Author Topic: RELEASE - Bem Cavalgar  (Read 34481 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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Both you and Luis Dias have a fair point here. In some ways this was a tricky choice to make - I'm both using and drawing upon Freespace as a text to add weight to my writing, but also subverting and ignoring it when it suits my purposes. In my defence, canonically the invasion and destruction of Vasuda takes... what, a few days? Bem Cavalgar is intended to take place over a much longer time than that (I imagine at least a month, which is the length of the entire Freespace 1 campaign) so some subversion was inevitable.

However, it was also a deliberate act on my part to try to divorce the player from notions of 'canon' and promote subtextual readings of the campaign. Petty crusade on my part, I know.

I love you :allears:

 

Offline FlamingCobra

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getting massive, massive errors. Log attached.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: RELEASE - Bem Cavalgar
Lieutenant Danger (sadly deprived of your awesome SA avatar) if I write a huge effortpost about this campaign will you be here to read it? **** it, I'm all up on Pascal's Wager, I'll do it

 

Offline Goober5000

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Re: RELEASE - Bem Cavalgar
Lieutenant Danger (sadly deprived of your awesome SA avatar)

I don't know what you're talking about.  He clearly has an awesome SA avatar on this forum. :nervous:

 
Any idea why my HUD isn't coming up on this, at all?  Seems this is the only mod so far I've had this issue on ...

I've tried various release versions of the executable, including 3.7.4, 3.7.3 and 3.7.2, same issues on each.


 

Offline Admiral Nelson

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Looking at the tables, I'm not sure how the HUD could work.  Bem Cavalgar includes a hud-gauges.tbl which defines only its custom gauges used for the strategic map.  It says not to load the retail gauges at all.  I thus don't see any messages in the strategic map (have to hit F4 to see them) and get no HUD in missions.  A question for the code boys would be has something changed in the handling of hud-guages since this campaign was released in 2013?  It is as if it assumes retail gauges just appear in missions even with $Load Retail Configuration:   NO and I don't see how?
« Last Edit: February 13, 2017, 08:49:10 pm by Admiral Nelson »
If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

 
Oh lordy, is there a way to work around this?

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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It is as if it assumes retail gauges just appear in missions even with $Load Retail Configuration:   NO and I don't see how?
Or it assumes a -hdg.tbm that will provide the rest of the gauges is present in, say, the 3.6.12 MediaVPs folder.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

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<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

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Offline Admiral Nelson

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All that file has in it is "$Max Escort Ships: 5" and nothing else. I don't see anything in the folder chain which gives any retail gauge positioning.

EDIT: If I change the first line of hud-gauges to "$Load Retail Configuration:   YES"  Then I see the HUD again.  Thus I wonder if something changed in what that meant in the past? hack-wizard, if you make that change does everything work for you? 
« Last Edit: February 14, 2017, 05:43:59 am by Admiral Nelson »
If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

 

Offline Admiral Nelson

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OK, never mind all that.  I've gone and fixed up this campaign as best I could, making it compatible with the current fs-port, fsport-mediavps_2014 and MediaVPs_2014, killing all debug issues, etc: click here to download.  Please try it (anyone else please try it as well) and let me know if you have any issues; if no issues I can re-release this properly.
If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

 
Sorry, life (tm) interjected majorly.  Will try the release and thanks. :)

Gauges still not showing in the new version ... what file or flag did I need to adjust again?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2017, 07:55:39 pm by hack-wizard »

 

Offline Admiral Nelson

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No worries.  I shoud have given you a non vp version so you can see all of the tables.  Download again.  The issue I think was in hud-gauges.tbl.  The first line should read "$Load Retail Configuration:   YES".  When I changed that I got the HUD back again.  Please give it a try.  This assumes you have the latest fs port, fsport media vps 2014 and media vps 2014.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2017, 08:20:57 pm by Admiral Nelson »
If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

 
Seems works ok. I didn't play all missions but hud appears.
Btw Knossos FSO is picky about space in
Code: [Select]
secondarylist = fsport, MediaVPs_2014; :nervous:
« Last Edit: February 19, 2017, 12:18:00 pm by tomimaki »

 
As well it should be, because that's broken. Take the space out.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Admiral Nelson

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I have released an upgrade to this campaign, which should take care of any issues running it with current builds.

If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

 
Re: RELEASE - Bem Cavalgar
What's with the ridiculously long TTK? With a single avenger firing on a shaitan or basilisk in close-range with at least a 90% hit rate it consistently takes me 15-20 seconds to kill, which is utterly egregious. Needlessly to say, it's mind-numbingly tedious and frustrating to just simply stand there holding down the mouse button, waiting for it to finally die, as it happily destroys your whole escort list since you pose absolutely no threat to it. Even ignoring their maneuverability (which I'll get to in a moment), a scorpion takes significantly longer to kill than even a seraphim with the avenger in retail! It kind of trivializes trying to protect things if they're happy to just ignore you, which, mind you, did actually happen in some FS1 missions, when they really wanted to kill your escorts they would put basilisks within hornet range and facing your charges, but at least it was mitigated somewhat because as a direct result of ignoring you rather than evading you, you could cut them down very quickly. I understand that the avenger is supposed to be a crappy 'we have nothing good left time to break open the avengers' kind of weapon, but this is completely absurd.

And then there is their behavior. I, at first, thought this was a bug, but I noticed someone else had the exact same line of thought only for it be confirmed it was indeed intentional. I specifically refer to the shivan's dogfighting technique. Close in as close as possible, and then circle strafe you to death. Now, of course, I am aware that shivans (only maras and scorpions from memory, but I'd be happy to accept that they all had the capability) could "move sideways" making them a very dangerous foe. But they only ever used this ability to a significant degree occasionally, usually by about 30 or 40 degrees to fire at you as they passed you by. But now, they do so at 90 degrees all the time. This has some significant problems when it comes to dogfighting. Since their heading is now basically irrelevant to them they lose nothing constantly turning (around you that is), so the only way to keep up with them is to come to a complete standstill, rotating in place. Moving at any speed will badly compromise your ability to track them. You can burn away, but remember, they're constantly facing you so they can easily get on your tail. Even if you're much faster and can disengage, your only other option is to just play chicken with them, which might work, but you'll take way too much damage to afford to do it consistently over the course of a mission. Oh and they also roll all the time, so the whole shield quadrant system is pretty irrelevant, you're taking all his shields down whether you want to or not.

So the result is sitting in place pouring hundreds of avenger shots into a single target (good luck if you've got more than one on you!) for 15-20 seconds, and desperately hoping you don't have to kill too many fighters or, heaven forbid, bombers.

All the things they do, rolling, circle-strafing, is all things they've always been able to do, it's just that now the AI actually tells them to take advantage of it! Which is a completely admirable sentiment, there's no reason why they shouldn't take advantage of their strengths, right? And normally, it's exactly what I'd want, but since it results in such a boring, laborious situation in practice I pale at the thought of more combat!

/rant

I don't like being so negative, I really want to like this mod. I absolutely adore the concept, but I can't shake the absolutely abysmal first impression I got from it. I expected gameplay at least somewhat similar to FS1, but instead the weapons are completely different, despite identical names, and the shivans don't fight anything like what they do in retail, and neither of the changes were for the better.

That's just my impression, I could be going into this completely wrong, or actually be suffering from some kind of bug, I don't know. Please, those of you who have played or completed it tell me how you did it, what am I missing here? I really want to play this mod more but I can't stomach the idea of more of that combat.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE - Bem Cavalgar
I too, remember that issue when playing the campaign.  It seemed like the Shivans got a massive buff in health.

 

Offline Iain Baker

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I’m pretty sure it is intentional, looking at the tables. Personally I love how they have been changed since fighting retail AI is kinda boring and lacks challenge on anything less than Insane. It’s also the only campaign where I have felt weak, vulnerable and on the loosing team throughout.

In many ways, the AI and combat in this is now the yardstick against which all other campaigns are judged, and for me at least, most come up wanting. Which is why I’m now adding “Fury-on-crack AI, full GXYZ movement and enhanced weapons to all campaigns I play to spice them up a bit  :drevil:
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