Toby Haynes

I have a Fedora Core 6 laptop with the fglrx packages installed from an external repository. Follow the instructions at this site to add the Livna repository to your yum configuration. http://rpm.livna.org/ Then install the fglrx drivers (assuming that they support your card) using Yum, Yumex or whatever you prefer and cross your fingers. You should DEFINITELY read the fglrx package information about disabling the Composite extension. My laptop hung hard without this change. http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/Packages/xorg-x11-drv-fglrx

FreeGLut is a replacement for the older libglut that Mark Kilgard developed. I doubt it's used by DropTeam. What distro are you running? Did you get the fglrx from a repository that your distro provides or did you download the drivers directly from ATI? I recommend using drivers provided by your distro if you have a choice, partly because the ATI installer has a nasty tendenancy to replace existing libraries with it's own copies. Which is fine as long as your linux distro does then upgrade the libraries that the ATI installer just altered. Most distros have a good HowTo for enabling the fglrx drivers. Or it's possible that your ATI radeon is not supported by the latest ATI driver and you might need the legacy one.

Are you using the "radeon", "ati" or the "fglrx" driver? You can check by looking in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Specifically, there will be a Device section which will tell you. </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Section "Device" ... Driver "fglrx" ... EndSection </pre>

1.2.2 seems to be leaking memory - normally slowly but sometimes catastrophically. During my four hours of play today (oops!) I had two crashes. The first one occurred when the game hung - the SpaceVikings process had swallowed 1.35Gb of memory (on my 1Gb RAM system) and was rapidly consuming more, so I killed it off. The second one occurred at 870Mb. I can try and run some tests to see when the memory usage starts to spike up. I might suggest running SpaceVikings against Valgrind.

Hmm - that sounds like an OpenGL problem. What graphics card/drivers are you using?

Hmmm. The moment of "YES" when you take out a tank moving at extreme range (5km+). Doing a coordinated flanking maneuver with a team mate to take out a heavy tank threatening the target - that's always a cool one. Especially when the MBT says "Damn you!" when it explodes I'd also add the sensation of seeing a new scenario taking form for this first time. I usually have a good feel for the general appearance of a landscape as I make it but I have to say, the first time I saw Desert Mesa with the shadow mapping done was a damn fine moment. Having these huge vistas to play in is definitely a big plus. Oh, and blowing up Jung is usually a good one too

Ah yes - I think you mean SlugFest. Blood laid out the minefield around the base to channel the opposing forces into certain routes, we laid the turrets out to hammer anyone who poked their nose over the ridge and had roving teams picking off the enemy forces, ably assisted by PHONON who was flying the Viper DS in a tank-bowling-and-recon role. Blood win. On Volcanic deposits, we continued the "Fun with Viper DS" theme - Nexus deployed a Paladin SAM controlled by Kevin, which was then picked up and flown to any dropship zones by PHONON. After that, it was really just a question of harrying the attackers as they tried to climb the hill. One of the things that Volcanic Deposits has taught me is that the attackers are very vulnerable to defenders deployed at distance from the objective. In one action, Jung was assembling a force of Thor Ms parading up the SE flank of the Objective, so I dropped in behind the column and piled 120mm AP and HEAT rounds through the soft rear armour of a half-dozen tanks. Blood win. On Raid (Ice World), the defenders laid in Hermes to protect the SAM installation, mined most of the intersections around the base. We set jammers, sensors and AA batteries around the periphery to try and take out the unwary dropship piling into the assault. Unable to destroy the SAM tower, the defenders lead assault after assault from the periphery. These assaults were repeatedly blunted by the roving Blood Executioners, and the few Water tanks that made it close to the base were dealt with severely. Blood win. Dead Gulch was Blood's Waterloo. Jung (Water) attacked us immediately with Thor Ms and by the time we had established any sort of anti-mortar defense, our base looked like a Walmart store after Boxing day sales. Needless to say, Water's base had laid in AA and anti-mortar support and repelled Blood's attempts at levelling Water's base. Blood's attempts to capture Water's base were finally defeated when we ran out of Dropships. Water win.

Awwww. Now I feel old! I turned 35 last month! Maybe I should change my name to Grandpa

OOooOOOooOOoo... Nice. I look forward to this afternoon's mayhem with renewed enthusiasm!! Better look out people

Holy carp! :cool: I'll say they'd help! Wow! That would be great! IcemanUSA: you are absolutely right - it would be much faster to collaborate. I'm pretty quick at putting terrain together - if someone (preferably with Windows who can use the Editor) wants to populate the maps with buildings, that would really help. Similarly, anyone who is good at taking a .blend file and creating a .physicalobjectgroup file for it is welcome to pick up my modelling efforts.

Actually, this is an area I've been looking hard at. The maps I've been creating are geared towards some sort of campaign. The intended order is: </font> Sea Cliffs - start at the coastline and take the inland base, ready for the strike inland.</font>Volcanic Deposits - seize both bases to secure this area.</font>Jungle (planned) - a "From A to B" gauntlet run through the dense terrain against many light targets.</font>The Dam - starting below the Dam, fight up and passed the Dam to obtain the base in the NE corner.</font>Desolation City (planned) - a destroyed Urban/Industrial scenario. Retrieve information about a secret military base.</font>Crystalus (planned) - storm a military base set amongst the crystal landscape of a strange moon.</font> So - as far as maps go, I've done 4 out of 7. Where I've got bogged down is on the modelling side - I need models that aren't part of the standard set, so I've been learning Blender. Now I've got to the point where I can actually model the things I can sketch I need to learn how to get them in game. It's all progress - my main problem is finding time. One thing I've wondered about is some sort of trigger system for (single player) maps. If I secure a base, could that trigger an event (like a resupply of ammo, more enemy tanks deploying, or a set of enemy tanks that were holding another base moving out to retake this one?). A trigger system would allow a scenario designer to make a more interactive world where secured buildings have impact on the game play. Another point: buildings with names like CommStation and SensorStation cry out to have a real effect on gameplay. For example, a CommStation might allow all tanks to see all enemies seen by other friendly tanks. A SensorStation might boost the range of all Sensor and Jammer units.

Cool - glad it worked (that also means if I buy a widescreen monitor I can still play this game )

I've not had this issue but I can give you a possible solution. My guess is that your monitor won't display the default resolution for the game. However, you can change the resolution by editting the DropTeamSettings.dat file. Make a spare copy of DropTeamSettings.dat for a backup. Here's an excerpt from the file - you should change the numbers under DisplayWidth and DisplayHeight to something your system supports. </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">... ViewDistance 10000 DisplayBitDepth 32 DisplayWidth 1280 DisplayHeight 1024 RemotePort 9967 LocalPort ...</pre>

I've not had a lot of time recently (Curling and other related issues!) but I'm hoping to get a first test put together. I've read through Clay's documentation on setting spotting points and hull collisions. I've looked at the stuff on the wiki. I just need to sit down and "Do It".

I don't mind having background music - I usually supply it from my rolling collection of music playing in QuodLibet anyway. I can see that people might like to specify a directory of music and have DropTeam play tracks at random from there.

Depends on how disciplined the cutters were. Humans have a tendancy to shoot jammers and sensors on sight, and their loss is reported to the team. It would require iron nerves on the part of the Hermes to resist the temptation to shoot the sensor...

Ah Death Gulch. I made a mistake - I should have stuck a sensor jammer and sensor combo next to that eastern tower so I could see when Jung tried to steal it. By the time I realised it had been captured (I'd just destroyed the North-Eastern tower) it was too close to the end time to complete a capture or destroy it. Good timing and technique by Jung et al closed the door in my face several times as I tried to "Hurri" the tower out of existence. Fun fun fun!

Actually, you can read all about it on the Wiki because it's the one I built for the tutorial on map design. Nexus 6 Map tutorial Note to self: finish tidying up the tools and release them pronto!

One other note - don't lie in the scenario file. Attempting to load a 513x513 .raw file into a scenario with </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"><WidthVertices>1025</WidthVertices> <HeightVertices>1025</HeightVertices> </pre>

As far as I understand it (and it seems consistent based on the object positions), the size of the map in metres is: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">WidthVertices * VertexSpacing</pre>

I'll mount all weapon systems externally on hardpoints. There are hardpoints under the nose and under each wing. Maybe one under the tail if we want to get a really vicious flying brick... That is consistent with all the existing units. I might eventually look at creating new weapon-system mounts for generic use but that will come later. Right now, getting this to fly in game is the next trick. As for a name, I can think of nothing more suitable than Icarus. After all, flying too close to the sun would almost certainly be bad for this craft.

'Bout time I gave an update (just to prove I've not been totally idle in the interim). 432 triangles, so it's hardly high-poly. With turrets mounted on various points, it should be in line with the tanks and other units. Most of the tanks seem to be in the 750 triangles range without turrets. Now that I've finally got a grip on the model, I shall try and turn it into something in-game.

Both Volcanic Deposits and Sea Cliffs have twice the dimensions of "standard" DropTeam maps, so that four times as many vertices. Coupled with the vertex distance is reduced from 30m to 20m to keep the maps a sane size, and you're pushing a lot more polygons. Now, both maps play fine on my system (AMD64 3400+ 1Gb GeForce 6800GT 256M) but I concede that this may be a problem for older machines. You will be relieved to know that both "The Dam" and "Desert Mesa" use the same dimensions as the other DropTeam maps, so hopefully they will play better for you.

That was something I did with Desert Mesa - there are four bases to control in Territory mode so you have to work out what you wish to hold, what you wish to attack and what you want to destroy. Hopefully everyone can have a hack at Desert Mesa when the next release is rolled out.

In Linux, I take screenshots by </font> Switch to Window mode (in Options)</font>Press "Print Screen" or click on the screenshot applet (if you have it)</font>Save the file to somewhere convenient.</font>