Wake up Call!

Forum for discussing various mods for the VS-engine based upon Privateer. (Please play nice now, and extinguish all flaming materials.
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travists
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Wake up Call!

Post by travists »

Am I the only one around here that still likes the old Wing Commander? Anybody else want to see Parallel Universe or other WC universe variants active again? Sound off!
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by klauss »

Of course there is.

Human resources, however, are scarce.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by travists »

That's why I'm posting. I know you are busy with the main code (as well as life), I'm just trying to "kick it in the pants", so to speak, and see what resources can be scarred up.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by loki1950 »

You might have a look over at http://wcjunction.com/phpBB2/index.php? but the main man chuck_starchaser is having some real life issues ATM so the forums there a very quite :( The Vega Trek lads are also there.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by travists »

That's the one I was talking about. If you happen to be an admin over there I can try again. But when I tried to register the spam protection send an email after moderator review thing never came through. :cry:
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by loki1950 »

Sorry not an admin on that site just the VS Consul General big title for mod liaison but I will have a look see if i can get someone with those privileges to wake up and have a look see at the new user backlog but I am afraid it will have to wait on chuck's return as it's his dimes that pay for the bandwidth and IIRC his email account that sends the confirmations.But I do have commit privileges to their SVN repo which holds the latest data and uses an external the link to the VS svn bin folder for the latest Win executable they use a vanilla engine with only changes to vegastrike.cofig and the setup app there is no other download link that the svn repo ATM since since chuck is a bit of a perfectionist he can't seem to ever sign off on a new release.BTW our shader system is of his design.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by travists »

Well, I'm just a lowly forumite right now, but I say until that point we move on here and do what we can. That will need a few more participants, though.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by pheonixstorm »

I'm trying to prod John from Gemini Gold to get back into the swing of things but I haven't heard a whisper back. All GG really needs atm are the cubemaps. But, as John is a privateer purist (unlike chuck) we have to make sure that the cubemaps are official privateer design which I am not 100% sure that chucks are.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by loki1950 »

John has also declared that GG is a finished product with no updates coming not even for new tech,that was part of chuck and john's final blowout IIRC.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by pheonixstorm »

He never mentioned that last time I emailed him.. so, guess I'll have to update it myself :( provided speheremap code is still in the engine.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by ermo »

Don't know if this is considered a thread-necro, but as it appears that this is the PU thread with the 2nd newest reply, and since nobody has reacted to my wcjunction forum registration attempt yet, I'm posting here instead. :)

I was one of those who enjoyed the original privateer immensely. Recently, I installed first Gemini Gold and then Parallel Universe. Of the two, I prefer the Parallel Universe for a variety of reasons, which is to say that I do not consider myself a purist.

As I was playing through the PU version, I noticed a few issues, some of which are well known. In no particular order:

* Campaign Text: There were a few minor language issues with some of the PU unlock campaigns (I can certainly help fix this as I play my way through PU)

* Combat: These issues are probably well known, but combat is really difficult in PU (and I'm not the greatest pilot ever either):
** Flight Speed: I felt there was a strange disconnect compared to PO, which likely owes much to the low speed differentials. 300 KPS in-game speed is scaled to 30 m/s VS engine speed and that's not a whole lot slower than 500 KPS or 50 m/s. This makes it really hard to get out of firing range and diminishes the focus on getting on someones six or just afterburning your way out of trouble, both of which were viable strategies in PO. As an experiement, I tried scaling the flight speed and weapon speed in vegastrike.config and subjectively, +25% seemed about right to me. I haven't crosschecked this impression with PO, though.
** AI behaviour: It appears that the enemy AI can track you very precisely and it also seems to be able to match your speed no matter what you do whilst still being quite accurate. I have found that this tends to leave you up sh*t creek without a paddle (if you'll excuse my french) if you are outnumbered more than 2-to-1 by non-crap oppoinents. From my perspective, 3+ kilrathis/orions/demons/sparrowhawks make for hard fights even if you have a wingmen or three. In many cases, I actually found myself switching to the dev ship to beat some of the crazier missions. Even just taking on a broadsword in single combat is quite difficult in my experience (did I mention that I'm not really a crack pilot? ;) )

* Tarsus Mk2: Making this bigger and heavier yet not more spacious seemed odd to me. Why not just keep the original size and model and just ensure that it can be upgraded with lvl2 reactors, a belly turret etc. like it can now? If the point is to make it a natural extension to the original (poor) tarsus and bridging the gap to the Galaxy, this would make sense from a variety of standpoints I think. :)

* And then there's the weird AI behaviour which means that AI wingmen (and turrets) don't stop firing even if all hostile craft have been neutralized. But as I understand it, this has been fixed in the latest VS release?

As I can code a bit of python and can parse C/C++ (though I'm strictly a novice when it comes to C++!) and I know my way around both Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo), Mac (I have a SL FrankenMac/Hackintosh) and Windows (still on 7) and programming environments in general, I figured that I would offer to lend a hand updating PU to the new VS engine. I'd certainly be more than happy to give it an honest shot anyway. :)

In closing, I saw that chuck was getting back into the swing of things over at wcjunction, so if someone could poke him about activating my account over there, I'd be much obliged. Thank you.
Last edited by ermo on Tue Oct 30, 2012 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by klauss »

ermo wrote:* And then there's the weird AI behaviour which means that AI wingmen (and turrets) don't stop firing even if all hostile craft have been neutralized. But as I understand it, this has been fixed in the latest VS release?
Ah... we just just just fixed this one :)
ermo wrote:As I can code a bit of python and can parse C/C++ (though I'm strictly a novice when it comes to C++!) and I know my way around both Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo), Mac (I have a SL FrankenMac/Hackintosh) and Windows (still on 7) and programming environments in general, I figured that I would offer to lend a hand updating PU to the new VS engine. I'd certainly be more than happy to give it an honest shot anyway. :)
By all means post your patches :D

In particular, if you're python-literate and you can fix those typos in the campaign text you mentioned, they're a great way to start getting acquainted with the engine.
ermo wrote:In closing, I saw that chuck was getting back into the swing of things over at wcjunction, so if someone could poke him about activating my account over there, I'd be much obliged. Thank you.
He was rather busy lately, so I'm not surprised he didn't see your message. I'll see if I get someone to give me admin rights to handle those requests.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by pheonixstorm »

Check your email. If memory serves Chuck sends an email to anyone that registers over there. As far as python... If you feel up for it think you can read over the VS python scripts and hunt down any bugs/typos there?

Also, if you think you can handle it, we could use someone to try compiling a mac binary from the latest source. We are in desperate need of a new mac binary.
Last edited by pheonixstorm on Wed Oct 31, 2012 2:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: err.. forgot about the poor sour apples.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by chuck starchaser »

Sorry, ermo; not sure what happened, why I didn't see you; but now I searched my gmail for "ermo", found the wcjunction registration notification, and activated you.
Welcome aboard!
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by travists »

Glad your about again Chuck Starchaser!
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by ermo »

pheonixstorm wrote:Check your email. If memory serves Chuck sends an email to anyone that registers over there. As far as python... If you feel up for it think you can read over the VS python scripts and hunt down any bugs/typos there?

Also, if you think you can handle it, we could use someone to try compiling a mac binary from the latest source. We are in desperate need of a new mac binary.
Yeah, however, I'd like to keep my work somewhat organized such that one branch I do is porting to the newest VS engine with attendant changes, while another branch is strictly for my attempts at proofreading dialogue.

Wrt to compiling a mac binary, that would be fairly low on my list -- at least lower than porting to the newest VS engine (I use Linux and Windows daily and Mac occasionally, so I haven't got as big an itch to scratch there).
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by ermo »

chuck starchaser wrote:Sorry, ermo; not sure what happened, why I didn't see you; but now I searched my gmail for "ermo", found the wcjunction registration notification, and activated you.
Welcome aboard!
Thanks chuck. See you over at the wcjunction forums!

@travists: Any chance you could fill me in on how far you got with your porting work? Or would you just recommend that I dig in myself because I'll learn more that way?
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by klauss »

ermo wrote:Wrt to compiling a mac binary, that would be fairly low on my list -- at least lower than porting to the newest VS engine (I use Linux and Windows daily and Mac occasionally, so I haven't got as big an itch to scratch there).
Fair point, but have in mind that a Mac maintainer is something we really desperately need. If we don't get one, we'll have to drop the platform.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by ermo »

klauss wrote:
ermo wrote:Wrt to compiling a mac binary, that would be fairly low on my list -- at least lower than porting to the newest VS engine (I use Linux and Windows daily and Mac occasionally, so I haven't got as big an itch to scratch there).
Fair point, but have in mind that a Mac maintainer is something we really desperately need. If we don't get one, we'll have to drop the platform.
What's the timetable on that decision? At this time, I simply can't promise anything re. Mac. For me at the moment, it's simply about keeping the momentum going and seeing what I can accomplish on Linux with a reasonable effort while stile keeping it enjoyable and fun.

In fact, I might as well be honest and state up front that the important thing for me is that the PU port is fun and enjoyable to play, since that will be my natural driver going forward. I get the feeling that I'm not the type of person that either you or chuck are, that is to say a person who is into VS (or PU) in part because it is something you can't help but play around with. But I will admit to being curious about graphics coding and learning to model ships, so there's certainly plenty of 'bob the builder playing in his sand box'-potential in this for me. :)

I'm sorry if you feel that I advertised my Mac interest/familiarity too heavily and I hope that you now have a better idea of where I come from and what you can expect from me.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by klauss »

ermo wrote: What's the timetable on that decision? At this time, I simply can't promise anything re. Mac. For me at the moment, it's simply about keeping the momentum going and seeing what I can accomplish on Linux with a reasonable effort while stile keeping it enjoyable and fun.
We are slow to take decisions, but our user base may already have done it, because 0.5.1 has been out for all platforms already, except Mac. They may have already forgotten about us.

Anyway, no pressure. Well, yes, I'd like to pressure, but certainly not to the point of taking you away from what you enjoy doing. Just saying, if you do have a mac and have coded on it, you'd be able to help. I honestly don't know how much of an effort would be to make VS (and that spills down to PU too) work on the Mac, it's been unmaintained for a while.

Usually, on linux, packaging is quite some work at first, but once you get it going, updates take little effort.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by ermo »

By the way, chuck mentioned that he doesn't have SVN admin access? If you feel comfortable with giving me commit access as well, I'd be more than happy to repay the trust placed in me in the form of a slow and steady flow of commits aimed at getting PU to run on VS trunk. :)

Do you run any sort of trac or is it 'just' pure SVN with ViewVC? I once ran a trac instance on my own server for a game mod, but gave up because of all the plugins and the associated maintenance hassle. I really dig the highly integrated nature of trac, but it seems the design might not be quite 'tight' enough for it to be really viable in production environments...
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by chuck starchaser »

We have Trac, but it is only installed in the repo at wcjunction that mirrors the VS engine repo.
We don't have Trac installed in the PU repo. Reason was, I think, that Trac has like global variables
that reference the repo; so it would have to be installed anew to track two repos. Or something
along the lines; can't remember.
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by pheonixstorm »

@ermo hurry but don't hurry to a decision :lol:

If you can spend however long it takes to tell xcode to compile and then post the problems you run across but even be helpful. Just having someone to attempt to get a new mac binary running is more than enough for now.

Short term, whatever decide though. Both Privateer mods really need some TLC to get them ready for 0.5.1/0.5.2 Windows and linux are covered for the most part.

Also, if you want you can branch the current VS code to see about updating python to the v3.x line (Too lazy to look up and see what ver of python you know well...)
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by ermo »

pheonixstorm wrote:@ermo hurry but don't hurry to a decision :lol:

If you can spend however long it takes to tell xcode to compile and then post the problems you run across but even be helpful. Just having someone to attempt to get a new mac binary running is more than enough for now.

Short term, whatever decide though. Both Privateer mods really need some TLC to get them ready for 0.5.1/0.5.2 Windows and linux are covered for the most part.

Also, if you want you can branch the current VS code to see about updating python to the v3.x line (Too lazy to look up and see what ver of python you know well...)
I much prefer python 3.2.x to the 2.7.x series, though I will maintain that the first thing to do is to get PU working on the newest VS. However, I'm having some image corruption issues on two different Linux PCs using the OSS video drivers (r300g and r600g), so if someone with an ATI card using OSS drivers could check whether the loading screen and the main menu screen look corrupted on their end, that'd be very helpful. It would also be helpful if someone using an NVidia card could check the same -- drivers are irrelevant in this case.

All I did to was to compile VS trunk and run it with -D<path to my priv_pu directory>
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Re: Wake up Call!

Post by klauss »

ermo wrote:I much prefer python 3.2.x to the 2.7.x series
Last I checked, macs had a really outdated python. That's why we keep compatibility for 2.4. But it was long ago, and, as I mentioned somewhere else... macs problems may get ignored in the not-so-far future.
ermo wrote:though I will maintain that the first thing to do is to get PU working on the newest VS.
Indeed
ermo wrote:However, I'm having some image corruption issues on two different Linux PCs using the OSS video drivers (r300g and r600g), so if someone with an ATI card using OSS drivers could check whether the loading screen and the main menu screen look corrupted on their end, that'd be very helpful. It would also be helpful if someone using an NVidia card could check the same -- drivers are irrelevant in this case.

All I did to was to compile VS trunk and run it with -D<path to my priv_pu directory>
Hm... which version of MESA?
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