Guy, on Mar 8 2006, 07:24 PM, said:

I hope you're only imagining it. There shouldn't be anything wrong here but I'll do some tests just to be sure.
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Probably. Although I just tried the weapon distance plug from the graphics thingy, and it looked far more familiar(and much harder) :mellow: .

My defence pods stopped working, possibly after I accepted a 'destroy voinian fleet build-up' mission at outpost alpha. I will test this as opportunity allows; if they start working when I buy a new ship, that will prove something interesting although I do not know what.

The fronteer express missions occur far too frequently. This was a problem with the original too I recall, but it bears fixing. With the randomisation plug-in, it's even worse.

EVO is a lot harder without the monty mython. I have no idea what I'm going to do to kill the dreadnaught. Maybe do the azzy string first and use an azdara.

Asc, on Mar 8 2006, 02:42 PM, said:

My defence pods stopped working, possibly after I accepted a 'destroy voinian fleet build-up' mission at outpost alpha. I will test this as opportunity allows; if they start working when I buy a new ship, that will prove something interesting although I do not know what.
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If, by not work, you mean that they don't always launch when you want them too, you have to make sure that you select a target before trying to deploy them. I don't know if this is intended behavior, but you can't set the defence pods as mines. Once you select a target (it can be any ship in the system), you are then free to deploy your defence pods at will.

Speaking of which, using defence pods is a great way to destroy enemy ships and fighters, especially if you use them as mines. The annoying part, however, is having to constantly select a new target if you're managing to blow up your enemies quickly.

This post has been edited by GutlessWonder : 08 March 2006 - 03:58 PM

GutlessWonder, on Mar 8 2006, 07:55 PM, said:

If, by not work, you mean that they don't always launch when you want them too, you have to make sure that you select a target before trying to deploy them. I don't know if this is intended behavior, but you can't set the defence pods as mines. Once you select a target (it can be any ship in the system), you are then free to deploy your defence pods at will.

Speaking of which, using defence pods is a great way to destroy enemy ships and fighters, especially if you use them as mines. The annoying part, however, is having to constantly select a new target if you're managing to blow up your enemies quickly.
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Right you are. Did they work that way in O? I never knew they wouldn't fire without a target, and I must have used them as my main secondary on half a dozen pilots. :blink:

Asc, on Mar 8 2006, 09:42 AM, said:

Probably. Although I just tried the weapon distance plug from the graphics thingy, and it looked far more familiar(and much harder) :mellow: .
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Okay, I checked it out and it is correct. They do go pretty far.

Asc, on Mar 8 2006, 09:42 AM, said:

The fronteer express missions occur far too frequently. This was a problem with the original too I recall, but it bears fixing. With the randomisation plug-in, it's even worse.
EVO is a lot harder without the monty mython. I have no idea what I'm going to do to kill the dreadnaught. Maybe do the azzy string first and use an azdara.
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Yes, I the annoyance there is that they're in the bar rather than the mission computer. There was a plug which fixed that but as this is the way the original works I'm not going to change it. The random plug doesn't make them occur any more frequently though.

Asc, on Mar 8 2006, 12:06 PM, said:

Right you are. Did they work that way in O? I never knew they wouldn't fire without a target, and I must have used them as my main secondary on half a dozen pilots. :blink:
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Heh, yes this is the way it has always worked, though I must say I don't quite see why.

That's very odd with the defense pods; as I recall, any weapon that requires you to have a target selected before firing is either a turret (i.e. guided launch) or a guided weapon (i.e. guided in-flight). In the latter case, the weapon will only explode if it encounters the targetted ship, which is clearly not what the defense pods do. Thus I have to assume that they're turreted for some reason.

The 'destroy zidigar photographer' mission's time limit expires the same day you launch.

Also, AI Azdaras are totally useless.

Derakon, on Mar 9 2006, 01:36 PM, said:

That's very odd with the defense pods; as I recall, any weapon that requires you to have a target selected before firing is either a turret (i.e. guided launch) or a guided weapon (i.e. guided in-flight). In the latter case, the weapon will only explode if it encounters the targetted ship, which is clearly not what the defense pods do. Thus I have to assume that they're turreted for some reason.
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Possibly so that they don't harm the parent ship, which would otherwise be impossible, as freefall-bombs hurt everything. I'm just guessing though, I don't know the specifics of each weapon type, but I do know that the pods are supposed to be short-lived pods with a blast radius and high damage that allow you to, as the name implies, defend yourself. Offensively, however, they do make a great weapon.

If the pods hurt the ship that launched them, it kind of defeats the purpose of being "defense" pods.

Asc, on Mar 9 2006, 06:22 PM, said:

The 'destroy zidigar photographer' mission's time limit expires the same day you launch.

Also, AI Azdaras are totally useless.
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Yes, that's how it is supposed to work. Have you not done the Azdgari string before? You have to fail that mission before you can continue the string. Unfortunately, for some reason fail texts aren't displayed if the CanAbort flag is set so it does leave the player slightly confused at this point.

GutlessWonder, on Mar 10 2006, 11:13 AM, said:

Possibly so that they don't harm the parent ship, which would otherwise be impossible, as freefall-bombs hurt everything. I'm just guessing though, I don't know the specifics of each weapon type, but I do know that the pods are supposed to be short-lived pods with a blast radius and high damage that allow you to, as the name implies, defend yourself. Offensively, however, they do make a great weapon.
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Ah yes, that does make sense. I think the "blast doesn't hurt parent ship" flag wasn't added until 1.0.2.

Guy, on Mar 11 2006, 12:03 AM, said:

Yes, that's how it is supposed to work. Have you not done the Azdgari string before? You have to fail that mission before you can continue the string. Unfortunately, for some reason fail texts aren't displayed if the CanAbort flag is set so it does leave the player slightly confused at this point.
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I have, but I remember killing the photographer and having to redo the mission. Maybe it was in an early version or something.

Oh wait, I remember now. If you don't buy/sell any outfits while on the planet then the mission won't immediately fail when you leave. You can kill the photographer and land again to complete the mission. This achieves nothing though - you'll only get the mission again sooner or later. If you do buy/sell outfits it means you spend an extra day on the surface so that when you leave it's already too late. The mission fails and you can continue the storyline.

Well everything seems to be stable for a bit. Should I release this now?

Thought the Dreadnought was too easy? Well you were right. Sometimes I wonder were bugs come from. Then I decide it's probably Qaanol sneaking into people's computers.
The Salvo Rocket Turret for some reason was doing about 15 times less damage than it should have been. I thought this was significant enough to actually do something about, even though I've already submitted it. So I've just upped a new version with this fix and taken the time to also fix a couple of weapon exit types (I could swear these were all correct!) and fix some larger explodetypes (thanks to Zacha). Also removed a dozen redundant picts (saved 10k!).
So quick! Tell me this is okay so I can resubmit before it's too late!

Awesome.

@guy, on Apr 4 2006, 05:53 PM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

Thought the Dreadnought was too easy? Well you were right.

Ah, the Dreadnaught. You know, part of the fun/terror of fighting that thing under the EVO engine was having no read-out telling you how much armor you had to chew through.... And then, on top of that, not knowing how much its armor was rebuilding when you were running away to let your shields recharge. If you put "faster armor recharge" outfits (ModType 29) on Voinian vessels, would the effect be closer to the original experience? I believe "repair system" outfits do affect AI ships, so it seems possible.... Or have we been through this already?

Oh, and by the way: I noticed that your port, unlike the official one, seems to leave most of the roid types unused in the spobs. Thanks for that -- it's much more plug-friendly.

@guy, on Apr 4 2006, 05:53 PM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

So quick! Tell me this is okay so I can resubmit before it's too late!

Wish I could. Playtesting would sure beat what I have to do today.

@guy, on Mar 8 2006, 05:24 PM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

@asc, on Mar 8 2006, 02:05 PM, said in EVO for EVN Update:
Warping out at 2x results in a much shorter warp-out-run-distance than at 1x. This may have something to do with running it on windows.

This is because Nova actually supports jumping in x2 mode while EV/O would revert to normal speed whenever you jump.

I'm not sure if this would help make your port behave more like the original or less, but here's a thought: The snd resource 129 is used in Nova for x2 jumping, and the jump doesn't go through until the sound finishes playing. If you make sound resource 129 take just as long to play as snd 128 (the normal-speed warp sound) then jumping at either speed will take the same amount of time.

Again, I'm not sure if this is desirable, and, for that matter, I'm not sure if you already have it set up like that, since I don't have a copy of your plug, but I thought I'd throw it out there for the heck of it.

@dr--trowel, on Apr 5 2006, 09:18 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

Ah, the Dreadnaught. You know, part of the fun/terror of fighting that thing under the EVO engine was having no read-out telling you how much armor you had to chew through.... And then, on top of that, not knowing how much its armor was rebuilding when you were running away to let your shields recharge. If you put "faster armor recharge" outfits (ModType 29) on Voinian vessels, would the effect be closer to the original experience?

Er, wouldn't it be easier to just give the ships natural armour regeneration? But you do have a good point there, I think I'll give them armour regen and remove the shield regen.

@dr--trowel, on Apr 5 2006, 09:18 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

I believe "repair system" outfits do affect AI ships, so it seems possible.... Or have we been through this already?

Yup, they do affect AI. We haven't been through this before but what exactly is the relevance? We don't really want to the Dreadnought to suddenly come alive again after you've disabled it.

@qaanol, on Apr 5 2006, 11:15 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

This is because Nova actually supports jumping in x2 mode while EV/O would revert to normal speed whenever you jump.
I'm not sure if this would help make your port behave more like the original or less, but here's a thought: The snd resource 129 is used in Nova for x2 jumping, and the jump doesn't go through until the sound finishes playing. If you make sound resource 129 take just as long to play as snd 128 (the normal-speed warp sound) then jumping at either speed will take the same amount of time.

But this would only serve to make the jump take longer when in x2 mode. EVO would actually disable x2 mode when you jump - simply making the sound longer hardly compares. The official port uses the same sound for both modes but I sped up the x2 one. No point in going out of your way to make a half-avoidance of a non-gameplay-changing new feature of Nova.

(EDIT): Okay, swapped Voinian shield and armour regen. Though I think you'll find it makes little difference. The Dreadnought has a whopping regen rate of 25 with the Supply Ship and Interceptor not far behind on 1.

Noticed something very interesting about EVO though. Ships with less than 100 shields do not regenerate their shields!

This post has been edited by Guy : 06 April 2006 - 03:47 AM

@guy, on Apr 6 2006, 01:32 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

Er, wouldn't it be easier to just give the ships natural armour regeneration? But you do have a good point there, I think I'll give them armour regen and remove the shield regen.

Oh hey, look at that "ArmorRech" field in the ship resource. Oops. I assumed that if armor wasn't recharging, it must not be easy to make it recharge -- and so I lept straight to the convoluted solution.

@guy, on Apr 6 2006, 01:32 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

Yup, they do affect AI. We haven't been through this before but what exactly is the relevance? We don't really want to the Dreadnought to suddenly come alive again after you've disabled it.

I just brought the repair system up as an example of an outf that affects AI ships, to point out that it wasn't outlandish to think that a "faster armor regen" outf might work as well -- I wasn't suggesting actually installing repair systems in the port's ships. (Though I do happen to think that self-repairing AI ships would be a fitting thing to include in a plug that extended story lines involving the Voinians. :))

This post has been edited by Dr. Trowel : 06 April 2006 - 09:16 AM

@guy, on Apr 6 2006, 07:32 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

Noticed something very interesting about EVO though. Ships with less than 100 shields do not regenerate their shields!

That can very well be explained if the implementation of shield recharge is Shield/100 shield points regained every ShieldRech frame, or any other such thing with integer division of Shield/100 giving 0 due to rounding down (as mandated by the C programming language).

@zacha-pedro, on Apr 6 2006, 09:07 AM, said in EVO for EVN Update:

That can very well be explained if the implementation of shield recharge is Shield/100 shield points regained every ShieldRech frame, or any other such thing with integer division of Shield/100 giving 0 due to rounding down (as mandated by the C programming language).

It's not so much "mandated" as "a side-effect of using integers". Integers, by definition, do not record any values to the right of the decimal point, so those values get discarded. If the EV engine used floating-point numbers (a fancy name for numbers that do record values to the right of the decimal point), then you wouldn't have this problem.

Incidentally, that negative shields thing explains something I'd always wondered about - why it takes so long for my shields to start recharging! You can sit for a long time at 0% shields before the recharger kicks in.