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21361

General Discussion / Re: Phasing and Whatnot

« on: August 28, 2012, 08:09:52 PM »

that actually works pretty well...

Made a quick mod in case anyone wants to try it

http://www.mediafire.com/?c7o0gkkeoqqdtiu

hoping this becomes official

Yep, it does. Made the change earlier today

21362

Mods / Re: Blackrock Drive Yards - First version release!

« on: August 28, 2012, 08:08:27 PM »

Didn't have a lot of time with it, but just a bit of quick feedback.

First of all, great stuff overall. Kept getting killed in both of the first two missions, but was progressing so I'm quite sure they're doable. The ships feel very distinct - the Arc Jet burners and the mobility on the destroyer give a neat feel, sort of like a Tempest of the destroyer world.

The cruiser (? flagship in first mission) is great, too - love the Antimatter Lance, and pairing it with the Lucifer system is a fun thing to try to get to work right. I didn't quite manage, but it seems like if you do, the results would be quite worth it.


The projectiles for the Squall Cannon look scaled-up and a bit pixelated - I'd change up the graphics to something else, maybe even a full-on energy bolt like the Onslaught's built-in TPC, or just a new, higher-resolution bullet graphic altogether. The gun has a great feel to it, though, but also seems too strong for a small slot. IMO, would be more appropriate power-wise for a medium, or small with a much longer cooldown.

(I'm guessing you probably based it on the AM Blaster in terms of keeping it balanced - but it's got superior stats in some very important areas (range, higher rate of fire, *much* less flux headroom needed to fire), and more importantly, it's paired with shield-busting kinetics, where the AM Blaster is usually not, due to flux concerns. Consider that a Harpoon does 750 damage per shot - not *that* much more - and it's much easier to counter, where these things are so fast they're almost guaranteed hits when shields so much as flicker down. I get that it's part of the whole package of fragile + superior firepower, so maybe just raising the OP cost somewhat would do. Obviously, just my opinion here, don't feel obligated to change it if you feel otherwise.)


The sound for the Arc Jet has the built-in deactivation, so if you start a burn and then pause the game/switch to the command UI/etc, it'll finish playing out and sound like it shuts off. You probably want to separate the sounds into activation/loop/deactivation - take a look at burndrive.system for how it does it.

The new sounds are really nice, btw. Adds a whole new feeling of freshness to the ships.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

21363

General Discussion / Re: AI vs AI battles

« on: August 28, 2012, 05:37:47 PM »

I mean... alex didn't even know?

One of those things that I hadn't touched in so long that I forgot it was there.

Wonder if the admiral AI has the fact that it ought to be playing the other side hardcoded somewhere. It might, so if you see your friendly admiral create a carrier group rally point on the other side of the map, that'd be why.

21364

General Discussion / Re: AI vs AI battles

« on: August 28, 2012, 01:47:43 PM »

Not possible either - retreat orders are given by the admiral, not decided by individual captains.

Use the "steady" AI (or don't specify at all, and it'll default to it).

21365

General Discussion / Re: AI vs AI battles

« on: August 28, 2012, 01:28:08 PM »

Negative, at least for the time being.

21366

Suggestions / Re: Two small UI Suggestions

« on: August 28, 2012, 01:17:35 PM »

Fair points, both. I'll see when I can get to it - more than likely when I'm working on that area of the code for some other reason. Same applies to the suggestions in the linked thread

Not to say I'll end up doing them exactly like that - but I understand where you're coming from with those.

21367

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Linux Startup Script

« on: August 28, 2012, 12:21:01 PM »

Spoiler

[close]

This link might be helpful.

Ah, thanks - ought to be preemptively fixed (by telling it to use the legacy version of mergesort, but still.)

21368

Suggestions / Re: Not your Ordinary Multiplayer suggestion.

« on: August 28, 2012, 11:49:17 AM »

I think it should be obvious that there's ways to respond to frequently-asked questions while maintaining a friendly community.

This.

Man i`m among those who sees how cool it would be to have multiplayer in this game. I would even love a split screen for hotseat, even with weird keys layout and beepeenig freezing keyboard. Anything that allows me to beat the *** out of my brother in Starcontrol-kind scirmishes!

Ah, dreams, dreams...

Ahh, that brings me back. Alas, a dream it shall remain.

21369

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Linux Startup Script

« on: August 28, 2012, 11:42:22 AM »

Just FYI, Starfarer seems to be incompatible with Java 7, so if/when your distro upgrades you'll run into problems.

Really? Do you remember what the error was? (Just curious, really - will have to deal with it one way or another, so no big deal if not.) Shouldn't be much trouble to get it running, though I'm surprised that it wouldn't "just work".

Will the bundled JRE be updated at some point? I believe the currently included one is 15 versions out of date.

Yeah... Java 7 ought to offer a decent performance boost, so it's something we'll definitely look at. Just have to be careful to make sure it still works with Java 6 on OS X.

21370

Announcements / Re: Blog Posts

« on: August 28, 2012, 10:19:50 AM »

Any progress, even the little things, since the last release?  I've been itching to know.

Lots. Happy now?

21371

Suggestions / Re: Fighter AI and engines

« on: August 28, 2012, 09:48:52 AM »

Thought this may be a good place to mention that I've actually made some fighter AI changes in the dev build. Wingmen now operate more independently of the leader, though still cooperate - trying to flank targets, etc. The degree of independence varies by type - interceptors roam more, while bombers hold a rigid formation.

Fighter also avoid missiles individually - for example, a wing of Talons flying at a wing of Broadsword stand a very solid chance of shooting down/avoiding the entire SRM volley. Not that this helps them much in that fight, in the long run

21372

General Discussion / Re: Phasing and Whatnot

« on: August 28, 2012, 09:45:28 AM »

Okay. So how is a phase ship supposed to go about its role differently?

What I meant is, due to having a different defensive system, it plays differently.

On individual ship level, phase cloaking is no different from invulnerable (better) version of fortress shield.  Only thing they can't do is take shots for other ships.

This is interesting, because they do look similar at first glance, but key differences get lost in reducing it to "absorbs damage at constant flux cost".

These differences are enough so that it plays very differently than a full fortress shield would. In the end, it’s still a defensive system – but imo, it’s about as different from shields as you can get.

One suboptimal way to fix that would make phasing act almost identically to Fortress Shields. By that, I mean have phasing generate hard flux, but be able to dissipate soft flux while phased. The other way would be to make phase ships able to take a few hits... in other words, give phase ships a ton of armor. That way, it can choose to fire instead of phase without being so harshly punished for doing so.

Hmm. I actually like the hard flux idea. It does add some gameplay similarity to Fortress Shields, but the differences are still enough for my taste - instant activation and not actually destroying missiles on impact are both game-changers as far as any similarity is concerned. And, hiding out in phase while you flux comes down a bit just feels "right". This also gives hard flux a role for phase ships, which is a nice touch.

21373

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Linux Startup Script

« on: August 28, 2012, 09:05:36 AM »

First, in the Starfarer Linux zip file all the file (not directory) permissions under the jre_linux directory are "-rwxr--rwx" world writeable and executable for some reason which is a bit of a security risk.

Thanks for pointing that out - added to the todo list. Done.


Interesting point about not shipping with a JRE. For me, it's a question of "what will work most of the time, and generate the least support requests". It also seems like a good idea to ship with the version of the JRE that the game was actually tested with. Still, definitely something to consider.

21374

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Flickering Screen - Linux (Intel gfx) - Please Help!

« on: August 27, 2012, 06:51:36 PM »

I just now fired up Revenge of the Titans and played it for about 10 minutes without any flickering/flashing issues.  I also tried another JAVA game called Titan Attacks (also by Puppy Games), also without any flickering issue.

Thank you for trying that again, good to know.

I've noticed that the flickering/flashing only occurs after the main screen has loaded.  The initial screen with the loading progress bar has no flickering/flashing whatsoever, only the main game itself flashes/flickers.

Hmm. Possibly just down to luck, since that doesn't update the screen very often - but just the same, another data point that's good to have.

21375

Bug Reports & Support / Re: Flickering Screen - Linux (Intel gfx) - Please Help!

« on: August 27, 2012, 04:53:22 PM »

Thanks for giving it a shot.


Just to confirm: have you run Revenge of the Titans recently? I.E, could you verify that it's definitely not having the flickering issue now?

It's actually using the same OpenGL library as Starfarer, though there are some necessary differences in display initialization. To be honest, I'm not sure what I'll be able to do on my end to work around whatever is causing the problem. I'll certainly keep an eye out for this or any related issues, though.