Author Topic: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch  (Read 2172 times)

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Offline Dilmah G

  • Failed juggling
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  • Do try it.
A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
Yo yo yo,

In what initially started as a BP Multi testing session (turns out it is unsurprisingly bugged to the ****house and requires a ground-up rework), Ertanax, Logomancer, and I got stuck into a good few hours of testing some of the campaign co-op missions and OG dogfight/multi missions in FS2. We were fortunate enough as well to be steered into position by SerialMascot who has done some really great work on BP Multi, and had Joshua, Gamma 3-9er, Cyborg, and LSDNinja pop in for the banter at various points. Apologies if I've missed you, it's past 1am as I type this!

Some of the carnage is embedded below for your viewing pleasure. The first two videos are only a few minutes long and should make for some easy and amusing viewing.




Wavetops in no particular order:

- The OG FS2 co-op missions require a dedicated human/team to go through them and be reworked for modern day FSO. We're talking balancing, update for the latest MVPs, etc. I say this however not having used the FSO Co-Op Multi mod for this on Knossos, so perhaps I'm wasting the letters on my keyboard typing this. Open to being proved wrong.

- The OG FS2 dogfight missions mostly work, but require someone to go through them for beautification purposes to insert modern skyboxes, and implement the latest MVPs.

- There are clearly some mega bugs when it comes to ship collision, selecting loadouts, registering laser hits, and so on. I would suspect having a player with 200+ ping was a contributing factor (me?! No way!), but whilst dancing Molochs are hilarious, their delicate spines are also not designed for those kinds of aggressive moves, and we could really impact mission balance and playability with it persisting. Credit to Cyborg and the gang though, as I write this, it looks like we've figured out client-side ship table differences are the culprit for the loadout bugs.

- The "throw me 150 clicks away from the fight and oscillate me on the spot" bug. Watch the end of the dogfight video for additional context.

--

All of that aside, I actually found it to be a super enjoyable time, and banter with a bunch of other FS nerds is worth its weight in gold. Without getting too political and ****, we've often talked about doing more voice/face to face stuff in the community to create a more wholesome atmosphere, and I couldn't imagine a better way to do it than all getting on and playing our favourite late 90s space shooter together, and lolling at the bugs. We've already got some great banter with Joe's stream, and the other guys like RP who also stream, so it would be great to keep that going.

I would be willing to pencil in a regular time each week/a few times a week to get around it and play through a few missions together. The more the merrier! It would be cool to have enough people one day for testing groups by continent, but baby steps first, of course.

Looking forward to hearing (reading?) everyone's thoughts, and having my flying ability sledged mercilessly! Cheers.

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
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Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
I'm keen to school some colonials.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Dilmah G

  • Failed juggling
  • 211
  • Do try it.
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
Let's do it.  :pimp:

 
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
This Yank's always up for nailing some bad guys for the Buntu. :P

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
#Tev4Life
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
The summary is pretty good. I have also had a couple decent multi coop sessions with people and would agree that multi - beyond some occasional weirdness - is pretty decently functional.

The increase in players has prompted Cyborg to actually create a fix for the collission/wigglyness issues, it's currently in a custom build exe. Hopefully, we manage to test it out a little bit in the close future to check if the fix works, and hopefully get it integrated into regular FSO builds.

Another thing that's we're trying to test right now is whether BPC works with multi at all. Dissapointed with BPMulti breakage, I've decided that whatever has words "BP" and "multiplayer" in it, will be based on the most recent BPC, if possible. So back a week or so ago, I've grabbed a couple of the first WiH missions and hastily converted them to multiplayer coop - nothing fancy, just add one more fighter in Alpha wing and allow players to use Alpha's fighters, no balancing or other alterations whatsoever. In the tests, said missions seem to be functioning correctly but weapon and ship classes get utterly ****ed - if I picked an Uhlan, I experienced being dumped into Cost of War in a Vishnan bomber with two banks of Bifrost (that generated a **** ton of FSO log warnings) and one bank of 160 Paveways that seemed to have next to no refire rate whatsoever.
To exclude mission-specific breakage, I drafted up a multi coop version of Kentauroi Race, which still uses BP-specific ships but has a very simple mission file, but had no chance to test it out with other people as of now. I hope to use it to narrow down the possible breakage source (for now I'm thinking it's either regular WiH missions having relations with some LUA scripts in their files, even like it doesn't seem they were even triggered during the testing, or just FSO Multi not being able to deal with the thiccness of the absolute unit that is the BPC modpack). So, there is *some* progress on this front as well.


To anyone reading this, if you have some free time and are willing to help out a little bit with something multi related, both of the aforementioned testing actions require, uh, well, some actual testing. The custom FSO builds and the mission files are currently just being distributed as attachments in Discord messages, it also seems like basically all of the multiplayer coordination/voice chat/discussions happen in the Discord as well. If you say you want to help, I'm pretty sure someone will be there to tell you more and help you set up the necessary things.


On the other hand, Freespace multiplayer isn't too fascinating when it comes to the content available. The only functional multiplayer content I'm aware of is whatever comes with FSPort and FS2 multiplayer missions (which I expect to be really outdated and not very fun to play) and the three mods: FS1 COOP UP, ST:R COOP UP, FS2 COOP UP. Which is really not a lot.

Hence with the recent release of Sol: A History Reborn, I'm planning to make an attempt on converting this mod, or at least most of its missions, for multiplayer coop. My aim is to not make a separate S:AH multiplayer mod, just prepare a pack of multiplayer missions you can toss into the existing S:AH modpack. The rough idea is to go with three passes: 1st pass being the bare minimum of effort to make the missions fully playable in multi at all, a brief pause for some playing of the converted missions, then a 2nd pass to adjust these missions for, you know, more than one being with more than half a braincell playing them. At the end, a 3rd pass for weeding out whatever bugs or balance tweaks people find necessary when they play. All things considered, S:AH missions are simple FRED-wise and I don't expect them to bring me many troubles.

I'll be sure to chime in with more info when I get some progress done on that front.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
Stop talking about it and come play ffs.

When would you fine gentlemen and skilled pilots prefer to meet?

(very excellent posts by the way Dilma & Mito, but i'd rather be playing than typing)

 
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
I talked to Joe by the way. He is down to do something and/or use his platform to advertise. It sounds like he is starting a new job though, so we shouldn't rely on that right now. He and I both would like to know:


when
should
we
meet
to play
?

are weekend nights not good?

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

  • HLP is my mistress
  • 213
  • Aken Tigh Dekker- you've probably heard me
    • My old squad sub-domain
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
Chill bud,  let them answer your last before you ask more.  It's good to he keeeeen, but be patient.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 
Re: A Pom, a Yank, and an Aussie walk into a Moloch
yeah I've only been waiting 17 years