Unofficial .5.0 beta

grendel0226 · Post by **grendel0226** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 6:55 pm

Well, the reason I'm creating this, is I forgot to state what version of windows and such I was running when testing... oops!

Anyways, I'm running WinXP still, latest available, Professional edition, and running on a Dell XPS, NVidia GeForce 7300 LE, Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80 GHz processor, 1 Gig RAM...

For your convenience, I'll also include the email... just resending it would screw things up for some reason O.o

"I tried extracting it first into a new folder, then
into the .4.3 directory, then uninstalled the .4.3 and
extracted into there... none of it worked when I tried
to use the vegastrike.exe, but I noticed that in the
stderr.txt file, something that caught my eye:

USING HOMEDIR :
C:\VegaStrike_0.5.0beta\data/.vegastrike As the home
directory

is the data supposed to have a backslash before it,
and a forward slash after it in the pathname? Other
than that, it was mostly geek to me in both files."

Post by **hellcatv** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:37 pm

I don't think I ever saw an earlier post from you... can you start from the beginning..

ok unzip it into a virgin folder with NOTHING in it (not 0.4.3 ...nothing)
then go to the bin/ folder inside
then double click setup.exe

so far so good?

then double click vegastrike.exe

that should function--if there's a problem you can make sure stderr and stdout.txt have been modified right then--if so, then you can go ahead and paste them here

Post by **jackS** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:21 pm

if the game won't start at all, please try running the vcredist_x86.exe VC8 runtime installer that is included in the bin directory.

grendel0226 · Post by **grendel0226** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 4:04 pm

Well, the first time I sent something about it, it was per the troubleshooting guide. Yes, I actually read the readme from the self-extracting file. Other than that, yeah, this is the first time I've posted anything on it. And I did it with a virgin folder the first time, which is why I tried the .4.3 folder after, and they all came up with the same error. About to try the vcredist_x86.exe solution, will tell you how that goes.

Update: Yeah, that worked. Noticed quite a few bugs already.

Bugs I've noticed:

Something to do with the SPEC drive (when you hit "a" think that's what it's called)- if a distance more than 1.9 lightseconds away, the ship tends to fly off into the top left for some reason, apparently seeking something, then goes towards the target. Is it avoiding something, or is that really a bug?

The previously mentioned "can select more than one of same mission" bug (another thread, another poster).

I think I broke it: I hit f9 to speed the framerate up way past 1 FPS... the graphics went all fuzzy and garbled, I tried to slow it down by hitting f10 like usual, and that didn't work... I suicided the ship with Shift + 1, then reloaded... and it's kinda stuck garbled whenever piloting now. This all happened as an escape pod, which somehow had FTL capabilities O.o

More to come, I'm sure of it.

Post by **hellcatv** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:07 am

F9 will be disabled for release

as for turning a corner when it's far away--it's probably just the ship's onboard AI computer trying to steer to maximize speed in the presence of a strong gravitational field

grendel0226 · Post by **grendel0226** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 4:30 am

Found a mission glitch that was in .4.3- If you accept a mission, then quit, it won't have the mission with the name when you log back in, just a number for how many missions (Max of 3).

Also, more detail on the "repeated mission glitch"- it doesn't give you the credits if you complete it, and you can fill your log (3 missions) with it.

Another glitch that was supposed to be fixed: I just crashed into a ship while not using f9 that just popped out of a jumpgate. There should REALLY be a warning for things like that at this point... or was that what the flashing j icon was for? This also happened after buying the most expensive intermediate radar in the Cephid 17 system. It has never happened before then.

Post by **jackS** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 7:51 am

grendel0226 wrote: Another glitch that was supposed to be fixed: I just crashed into a ship while not using f9 that just popped out of a jumpgate. There should REALLY be a warning for things like that at this point... or was that what the flashing j icon was for? This also happened after buying the most expensive intermediate radar in the Cephid 17 system. It has never happened before then.

I, for one, was always partial to replacing the half-duplex jump gates with full duplex models

(and there should eventually be some notion of traffic control, but that may be a while in getting usefully implemented)

grendel0226 · Post by **grendel0226** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 8:53 am

Multiplayer glitch #1: Upon logging in, the ship is slightly askew to a corner for some reason. Docking with something and going back out fixes this.

Multiplayer glitch #2: I couldn't shoot when in multiplayer for some reason

Other than that, I have no idea.

Post by **ace123** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:51 am

What do you mean by "slightly askew to a corner" Is this an issue with the cockpit?

About not being able to shoot in multiplayer, was this with a private deathmatch server (which crashes in the beta release) Or was this logging in with a forum account?

Does your ship have guns at all? If it does, you should be able to shoot, so I'm a bit confused with this.
Can you dock to a base and buy weapons? You should start out with enough money.

Moe479 · Post by **Moe479** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:05 am

i can confirm that steering bug with joining multiplayer, sometimes its more sometimes less intensive, maybe its related to useing a mouse instead of a stick, like i do.
for the most joins im able to 'compensate' this with keybord to get my ship on the next base, after undocking the bug is gone, until next login in space ...

grendel0226 · Post by **grendel0226** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 9:29 pm

Do I have guns? Yes. Can I buy more on base? Haven't tried. It was with the forum log-in. And I was using the mouse-glide setting, and the green reticle was askew to a corner compared to the white reticle, which was perfectly centered.

More on Single player: Not sure which condition caused this one, but I'll give the whole scenario. I just finished Janek's first mission, went back with the bar where Janek is, and decided to take a merchant mission to deliver Aera supplies to a rlaan base (I believe) which was a shaper colony (I think... Huge rounded cylinder and definitely shaper) in Orsini. Once I delivered the supplies, I took 2 missions to get me back to the systems near Cephid 17, both cargo: One to Arcturas, one to Pandey. I also picked up a plasma ray (the plasma light beam weapon) and a Repair Droid I.

I then went to start to deliver them, and for some reason, the Autopilot didn't work right in the Orsini System... it DID go FTL... It went for the gate I selected, and when I got there, with it still on, I could control the Ship (the shield light was still flashing). It glided around the gate for some reason, and I checked the tilde issue... that wasn't it. It didn't accelerate/decelerate properly from then on.

I landed on a biodiverse planet in the system to see if any of my systems were damaged, which they weren't, so I replaced the Plasma Ray and the Micro Driver with regular lasers, and bought an Overdrive, which I may or may not have had prior to getting the mission (almost every time prior to that, that I got an Overdrive, I died shortly after for various reasons, only one of them being a gate traffic problem).

Well, I went to the other mission, which ended me up in Pandey, then went to Cephid to see if I could get to Arcturas from the other side... Was still having the gliding/acceleration problem (It DID accelerate and decelerate, BTW, just very slowly and quite randomly outside of the Orisini System). For some reason, once I got to the Cephid 17 System, my drop location changed to the plainsfield there O.o I successfully delivered that bit of cargo, and then quit to post the situation.

So, the Question is: Was the problem in choosing multiple cargo missions, Getting the Plasma Ray, or The Orsini system itself?

I'm about to load up to see if it fixed itself. Have fun!

Zael · Post by **Zael** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:41 am

I have also experienced the steering bug. For me it has seemed that hitting shift+M to bring up the menu and then closing the menu again fixes this.

I have also experienced problems docking online even when autopilot is disengaged.

Also, I am not sure how much it affects game AI, but the chat keys seem to switch back and forth for me between hostile and friendly phrases so quickly that anything I try to say to AI is pretty random.

grendel0226 · Post by **grendel0226** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:12 pm

I've figured out WHERE the bug is, but not why, though it has something to do with the sun in the system. The bug (so far) only occurs when traveling through Pandey, and more specifically, any time you near the sun in the system, like for the cargo mission it keeps happening on (both from bar and mission computer).

It doesn't matter the starting location, but I have found a few strange fixes. If you can manage to land outside the system (assuming your inertia doesn't stop you from reaching a jumpgate) it tends to fix itself. It also screws up the Autopilot in the process, like being able to steer away from the object being piloted towards while in autopilot and less than 15 times your normal acceleration (in other words, only when close to the target).

The other strange fix that sort of works, is to hit backspace to make your acceleration 0, let your ship stop, then go back up to max combat speed (250 in the llama, which started at 240 til I got it repaired at beginning of game O.o)

Other than that, most bounty hunting missions are broken (only seen so far with redeemer and Plowship types). By broken, I don't mean the unit doesn't show up. I just mean that if you kill said unit, it doesn't usually give you the credits, and the ship tries to run away from meeting point (as in FTL travel) and you need to chase after it with FTL while trying to shoot at it. Only when the unit tries to run away does this happen O.o

This also happens with Clean sweep missions, same ship types.

Edit: well, according to my previous post, not only in Pandey, but it seems to be in systems that look like Pandey (maybe it has something to do with the map?).