Cheers Zak, it's always nice to hear that FFE hasn't quite been consigned to the history books just yet - although I do hope (as a Founding Member KS backer) that Dangerous will ultimately overtake it in all areas in the very near future!
You should definitely check out the current FFED3DAJ build though if you missed it as it was a significant update - especially if planetary landings are your thing. It retains the original geometry but adds enhanced terrain texturing and atmospheres.
There is an album of images for each of nanite2000's new texture packs which were created especially for it here to give a tease of what to expect!
(the terrain textures are defined in a .cfg which must be enabled in the main ffed3daj.cfg file)
pettytyrant101 also posted this nice video "FFED3AJ- Elite Frontier: First Encounters- see the galaxy for less than 3 Altarian dollars a day!" which shows off some nice atmospheres.
Obviously more bling means more memory, but if you've upgraded to x64 Windows now for Dangerous then that won't be an issue. Otherwise if you've got a video card with say 1->2GB memory, there's the option to cache main game textures in its memory rather than using system memory.
Docking sequences are also fixed after correcting the models used & I added code to control their animations so that the doors are open/shut as required. I also fixed the 'lift' area between entry room and docking bay by using FFE's original lift model but retexturing its walls so that it blends in when using the replacement .x models. Depth-sorting was completely re-worked so that planets won't eat each other like pac-men and transparent windows in models should now show models that are behind them. Draw-distance can be greatly increased so you'll still see the windows and adverts on distant city blocks - although this can prove to be very CPU intensive. Lots of other lesser fixes/enhancements - star dust finally displays again too!
Anyway, I'll post any more updates about the forthcoming FFED3DAJ v1.11 over in its own thread - I see that's also had a little bump / love-tap too
I'm going to let the Russian users give it a test first so that any issues with their HellMod .exe and newspaper translations can be sorted out.
BTW - I also have an answer for your old question of "why does the space ship land facing the wrong way at Hope" when you've returned after taking off at the start of a new game...
The 2 pad ports are designed such that ships will land facing towards the terminal building, much like an airport I guess.
Probably someone thought later on that it would be a much better first impression that instead of looking at a blank wall, the player should be looking out across the city at the setting sun. Rather than change the landing orientation on the port, for some reason they decided to call a routine during initialisation and rotate the player's ship to face the desired direction. So, that's why you start facing the sunset but afterwards always face the wall.
[edited to fix the postimg.org img link to postimg.cc]
You should definitely check out the current FFED3DAJ build though if you missed it as it was a significant update - especially if planetary landings are your thing. It retains the original geometry but adds enhanced terrain texturing and atmospheres.
There is an album of images for each of nanite2000's new texture packs which were created especially for it here to give a tease of what to expect!
(the terrain textures are defined in a .cfg which must be enabled in the main ffed3daj.cfg file)
pettytyrant101 also posted this nice video "FFED3AJ- Elite Frontier: First Encounters- see the galaxy for less than 3 Altarian dollars a day!" which shows off some nice atmospheres.
Obviously more bling means more memory, but if you've upgraded to x64 Windows now for Dangerous then that won't be an issue. Otherwise if you've got a video card with say 1->2GB memory, there's the option to cache main game textures in its memory rather than using system memory.
Docking sequences are also fixed after correcting the models used & I added code to control their animations so that the doors are open/shut as required. I also fixed the 'lift' area between entry room and docking bay by using FFE's original lift model but retexturing its walls so that it blends in when using the replacement .x models. Depth-sorting was completely re-worked so that planets won't eat each other like pac-men and transparent windows in models should now show models that are behind them. Draw-distance can be greatly increased so you'll still see the windows and adverts on distant city blocks - although this can prove to be very CPU intensive. Lots of other lesser fixes/enhancements - star dust finally displays again too!
Anyway, I'll post any more updates about the forthcoming FFED3DAJ v1.11 over in its own thread - I see that's also had a little bump / love-tap too
I'm going to let the Russian users give it a test first so that any issues with their HellMod .exe and newspaper translations can be sorted out.
BTW - I also have an answer for your old question of "why does the space ship land facing the wrong way at Hope" when you've returned after taking off at the start of a new game...
The 2 pad ports are designed such that ships will land facing towards the terminal building, much like an airport I guess.
Probably someone thought later on that it would be a much better first impression that instead of looking at a blank wall, the player should be looking out across the city at the setting sun. Rather than change the landing orientation on the port, for some reason they decided to call a routine during initialisation and rotate the player's ship to face the desired direction. So, that's why you start facing the sunset but afterwards always face the wall.
[edited to fix the postimg.org img link to postimg.cc]
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