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Topic: Aftermath (Read 128738 times)
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Megagun
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Well.. I can't see any text. Text on buttons, text when you want to buy ships, "loading" text at the beginning, briefing text when you click "new game"....
The only text I am able to see at other resolutions than 1024x768 are the texts you can see in the main game itself (such as cargo, minerals list, and such.)
I recently updated my video cards drivers.. I'm running a (old i know) s3 Savage4 card.
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thatsteveguy
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MadGap,
As far as status indicators go, here's what I thought of. When I'm in a battle right now when there's a lot of ships, targeting one is the last things I want to do because then if I get close to the targeted ship, I often get nailed from outside the screen by another ship I can't see. Since we do have two hands, what about putting in zoom in/zoom out keys? By default set it up as the arrow keys with 'up' being zoom in and 'down' being zoom out. Limit the zooming so that it can't get bigger than your radar and can't get smaller than having your ship and your current target, (which is the default view you have now). That would take care of being able to see everything, but I'd recommend having an option to set the zooming so that it's the way it is now, (it works well and is simple). Lastly, as far as the status of ships, have say the right arrow key cause the game to display bars to the right of each ship kind of like this, (excuse crude ascii art). Only while you hold the key down though.
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So you'd have forward and aft hull , (left top and bottom bars), and forward and aft shield, (right top and bottom). Color the hull indicator bars for whichever team the ship is on, (red for enemy, green for ally, blue for nuetral maybe?), and the shield bars could always just be cyan. This would enable you to get instant status on all ships visually, yet the default view would be uncluttered.
The only disadvantage of this is that then you wouldn't be able to use the mouse for combat, (don't know if you have anything planned in that vein). I have to admit that being able to aim weapons with the mouse would be cool. 
Well, now I'm 2 cents poorer.
-TSG
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« Last Edit: July 03, 2004, 05:02:41 am by thatsteveguy »
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Madgap
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I just finished integrating Ogg Vorbis with with my DirectMusic based sound system. Do you think it would be alright if I used some of the 3DO music from UQM? Is there someone I need to contact first for permission?
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JonoPorter
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dont take my word on this but,
I believe it woulb be alright, since, they are released under the licences they are under. also since you are not releasing yours as a retail and do not plan to, I dont think they would have problem with you using thier music.
they most likely will say "as long as you give us credit for it, its alright with us."
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« Last Edit: July 04, 2004, 12:57:48 pm by BioSlayer »
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JonoPorter
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I just thought of the most interesting of ideas.
mix your game engine with diablo. not it terms of going down to the depth of hell to fight satan, but in terms of special skills like chained lighting, or summon minions to fight at your side. having special items bosses drop that are unique. If done right it could be very interesting, and potentialy fun.
though the amount of effort to make such a game would be beyond me at the moment.
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« Last Edit: July 04, 2004, 01:04:49 pm by BioSlayer »
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Madgap
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I think what I'm going to do is let people pick their own music files. Something like: a file in the Music directory called Hyperspace.ogg will be played when the player is in hyperspace, Battle.ogg when fighting, etc... Keeps the file size down and lets people hear what they want.
In other news: I'm adding mouse support during truespace mode. You can use the mouse to select ships, issue commands to ships in your fleet, manipulate objects, etc... It's pretty cool and works better than I thought it would. So now you will be able to order some of your ships to hang back, while having others attack specific targets.
It's not perfect, but it's a start.
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« Last Edit: July 04, 2004, 09:52:47 pm by Madgap »
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Megagun
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Reinstalled directX, reinstalled my graphics card, but it still isn't fixed (the weird non-displaying texts bug)
also: is this normal?
It seems to be related to light-reflections. When I turn my ship, those squares change from visibility to invisibility.
Maybe an idea: lower gfx quality options (such as: no lighting, low texture mode, low nebula texturing, and such..)
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« Last Edit: July 04, 2004, 10:02:59 pm by Megagun »
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Madgap
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Ok, that's definately a problem with your card, not the program...maybe a texture memory problem. I did some searching online for that card:
"Compounding the Savage3D's teething problems were drivers that needed constant updates, over 30 and counting as of the writing of this article, and no less than three BIOS flashes for the cards that were based on the early Savage3D chips at that time.
The final nail in the Savage3D's coffin came in the form of its very limited on board frame buffer support. 2, 4, or a maximum of 8 total megabytes of on card ram were all the Savage3D could handle, which made cards based on the S3 chip look pale to buyers when compared to the many 16MB offerings from the competition. "
I'm afraid I'm going to have to issue my second one of these:
- Aftermath does not support the S3 Savage4 video card.
Sorry buddy. 
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thatsteveguy
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In other news: I'm adding mouse support during truespace mode. You can use the mouse to select ships, issue commands to ships in your fleet, manipulate objects, etc... It's pretty cool and works better than I thought it would. So now you will be able to order some of your ships to hang back, while having others attack specific targets.
It's not perfect, but it's a start.
I'm stoked on the mouse support. I can't wait till you get it out. Related to the whole zooming thing, I think you should set the mouse wheel forward and back for zooming instead of a key on the keyboard. I would also still like a key, (or mouse button), that brings up status indicators next to every ship like I mentioned in my previous post.
Actually, I just had a second thought about the zooming. If you're going to be issuing commands to many ships in your fleet, perhaps you should set the camera so that it points at the average middle of all enemy and alliance ships.
I really like the idea of a high speed strategy with this, via mouse controlled fleet combat. It has the potential to be very fun and I believe you can implement it very well.
Cheers
-TSG
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Mos
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Why not improve the strategic portion of the game? I'd like to see mining drones buzzing around systems after you build them, as well as the ability to set patrols and such. Multiple fleets would be fantastic. What if both sides had to work? I'd like to do something like launching a fleet (tying up their resources) at System X and then launching a second attack against their starbase at System Y.
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Mos
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I've hacked the Earth ships a bit. I've found that convoys are normally way too powerful compared to anything you might get, making convoy raids far too unprofitable, as well as making the game pointlessly difficult given that you can't run away from encounters very well.
The regular nukes now have these properties:
EnergyUsage: 4
RechargeRate: 24
Previously, a group of, say, 11 ships might have one hell of a battle against only 2 uber-dreadnaughts with standard escort. Either the fleet is destroyed or only a few are left, making space incredibly dangerous and convoy raiding pointless until you have a massive fleet. But why shouldn't 20,000 credits (10 ships + yours) be enough to profitably raid transports? This modification allows you to shoot 3 round bursts.
In normal circumstances, at the start of the battle, the ships will all concentrate on one or two targets and destroy them pretty easily. Standard Ur-Quan vessels are now roughly equivilant to human ships - the winner of any one conflict between the two depends on who fires first. If the Ur-Quan gets off his shot first, the human will be destroyed. On the other hand, 3 nukes can take one out. I thought about making them a little more powerful, but I don't want to increase their armor rating too much. I left it as it is.
I also reduced the armor rating on AutoFighters from 10 to 2, making sure they're fragile as they should be. Pretty much any explosion will take these guys out now. This gives human ships an actual chance against them, because currently fighting the damn things is difficult as hell.
Finally, is there a way to add ships and weapons? As an experiment, I changed galaxy.dat and added new entries so I could purchase Ur-Quan ships, but that didn't work. Specifically, I copied and pasted the Ur-Quan entry and changed "Team: Ur-Quan" to "Team: Federation." The only way I managed to get Ur-Quan ships purchasable was to replace the Light Cruiser and its weapons with the Ur-Quan equivilant. There must be a better way?
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Madgap
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The price of playing a beta I'm afraid. There have been massive changes to the save file format since the last version. The old save files don't have nearly enough information. However, maybe to make it easier I'll let you start the game with a very large amount of money, so you won't have to do as much mining.
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« Last Edit: July 05, 2004, 07:35:22 pm by Madgap »
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Madgap
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That's the latest public version. The next release will be .70, but still needs some work.
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Deep Jiffa Owns j00!