ToxicFrog

You, sir, are an Incredibly Sadistic Bastard. I would take my hat off to you, but it has been vaporized, along with myself and the rest of the GCV Troika. I launched from Starpath and plotted a course for Barnard's Star (although I actually came across Pixan in Lennen). When I arrived, there was a Ter/Mil cruiser already attacking it, so I sat back and watched. The fight didn't last long. Once the friendly cruiser was dispatched, it sortied two S-24 Ravens at me; I immediately cloaked and jumped across-system. Interestingly, the cloak system doesn't seem to consume iridium while in hyper, although the radiation meter did increase. The ravens, losing their lock on me, immediately returned to base. After emerging from hyper, I drifted for a few minutes while the hyperdrive recharged and the radiation from the cloaking system dissipated. I then reactivated the cloak and jumped directly towards Pixan, emerging 77km from it. The rest was over fairly quickly. At 50km I launched a missile salvo at it and immediately changed course; it launched another pair of Ravens, but they couldn't see me and went home. At 30km, I launched another salvo and opened fire with my main guns. I caught a glimpse of several PDS turrets locking on to my missiles before the rest of the turrets (it looked like at least 6-8) converged on my Nightstar and blasted it into superheated gas instantly.

Patch seems to be working fine so far, although I don't know about the savegames since I purged them myself...I was only ten hours in or so. ("Only" ten hours in? That would be a serious fraction of the game in anything else!) quote:VCFRevised the NPC threat assessment and prosecution matrix. What the hell does this mean? You'll see....I am suddenly very afraid. quote:VCFNPC carriers and stations can once again launch Space Force Marines Yay! Time to dust off those marine kill-marking templates for my shuttles... quote:Originally posted by Patrik Vanda:Anyway now everythings ok I'll start a new game and practice my skills for all the multiplayer mayhem thats coming up shortly I have yet to see anyone else on the server at the same time I am, unfortunately; it's a pity we don't have some way of setting up multiplayer events in realtime.

I apologize; I thought the F10 camera issues applied only to objects on another map, not your current location as well. In any case, if I find a solution I'll edit it in here in case someone else is having the same issues; until then, I'll cease cluttering this thread.

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: Whats so hard to fathom that when the FPA changes from HS to your current speed or VTOL and you get the message that you are no longer in hyperspace, then guess what - YOU ARE NO LONGER IN HYPERSPACE - and are now radar visible - regardless - of when the specialfx which decloaks the ship, completes? *sheesh* I realize that, and I also realize (having died this way many times) that it is perfectly possible to die while the hyper SFX are still being played. The phenomenon I'm talking about occurs when you are still fully in HS. For example, if you plot a course that takes you through an enemy station in hyper at a relatively low speed. The hyper meter is still counting down, the speed is still well above anything the ship's realspace engines can attain, and no-one has yet said "emerging from hyperspace". [ 06-12-2004, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]

quote:Originally posted by cdrhardboot: (long, pointless rant snipped)Remember, kids: read the manual, or this could be you. There is one thing that caught my eye, though, as perhaps having a point. quote:Originally posted by cdrhardboot: you still have a good 5 seconds where the ship cant fire but can easily be destroyed. I thought nothing is real, you can pass through a planet but lasers wont pass through you? quote:The UC manual, p56 In hyperspace, nothing is real and even though you may seem to fly into things, you cannot collide with them.The manual text seems to be at odds with how the game actually behaves; that is to say, before you start emerging from hyperspace (the timer is still >0:00), you can be targeted on radar and even fired upon. For example, take a Firestorm (hyper transition time of 180s), hunt down an enemy starstation, and tell the CC to fly-to it (you may want to leave the ship in a fighter or shuttle so that you can target the CC and see the hyper time remaining indicator). Typically, when there's still 5-15 seconds left on the timer, the ship will start taking massive amounts of damage as the station opens fire on it. Alternatively, take a Raven out and hyper at the station yourself. My experiments in this area have always resulted in destruction or disabling of the fighter with 8-12% still left on the hyper indicator. The fact that it behaved like this in BCM, too, implies that this is by design (perhaps the no-collisions rule refers only to physical objects, not energy?), but the manual text can be confusing if you see this effect in action.

Both the desktop and the game are running in 32bit, and the JPGs look identical to the original TGAs. What I meant about the altitude is that all three of those images were taken with the ship in exactly the same place, only the camera angle changed, but the altitude is variously reported as 896333 MSL (with the ship floating in a white void), 0 AGL (with the ship appearing to be in midair), and 3611 MSL (with the ship appearing to be resting on the ground). What I meant about the wobbling is that the ship's position only seems to be modified by the detail mesh when the mesh is rendered - so if I zoom out, the ship lies flat, but if I zoom in so that the detail mesh appears, the ship suddenly jumps up and reorients to be lying on the now-sloped terrain. As I pan the camera around the ship and the mesh vanishes and reappears to follow the camera, the ship gets tossed around as the ground shape changes underneath it. I can't see any visible change between 32-bit and 16-bit rendering; perhaps it won't/can't enter 32-bit mode on my system regardless of what it's set up to try?

I followed your instructions - although I'm using an R9200, so there's likely to be at least some difference considering how much more powerful your card is, and cata-4.6 rather than cata-4.4. Desktop is 1280x1024x32, by the way. Apart from the fact that it's now running 800x600, it looks identical. I'll try installing cata-4.4 next, in case they broke something in 4.5. It's good to know, at least, that it's a driver issue and not a game one; I've got a decent chance of finding one that works. [EDIT] Playing with it a bit more...it seems that my ships are sometimes on a slope when they land, hovering in the air, and the camera behaves as though the ground level changes, even when detail mesh is off. Is there a hill mesh there that it's landing on (even with detail meshes off), that the video card isn't rendering? I assumed that the ground was flat if detailed meshes were disabled... [EDIT] 4.4 didn't fix the terrain, and introduced a few new graphical issues. That makes it either a video card problem, or some other aspect of my system. Back on the 4.6 side of things, I've uncovered a few more peculiar graphical glitches that seem to be futzing with the ship's altitude, too. [ 06-11-2004, 01:00 AM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]

The AI has started showing its true colors once again... I'm wandering around Midae4 in a brand shiny new Firestorm when I get jumped by a pair of cruisers and get a bit charred around the edges. A moment later I've retrieved my fighters and jumped back towards base. As I enter hyperspace, Tac informs me that we're being targeted...but there's nothing showing on the screens. The bridge MFDs, showing a sense of the dramatic, chose that moment to flicker with static. Clearly there was something lurking around the system...but it was too late to abort the jump, even if that were the right thing to do. Three minutes later, I'm meshing back into realspace, watching the simulated external view as usual...which meant that I had a perfect view of what happened next. An enemy Stormcarrier rippled into visibility right next to ship - as in, I could have hit it by throwing rocks out the airlock - and tore into me with its turrets. Fortunately, homebase sortied a wing of fighters to help me, and between them and my fast reflexes I was able to get out alive and limp back to base. I spent a lot of time in drydock after that adventure. As a side note, I saw something rather odd just before that. I was tracking a Warmonger and a Spacestar that had gotten into a skirmish, with the Warmonger lying in wait as the Spacestar approached it in hyper. With the Spacestar still ten seconds or so away from emerging from hyper, the Warmonger opened fire on it - and hit! It took away half the Spacestar's shields before it even started meshing back in. Despite this, the eventual victor was the Spacestar, aftera short bout of turret tag. ------------------------------- I now have a note pinned to my command console, reading "DO NOT LET MARINES PILOT SHUTTLES". Having finally made planetfall on Centris without slamming my Nightstar into the surface at lethal speed, I prepared to deploy drones. Taking up station 7km above a desolate area of the planet, I ordered four marines to the shuttles, gave them drone deployment waypoints, and launched them. That was when it started to go horribly wrong. Shuttles 1, 2, and 4 deployed normally, although they seemed to spend more time than normal circling my carrier. SC-3, however, promptly shot up to 16km, blatantly violating the accel tolerances of the ship. I suppose what happened next should have come as no suprise; at the g that ship had to pull to climb so fast, the pilot had surely blacked out. SC-3 tipped over, and even faster, it seemed, plummeted into the planet surface and immolated itself in a giant fireball. Perhaps the fate of their comrade instilled a greater than normal sense of caution in the other three marines, for they spent far longer than normal circling the landing sites, darting in for a landing before changing their minds and pulling up, and suchlike...but eventually, all three of the remaining shuttles had landed and deployed their mining drones. In the meantime, I had shed 6km of altitude, in the hopes that if one of them screwed up while landing on the carrier, the shorter fall would increase everyone's chances of survival. SC-1 and SC-2 made it back intact. I have no idea what happened to SC-4, but the comms uplink registered a sudden increase in engine power, then nothing. I can only surmise that, made overconfident by his successful landing, the pilot gunned the engines for takeoff and promptly embedded his craft in a rock at 700mps. I suspect that the marines' flight training, if indeed they have had any, involved extended sessions with Lt. Jim Beam. [ 06-11-2004, 03:25 AM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]

1. Oops. Sorry. 2. Hmm...perhaps I was firing from inside its shields. 3. The contrails were at full v; it would generate a 'lump' of particles, and then stop, and then start generating them again, etc...as though my FO were tapping his foot on the accelerator or something. I'll see if I can grab a screenshot, if you like.

I'm having the same problem in 2.00.10 - four drones deployed, but three of them are missing (and my incompetent shuttle pilots can't seem to retrieve the last one). I've got the savegames handy if you want them, SC.

Dropped onto S4 for a few minutes this morning...no-one else was on, but I had fun anyways getting myself killed. Apart from the station jumping about slightly, it was surprisingly smooth - indistinguishable from singleplayer. Nice netcode this game has.

(SC, I'd like to apologize for wasting your time with my earlier posts. I wasn't thinking entirely clearly, but that's no excuse.) Initial thoughts... First of all, the overhauled graphics look gorgeous, and I like the new soundtrack, too. On the other hand, I concur with DrugCheese WRT the GUI beeps: they seem incongrously loud. The mouse control is nice and smooth, allowing me to finally retire my less-than-entirely-functional Cyclone 3d. I initially found the new HUD rather distracting, but adapted to it quickly - although, the status bars and their labels on the left are misaligned at 1280x1024; I don't know if this is a game issue or a gfx driver issue, but it's a bug in something. It works fine (and silky smooth) at 1280x960, though. The slight alterations to the controls have claimed their first casualty; while engaging Zerin Station (I launched from it, then spun around and salvoed all my missiles at it), I managed to eject from my CC while trying to activate ECM rather than Jamming. I had a great view of the following battle, though, and my leaderless crew aquitted themselves well before they were killed. It also gave me a chance to ogle the new shield effects. The one major gripe I have is the new speeds. It takes years just to get back to the station you launched from - or at least, it seems that way after BCM. I can't even express my speeds in kps any more without looking silly, let alone fractions of c. It's also somewhat bizarre to see a missile slam into a station's hull, followed by the station's shields - quite some distance beyond the hull - lighting up. On the whole, though...I like it. I like it a lot. Further thoughts now that I've played it for a while: The long pauses in bridge crew speech break the immersion somewhat, although I can just imagine them consulting their script as they give reports. The drive trails also seem to be intermittent at times; perhaps I'm hitting some kind of particle limit? On the plus side, I just found a shiny new Crumicron and 1200k worth of ground-defence hardware in a cargo pod. [ 06-10-2004, 01:08 AM: Message edited by: ToxicFrog ]

Yes, actually - the cave of university. I blame BCM for my low English grade. I tend to operate on the assumption that if it's still on the front page, it's not dead...

Part of my inner geek is now whimpering in the corner, something about 'betrayal'. On the other hand... *waves around his hardcopy BCM manual* No search function, but nice fast load times and no alt-tabbing!

Just expanding on the info in the posts above a bit... DaemonTools doesn't appear to cause this problem either. Adaptec CD Creator also appears to be unaffecting, which is rather suprising to me as it seems to break everything else. CloneCD can coexist peacefully with it, and it also seems (after some experimentation) that turning off autorun can lead to a number of other problems, but not this one. More games seem to have "safedisc barf" on NT-based windowses than on win32s, but I've seen it on both. Laptop drives also seem to be a serious sticking point; I once had a laptop running 2k that wouldn't play any of my safedisc'd games. It never ceases to amuse me that the copy protection scheme in my old copy of Wing Commander not only is faster and takes less CPU time than safedisc, but is also more effective at dissuading piracy.