Unsure of version, some texts refer to version 0.5.0... Obtained on SVN 08-14-2007.
Well let's start from the start...
Starting a new game is slow, granted, but no progress is shown. Can't tell if it froze or if it's doing something without running a tail -f in a console.
(Feature request)
System map - no option to disable showing ships, or select groups of things to show in the maps.
(Bug)
I couldn't select a jump point simply because it would always get a nearby ship.
Map is extremely slow on my system, likely due to displaying all the ships moving about.
Escape pod escape from escape pod - this happened after a nasty collision at FTL speeds - I managed to survive the collision and somehow pop out in an escape pod, which later collided with something, and it spawned me again in another escape pod??
Repairing escape pods crashes the game, segfault.
stderr:
...
Asking to undock
Asking to undock
Asking to undock
Asking to undock
dot 0.087373Assumed exit on unit LOAD_FAILED(if not quitting, report error)
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Why did I attempt to repair an escape pod? I had only ~5000 creds, and it was the only ship I had...
Various bugs encountered
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Pyrodyne
- Just a tourist with a frag'd nav console
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:37 am
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Halleck
- Elite
- Posts: 1832
- Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 10:21 pm
- Location: State of Denial
- Contact:
Since this is SVN (in between release versions) we usually refer to it by the SVN revision number. Currently, this is 11267, but it increments often, currently several times a day on average.
The nav system is clearly in need of some major work. Since we are so close to release I think we can shoot to have it work at least as well as in 0.4.3, but probably not any better. This, however, is an important long-term goal.
I almost never use the map anyway because it sucks, especially with the overcrowding presence of ships. Instead, I use the targeting system to get around. N cycles through nav points, such as jump gates, stations, and planets. Read the help text in the info screen of the nav computer for more tips.
And escape pods as they are are pretty useless. Eventually we'll want to have a rescue service, but it will probably be a while before such a thing is implemented. I usually just suicide, Shift-1 (!) to explode and respawn with the ; key. You start from your last saved game I think.
In the meantime we might add a warp drive to the escape pod so that a base can be reached. Really this is just so you can try to buy a new ship. If you're out of credits, you're out of luck and have to restart.
The nav system is clearly in need of some major work. Since we are so close to release I think we can shoot to have it work at least as well as in 0.4.3, but probably not any better. This, however, is an important long-term goal.
I almost never use the map anyway because it sucks, especially with the overcrowding presence of ships. Instead, I use the targeting system to get around. N cycles through nav points, such as jump gates, stations, and planets. Read the help text in the info screen of the nav computer for more tips.
And escape pods as they are are pretty useless. Eventually we'll want to have a rescue service, but it will probably be a while before such a thing is implemented. I usually just suicide, Shift-1 (!) to explode and respawn with the ; key. You start from your last saved game I think.
In the meantime we might add a warp drive to the escape pod so that a base can be reached. Really this is just so you can try to buy a new ship. If you're out of credits, you're out of luck and have to restart.
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Pyrodyne
- Just a tourist with a frag'd nav console
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:37 am
Actually, the a-spec drive sometimes does work on the escape pod, just toyed around with it a bit, though it's really glitchy, I did manage ~0.25C speeds... repairing an escape pod still segfaults.
The nav system seems to work normally in combat mode, in fly mode it goes really off and does odd things, namely slamming into stationary targets at FTL speeds *cringe*, or overshoot moving targets by a few light hours and slingshot back and forth alot, never seems to be a problem in combat mode.
Messing with the time feature with the aspec on has some truly bizarre effects, sometimes causing insane speed increases, most often the aspec FTL graphics effect is backwards, so it looks like you're going backwards.
I must have passed up using 'n' for nav points, the keyboard map I have printed says 'neutral targets'...
I am fully unfamiliar with SVN, only some CVS experience before this.
Even poking around and grepping like crazy I found /dev/null info on what SVN revision I ended up with. The README in vegastrike/ reads 0.2.0...
It's still fun despite the waiting times, though i'll stick to an earlier/faster loading version until I can get the hang of not crashing into random objects.. haven't played many space sims since the days of freespace and windows 98...
The nav system seems to work normally in combat mode, in fly mode it goes really off and does odd things, namely slamming into stationary targets at FTL speeds *cringe*, or overshoot moving targets by a few light hours and slingshot back and forth alot, never seems to be a problem in combat mode.
Messing with the time feature with the aspec on has some truly bizarre effects, sometimes causing insane speed increases, most often the aspec FTL graphics effect is backwards, so it looks like you're going backwards.
I must have passed up using 'n' for nav points, the keyboard map I have printed says 'neutral targets'...
I am fully unfamiliar with SVN, only some CVS experience before this.
Even poking around and grepping like crazy I found /dev/null info on what SVN revision I ended up with. The README in vegastrike/ reads 0.2.0...
It's still fun despite the waiting times, though i'll stick to an earlier/faster loading version until I can get the hang of not crashing into random objects.. haven't played many space sims since the days of freespace and windows 98...
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Halleck
- Elite
- Posts: 1832
- Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 10:21 pm
- Location: State of Denial
- Contact:
I don't think that the autopilot is designed to work in 'flight mode'. I reccomend enabling your speed cap (y) before you press a.
Also... by time feature if you mean time compression, this is not a feature. It's a debugging hack, please do not use it. Especially do not use it with SPEC/ASPEC, this has NEVER been a good idea.
I still find myself using time compresson on occasion (usually to counter inertia or get around in an escape pod) but it does odd things.
SVN version should be reported on each update, or by checking "svn info".
Load times are still a problem. I don't know how much it could be sped up unless we offload some of that python dynamic universe code into the engine itself. (I think that's the main slowdown but I'm not positive.)
Also... by time feature if you mean time compression, this is not a feature. It's a debugging hack, please do not use it. Especially do not use it with SPEC/ASPEC, this has NEVER been a good idea.
I still find myself using time compresson on occasion (usually to counter inertia or get around in an escape pod) but it does odd things.
SVN version should be reported on each update, or by checking "svn info".
Load times are still a problem. I don't know how much it could be sped up unless we offload some of that python dynamic universe code into the engine itself. (I think that's the main slowdown but I'm not positive.)
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Pyrodyne
- Just a tourist with a frag'd nav console
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:37 am
Feature, bug, same thing 
Yeah, i've read elsewhere that it's a debugging tool, though it also serves to get around a bit faster.. with moderation it can be used with aspec and have good stability, max I could use was 4x on f9, the fifth hit on that key in aspec made everything... interesting.
The load times are acceptable on my sempron 2600+ on kubuntu feisty fawn, i've watched the stdout and stderr to monitor progress on loading, and for what it's doing in there I think that's fine.. however... at points when it is doing that generation there is no feedback about it doing anything, it appears to freeze loading menu or texture png/jpegs. Simply updating that text at the bottom would be fine with me. "Generating universes", "Creating dynamic missions", etc.
Once it's loaded performance is also acceptable on my system, except for the map, which bogs terribly and it takes a few agonizing seconds to move the mouse to another button to get away from it. If i zoom the map in far enough, it seems like it excludes processing ships that are out of view, and at some point performance is acceptable and smooth. Zoomed out far enough to see everything causes a major slowdown, and I estimate 3-4 frames per second are actually drawn.
Other than performance, if I leave it zoomed out long enough, the text labels and other graphics will corrupt as ships fly through them, as well as corrupting seemingly on their own. This does not happen when zoomed in at all.
I played some Privateer Gold last night and compared with the current state of Vegastrike - PG is quite stable, load times are somewhat quicker, though there are far far less ships in any given system. Maps are limited (as are the systems it seems), however there are no slowdowns at all that I have found when using the maps.
I notice that many ships are listed as part of a wing in the stdout loading texts. Would it be feasible to implement wings on the map as opposed to individual units? Perhaps just have the graphic stretch to include all the ships in a given area, and give a unit count with the wing's ID.
The map in VS is a serious drawback to an otherwise fine system. In PG, I had no trouble picking out where I wanted to go. Using the neutral targets button works well, and I ended up forgoing the map after a while in PG and VS to get around, though it is nice if you want to dock at a ship that's swarming with other ships around it.
On that note, targeting... using 'p' to target within the reticle often ignores what is directly in my sights for something off to the side. I think the targeting area is a bit large for my tastes with this function.
Well, off to hunt for new bugs to report!
Thanks for the SVN info. Looks like I am running Rev 11258.
Yeah, i've read elsewhere that it's a debugging tool, though it also serves to get around a bit faster.. with moderation it can be used with aspec and have good stability, max I could use was 4x on f9, the fifth hit on that key in aspec made everything... interesting.
The load times are acceptable on my sempron 2600+ on kubuntu feisty fawn, i've watched the stdout and stderr to monitor progress on loading, and for what it's doing in there I think that's fine.. however... at points when it is doing that generation there is no feedback about it doing anything, it appears to freeze loading menu or texture png/jpegs. Simply updating that text at the bottom would be fine with me. "Generating universes", "Creating dynamic missions", etc.
Once it's loaded performance is also acceptable on my system, except for the map, which bogs terribly and it takes a few agonizing seconds to move the mouse to another button to get away from it. If i zoom the map in far enough, it seems like it excludes processing ships that are out of view, and at some point performance is acceptable and smooth. Zoomed out far enough to see everything causes a major slowdown, and I estimate 3-4 frames per second are actually drawn.
Other than performance, if I leave it zoomed out long enough, the text labels and other graphics will corrupt as ships fly through them, as well as corrupting seemingly on their own. This does not happen when zoomed in at all.
I played some Privateer Gold last night and compared with the current state of Vegastrike - PG is quite stable, load times are somewhat quicker, though there are far far less ships in any given system. Maps are limited (as are the systems it seems), however there are no slowdowns at all that I have found when using the maps.
I notice that many ships are listed as part of a wing in the stdout loading texts. Would it be feasible to implement wings on the map as opposed to individual units? Perhaps just have the graphic stretch to include all the ships in a given area, and give a unit count with the wing's ID.
The map in VS is a serious drawback to an otherwise fine system. In PG, I had no trouble picking out where I wanted to go. Using the neutral targets button works well, and I ended up forgoing the map after a while in PG and VS to get around, though it is nice if you want to dock at a ship that's swarming with other ships around it.
On that note, targeting... using 'p' to target within the reticle often ignores what is directly in my sights for something off to the side. I think the targeting area is a bit large for my tastes with this function.
Well, off to hunt for new bugs to report!
Thanks for the SVN info. Looks like I am running Rev 11258.