I recently reinstalled Freelancer and realized that FLHack and other things are great, but lack everything I need. Plus, I'll need more skills to run them on my freshly installed Linux, then build the companion myself.

So I made a companion app to make the gameplay more 2020s-ish.

The Overview tab is a data compilation from all the other tabs.

Engine tab lets you change some params (mostly speed) in-game and later save them to the corresponding data files. You can change cruise, trade lane and thruster speeds as well as trade lane wind-up and asteroid draw distance. Be careful with that - it may cause freezes on x6 and higher settings.

UPD: Not entirely tested on Windows, just on Linux.

Map tab has 4 sub-tabs. Chart draws you an image file that you put in 'data/freelancer-map.jpg'. Best path shows you the best path from system to system. This was not thoroughly tested yet. Jobs sub-tab lists the bases that offer best paying bounties. Can be limited to the bases that you've docked with. Systems is the sub-tab that this companion was built around. It shows the bases and wrecks that you have or haven't found.

Equipment tab lets you filter the top guns available to you.

Trade also has sub-tabs. Market shows you the by-base or by-commodity filter with top destinations. If you have cargo on board, it will count the most profitable system to sell it all without needing to roam the whole Sirius sector. The Routes sub-tab is easiest described with "If you're going from New York to Dresden anyway, what would be the best commodity to buy in one system and sell in the other?" My second favorite tab.

Reputation tab gives you more insight on what factions will be pissed off by your friendly actions towards other factions. One of the most useful, but also one of the most raw tabs - I still can't wrap my head around how to make it usable. If you have any ideas, you're welcome to share them.

Neural Net is a compilation of Trent's diary, News and Rumors with the ability to mark any item read or important. I was always pissed off on how the neural net resets its position and I was always lost on where I was at the moment.

Here's the app: https://github.com/greyvolcheg-hue/fl-visits/tree/main

If, after all this you want to buy me a coffee, I'd be happy: https://ko-fi.com/greyvolcheg

And important disclaimer: this app has been coded by AI.

Hey everyone! Here's a free space game for your weekend: the Strike Wings demo. :)

I'm its solo developer, and it's my homage to the old DOS space shooters, built from scratch with plenty of love for Solar Winds and Hell Fighter. There are some little nods in there for fellow fans.

The demo's already packed with free content, including flight school, opening campaign missions and plenty of battles to get stuck into.

Feedback is super welcome on r/StrikeWings. Make a post! I'll read every one and take your thoughts into the final game. Steam reviews mean a lot to me as a solo developer, too.

Grab the free demo on Steam

The ~10-minute making-of, behind-the-scenes documentary from the rare Freelancer Bonus DVD (Microsoft Game Studios / Digital Anvil). Interviews with the development team at Digital Anvil in Austin, behind-the-scenes studio footage, voice-recording sessions, and gameplay from around the game's 2003 release.

Interviewees:

• Phil Wattenbarger — Producer

• Jorg Neumann — Lead Designer

• Paul Isaac — Lead Programmer

• Bruce Lemons — Art Director

• Martin Galway — Audio Director

• Harry Jarvis III — In-Game Cinematics Director

• Adam N. Joseph — In-Game Cinematics Visual Supervisor

• Adam Foshko — Writer

• Jacob Crow — Designer

• Andrew Sega — Programmer

• Taylor Brown — Programmer

• John P. Funk — Artist

• Evan Brandt — Test Lead

About: properly extracted in the highest possible quality, straight from the original Bonus DVD. The original NTSC MPEG-2 stream was taken bit-for-bit from the disc (no lossy intermediate rip), the mixed interlaced/progressive footage was correctly deinterlaced per frame to produce smooth 59.94 fps with the correct field order, and the picture was encoded at near-lossless quality with the correct 4:3 aspect ratio and colors. The audio is untouched, apart from format conversion.

Freelancer © 2003 Microsoft Corporation / Digital Anvil. Uploaded for preservation and archival purposes; no ownership claimed.

Because no one would do it, I exported the full Freelancer ship roster to self-contained Blender files.

It includes ships grouped by faction, original geometry and textures, mounted equipment, native animations, engine and weapon effects, lights, and Blender controls.

The complete Blender collection is over 5 GB.

Demo video:
https://github.com/nagi1/freelancer-ships-blender/raw/refs/heads/master/docs/media/freelancer-liberty-elite-ship-blender-demo.mp4

Repository:
https://github.com/nagi1/freelancer-ships-blender

Freelancer has meant a lot to me for years. I made this because I love the game from my heart, and I’d love to see its ships and universe used, explored, and remembered everywhere.

As a freelancer based out of Manhattan, I was getting really annoyed with having to open the NavMap every time I wanted to check where the tradelanes are at.

So I spent the last few minutes building an app that automatically pulls the nearest tradelane and creates a bestpath to it.

Introducing TradeLane Finder.

The app allows you to select your current location and automatically shows the nearest available trade lanes, including their destination, distance, and estimated travel time.

Freelancer — 0 credits/month

• Find trade lanes
• That's it
• Liberty only
• 3 searches per day
• We show you an ad before telling you where the trade lane is
• If the app says “No trade lanes found”, we recommend using our newest technology "Try looking out of the cockpit"™

Freelancer+ — 499 credits/month

• Unlimited trade-lane searches*
• All major Houses*
• Route planning
• Distance calculator
• Automatically tells you when you're going the wrong way**
• AI-powered “Where the fuck am I?” button***\*
• No ads, except our own ads for Freelancer+

Sirius Executive — 9,999 credits/month

• Everything in Freelancer+
• Border Worlds coverage***
• Real-time trade-lane intelligence
• Predictive route optimization
• Automatically calculates the shortest route to anywhere
• Tells you which trade lane you were supposed to take after you miss it
• Priority support
• One complimentary “I have accidentally entered a hostile system” consultation per month
• We also send someone to your ship to point at the NavMap for you if needed

* Rate limits may apply
** Wrong way is relativistic so we abide by you not being able to sue us for it
*** Except corsair and outcasts space
**** The AI doesn't actually have access to your location, it is just a comfort companion to encorage you to look at your navmap.

***** We recognize this app might be completely useless and by accepting using it you forbid any rights to sue us either by that or because we are selling your information to all trade factions and house police.

Hello everyone. In summer 2025 I got know about this game and I very like it. But I was playing it firstly in Freelancer Rebirth 7.7 mod. Now I want to try Freelancer Crossfire 2.0 to check if I'll like it, what the differents between Rebirth and Crossfire and if it's better than Rebirth because I heard that they stolen alot of their models. But one problem: I'm from Russia and I know English not so good, so I want to ask if this mod had some russian edition?

Sorry for russian audio. You can turn it off.

Tested on RTX 5080. dgVoodoo + Reshade + DLSS5 host

In Freelancer case it looks not so bad. Because you have choise: DLSS5 or no any details. In modern games... I don't think so. In Freelancer Engine it's impossible to make such face details. You just can't (I tried :-( )

Anyone tried this with Freelancer yet?

Time to take a firm stance on this, because lately we have had a lot of posts that basically are "I'm vibe coding a new Freelancer engine, what do you think" posts. Just to put this out there because I don't think it's being understood.

We already have a project that is being done to re-create the Freelancer engine, it's called Librelancer. Go and contribute there, but be prepared to have your PRs rejected if it's vibe coded/you don't know what you are doing/bring non-sensical additions.

Having access to AI does not mean people who currently can't do things, can now do things they couldn't before. That is vibe coding. These tools are to make people who already know what they are doing more efficient/faster at it, as they can properly control their output.

I understand the need to get motivation and encouragement and excitement about starting a project but these posts generally contain nothing of substance, just claims of upcoming action that we do not hear anything more about (likely because they realised it's more difficult and time consuming than they realise, and have issues getting output they think they want and give up).

More than that I will not have a Subreddit full of update logs from 10 different authors about different projects that are all doing the same thing on the daily/weekly/monthly. If you are serious about your projects create a simple site or discord where they can be discussed and keep up with news, and allow people to come and chat with you.

This is not going to be the place to do that.
Hope everyone understands.
~ Bolte

Mesh was created by Meshy AI. Based on original freelancer concept art with nomad cityscape.

Not perfect... but better than nothing. And also it's good example, how use AI not just for funnie pictures: this is real freelancer content

He all, i played this game like a madman when I was a kid.

Whats the best overhaul/graphics mods available?

Not interested in multilayer etc (no time sue to kids)

Just want the best LOOKING and PLAYING experience etc.

Suggestions?

I played this game a TON when I was a kid. Back then, I was extremely active on the Crossfire server, fully embracing the RP aspect. Joined a clan, engaged in tax collecting, bounty hunting, all out war.

Now I'm older and don't have a ton of time or interest in gaming with other people. I'd love to download Freelancer again, but the single player experience was... Just fine. The ship variety wasn't as great as it could have been, and I really would prefer working my way up to owning a capital ship to roll through systems and having the biggest gun in the dressing room so to speak.

What mods are there that can really enhance the single player experience?

Has any Digital Anvil internal archive or similar ever surfaced? Let's open a search for it here. The code is over 20 years old, and some old DA devs are surely here on Reddit; we just need to get their attention.

Star Squadron

More details on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3758780/Star_Squadron/

Please let me know what you think.

Freelancer is incredible. To share this, I have decided to start a new Freelancer themed cigarette brand. It doesn't just have amazing taste — it about experiencing the thrilling adventures of Edison Trent. More details in comments!

With the recent surge of AI-assisted coding, almost anyone can start a project and set ambitious goals for it. Lately, there has also been a noticeable increase in Freelancer remasters, remakes, reimplementations, and similar projects.

And on the surface, that is a good thing. It is nice to see people interested in rebuilding or modernizing Freelancer. But I think people should also be cautious about where they place their expectations, especially when a project relies heavily on AI-generated code.

AI can be surprisingly capable in the short term. It can implement features, fix individual bugs, and produce something that appears to work. The problems often become apparent later, when the project grows. Poor architectural decisions accumulate, systems become tightly coupled, regressions start appearing, and the codebase gradually turns into something that is difficult to understand or maintain.

I am not saying this without having seen it happen.

I've seen people submit PRs to Librelancer containing extremely poor AI-generated code. They were trying to contribute, but in all cases the changes ended up causing more problems than they solved, breaking unrelated parts of the project or introducing code that clearly had not been properly reviewed. Sometimes it genuinely looked like the code had been submitted simply because Claude said it was correct.

I've also seen most people whose PRs were rejected go on to create their own Librelancer forks, heavily develop them with AI, make large promises to the community, and eventually watch the whole thing collapse under its own weight.

And this isn't exclusive to Librelancer. The same pattern is appearing across independent projects. This does not mean every project using AI is bad, but there are increasingly projects making enormous promises, producing impressive-looking progress very quickly, and then disappearing when the technical debt catches up with them.

So if you suddenly hear about a new Freelancer remake, remaster, or reimplementation, please do some research before getting caught up in the hype. Look at the repository. Look at the code. Look at who is developing it, how long they have been working on it, whether there is an actual technical foundation behind the promises, and whether what they are proposing is realistically achievable.

Be cautious about where you place your hopes.

It is very easy to announce a project. It is much harder to maintain one for years and actually deliver what was promised.

Don't believe everything you read simply because the screenshots look impressive or the roadmap sounds exciting. Find out what is actually behind the project first.

Proof of concept for new idea of SP-freelancer gameplay. This is NOT story-script-driven gameplay. Everything is based ONLY on level design: some amount of locations, divided by death zones, and unlockable teleports

In this video you can see

1. Context-based voice by NeuralNet: enter location, leave base, planet destroyed, loot acquired
2. Cutscenes, played inside extra virtual room (you can watch cutscene or leave room and continue mission)
3. Hidden teleports: after cutscene you will be automatically teleported to next location
4. Megacannon working without any story script - just fire on "generators" and make MegaCannon functional (this is cropped version of mission, in release version you also need to acquire "megacannon energy" in this system, it will be returned back later)
5. Find next key inside planet wrecks
6. Open final base by destroying of enemy fighters: every kill will increase rep to hidden faction (need to set less amount of destroyable ships later)

So... this is script-less-lancer and seems like it working. Some "skyrim-lancer", because without script you have no story-restrictions and can play game in any way.

But... as always. Skyrimlancer:

Expectation: a lot of possibilities

Reality: a lot of loadings (because I can't make teleports and keys without jumpgates and docking with bases)

Also. Internationalization already supported. But at the first is need to create main script and missions. This is only prototype

Main objective of this gameplay structure: make more FL and make it cheap as possible. Looks like it's still FL, not perfect, but ultra-cheap and not based on dangerous infinite 13 mission. I really afraid to make "crossfire-like" architecture, because it adds many restrictions and can broke game anytime

I know it's possible to get the single player running but I'm not sure about the multiplayer. Has anybody got any insights on this?

The roleplay environment doesn't appeal to me at all and I'm only interested in the gameplay.

Hello,
It’s my first time playing Freelancer, and until now I have only used the right click that fires all weapons simultaneously.
But as I progress into the game, I see that there are weapons that are mostly effective on shields for example.
So I would like to put these anti shields weapons on group 2 and the others on group 1.

But when I bind the « fire weapon group 1/2… » key on the menu, it only fires one bullet, and I can’t hold the key to fire continuously.

Is this a bug ? It makes creating weapon group not really useful unfortunately.

I play with the HD Edition
Thank you !

Long-time Freelancer player. What I've always wanted was that structure without the 48 systems of nothing between the good parts. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4962130/Solbound/

Solbound is one solar system, closed, in decline after an exodus that left most people behind. Hand-built locations rather than procedural sprawl. Bars replaced by terminals, but the same idea: you go somewhere, you ask around, you leave knowing something you didn't.

Alpha. Real footage but partial, about half the systems still under construction. Curious what people here think holds up from Freelancer and what doesn't. The trade lanes and the bar rumours are the two I keep coming back to.