It is with great joy that I can present to you the result of 2.5 months work and contributions from other people with Freelancer Variations: a mod which expands the Freelancer game mode to different versions of maps. 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 will work on Peacock when that supports Freelancer. 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.

1. Deploy mod in SMF
2. Put the SDK in your games retail folder
3. Put the FreelancerVariations.dll and .json (FROM THE SDK MOD YOU NEED TO DOWNLOAD) in the retail/mods folder
4 (Optional). If you wish to change which variants will appear for you (By default all are turned on), go to PiePie’s variant picker website, pick what you want, and hit Generate (IO). Replace the .json in the retail/mods folder
5. Launch the game and select FreelancerVariations in the mod list
6. Play the game!

SDK CRASH SOLUTIONS:

1) (Suggested by ProjektRF) 

For people having issues with SDK just crashing the game on launch I've had luck changing the Hitman3.exe to compatibility mode Windows 8 and it launched. I've seen others have luck changing it to Vista compatibilty. I guess play around and see what works

2) If you use a controller, disconnect it and do not reconnect until you are past the welcome screen, for some reason the SDK does not like it.

Known Issues

• Getting crashes from SDK (Unknown if this is still happening in 2024)
• Some bugs are vanilla, like suspects standing on top of each other not moving, crash on entering map from safehouse, crash on returning to safehouse from map. Please do not mention these to me, mention them to IO instead.
  

Incompatibilities

• If you use Lighting Ultimate 2.3 then turn off Colorado - The Vector option in LU and it will work. Only use GOTY version of The Author, not Vanilla+. If a better solution is found I will update this.
  

General Principles
- Each map is meant to have at least one alternative time of day, and for slight difference I try bundle in at least one ET/Special Assignment with that time change
- If I had to make a new file from scratch, usually I remove the story targets and enabled their ‘dead’ logic to help it be slightly more immersive (It will be like the targets recently died)
- I've put little bonuses in where I could to keep things interesting. Mainly increasing the variety of NPCs, you may see some unexpected cameos.
- 7DS and Deluxe content was not to be added as variants



Notes
- Chongqing Noodle Massacre starts on by default. If you find the deploy time too long or do not wish to play Noodle Massacre you may disable it in SMF's options screen, then just use  Piepie's variant selector to unselect the two Noodle Massacre options in Chongqing.  I strongly discourage you from doing this as it adds a lot more than just Chongqing Noodle Massacre changes, and in my opinion is a way more fun way to play Chongqing than having to go around the ICA Facility or Hush' weird shit.

Contributors
Contributions have been made by some other members of the modding community

Piepieonline created the SDK mod so you can play online

Kercyx came up with the following time of day changes: Night Dartmoor Garden Show (Fireworks by 2kpr), Night Dartmoor (with assistance from Ruddy), WoT Sunset conversion, Night Haven, Night Mumbai (with assistance from Ruddy), Berlin Easter conversion (with assistance of NPCs and crowds by Ruddy), Mumbai + Dartmoor Day conversion, conversion of existing ToDs made by Rudd into new format

musicalmushr00m created the following time of day changes: Night Colorado (Lamp tweaks by Ruddy), 2016 Daytime Sapienza (Restored from 2016 game files, Applying it to Landslide has meant some interiors may not look like how creator intended), 2016 Holiday Hoarders (Restored the original night from the 2016 game files)

TonyStark created the following times of day: Berlin Midday (Tweaks to indoor lighting means it may not look 100% as creator intended)

Minnow for the Hawke's Bay guard outfit fixes

Dinozafr for The Brothers Russian translation fix and extracting "Singapore" Diana line from briefing video

If I've forgotten any contributions, which is likely, I will update

The Variants
There's a lot to go through, I suggest you go to the variant selector website to read them all
https://www.piepieonline.com/h3-freelancer-variations-configuration/



Future Updates?

• Hawke's Bay Festival
  

For now... have fun and explore a *true* world of assassination!