WCU Alpha 0.1: Patch History 1 - 11

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 4:39 am

Well, thing is the Razor is called a new private light fighter in the WC4 literature, while the Banshee/Vindicator/Durango etc. are clearly fairly old so were probably around in the BW area since the 2660s.

If the Razor stays in it will be a very new ship, so it has to be powerful -- I was thinking essentially a Demon with a smaller footprint and less missiles.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 4:55 am

oh i see.

Well, its up to you in the end. I am all for more ship variety, but if you decide to keep it IG I think its better be sure its possible to hit the thing

The demon idea sounds ok to me, I can hit demons.

But then, if its a new ship, pirates would not be using it. Confed would just go nuts if pirates placed their hands on state of the art stuff.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 5:38 am

Which is why I'd rather it not spawn -- it stays in the game as something to use in scripted missions, if we want (Say a Kindred-like pirate band that has a lot of money, or maybe Miggs could be flying it in that one mission)

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 9:49 am

http://www.spiritplumber.com/priv_remak ... patch5.zip

Small one....

* Nerfs razor a little (still somewhat tougher to kill than a demon due to small frame, but less powerful) and lessen its occurrency. Now you will see it very occasionally as an unmarked ship (if we do the "rival privateer/corporation" storyline, the redshirts for that faction will use razors)

* Added handy "reset everything" batch files

* Fixes asteroids, finally (PR team, take a look at how this one works, see if you like it.... WC3 style plus mining, and doesn't cause much slowdown)

* Planets can have subunits (and thus launch fighters for self defense)

* Fixes demon loadouts (hopefully)

* Units defined with having hull <0 explode on "birth", useful for multiple explosions or spawning random cargos or what you have. (VS team, hope you like the idea!). Only used it for multiple 'roid explosions right now, but I want to use it for cargo fragments too.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 3:44 pm

Not sure if I mentioned this for patch 4, but it certainly exists in patch 5: Planets are now owned by the faction that owns the system, by default. This is nice in that we don't need "kilrathi agricultural" etc. planet types anymore.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Sun Aug 14, 2005 7:52 pm

I have to say I am rather impressed with the amount of work you are putting in this mod. Its like a patch every 3 days...

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:28 am

Gotta second Fireskull's commendation. It's great to see you do so much on WCU, Spirit.

Hopefully it will engender some motivation in others [myself included].

On CVS, what issues were you having? Perhaps a bit of coaching from somebody might help remove the need for manual patching. IM me if you want any help.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 2:32 am

meow, thanks!

that's what i get for having no life, hehe... seriously guys, thanks a lot. Also go look at the ceeeerazy textures!

I could definitely use some help with uploading a whole tree without having to put in my password every 30 seconds.... also since i'm braindead

i don't remember what's the cvs "name" of the wcunivere sourceforge repository.

In this respect, I have a lot of small improvements to dump on the vegastrike source code...

also cookies.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:35 am

the daemon still is buggy.

The reactor and the ship armor ( or was it the hull? Im sorry, its late here, im a bit sleepy ) come damaged. The armor you can repair... but the reactor you cant.

Its also funny how the reactor has some stats which dont belong to reactors. It has ship trust and stuff... almost like the neutron and particle canons when they were bugged.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:14 am

http://www.spiritplumber.com/priv_remak ... patch6.zip

Stuff:

* WC1/WC2 style afterburners! (Basically this unifies the fuel gauge and the warp capacitor gauge -- default is off for VS, trned on in config) Currently only the Wraith has them, but they're easy to put in -- just change afterburner type to 1 and give it some consumption. These afterburners will use jump fuel to function. In order to make the game a bit more enjoyable, going in a straight line doesn't cost you as much AB fuel as dogfighting. You can still be stranded if you get those afterburners. Still, try them out

this finally allows us to make a WC1 and WC2 remake, it's almost the last bit that was missing code-wise... I need to make torpedos capship-lockable only and implement the cool locking music

* New Caernaven texture (THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!! it rocks! it makes me feel all badass and stuff) and the Caernaven is on the way to be fully flyable (upgrades and such), not quite there yet.

* Multiple explosions in progress (we can even make MIRVs now I think, might be good for VS).

* Small fixes for Demons (I hope this is it...)

* Docking no longer automatically refuels you every time -- you still get refueled if you land on units that carry more than 15 units of fuel (that number can be defined in the config file), otherwise you don't. I will implement a phyton script to buy fuel if you dock with smaller ships. Note that tankers and carriers will refuel you always with the current units.csv (just in case). In the future I'll have something that decides refuelage based on your ship too as well as the one you are docking with, as well as faction relations. This opens an interesting possibility -- suppose that you're stranded in Kilrathi space, it's possible to script missions (from kilrathi pirates, whatever) that reward you with the jump fuel you need to go home!

* You can only buy cargo wingmen if your ship has a docking port. In addition, we can display buying multiple upgrades if the ship has a docking port (not used atm, but present)

NOTE: Anything that was done has extra config variables to mantain compatibility with PR and VS.

NOTE 2: The main zip file has been deleted, this way I can upload a new main file. It will be updated up to patch 6.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 11:20 am

CVS howto (discussion continued from patch 5 thread). This assumes you're using a half decent shell (e.g. running linux or using cygwin).

According to the web interface there's 3 wcu CVS projects, just use the correct one:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wcuniverse

For now I'll assume it is 'wcu'.

To prevent repeated use of a password, use login. To prevent repeatedly specifying the cvs URL, export CVSROOT. Example:

Code: Select all

$ export CVSROOT=:pserver:spirit@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/wcuniverse
$ cvs login

Obviously change 'spirit' to your sf username.

Then you should be able to just use 'cvs command' on the wcu repo.

Also somebody suggested creating a single patch from your current list of patches. I say just apply your patches one by one to CVS - so do a fresh checkout of CVS then apply your patches to it. Use cvs add to add new files (with -kb for binary files). Like so:

Code: Select all

$ cvs co -P wcu
$ cd wcu
<copy patch 1 files into wcu dir>
$ cvs add path/to/source.file
$ cvs add -kb path/to/binary.file
$ cvs commit -m "Patch 1 - original date dd/mm/yy"

Et etc.

There are some excellent howtos online for CVS for more advanced information. Just google for 'cvs howto'. The top result for that is pretty good:
http://www.akadia.com/services/cvs_howto.html

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:58 pm

uhm, so if I dock on a agricultural planet its possible there wont be enough fuel for my ship?

On the whole planet?

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:19 pm

on to the bugs:

*the daemons still come with their hull and reactors damaged, and you cant repair the reactors. The reactors still have weird stats such as trust on them.

*Now I cant use my afterburner properly with my joystick. It goes on and off and doesnt acelerates on a steady pace, making it impossible to reach top afterburn speed. I have changed config so I can use it with a keyboard, which runs fine. This could of course just be a buggy joystick so I need someone else to confirm this.

*Afterburner fuel usage is incredibly high while dogfighting. I have just reconfigured vegastrike to not use fuel in afterburners as the change made them almost useless in dogfights.

*I swear I saw New Constantinople attacking the gladius fighters it had launched to interncept two pirates ships. Either that or its AI is a bit wrong because the pirate fighters were out of its gun range.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 1:30 am

It just hit me that the afterburners wasting too much fuel thing could be because fuelusage is set to 10 in vegastrike.config. It looks like someone forgot to delete the zero before putting in the one

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:00 am

No, that's correct actually. Fly a Wraith and try

basically "normal" fuel usage is 1 (I put it at zero because you can fly w/o fuel in wing commander, normally) and the afterburners are inherently inefficient.... also, you get charged for afterburner use only when accelerating or changing direction, right now.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:00 am

Update: The main file is now at

http://www.deeplayer.com/spiritplumber/ ... patch6.zip

until I grok CVS correctly. As the name implies, it's updated up to patch six.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:16 am

My joystick was set on turbo and thus why I couldnt afterburn with it.

I have to disagree with your decision of making afterburners inneficient. I know I can just change them in vegastrike.config but we have to keep in mind that we shouldnt ask players to edit the config files.

I think it takes the ship speed balance and throws it out the window. A example: Daemons will now be slower than Centurions. With afterburners they had a 200kps advatange, now they actually have a 50kps disavantage. I dont see how light and fast ships will be able to avoid missiles either... since they cant manuever while afterburning.

In my opinion the best way to impliment this would be to have a military spec afterburner that would use fuel -and- be effective. The reason confed uses fuel for their afterburners inst because they lack technology to have them use energy but because that way they can have fighters shotting to their hearts content while afterburning around.

If their afterburners used energy, they would need bigger reactors to keep up, and those are heavy, so fighters would be less maneurable.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:26 am

That's indeed the plan

oh, if you mean the wraith doing 1050 on afterburn... right now I just punched in some values to see if I could get the new fuel gauge to work properly. The reason why it's so inefficient ATM is that I needed to physically see the gauge go down quickly

What I want the player to be able to do is buy:

* Crappy afterburner -- pretty much always zeros your energy regardless.

* Normal afterburner -- functions like the one in Priv, a bit more expensive to justify buying the crappy one in the beginning of the game.

* Military style afterburner -- works like the one in the Wraith now.

* Actual milspec afterburner (only thru plot) -- works like the one in the Wraith, but uses less fuel.

Note that the AFTERBURNER SPEED of your ship is fixed (600 for tarsus, 1000 for centurion etc.) what changes is the efficiency.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:22 am

oh lol

Great minds think alike I supose

Sometimes I forget the game is still under development and some of your changes are meant to test stuff or help with implemeting new features

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:36 am

Do you have any suggestions about the upgrades? The minimum set is of course the Priv upgrades.

Please keep it with existing WC technology... what should the player be able to buy?

Post by **klauss** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:27 pm

Spirit: if you PM me the code changes, besides merging them with my tree (which is going to have quite a lot of changes soon), I can commit them (which I'm doing also - I'm doing some things to the music system).

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 4:08 pm

sure! pming now. thanks!

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:17 pm

ADD: Waterloo
ADD: Clydesdale (The Clydesdale mesh file is HUGE for some reason... not sure how to fix that, can anyone help?)
ADD: Milspec afterburners for WC1/2/3 fighters
FIX: Sometimes fuel capacity would go negative

http://www.spiritplumber.com/priv_remak ... patch7.zip

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:24 pm

Hm, I cant think about anything right now. *ponders*

You see, the problem is that anything else we add would send the game off balance.

We -could- add milspec mass drivers. Anyone who has played wc2 and wc3 knows that in those games mass drivers are deadly because they fire very -fast-. Not so in privateer

If they are added broadswords and stilettos would have a massive boost in their firepower, and so would the player if he manages to buy them.

There are also the proton torpedoes which are very different from milspec torperdoes. Aaaaaand lets not forget the dumbfire missiles, in WC they werent guided... but did lots of damage. If you had to intercept bombers it was actually better to have unguided dumbfires.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:50 pm

I already redid the missiles WC3+ style (better maneuverability = smaller warhead).

I think we're mostly set guns wise (priv + rf) I wanted to add (assume all Priv and RF upgrades):

GUNS

* Tachyon (leave as Confed special tech)
* Stormfire (AWACS special tech)
* Leech Gun (BorderWorlds special tech)
* Scattergun (?)
* Buyable capship will carry ONE antimatter gun on the keel

MISSILES:

* Leech Missile
* Milspec Torpedo (very expensive/hard to get, and you need a mount upgrade or a dedicated bomber)
* Mace (uses torpedo hardpoint, player may get to use it occasionally)
* Coneburst?
* Explosive Mine (can be tractored back in & redeployed)
* Leech Mine (can be tractored back in & redeployed)
* Laser Mine (can be tractored back in & redeployed)
* Bomb (bigger proton torpedo with no speed of its own, you have to do a divebombing run, can blow up in your face)

ENGINES:

* Crappy starter afterburner
* Milspec-type afterburner (less efficient than milspec though)
* True milspec afterburner

SHIELDS:

* Player can buy up to level 8 (7 orion, 8 drayman/caernaven), 9 is phase shields

TURRETS:

* Stormfire turret -- when it's out of ammo you have to sell it and rebuy it!!!
* Tractor-only (cheap) turret
* Leech gun turret
* Long range laser turret with flak gun
* "Big" turret for the Caernaven (or it comes built in? builtin probably easier)

CARGO:

* Change 10 units exp to 25
* 1 unit expansion (fill in the crannies -- pirate bases)

MOUNT UPGRADES:

* Remove autotracking (and nerf demons a bit, lol)
* Torpedo upgrade for missile mounts (on select ships)
* "Special" gun upgrade for gun mounts (unlocks stormfire, leech...)

Vega Strike Forums

WCU Alpha 0.1: Patch History 1 - 11

Patch 5

Patch 6

patch 7