Freelancer Variations

It is with great joy that I can present to you the result of 2. 5 months years work of mine, and contributions from other people with Freelancer Variations: a mod which expands the Freelancer game mode to different versions of maps (and new maps altogether). The primary goal was to add all bonus missions and similarly different map versions to Freelancer, the other goal was to give alternate times of day where no bonus missions existed. Adding to the times of day I tried to bring as many low effort differences to the maps as I could. This mod works on the vanilla server and Peacock. If you’re on PC, you’ll have no excuse not to use this to play Freelancer!

Installation

On top of the SMF mod being deployed as per usual, this is the first mod I’m aware of to make use of the Modding SDK by NoFaTe, this is required for the variants to actually show in game.

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SDK Method

The SDK is the preferred method of playing the mod. It intercepts data between the real server (IO) or emulated server (Peacock) and injects the variants as you leave the safehouse. Unlike the Peacock plugin it allows the variant picker website to work with the Hawke's Bay slot. Downsides include people with bad PCs getting potential performance issues, or a game update potentially breaking the SDK.

1)     Get SMF

2)     Get the SDK. Put the SDK FILES in your HITMAN3\Retail folder

3)     Grab the Mission Companion Mod and put it in HITMAN3\Retail\mods

4a) OPTIONAL: Grab the Sandbox Hantu Port mod if you’d like to play Hantu Port in Freelancer... literally a new map!

4)     Grab the FV SMF Mod and install it using SMF Mod Manager’s “Add A Mod” button. In the options of the mod make sure “via SDK” is ticked, then deploy of course

5)     Go to the Variant Picker website to de/select the variants you want. You’ll mainly want to do this to pick which map slot you want the Romania passenger train and Hantu Port variants to use. Train can be used in the slots of Colorado, New York and Hawke’s Bay. Hantu Port can be used in the slots of Isle of Sgail and Hawke’s Bay. When you’re done, click “Generate” at the bottom and save the file in HITMAN3\Retail\mods, overwrite what’s there.

6)     Launch the game! You should get a popup of the SDK if it's your first time, if it's not then press the ~ key to bring it up. If the mods list isn’t showing then press the Mods button to bring up the list, then select MissionCompanion and press OK.

You will now have Freelancer Variations working and active and you just play as you normally would. Some people can not get the SDK menu working in game... I don’t know how to help them. They might have a weird OS or weird version of the game (Xbox/Microsoft). It MIGHT be possible for you to manu