New patch...

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spiritplumber
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New patch...

Post by spiritplumber »

New patch from your favorite CIC nonperson....


* More WC-like flight model (John, please fly this and give me some feedback!)

* Some more AI options, for example, fighters told to attack a phase shielded ship should go after the turrets

* Restored CTRL+W turret fire at will functionality

* Hangar and crew panels (to hire crew, go to a bar and click above the bartender's head; to use the hangar, have a hangar-capabe capship like the drayman or caernaven and go to the ship dealer -- doesn't use the cargo screen anymore)

* Turret weapons make a bit more sense, hopefully

* When in a spawned fighter, your carrier is cycled with the nav points

* If you issue a CTRL+P order to your own carrier, fighters that are outside will circle it, and the carrier will stay put with turrets on -- good to park the carrier at a nav point

* Spawned fighters return to their carrier automatically if no fights are happening (reduces load on the engine a lot)

* Still no new Bengal, sorry... the problem is that having it onscreen as it is now slows everything down, so having it in the "battle" scenario is a bad idea... and I love how it looks and don't want to simplify the model, I'd rather someone expert do that.

http://www.spiritplumber.com/WCU/wcu-2006-patch2.zip about 12.6 Mb
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chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Great stuff! This is a patch for which version, Spirit? I may be a bit behind on the versions and/or patches; I'm not sure...
The version of the Bengal I gave you was just for you to position the turrets; it wasn't meant for in-game; it has two layers of skin, plus all the inside rooms, and therefore causes a lot of overdraw. And by the way, I had to change turret positions, so I ate my words about the positions being final; but the moves are only slight and only in the Y direction. I'll try to come up with a new version you can try in-game, ASAP.
Ehmm... What kind of videocard do you have? And what kind of computer?
IIRC, you said you had some old junk. I have an Athlon box sitting in my office I could send you. It has no videocard, but maybe I could get one for it. Purely for selfish reasons, don't get me wrong; but I like making detailed models and, of course, they need to work for the main developer; besides, I haven't sent you any donations yet, and I feel they are overdue.
spiritplumber
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Post by spiritplumber »

You need the latest that's on your server, then

http://www.spiritplumber.com/WCU/wcu-2006-patch1.zip

and finally

http://www.spiritplumber.com/WCU/wcu-2006-patch2.zip

in that order. Again, nothing too new, just the crew and hangar panels plus a few graphical cleanups for some of the ships (for example, the Remora now looks as it did in WCP, the Rapier and Gratha have more polys, and the Venture skin looks a little less cartoony)
My Moral Code:
- The only sin is to treat people as if they were things.
- Rules were made for people, not the other way around.
- Don't deceive. Real life is complicated enough.
- If all else fails, smash stuff.
charlieg
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Re: New patch...

Post by charlieg »

spiritplumber wrote:Still no new Bengal, sorry... the problem is that having it onscreen as it is now slows everything down, so having it in the "battle" scenario is a bad idea... and I love how it looks and don't want to simplify the model, I'd rather someone expert do that.
Even with LODs? Surely you could add some much-reduced LODs using the detailed model to produce appropriate textures.
spiritplumber
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Post by spiritplumber »

I still don't know how to do LODs for vegastrike :( will be very happy to do that if you tell me how though!
My Moral Code:
- The only sin is to treat people as if they were things.
- Rules were made for people, not the other way around.
- Don't deceive. Real life is complicated enough.
- If all else fails, smash stuff.
chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Charlieg, I have to do the LOD's; after I finish the top model, hopefully soonish. The biggest problem, though, is Spirit has an old ATI videocard. That's one big problem of open source game development; I mean, if you check out commercial game companies, you'd find boxes that blow your mind. I had a friend working for Ubisoft, here in montreal, like 7 years ago, and his machine had 1 gig of ram. In those days that was pretty much unthinkable. I'm sure nowadays every workstation at a game company has like dual 7900 videocards in SLI. But your average gamer has a better videocard than your typical Open Source developer... Gamers will do whatever it takes to have the latest hardware: Moonlight, steal, sell drugs, you name it; but open source developers have hardware years behind the times, and on top of that they worry about gamers having bottom of the line hardware... :-/
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Post by klauss »

chuck_starchaser wrote:but open source developers have hardware years behind the times, and on top of that they worry about gamers having bottom of the line hardware... :-/
Can't help it.
Because... you know... they're mostly worrying about themselves, and not gamers per-se (or other developers, or simply not hardcore gamers).
And because it's a principle that sinks in most open source developers: portability and scalability is paramount.
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spiritplumber
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Post by spiritplumber »

I don't know, it can be argued that having older hardware "keeps you honest" in that you don't go overboard with eye candy and so on...



BTW, the crew system is temporary -- you hire crew at a bar, and it's automatically un-hired when you land, this is the best thing I could come up with quickly to make sure you keep paying for 'em.
My Moral Code:
- The only sin is to treat people as if they were things.
- Rules were made for people, not the other way around.
- Don't deceive. Real life is complicated enough.
- If all else fails, smash stuff.
chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

If you look at what games get the whole world's attention, it's always the ones that push the envelope, though; which often come with benchmarks, so they get free advertisement every time hardware benchmarks are taken.
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