong.

Slippster used to have a website where his maps we're collected. His christmas tree map was one such memorable map.

Shadows Lament worked on the map editor. Last time I saw her she was a mod in the Star Citizen community. Lost her files and with it any hope of a follow up. I forget if she made the Corvus with the hex edited pcx skin so it appeared all silver.

Razor's Kiss lost most all of his files from the old days.

Decker and Mystica had soem mod tools and claimed to have a different map editor that was more complete than Shadows, but they've declined to release it.

What I've been doing over the years was making the IP patches to keep access to the lobby going. I also collected every mod from the time period when I started and tried to update the ship and map packs into one master pack I called Service Bay. I took what I considered to be the most desired and accessible maps and ship, did extensive balancing over 3 months, and put that out. We also found out about the Glide wrapper along the way, so I made things for that.

People I've met along the way gave me mods like the GodRails, which is a capital ship 1 hit rail beam on a fighter.

I tooled around trying to push the limits of the game and map making so I put caps in multiplayer maps (easy), tried to make turret dodge maps, tried to edit textures, tried to play as a cap and as a base, lots of oddball things.We got the music figured out and z64 made a model extractor based on another person's unfinished work.

From what I gather from old message board records long gone thanks to Yuku and ezboard, Star Patrol tried to keep heard on the bad modders but one member gave out their mods like the god rails to the one bad egg, and of course they spread around then too. Between the fanfiction and themed groups, people were just trying to keep the game alive by role playing but you also had ass***** that wanted their own form of fun tormenting others.

Now Novalogic more or less dropped Tachyon, to clarify the server situation. Up to a point I could at least get an email out of them around the GameTap era. After that they would even respond. I pushed several times and the reason they quit hosting is when they did that first big sever center move (I always assumed because it was cheaper and the hosting company was really close by, you could find them on GMaps) they lost their server side maps. Now why they couldn't port over the SPX, or run a retail copy I don't know, but that's where I had to host to do any games and I consequently had to start making the IP patches. I ran that Tournament event trying to grab anyone and everyone I could from the old days. I spent over a month emailing close to a thousand old players. We had 9 I think show up.

I had been bought Tach for my birthday in 2000, but didn't get to play it long. I was there online and it was a glorious list of servers. I didn't come back until early 2006, met up with Razor and we started FringeSpace in Sept of 2006. It's been over 12 years as of this post.

Where do we stand? We have a bunch of models in various states, lot of ideas, we had a plot, we have a rough working playable "thinig" with a lot of missing pieces, much of our team disappeared or was waiting on this or that so eventually they too went to do other things. We are effectively 3-4 very busy adults dealing with life kicking us in the nether regions. It's no coincidence that this corresponds to the FS team getting more silent over the last 5 years.

We started out working on Freespace 2 Open because in 2006, it was the best option for modding. 2018 and 2006 are incredibly different. We also basically didn't know anything and had to learn the hard way, how to model, how to texture, how to do anything. We made so many massive mistakes and didn't have a ship extractor till recently, that we restarted work on the ships so many times it was burn out. I think we redid the ships 18 times. Now here's the kicker, FSO is very set in how it was designed for Freespace. It's not multiplayer friednly and the code although now better, has been unplayable for many years. Things we needed like adjusting the HUD, just being able to display a value, or linking weapons, all not possible, or not possible till recently. We had a list of about 35 things we asked the modders for FSO to integrate. Plus we were a multiplayer mod in a single player game community. No one wanted us or understood why we wanted it. We were the black sheep and getting info outside of the FSO wiki was pulling teeth. We're talking about an engine under constant change, and only the guy that made the tweak knew how to use it.

SO... here about I guess a couple years ago we started talking about the idea of if all this stuff we want to do isn't possible in FSO, but we have assets, maybe go elseware? We were strongly looking at Unreal Engine. Since then, we've had bankruptcy, job loss, job change, kids, illness and terminal disease hit us. Our hearts are here.... why else would we still check this board or run our Discord to let old players connect? We want to do it, and with Novalogic finally bought out and sold the rights to THQ... we'd hoped they'd do something or we could approach them, but no response there either.

The bottom line is that we need more hands if it's going to pick up again.