Issues with Privateer Remake

[hoam]

Hey all, I'm new to the remake but still holds itself pretty well so far. However, I've run into a few problems

1) The intro cutscene has no sounds at all, and is quite choppy. Is this normal?

2) I hardly get any sounds or ambience in-game. There are only a few sounds, such as the laser's pew-pew sound, the docking voice, and the speeches of NPCs in the planets/facilities. Basically, the game is just very quiet

3) When accepting a mission and going back to in-flight, the text moves very quickly. Easily solved though, by just pressing page up, but its still a minor inconvenience

Despite these problems, I appreciate the hard work gone into the remake. Manual is comprehensive too

[Vandrvekn]

>>>Hey all, I'm new to the remake but still holds itself pretty well so far. However, I've run into a few problems

1) The intro cutscene has no sounds at all, and is quite choppy. Is this normal? <<<

I had this same problem when I started. Dropping screen resulotion to 800x600 fixed it for me.

[z30]

>>>Hey all, I'm new to the remake but still holds itself pretty well so far. However, I've run into a few problems

1) The intro cutscene has no sounds at all, and is quite choppy. Is this normal? <<<

I had this same problem when I started. Dropping screen resulotion to 800x600 fixed it for me.

My rig only has 256 RAM and a 1.5 Ghz CPU and the graphics card isn't top notch either. Did the same thing, dropped to 800x600 but also cut the color depth down to 16bits.

Other settings are No Specular, High Detail and VBO. The last made a big difference in how the game ran for me.

I have no problems with the cutscene and heavy animation due to multiple bogies firing a zillionlaser bolts and guided missiles don't cause it to hang up anymore.

[Vexator]

I have a P4 3.0GHz machine with 2.0GB of RAM and a 128MB ATI RADEON 9600XT graphics card.

When I run the game at any res with any options - even those mentioned above, the intro runs choppy and when on a base it runs choppy.
When i launch the ship everything runs fine.

Can't find out how to fix this.
Anyone got some more ideas?

[klauss]

The intro is pretty much unfixable. Not from your side.
But, if you want to fix the bases, try to find, in sprite/bases, the .spr files that say "video" in them (all except the intro). Remove the "video" keyword, and you'll be set.

It was a mistake to put so many of them... I tested on a medium-range CPU (P3 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, TNT2-32MB GPU) and worked well, but apparently some people are less tolerant of choppiness than I am. I think Mamiya has removed them already for the next version.

Some of them could be left, though, and it would help in conserving GPU and system memory. But achieving the optimum settings on a broad range of CPUs is a challenging balancing act.

[Vexator]

Well if the intro is unfixable it's no big deal.
I've still got the original which i can run on the "dosbox" emulator if i want to watch it

The gameplay itself isn't affected by the choppy base or intro.

I couldn't find any *.spr files with "video" in them bug again - no biggie.

Thanks for the reply.

[klauss]

I couldn't find any *.spr files with "video" in them bug again - no biggie.

Curious.
There should be quite a few.
Where did you look?
It would help to know which OS you're using. If Linux is the OS, you'll have to find the data directory, which isn't home/whatever/.priv120.
(I'm not sure where it gets installed in linux, but it's not on your home folder).

[Vexator]

This is the Windows version.
I'm running Windows XP - as above P4 3.0GHz with 2GB of RAM and a 128MB RADEON 9600XT Graphics card.

I did a search on the Privateer folder for *video*.spr and it didn't return any results.

Looking in the "Privateer\Sprites\Bases\" folder I have a bunch of other folders relating to the different base types. with several .spr files - none that have the string "video" in them though.

Unless I misunderstood and you mean to actually rename the .spr file to .old.

Example: Rename mercenaryguild.spr - mercenaryguild.old ?

[EDIT] - I just tried this - renaming the .spr files removed the graphic for the base altogether. For the landing pad it's just a black screen with the Tarsus shown (although you can still click onto the other parts of the base)

[klauss]

Oh... no... I didn't mean 'video' on the name, but on their contents.
.spr files are text files, if you open and find the keyword 'video' in them, you'd have to remove it (unless it's intro.spr).

Like: search for '*.spr' containing 'video'

[Vexator]

Ahh, I see what you mean now. Searched through all .spr files for any containing "video" - no results came up. So i opened a couple of spr files up with notepad and got the information below:

e.g.
bases/university/Landing_Pad.png 0
3.104 2.4832
0 0

Taking a closer look at the files in the subdirectories - there's a bunch of .png files in subfolders - they act like a movie when viewed one after the other.
e.g. Under folder sprites\bases\university\tnc.ani\ (i'm assuming the .ani stands for animation?) there is 55 .png files when viewed one after the other it looks like an animation.

[klauss]

You guessed how it works.
There were some guys working on replacing them with actual video files, but that didn't go anywhere yet. That would indeed truly fix it.

e.g.
bases/university/Landing_Pad.png 0
3.104 2.4832
0 0

If it had the "video" keyword, it would look like this:

bases/university/Landing_Pad.png 0
3.104 2.4832
0 0 video

Only that the 0s wouldn't be 0, but rather some concrete number (those are the number of frames and frame delay respectively).
Simple.
At least, intro.spr must have that. It cannot be that it doesn't - wouldn't work if it didn't.
Not all .spr files have it, so opening one by one would be inefficient - use a search tool for that.