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Welcome to Discovery Freelancer homepage! On this website you will find information and news about Discovery mod and its multiplayer servers. If you are new to Discovery, start with Introduction. If you seek more, browse the rest of the website, and visit our official forums: Discovery Gaming Community.
News Today, on June 14 2008, Discovery is celebrating its 3rd birthday. Three years is not a very long time compared to human life, but quite a lot for an independent gaming project that started out from (almost) nowhere. A forum with only a few members, and plans to create a Freelancer server with a small mod for it. Since then, we've come a long way. Server has grown to become the largest Freelancer server available online. Board changed hosting, server changed ownership, new people came, while old ones left. We've exceeded the 128 player limit, and reached the record 197 players simultaneously online. The mod received a genre award at ModDB.com Mod of the Year-2006 contest, was downloaded hundreds thousands of times from various sites, and was even stolen by a rogue server and re-released under another name. Everyone within the community can tell many more interesting stories on what was going on... and I'll just reveal some celebration plans for this month. First of all, you are welcome to participate in Discovery Screenshot Contest. Sure, there will be prizes - but it's not only about prizes! The best screenshots can be used to promote Discovery on various websites, including ModDB, and you can help to showcase the mod from the best point of view. Second, you all know about the recent Discovery 4.85: Reunion announcement. Very soon, I'll post Q&A article revealing much more details on what we are planning to do. And answer more questions that you may ask yourself. Good flying, and stay with Discovery!
Discovery Freelancer v4.84, officially released on December 9 2007, has reached a total amount of 85,000 downloads from our site (according to Webalizer stats) and 11,500 more downloads from Mod DB. We did not count downloads from other sources that host the new version of the mod. So, 4.84 has reached 100,000 downloads in 3 months of its existence, which is really impressive.
Another impressive number is displayed on the screenshot above (click to see full version): there are 177 players online at one time on the Discovery 24/7 RP server! This is probably a record number for any Freelancer server, ever; to achieve it, we used the tool released by v0dk4 that allowed to surpass the 128 player limit of original Freelancer server. We are also glad to announce that Discovery Wiki is back online after years of extinction. You can visit it by following this link: www.discoveryfl.com/wiki. The resurrected Wiki will contain information about the mod itself, about our server, its factions, upcoming role-playing events, as well as info about other Discovery servers that their admins will be able to edit themselves. Also, the Wiki will play an important role in organizing development of the new version of the mod, providing safe ground for sharing information between our modellers and other community members who contribute to the mod.
Thanks to your votes, Discovery Freelancer became one of the Top-100 mods of Mod DB's (www.moddb.com) Mod of the Year-2007 (MOTY-2007). Now, the second phase of voting has started, where only the Top-100 participate. On this stage, the mods eligible for final Mod DB awards will be chosen, so your votes are more important than ever. The Phase 1 votes are not counted for Phase 2, so if you have already voted, please do so again.
The second phase will last until January 1. To vote, you need to follow several simple steps: - Register at ModDB.com, if you haven't already, or sign in; Please register before you vote, since only votes of registered members are counted for the rating. Registration also provides a number of other benefits: you will be able to leave your comments, votes, track the mod progress and updates, and browse other mods for your favourite games. You will even be able to submit your own screenshots and videos for Discovery. Running since 2002, Mod DB is the largest and most popular website dedicated to supporting independent development of games, including mods, indie games, and homebrew.
Discovery Freelancer 4.84 Final is now available for download. Version 4.84 contains more changes than any previous Discovery version. Almost half a hundred original ship models were created for the mod by our community members. Many more faction systems received long-awaited updates, and 5 new systems were introduced. With numerous new weapons for fighters and capital ships, it became much easier to create versatile and balanced setup for any ship you like. More equipment types were introduced, including new scanners, thrusters, and countermeasure droppers. In addition to that, many profitable and dangerous trade routes were added, involving both new and original commodities. Top-level NPCs became more challenging than before.
The year is 816 A.S., and the history of Discovery continues. While Kusari onslaught into Bretonia has been stopped, fierce fighting in Tau systems still continues. The Wild are building a Nomad gate in Omega, its destination yet unknown. Rheinland accuses Liberty of illegal experiments with Nomads in the Alaska system that could cause dangerous consequences for the whole humanity. You can download the new version of Discovery from ModDB.com or this website’s download page.
Discovery Freelancer 4.83 Final is now available! Version 4.83 continues the best traditions of its predecessors with lots of new features to enjoy, including 10 new ships (5 of them are Discovery-exclusive models created by Legeonation, Vaporlynx, and Doom), 4 new and 8 updated systems (many of them clan systems by Dab and Nightfall), dozens of new weapons for fighters and capital ships, armor upgrades for capital ships, new equipment and commodities. Three new factions became part of Discovery with the new release; NPC freelancers can now be seen in many regions of Sirius. Like before, storyline singleplayer is fully supported, and Open SP can be enabled in mod options.
In January 2007, Discovery mod was chosen to receive the Simulation Genre Award of ModDB.com's Mod of the Year-2006 (MOTY-2006). If you prefer online play, you are welcome to official Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7 and PvP 24/7 servers, and a number of other servers running Discovery mod. Server operators are allowed to run this mod without any restrictions, IONCROSS data files are included. You can download the new version of Discovery from www.lancersreactor.com, ModDB.com, or this website’s download page.
Today is the day when the second official Discovery server, Discovery Freelancer PvP 24/7, is launched. The server is successor of Rogue Ideas 24/7 server and will be administered by BULLDOGNK, the server owner, and Igiss. There are many reasons for creating this new Discovery realm. Discovery main 24/7 server has officialy become a role-playing one several months ago (and recieved "RP" part of its name). The new server will provide PvP gameplay not limited by strict role-playing and ID tag restrictions imposed on our RP server. This, of course, does not mean that there will be no rules at all; most Discovery rules that are not RP-related will stay. This applies to rules of conduct, rules related to cheating, PvP abuse, and others. You can read the complete set of Discovery PvP rules in this forum thread. Server is running the most recent Discovery beta, 4.83 beta 4. Name of the new server is The new server is open for new players, and you are welcome to join right now! We have set 10 million starting credit amount and neutral reputation for all newcomers. All former Rogue Ideas accounts are still available and can be used for playing. I will encourage Discovery RP 24/7 server players to start accounts on the new server, not only those who prefer PvP playstyle but everyone else as well. You can help us immensely by participating in new server's events, testing balance of different weapons and ships in harsh PvP environment, and even create factions on the new server.
As you know, Discovery Freelancer is a completely free modification that does not require any charges or donations to download. Development of the mod, although very time-consuming, is free and done for the benefit of players. That’s why I don’t ask for any donations for mod development, for hosting Discovery forums and this website (hosting is not free). However, building and maintaining the server requires more significant sums of money that we cannot afford to pay ourselves. In the end of February 2007, Discovery official server moved to a new dedicated host that was set up by Majk in Prague. The donations we collected before February were not enough to cover the cost of builing a new server. Since February, when the new server was launched, we did not get any donations at all; and we have to remind that we don’t have any funds for maintainance and possible upgrades, and that we didn’t even cover initial costs of the new server yet. To donate, you can use the button placed on the side bar of this website, or send money directly to this PayPal account: discoveryserver@gmail.com Your contributions will go directly to Majk, our server owner and hoster, and will be spent only for the needs of the server. We will provide more information on how the money are being spent and on those who donated on a new Donations website page and on the forums. In addition to that, Discovery Freelancer 4.83 beta 4 is now available from forums and from this site’s download page.
April 15 2007 Discovery 4.83 beta 3 available Discovery Freelancer 4.83 beta 3 is now available for download. You can get it from the site’s download page. Changelog, details and comments regarding the new beta are available from this thread on Discovery forums. Beta 3 was already installed on our official server and Rogue Ideas server.
March 23 2007 Discovery Player Rankings To provide up-to-date statistics about Discovery Freelancer 24/7 players, FLstat version 1.5 was installed on our server. Player rankings (currently Top-200, sorted by level, might be extended in future) can be viewed here: http://igiss.net/flstats. The page is updated once per 2 hours. In addition to that, our server was successfully submitted for inclusion into Global Player Rankings database for Freelancer. You can view Discovery rankings page here, it contains some extended features that our own ranking does not provide, like sorting players by kills, and viewing statistics for clans (players with same prefix before their name). With 2184 total players and 464 active ones, Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7 server is number 9 in worldwide server rating (as of March 23 2007).
March 14 2007 Website updates Several pages of the website were updated during the recent week. Many new Discovery servers were added to Servers page; the most recent addition was Blue Knights server. If you wish to submit a server or add/update server details, please send mail to igissmail@gmail.com. Links page now has a large collection of different FL-related links. Again, if you wish to submit yours for the list, mail me. Special thread for feedback on this website was opened in Site & Board Feedback forum (Discovery GC). If you have any ideas and opinions worth posting, you are welcome to do so.
March 4 2007 Discovery Freelancer website launched For more than 1,5 years, Discovery Gaming Community was the only source of information about Discovery mod. Now, as Discovery is getting more popular, it’s time to extend our web presence. I hereby introduce our new information website, located at http://www.discoveryfl.com. As you can see, design of this website is quite basic. In future design and layout will improve, but concept will remain the same: a simple, fast-loading html site containing information, news and updates about Discovery modification and servers that run our mod. Discovery official forums at http://www.discoverygc.com will run just like before, no additional forums or interactive services related to this site will be launched.
February 28 2007 New dedicated server Our official server, Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7, is now online and ready for playing! New dedicated server was set up by Majk and will be located in Prague, Czech Republic. The user database from Discovery Freelancer 24/7 was already restored, all accounts remain intact. The server is running new Discovery version, 4.83 beta 2. The new server IP is 82.113.48.5; server name: Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7. I would like to thank Majk for the new server. Hopefully it will last much longer than two temporary servers that we were testing in February. More information about donations will be available in the nearest future. You can be sure that all previously donated money will be spent to cover server maitainance and upgrade costs, if not spent already for those purposes. Stay with Discovery!
January 28 2007 Discovery wins Mod of the Year-2006 Genre Award Discovery modification for Freelancer have won the Simulation Genre Award of Mod of the Year-2006 (MOTY-2006), a modding contest run by ModDB.com website each year. This achievement became possible thanks to votes of ModDB visitors and members. Final decisions were made by ModDB editors.
That's how Discovery was described in Genre Awards listing: 2006 was surely a successful year for our mod, and this award is well-deserved: latest 4.82 version of Discovery was undeniably the best Discovery so far, downloaded more than 20000 times in less than 2 months! In addition to that, Discovery gained majority of votes in the TLR's Informal Poll for your favorite Mod (http://lancersreactor.com). Poll was opened in December 2006 and continues until now. In 2007, we are looking forward to improve the mod even further. Expect the best, and stay with Discovery!
December 24 2006 Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! Merry XMas and Happy New Year to everyone! History of Discovery will continue through 2007, and we are going to improve and change like we always did, hopefully never failing your expectations, and preparing exciting surprises that you could never expect. Stay with Discovery, and let your winter holidays be happy, remarkable and full of gaming!
For previous news about Discovery, check News and Announcements forum of Discovery Gaming Community. |
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