Topic: New cloak not working as advertised  (Read 16847 times)

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Lepton1

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #140 on: July 23, 2003, 05:01:22 am »
I have a dumb question.  Did this whole PPD-cloak interaction with a CTD happen before this patch?  If so, why have I never heard of it and why was it not fixed?  If it is just happening with this patch, why is that so??  Is it a graphic error???  It is hard to believe that maybe because somewhere in there the code to deal with possible loss of lock for the PPD being faulty would cause a CTD.  It seems as if a number of CTDs have to do with graphics issues.  I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts on the issue.

EmeraldEdge

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #141 on: July 23, 2003, 07:51:48 am »
Wow, just tried out the Cloak/PPD thing.  OUCH!  That's bad, once it hit hull, hello desktop.  

Mog

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #142 on: July 23, 2003, 08:18:10 am »
Hang on a mo, shouldn't the PPD require a lock-on to be able to fire?

EmeraldEdge

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #143 on: July 23, 2003, 08:22:08 am »
It's always been able to fire at a cloaked target, as far as I remember.  I seem to remember having some really one sided battles against the I-XCB, as it took it's 6 PPD and whittled away at me.  Cloak didn't do much to help either.  It was a long slow death, I couldn't catch up to him and no plasma would reach, so it was bye-bye Emerald.  Anyhow, this is a bad bug.  

TarMinyatur

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #144 on: July 23, 2003, 08:48:59 am »
Quote:

I have a dumb question.  Did this whole PPD-cloak interaction with a CTD happen before this patch?




That is an excellent question. I know that the PPD does not do 500 damage against the hull of cloaked ships in EAW 2.036. I'm not certain what happens in OP 2.5.3.8.

Screen shot

The PPD also ignores the cloak chart. I've not seen a pulse do less than maximum yet.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2003, 10:33:32 am by TarMinyatur »

Corbomite

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #145 on: July 23, 2003, 09:27:34 am »
Unless someone beats me to it, I'll reinstall 2538 this afternoon and find out. Since it is based on 2036, however, I doubt it will be there.

Quote:

Hang on a mo, shouldn't the PPD require a lock-on to be able to fire?




All DF weapons can fire without a lock on, your chance of hitting is just very, very slim. I have managed to hit with the PPD on a cloaked ship before, just not very often. If it is done ala SFB (there's that term again!!!!    ), each pulse must role for it's own wave lock, i.e. the rest don't get free rides once one hits.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 pm by Corbomite »

EmeraldEdge

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #146 on: July 23, 2003, 09:39:55 am »
I do seem to remember the "final" EAW patch had a few showstoppers and they did another to fix them.  

Dogmatix!

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #147 on: July 23, 2003, 11:00:13 am »
I really hope Dave decides to go ahead and at least take care of the PPD vs cloaked ship CTD issue.  That's going to really be a problem in light of the fact that given the new benefits to cloaking, more people will be using it.


A lot of us have been doing a lot of work singing the praises of OP and buying community members free copies to drum up support for and interest in the game.  On top of that, the many, many very nice fixes that Dave implemented would seem to be almost for naught if we have a show-stopper bug like this one to contend with.


I could probably learn to live with the PPD DAC issue, but the PPD CTD bug is gonna be tough.


Crosses fingers....







 

jimmi7769

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #148 on: July 23, 2003, 11:03:31 am »
Quote:

I do seem to remember the "final" EAW patch had a few showstoppers and they did another to fix them.  




How many final KISS tours have their been???

David Ferrell

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #149 on: July 23, 2003, 11:38:43 am »
The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.

Thanks,

Dave  

jimmi7769

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #150 on: July 23, 2003, 11:47:38 am »
Quote:

The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.

Thanks,

Dave  




Come on,  Just one more Tour..........what could it hurt.............

EmeraldEdge

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #151 on: July 23, 2003, 11:49:31 am »
Quote:

The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.

Thanks,

Dave  




THANKS!  

Dogmatix!

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #152 on: July 23, 2003, 12:28:31 pm »
Quote:

The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.

Thanks,

Dave  




Thanks, Dave.  That's very good to know.  


Ah, the life of an aging Rock Star!    

jimmi7769

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #153 on: July 23, 2003, 12:30:29 pm »
Quote:

Quote:

The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.

Thanks,

Dave  




Thanks, Dave.  That's very good to know.  


Ah, the life of an aging Rock Star!      




It's tough haveing to Rock and Roll all night and Party Every Day.

SPQR Renegade001

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #154 on: July 23, 2003, 12:52:50 pm »
Quote:

The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.
Thanks,
Dave  




Do I detect a note of sarcasm in that "Thanks"?

Thank you Dave. Cloak and PPD performing out of spec... No biggie. We'll update our charts and more forward. A reproducable CTD bug would kill the Great Green Hope.

You can expect some thank you notes over this.  

Pestalence

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #155 on: July 23, 2003, 01:15:11 pm »
Quote:

Quote:

Does everyone here have to number crunch or nitpick for bugs.. reporting them is one thing and the details are nice, however, David already poisted that this patch for OP is FINAL.. in other words, there will not be any more patch support client side for Orion Pirates, so bug hunting and such is pointless, unless it is to just announce them to the community...

as David Ferrell said, go play and have fun and stop nit picking the game to death.. it takes a lot of fun out of it for many of us, especially when the Developer of the game is not supporting the game any more...

I know many want OP to be the PC version of SFB, however many systems and functions have to be approximations of the SFB rules or just changed outright for balance sake.. maybe some look like bugs.... a CTD is a bug, but the Cloak was a slight oversight and has been redifigned by Taldren...

Read the OP Cover page 1 again in the Preamble of the manual... SFC : OP is "Based" on  SFB, not a direct copy of it....

just consider 1 thing before posting, This game is based on SFC and many things are approximations of the SFB rules, however, this game is Taldren's and the changes that they make is completely up to them.. if they want the Energizer Bunny drum across the screen in the middle of a battle because Taldren wants it there.. then so be it.. it is their game and their game engine and coding...

David said to get use to this patch version and play accordingly as the game is now Final version 2.5.4.10 and no future patches are coming out...

as for the damage table, it was an oversight, and David made a statement.. thus changing the way the Readme.txt reads.

just my $.02  




I find it insulting to think that a quest for knowledge ie "Can you use the PPD against cloaked Rom without crashing?" is some sort of political or personal attack. And the thing that really bites is that this bug (in the truest "accidental" use of the term) is just another excuse by you to accuse people of being ultra orthodox SFB purests, which seems in your post to be right up there with burning the flag. That in my eyes, is just as intolerable as trying to suppress this sort of CTD information. You may not be able to change it or fix it but it is important to know it exists in the game engine. To specifically quote you " to get use to this patch version and play accordingly ".

Next thing you know somebody will be quoting the "SFC is not SFB" mantra as an excuse for criminal acts, along with the Twinkie Defence. Or better still, a good old fashioned book burning. Not acceptable! This is not Oz and The Emerald City isn't.    




I was not insulting anyone.. if you take it as such, then so be it.. I was just merely stating sometihing called..

FACTS

Fact was that at the time, David had announced that support for OP was ended.. no further patches...

Bugs in how the game performs, such as CTD or ships not appearing should be reported so the such items may get a hotfix when Taldren gets time...

Bugs for how weapons operate (when compared to SFB) are not bugs, but most probably game design for balance sake....

as for the damage mitigation on cloak, that was a mistake and David owned up to it and stated for everyone to consider it 67% full damage and 33% half... thus people need to edit their read-me files accordingly...

however it is the number crunching that people do, that makes testers like myself feel unappreciative... not even 5 hours after the patch is released is there a bug posting and flames against the Testers and Taldren...

We, the testers that is, tested 10 builds of SFC OP before this patch was released... we overlooked a couple of things because in a previous patch version, it was working correctly, and as such (speaking for myself) I took it for granted that it was still working and did not test to check numbers...

the point of a PC game or any game is to have fun... not analize it to death.. unless you have fun analizing... many of us just like going into a game and playing to have FUN, not to see if 87% of my photons hit at range 8 on normal load... I go into game to blow something up or to see if i can survive against superior odds...

I am not against SFB purists.. however, it is in the liscense agreement and the Game Manual that SFC is not SFB but is "Based" closely on the SFB Doomsday Ruleset... and it also goes on to state that some things may be changed from SFB standard to promote fair play, balance, etc...

you clicked Agree an the liscense agreement, thus accepting SFC for SFC and not SFB... thus it completely invalidates any SFB Purist claims...

as for me, yes i do want SFC II OP to be as close to SFB as possible because i enjoy the game play..

however when the developer states that support is ended (unless CTD or other major occurance) then it is time to put the penicls down and enjoy the fruits of the labor... IE, such as this cloak issue... the topic heading itself in insulting to Taldren... it could have been titled

Patch 2.5.4.10 has bug in Cloak...

instead of announcing "New cloak not working as advertised "

first off, it is not a new cloak.. it is the cloaking system that has been revised to be more effective in OP

second, Taldren did not Advertise the cloak, all they did was post links for Download and a bug fix list and some game adjustments... I didn't see a web ad stating the capabilities of the SFC OP cloak system...

is it a bug, yes, is it bad enough to prevent game play.. No

another bug is that a Cloaked ship can benifit from ECM... I didn't see a post on this until the middle of the topic thread... does it prevent a fun game play enviroment? No...

but the ECM vs Damage on a cloaked ship are bugs that sort of cancel each other out... thus not a big deal.. maybe lists as a 3 or 4 on a 10 point severity scale...

now the PPD on a cloaked ship causing CTD, that is a showstopper and can prevent game play and is now being looked into by Taldren...

people the game is what it is.. a game, and once the CTD is fixed, then it is a Finished Game... if David looks into the Cloak Damage Bug and looks into the ECM by Cloaked ship bug, then that is up to him... if not, then so be it, I am happy either way and am not losing any sleep over it...

for a pure SFB online game.. www.sfbonline.com will allow people to play .. but as far as OP, taldren tried to get it as close to SFB as possible without going overboard.. they kept it fun. weapons and systems got adjustments, and as such... may be approximations of the SFB rule, or just flat out changed all together.. thus reinforcing again what the game manual states... SFC is not SFB but is "Based" on SFB and changes witll be done if needed.. (read as either to SFB standard or away from SFB standard, whichever makes the game more fun)...

I advocate on several web sites that SFC is based on SFB.. I never claimed SFC was SFB on PC nor have I said I wanted SFC to be SFB on PC... but I do think that SFC should stick as close to SFB as possible, so long as it does not lose the games fun factor... I want to enjoy my game, not tear it apart...
as for the model Size cheat, i found that and reported it.. and thus khoromag Gaming Services created the Model.siz file to reneder models correctly in game... the Plasma Snare Bug on the Gorn Plasma Snare.. i reported that as well and it got fixed... I reported some things i found wrong server side that were not working as intended... basically the things that make the game unplayable...

Firesoul is the one who is attempting to keep the game as close to SFB as possible and has done and excellent job of doing so... he posted quite a few bugs in the Testers Forum following the 2538 patch... most of the listing in the Readme.txt file were things Firesoul found as far as SFB or actual game bugs.... even Firesoul's Shipname.txt file was used in the last patch....

do i complain, no.. why, because it kept the game close to SFB as possible (which i agree with) yet also kept the fun factor (which i agree with changes from SFB or to SFB whichever is more fun when playing)...

the issue came from a ship system that was doing 33% full damage, 33% half damage, and 33% quarter damage in a previous build between 2538 and 25410.. and as such, it simply got overlooked.... not the end of the world, and certainly the changes were not advertised... the only thing ever stated was that the Cloak was improved.. the Readme contained inaccurate information... however it was not advertised in the least...

am i a SFB Purist.. No, but i do support using SFB as a basis for SFC and that SFC should approximate SFB as much as possible, but not as a mirror image, there has to be a fun factor and game balance somewhere... so if changing a SFB weapon damage table, or adjusting a ruleset for applying damage is needed, then so be it..

so don't get me wrong.... all i was doing was replying to a thread 3 pages long what was still arguing about the cloak issue even after David stated that support for OP was ended barring any critical game play problems.. which a CTD is critical game play problem... any other fixes that David is willing to incorporate into OP is purely a blessing.. but as it stands, the game is what it is, so go and have fun and enjoy until the PPD CTD is fixed....

 
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 pm by Pestalence »

Sethan

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #156 on: July 23, 2003, 01:56:01 pm »
Quote:

The only thing that could bring me out of retirement is a CTD, and unfortunately
you have found one.

Thanks,

Dave  




David - thank you.

I never cease to be impressed at Taldren's commitment to doing the right thing.

...especially given how sick you guys have to be of looking at OP code by this time.

Ifrit

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #157 on: July 23, 2003, 02:30:55 pm »
Dave, any chance we could add a setting for anistropic mipmap filtering, if the patch is going to be patched?  That could really improve the appearance of the lightmaps, and it probably requires only one line of code.  It might even improve the appearance of, er, cloaked ships?

I had to at least try to keep this on topic... seriously, though, mipmap filtering makes a big difference when rendering light maps.  

FireSoul

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #158 on: July 23, 2003, 02:54:03 pm »
Quote:


Firesoul is the one who is attempting to keep the game as close to SFB as possible and has done and excellent job of doing so... he posted quite a few bugs in the Testers Forum following the 2538 patch... most of the listing in the Readme.txt file were things Firesoul found as far as SFB or actual game bugs.... even Firesoul's Shipname.txt file was used in the last patch....





Not quite.. sorry man, but with your thanks, I have to straighten it out a bit:

1- I do it in Taldren's style, but as close to SFB as I can.
2- it's a shipnames.txt and strings.txt made just for this patch, extracted from with I've already done before for my own project. It was easy: I just had to write another perl script to so it.

... and 3..
.. yes, the majority were things that I had found.. but a lot were reported to me FROM here, the general forums. Often, I merely copy-pasted private messages. It's because of everyone here that I did this. (I'm soo glad you noticed tho, Pestalence.   )

TarMinyatur

  • Guest
Re: New cloak not working as advertised
« Reply #159 on: July 23, 2003, 03:27:27 pm »
Pestalence wrote:
Quote:

...however it is the number crunching that people do, that makes testers like myself feel unappreciative... not even 5 hours after the patch is released is there a bug posting and flames against the Testers and Taldren...




This is clearly directed at me. If I were still part of the testing circle I would have found these bugs. It wouldn't have been the first time that I found bugs that nobody else did for whatever reasons. A few bugs were missed. Big deal. Nobody thinks you are at fault and should be held responsible.

Anyways, I don't see any anti-Taldren or anti-tester posts in this thread (other than mine???). I think the general public appreciates the work that Taldren and the unpaid beta testers do and have done for years.
 
I think the SFC vs SFB argument is pointless.  Does the game work as the manual and the readme describe? That's all that probably matters in Taldren's eyes now. Of course, we will all have our preferences on the details and should feel free to express them!

Taldren has used the SFC community's insight and experience as a valuable resource to improve their (I like to say "our") game. I'm very impressed at how bold,  thoughtful, and dedicated Taldren has been in the evolution of the game.