The Tharin Server

[pheonixstorm]

I havent tried but I dont think ace made any changes to the server code yet to attempt a fix. He did leave information on what is causing the problem so maybe myself, klauss, or breese can look into it and attempt a fix. I'm hoping that the issue is issolated to those with bad lag but who knows...

Mets, can you change the starting cash value to something over 100k so we can try to buy one of the cheaper ships and see if everyone has this problem?

[Mets]

Sure, what do you propose?

[ghoulsblade2]

pheonixstorm : When you tried my logging into my account, you also blew up, right ?
So if it is lag related, i guess it'll happen to everyone not sitting next to the server.
My internet connection is rather good usually, and this problem has been 100% reproducible so far, so it wasn't a bad day either.

if anyone wants to give it a try and mets has trouble setting the starting credits :
the login for a test-account i made is
username : ghoulsblade2
password : aabbcc11
you start docked at atlantis with a little over 140k credits,
and you can try and buy a ship in the shipyard (dodo or hyena are affordable)

I know trading well enough by now to recreate such an account in around half an hour with little interactivity (select, autopilot...) should someone accidentally (or willingly) waste the save, so no worries, this is free for testing if anyone wants to try.

[ace123]

Are the credits going down when you buy the ship?

From what I remember, the credits and the new ship name should be saved at the same time. (The dying and reloading should force VS to re-read the newly saved game, which should then have the new ship name saved into it)

I'll try out your account when I have some time

[ghoulsblade2]

no credits. i see the ship explode from external cam as soon as i click buy for the new ship.
then i see the death-screen "space is a harsh mistress. [...press ; to respawn...]".
on pressing i see my old ship in the hangar again,
with the credits back on my account. also undocking shows i still have the old ship.
some problem with the saving maybe ?

[Mets]

Actually I'm not sure where I would change the default credit value...I'd love to be able to customize the universe more but I'm not quite sure where to start. If there's interest in working on multiplayer again, I'm not opposed to making a vegastrike dev account and letting you guys tinker with things.

[pheonixstorm]

I believe you change the starting credits in the new mission save file. At least thats were it reads from in single player games.

[ace123]

For deathmatch mode (use_account_server = false), the credits value is read from
mission/networking.mission

Code: Select all

                <var name="credits" value="20000"/>

When using the accountserver, it is up to the accountserver to pick a default saved game.

The cgi-accountserver which is inclded has the following logic for finding this:

Code: Select all

                 f=self.open_default_file("network.save")
                except IOError:
                 try:
                  f=self.open_default_file("New_Game")
                 except IOError:
                  try:
                   f=self.open_default_file("accounts/default.save")
                  except IOError:
                   try:
                    f=self.open_default_file("default.save")

open_default_file looks in the data_path which is configured in config.py

Anyway, New_Game is among those files, but if you want a special network-only default, you can put it into network.save.

You can edit those savegames in a text editor -- the first number is the number of credits.

[Mets]

open_default_file looks in the data_path which is configured in config.py

Anyway, New_Game is among those files, but if you want a special network-only default, you can put it into network.save.

You can edit those savegames in a text editor -- the first number is the number of credits.

Ace, unfortunately my config.py file has only one line, "# "header" of vegastrike python configuration files"

Also, no New_game or network.save file.

I do see this, though, in accountserver.py

Code: Select all

def getShipname(savegame):
        where = savegame.find("^") # This will give the location of credits.
        where = savegame.find("^", where+1)
        space = savegame.find(" ")
        if where==-1 or space==-1:
                return "llama.begin"
        else:
                return savegame[where+1:space]

[Benison]

ive just signed up on tharin today, and just been wondering: is there actually anyone still playing?
yet i have to find another human controlled ship. ;o

allso, at what rate do the stocks on mines, factories, commercial centres, whatever replenish?
i found it kinda exhausting to sum up a few credits, compared to offline play wich gives you lots of new buy options each time you fire up the game, since the server doesent allways seem to let you jump out of a system. ~~

[Benison]

looks like the board ate my last post, well... ~~

first up: im new to the server, and just wondering, is there still anyone playing at all?
i havent ever met a human player yet, and due to the lack of npcs, space feel sooooo empty. :p

allso i have some additional questions:
1. is it normal that the savegame doesent memo high/low prices?
2. sometimes the system wont let me jump out of a system, or even eject/self destruct. i have to terminate the process manually from time to time.
is there any conclustion to solve this? its sorta annoying...
3. is it even possible to have multiple ships in multiplayer?
just wanna make sure the ship gets moved to my stock when the server "kills" it to replace it with the new one. ;o
4. is there any campaign playable online?
havent found any story-arc missions in offline play neither yet, and couldnt find anything useful with the search option.
5. how long are respawn/replenish times for goods at planets/stations?
its hard to make a profit if every station runs out of stuff in no time. ~~

id be happy to hear of any players that actually play this game, and of course get some of my questions answwered.

/edit: oh, and why arent there ANY stations around? all i find is planets, not even asteroids or some npcs to hunt. :-/
so you cant fight anything, and trading doesent pay off, since your ships too small to make a considerable ammount of cash with stuff like food or booze, not to mention the general lack of wares worth buying.
is this working as intended, or did something get messed up?

[ghoulsblade2]

try selling rlaan food packs from the starting planet to the desert planet in oldzie, thats nice cash. you're prolly the only one playing there tho =)

[Benison]

allready sold all the booze and food atlantis had on stock, aside from some other oceanic and organic rich planets, its still a pain, compared to selling construction equipment or something other with a high cred/m³ ratio. ~~
and heh, if there no players, a couple of npcs wouldnt hurt. *cough* ;o

[Benison]

made a few traderuns selling stuff i bought on atlantis to neighboring systems until i have around 200k credits.
now back on atlantis, from mission menu or similar : netplay : save, go to shipyards, select plowshare, click buy, BOOM.
deathscreen, i press : and see my old llama back in the hangar.

how can i be the only one having this ?
has anyone else ever actually tried buying a ship in multiplayer with fresh checkout and /home/username/.vegastrike ?
vanilla svn, even renamed my old /home/username/.vegastrike before starting.

same here, with the difference that i picked privateer as starting faction.
if you could at least switch to the lama with 2 medium gun mounts... :p

since there arent any npcs it prolly doesent make a diff anyways ~~
speaking of npcs and such, is cephis_17 the only system with something in it despite planets on purpose?

[ghoulsblade2]

I'd say multiplayer is pretty much unplayable currently.
Try singleplayer, that's better.

Rlaan food : only sell that at desert/arid planets, not elsewhere. There's a planet like that in oldzie, a direct neighbor-system of the starting system.

The amount of goods a planet has in stock should regenerate after a while (not sure if it works in multiplayer), but i also criticized that almost all goods are useless in the low quantities they appear in. There is a short chain of goods that'll yield near unlimited funds in very short time once you got a bit of capital tho.

[Benison]

due to the lack of commerce centres and relays im affraid you have to earn your bucks the hard way in mp. ~~

and yes, as it is right now its virtually unplayable.
guess having some npcs would simply hog too much resources on the server...

[ghoulsblade2]

I don't think it'd hog too much resources to have npcs flying around, it's just that noone really bothers to get the server playable.

If someone with a few programming skills would be willing to help me make a simple-but playable server please contact me.

I think i can take care of coding a simple server if someone can help me figure out the network protocol / messages.
Figuring out the network protocol shouldn't be too difficult,
but it involves reading through a bunch of vegastrike server code to find out what messages are sent back and forth, as i don't think there's any docs outside the code for the protocol.
I have code for loading the universe data and tradegoods etc already, and i should be able to put together a makeshift server that is more playable than the current one.
(trading, stations, travelling, buying new ships, random pirate/territory-specific-enemy fighting, but probably no quests/missions besides kill-in-system and no persistent faction fleets like in singleplayer).
I can also take care of hosting.
Doing it alone isn't fun tho, so i want some help with figuring out the protocol at least =)

[bgaskey]

I think the last release included the vegaserver executable, and if not, it's certainly buildable from the SVN. All you should have to do is configure it and run it, and make sure external people can connect. I have run a multiplayer server before within my LAN and I remember it being easy enough to set up, but it was a long time ago. Good luck, feel free to post any questions.

[Benison]

setting it up really isnt the problem here.
some things simply arent included yet, like the ability to buy new ships.
this whole kill and respawn thing doesent seem to work.

allso, if you manage to set up a mp-serer with the singleplayer settings, you sure wont have enough goods for more than half a dozend players really.
unfortunatly i have totally NO idea how to programm, so i cant be of any help here. ~~

as a personal sidenote: its really a shame that EACH and every elite-multiplayer project started since freelancer/x³ was cancelled/abandoned beore its finished.
atm you have eve and nothing to choose between.
wich is kinda suprising if you take into account that or ex. iwar2 offers native modding support, and even projekts trying to squeeze mod-friendly games into the desired sheme werent finished.
there of course IS a project that even looked promising, but as usual didnt reach a playable state before its been abandonned.

try to imagine the nr of copies sold if some publisher would actually manage to get a newtonian-spaceflight-sim with solid multiplayer out to the local stores. -.-

[ghoulsblade2]

space is for geeks and just doesn't interest mainstream gamers, so the commercials churn out one wow-like after another, and it works.

[Benison]

ive been looking into lots of different mmos recently, and i couldnt help but realize that peeps are bored of those wow-clones by now.
theres still light at the end of the tunnel. :p

allso, if i remember correctly the first i-war (wich imho still is the one game you have to measure a new one with) was a sucess in terms of sold copies, so it cant be just a geek thing.

[Mets]

hey guys,

First, thanks for those of you flying around on Tharin! I keep Tharin up as a way to say to devs - hey! multiplayer is not dead!

Unfortunately, the multiplayer element of this game is very sparingly developed. It is very unstable, and any coding time I have usually goes into just making the thing "run." I agree, the server lacks NPCs, amongst many other things. For a long time now, we have been trying to get a dev to put some time into it, but they are busy with the main version of the game.

Until then, I'm afraid, it is what it is. I'm glad it works, and I sometimes log in and jet around just because it is mine But hopefully, at some point, it will be more developed, and it will be a feature rich MMO environment that doesn't charge annoying subscriptions!

[Clint_Thomas]

Thanks Mets.

Just signed up. I know it is sparse but it gives me a chance to try out the multiplayer function.

Thanks again for providing the server.

[Sen]

Just wondering if anyone is still exploring on this server? And if anymore work is being done on it.

Anyone out there?

[Clint_Thomas]

I pop in once in a while, but the lack of NPC's makes it kinda lonely. I am in Afghanistan, so I cant plan time to be on the server. It is just when I have an available moment.