poesel

IIRC there will be a release of documentaion about modding 'very soon'. I'm waiting also... Since this is the modding thread: about when is a fix for the problem with 'connecting to a server without having the mod and crashing it' planned? Its currently a bit pointless to make (public) mods.

On archipeleago I had two apollos and called the Galaxy. One of the Apollos got a motor damage, the other had zero ammo. The Galaxy of course refilled the one with the motor damage and I was waiting for the Galaxy to switch to the other vehicle. But it didn't - it just flew away when time was over and I had to push the damaged Apollo to the last turret! (no extraction in this mission) Must have looked very stupid.

I have a 5 year old computer and I play with all sounds on (no music). From the graphics options I have only particles on (you need that to know if you have penetrated the armor). I sometimes have 'flying' vehicles but thats not disturbing me much. I can recommend to turn of texture caching - it takes forever and the missing textures are loaded during the game (only short stuttering at the beginning). Gives you plenty of time during deployment

Hi Clay! I just wanted to say that I apreciate the way you fix bugs. I'm writing software myself and I know that theres always something wrong. So as long as you keep fixing and answering questions everything is green with me The game has a great potential as multiplayer game. Have you ever tried to play with, say, 20 humans on each side?

When I update 1.0.0 I get version 0.9.93 (from data/version.ini) (on Linux). Is that right?

I found the source of my crash problem: if I turn off the sky box, the game crashes. Repeatable and just that option. I may be wrong but is the skybox thing connected to getting the smoke cloud when you fire? I have the same settings in demo and now except for the skybox and there was no dustcloud in the demo for me. One other thing I noticed: when I cross the next to last bridge in the first scenario, my framerate drops to ~4fps. Before and after and on other bridges everything is normal.

I have also some issues: - if I press quit on the scenario startup screen then the game crashes (SDL parachute...) - if I start a scenario the game crashes too - multiplayer worked for one and a half scenarios and then crashed (I was doing nothing special) I never had the client crash with the demo (same machine). Other things: - my controls were also empty but I had a bachup of the demo files and it works with the copy - I cant see lava although it can burn me. My machine is rather slow so I have every graphic option turned off. Still it would be nice to at least have a hint that there is something dangerous. - running the runUpdate.sh updates version 1.0.0 to 0.9.92... - is there a changelog or is 0.9.92 = 1.0.0? (except scenarios etc...) - I couldn't carry over my name from the demo - now I and everyone I knew has a new name...

Ok, tried and tested again. Now it crashed while I was online and I think this time it was 'overhead'. Overhead, did you have the modfiles at that time? Dropteam.log: [..] SERVER: 30.303 frames per second SERVER: Elapsed time = 1429.18 FLAG: Reasonable location = 1 REQUESTDROPMSG: Drop request from acct id 19 I'm guessing: he tried to drop a Hurricane but this mod has no hovercrafts. I won't start the server again until this is resolved. I know this is 0.9.91 so I'll patiently wait.

My server crashed after around 6 hours of operation. This is from the nohup.out: Fatal signal: Segmentation Fault (SDL Parachute Deployed) SpaceVikings: ../PThreadCondition.c++:110: virtual OpenThreads::Condition::~Condition(): Assertion `status == 0' failed. ./runServer_Retro01.sh: line 4: 26544 Aborted LD_LIBRARY_PATH=../lib ./SpaceVikings -enterlobby false -hostmode server -lobbyname DeDo -difficulty 0 -numbots0 6 -numbots1 6 -maxclients 12 -uselos true -collisiondamage true -password xxx -dynamicbots true -mod Retro01 -gametype CTF The last lines from the Dropteam.log: [..] PROJECTILE: Modifier = 0.734118 PROJECTILE: Final penetration = 183.53 PROJECTILE: Penetrated facing 0 with pen = 183.53 PROJECTILE: Time = 1033.8 REQUESTDROPMSG: Drop request from acct id 16 That happened 3 minutes after user 'Tycho117' connected. In those 6 hours two persons connected but I have only one GET for the Modfiles in the apache log. So probably Tycho117 didn't have the mod. Btw: where are the local IDs stored?

Thanks Clay - I now have a real mod. Its called Retro and the basic idea is from someone here on the forum. Here is the description: > No Ion, no Hovercrafts - just Track and Wheeled. To get an even more WWII feeling, alle vehicles are equipped with sensor jammers. So watch out! Other changes: Apollo and Thor have a slightly better acceleration, all wheeled vehicles have a slightly lower center of mass. The Hermes is a bit faster because now everyone has a jammer. The Viper is more agile and also has a lower center of mass. < You can get the files from: http://www.johalla.de/~markus/Mods/Retro01.zip Unpack in the Mod/ directory. Have fun!

Please - use a configfile for server options - ability to send messages to the players from the command line - a graceful terminate (via SIGHUP or similar - sometimes the server doesn't die completly and you are left with a process blocking the port) - linebreaks in the Description.txt files - some output that the server started on STDOUT (like'server listening on port xy' in the .log) - make it possible to need a password to join a server - make it impossible to join a server if you don't have the correct mod (this is IMHO a must: a lot of strange things happen if versions don't fit) - option to auto-download the needed mod files Edit: - configurable loglevel or something like logrotate - if the server runs a few days, the Dropteam.log gets HUGE [ May 27, 2006, 04:36 PM: Message edited by: poesel71 ]

yurch, you need to give me a tip on how to shoot a DS. I never seem to hit those things. Yes, the dropships make the game chaotic. No real frontline. Its like in comparison every unit of a modern army would be airborne. Its a nice shock tactic to drop own units behind the enemy but if everyone can do it evertime its ppointless. I hope the scenarios will have 'conquerable' dropzones. That way dropping would be restricted to the areas you really own. I would like to see the command track and the engineer having the ability to drop AA, jammers,... on the spot where they are (not by dropship). Especially the cutter has enough space in his back to store those. That would give especially the command track a reason to get involved more. Currently I don't know why this vehicle exists at all: the commander could as well sit in the liveship and give the orders from there.

I think all sounds are configurable. For example: -ShootSound-MediumCannon.wav-/ShootSound- (replace minus with smaller/greater sign - the forum deletes it...) is the line for the 76mm. Make a new wav-file and point the configuration to it. Thats probably all. Collision damage ist activated. There is a 'mod' directory and I think that you can put everything you have changed for the mod in that place. If a client gets that from the server or if you have to do a seperate install - ??? Ask me next week when I have the manual. I had to change the standard client to create that new vehicle but I think (hope) this wont be necessary in the future.

Moon said in another thread that this game will be modders heaven - and he's right! This is really great. Just copy a few (ok, 999 lines and you have a new unit. I found out how to create a 76mm Tempest (which will be named 'Ariel' as soon as I find out how to change things in the Inventory.xml)! Currently you will need to exchange the file 'Tempest.physicalobjectgroup' in the data/ directory with the file: http://www.johalla.de/~markus/tempest76 Backup the original! If you use the original file the client will crash. I assume that in the future that will be done through mods but I currently do not know how to do that. The Ariel is a single shot 76mm with a small recoil factor. The Paladin has no recoil but I thought it would look good. About multiple turrets: we currently have no unit with two 'manual' weapon systems so theres no way to switch between the weapons. But thers still the OGRE to come so maybe we can use that. What probably can be done is to plant the Hermes AA and jammer on other vehicles.

More bots - done. You can shoot while driving - but only in the direction of the bow (or close to it) and at higher speeds. The Twin: 1) I don't know how to make a two barreled turret and incorporate it in the game 2) there is no twin shot in the game. Theres only the 20mm which does a triple shot. So the 76mm twin works like the 20mm Skidding: thats probably true because you will rather skid than just topple over. If you want to compare then test-drive the 20mm Paladin versus the 76mm. The 20mm has the lower center of mass. About the server: yes, I got some other strangeness there too, but I will wait for 1.0 to see if its still here.

I've played around a bit with some server settings and set up a server for public testing. Its the aptly named: 'dontjoin_testing'. Its CTF without deploy time - the 120mm Thor and Apollo have a slightly increased acceleration (3->5, 4->7) - the 76mm Paladin is now a twin shot (watch your ammo!) (btw: I had a twin shot 120mm too - _that_ was a killer! - the 20mm Paladin and the Shrike now handle much better. Some kind of F1 feeling although it does show more with the Shrike than the Paladin (lowered the center of mass) - the recoil factor of the Hurricane is more than doubled. Go watch yourself but remember: 'x' is for landing the thing... (I've raised the availabilty of the Hurricanes to 10 so you have enough to test) I tried to make a 76mm Tempest but only managed to crash the server. Can't wait for the manual. But XML configfiles are really nice! Please tell me what you think. I'm also open for other suggestions.

Any chance of getting the manual before? I've tried some modding but apart from speeding up a light tank to 200 and flying it over the hills I only managed to crash the server. Too much guesswork... I've preordered but I can't wait!

It shouldn't be that hard to add to the 'send on change' a 'send on timer' of the keystates. The keystates are only a few bytes and if the timer is ~1sec then you only add a little to the network load. A missing keystroke would then be corrected in an average of 500msec which seems acceptable. This is of course without knowledge of any of the inner workings of the program.

Now it works. I didn't change anything. Maybe that was a coincidence with the authentification being down. The client did a hard lock-up. I'm afraid that the log file is already gone so I can't check. Thats a part from the log: CLIENTIDMSG: szVersion = 0.9.91 CLIENTIDMSG: Client is using PAT? CLIENTIDMSG: Swapped port = 32772 but msg port = 9968 SERVER: Request from host 62.143.162.249:32772 CLIENT: Account not found for poesel71; creating new one SERVER: 30.303 frames per second What is PAT? The account mentioned is created locally I assume? The fps message tells me that I'm probably right with the 'inner representation' through OpenGL. How many fps does a server need or is it capped anyhow?

Hmm, I don't know anything specific about OpenGL but maybe the server has an internal representation of the battlefield and uses OpenGL for collision detection? I copied the needed libraries from another machine to the lib directory and created some symlinks. These are: libnvidia-tls.so.1 -> libnvidia-tls.so.1.0.7667 libaa.so -> libaa.so.1.0.4 libGLcore.so.1 -> libGLcore.so.1.0.7667 libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.060302 libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.0.7667 The server did start without complaining and I had it in the list when I hit the refresh button. So far so good. Problem: when I tried to join, the client hung himself up. Had to kill the process. Is that a limitation of the preview or some bug? Server and client were on different machines in different networks. Another question: the server doesn't print any information about what hes doing (in the terminal). Is there an option to get it a bit more verbose or do I have to tail -f on the logfile?

Hmm, I'm not root on this server and so I have to talk to my sysadmin to install it for. And you know how sysadmins are about installing. Ok, will do. Should be stated somewhere in the prerequisites though (or just ship the libraries). Still, and I hope you agree here: its a bit silly to install graphic libraries for a system without a monitor and a program without graphical output, no?

I've tried to start a dedicated server under linux on a, well, server machine. This machine has no monitor and no audio, So no Xserver or other desktop machine features. First problem is that Update didn't run without libaa.so. Hmm - why does the Updater need ASCII art (and it is not included)? Ok, installed and here we go: the update runs without problems. Searched the forums for the correct way to start the server: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">#!/bin/sh cd bin LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:../lib ./SpaceVikings -enterlobby false -hostmode server exit 0</pre>

Sorry, I have to disagree. One hit will cripple you while the mbt will most probably be still alive after 3 hits from the 76mm (depends of course). At great ranges the palladin can easily outmaneuver the shots from the 120mm while giving a steady stream of shells on the target. If the enemy is human and keeps the front pointed to you then you have a standoff. No chance for the small caliber to penetrate there. But if he turns or looks away or you can maneuver to his behind - bang!

I did some testing with the 76mm Paladin. I quite like the gun and the sound it makes. Its good at long range (I wish it had another level of zoom, though) and the rate of fire is ok. One problem: I never (read: very seldom) seem to kill something. Lots of smoke and engines disabled. Great annoyance for the enemy but no kill. Sometimes a paladin, ok. But even shrikes seem to eat shell after shell without really dying. I get more kills with the 20mm! Is that on purpose or am I doing something wrong? Btw why is it that the 76mm is only on the paladin? A tempest with that gun would be really fun!

I have also been shot from the back of a bots turret and seen it shooting at someone else with its 'behind'. So its really a conspiracy!