Author Topic: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS  (Read 20572 times)

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Offline EatThePath

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Re: RELEASE: Warmachine(Looking for testers for next version)
That's Lafiel's radar icons script. Really helps with situational awareness I find. A bit heavy on performance, but not as heavy as it used to be  ;)
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
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"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 
Re: RELEASE: Warmachine(Looking for testers for next version)
Ah thx, that comes in handy~ :)

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
After better than half a year, soon has finally become now. The first post of the thread has been updated to reflect the current version of the mod. There's no detailed changelog because there's just too much. Get it on Knossos, have fun, be sure you're launching with the proper nightly build or everything will explode. And not in the fun way.

New fighter models, all new missile models with TEI fighter options now sporting externally mounted missiles to show them of, re-turreting of most TEI ships, player equipment balance tweaks and overhauls, remade effects for most things by Kestrillius and Talhydras collaborating, a fresh batch of mangling with AoA the missions with some things I'm excited to hear first reactions to, select music from ShadowsOfLight, shinier TEI ships, new shader and lighting settings, some smart weapon targeting modes, and too much more that I didn't keep track of in detail.

And at the same time, Talhydras would like to share something he's been working on, a new GTVA warship concept.

And I'll add to that my own modeling efforts of the last months
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Whoa! Is she Vasudan?
"Wouldn't it be so wonderful if everything were meaningless?
But everything is so meaningful, and most everything turns to ****.
Rejoice."
-David Bazan

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
The ships? They're both intended as GTVA, but both with a lot of our own aesthetic tastes blended in.
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Two updates have been rolled out since 2.0.

2.1 changed some lighting settings and added the GTB Promachos to a mission or two. This ship is intended in part as a transitional step from FS2 era bombers towards the beast that is the GTB Sirrush, and generally exploring ways to make bombers fun. A Time For Heroes is a good place to try it.

2.2 is makes the mod now target a custom build I've uploaded to Knossos. This mainly brings in the new lighting myself and qazwsxal(mainly qaz) have been working on, and TEI capship texture revisions that take advantage of it. If this gives you any trouble, let me know. This should also free us from the versioning headaches that we've been seeing lately.

Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Looking forward to trying this out.

  

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
You know, I don't actually intentionally post updates on holiday weekends, but somehow that seems to be the case surprisingly much of the time. Weird.

A few weeks ago RedMageJoe streamed a playthrough of our version of AoA, which you can watch here:



It was quite interesting to watch. And a little concerning in places too, if lots of people are finding the first dragon fight an absolute brick wall they can't hammer through, please please let us know.

In any case, I was sitting on a video of the new-new A Time For Heroes until after Joe's stream to preserve the surprise for some people. Now that it's out and r2's been out for a while, here's a look at the changes to the mission, the Promachos light bomber in action, new lines from Dekker, Shadows of Light's excellent FS soundtrack expansion plugged in, and a few other small odds and ends.


Finally, I bring you a tease of the future.

Some months ago I shared with ShadowsOfLight a video of a work in progress mission that was using some copyright darksynth as music, and asked if he was interested in some day taking a shot at replacing it with something new. We talked about what worked about the 'temp' music, and then shortly after he dropped a whole track on Talhydras and I that we fell instantly in love with. That mission isn't in any public videos and we're probably going to keep it that way for a while, and the full suite of music is probably going to not be released until the mission is. so the full tracks he made for it will remain in waiting for us to get more mission content together. But it's too good to sit on entirely, so, check out this segment of The Impending Dawn.

SoL has consistently blown us away with how his music meets and exceeds our requests. Having this music in our pocket has provided no small amount of extra motivation to work on our own campaign content, and there's stuff there I'm increasingly proud of. I don't want to suggest we're close to publishing things, we're quite far still, but wheels are turning.
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Any optimization tips? I have a decent rig for FS2 modded games, it's not the massive quantity of capship fire or explodes that cause me the most slowdown, but when my Wingmen fire off their seeker swarms, oh boy, that runs pretty poorly.

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
For those, there's three things I can imagine that are hitting you there.
First is the fact that each missile has a light attached. If this is the problem, -no_deferred as a command line flag might help, though it'll likely murder all the pretty lighting. With a lighting profiles file change you could make all the dynamic missile lights tiny and black, and the engine may be smart enough to not render them at all, though I can't swear to that without a deep code dive. Also I think if you turn down the lighting detail setting in the in-game options far enough it'll stop using those lights.

The other things that might be slow are particles and trails. Both are potentially slow in my past performance tests. It doesn't look like there's any command line flags for those. Turning down some detail options in the settings may have a bearing on them, otherwise you'd need to edit the weapon tables to disable those properties of the weapons in question.

This is mostly speculation though, if you put -profile_frame_time in your flags and screenshot the output when it's at it's slowest that could give some better insight as to what's slowing you down.

If you try any of these, or want to but aren't sure how, let me know!
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Huh, dropped the ingame lighting down one setting from 5 stars to 4 and now everything is smooth as butter. Thanks for the advice!

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Unless I'm missing something horrible and obvious, when WM is updated, can there be a link to whatever WM nightly build is required to get it to run? I tried doing a fresh install and the mod is still asking for "22200.9.0" which I can't find in the game folders or in the nightly build section.

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Is there any chance WM-FSO could be built for Linux?  Alternatively, could you point me at the source repo so I can try building it myself?  I'd love to take this mod for a spin, but I don't game on Windows.   :(

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Unless I'm missing something horrible and obvious, when WM is updated, can there be a link to whatever WM nightly build is required to get it to run? I tried doing a fresh install and the mod is still asking for "22200.9.0" which I can't find in the game folders or in the nightly build section.
Ah shoot I missed this until just now. Knossos is such a pain about this...
What you need is the "Warmade Builds" special engine version on knossos. You may have to toggle the "show engine builds in mod list" option in the knossos settings.

roadnottaken: unfortunately the process I'm using to build it for linux is failing, but the source for the current version the mod is running on should be https://github.com/EatThePath/fs2open.github.com/commit/74e912dead356a9731cf5bb8a2d5d2c4177cfae2

Alternatively if you know how to get around any roadblocks your launcher puts in your way, you can just use a current nightly. While at times the special builds do have divergences from the main builds, at the moment they're pretty closely synced and mostly exist to provide some version stability. Knossos doesn't really behave when trying to pin a build to a nightly, loving to just use newer versions if the user has them, which defeats the point... since nightlies do break these builds are my way around that. But right now any working nightly newer than november 17th should run warmachine 2.5.1 just fine.
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
I use knossos, and managed to get things (seemingly) working on the latest nightly build with a bit of mod.json tweaking.

For my own future reference: I ended up installing knossos under wine in order to get a clean download of Warmachine including the mod.json file.  Is there a more straightforward way to either get knossos to download a mod without checking for dependencies or find the url(s) knossos would have downloaded files from for manual retrieval?  The direct download link on fsnebula.org doesn't include a mod.(json|ini), and I wasn't fully confident in my ability to create a working one.

 
Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Playing through Warmachine has been an utter joy so far.  I really like what you've done with the difficulty and game balance.

I want to focus in on Forced Entry in particular.  I fondly remember playing through AoA in the early days, when AoA was only partially complete and FE was this massive setpiece battle to serve as a capstone.  The battle was a massive challenge, and I had to replay it many times, slowly building up the skill and tactics to make it through this nailbiter of a fleet battle and emerge victorious.

On later replays, the mission lost much of its luster.  The strategies were known.  The player's task devolved to racing from the front of the battle line to the back, defanging enemy warships.  There simply wasn't time to help out in dogfights, or even maintain situational awareness of the overall battle beyond ordering wingmen to defend each new ship as it arrives.  Blue Planet is still some of the best content to come out of the FreeSpace community.  Updates to War in Heaven and the rebalance of the retail FS2 campaign have kept things fresh and interesting.  But the passage of time has not been kind to Age of Aquarius.

Warmachine brings back the challenge and discovery of the early days, while very clearly forging its own path and showcasing all the massive leaps forward the FSO engine has made over the years.  Battles are fast-paced and dynamic.  Ordering a kill and watching my squadmates annihilate an enemy formation or cruiser in a matter of seconds is a sheer delight.  There is real choice in which engagements to wade into and which to leave to squadmates.  The new weapons add immense variety and require much greater strategy than the classic trebuchet spam.  And the new HUD icons massively improve battlefield awareness.  And best of all, the massive power boost of the WM arsenal doesn't feel the least bit cheap because the shivans have become just as lethal.  The gameplay of the reimagined Forced Entry mission was dynamic, engaging, and unforgiving without ever feeling unfair.  I had to relearn how to effectively use the weapons at my disposal, push my squadron to their limits while being careful not to overextend them, and die and/or watch the Temeraire go up in flames several times in the process.  And I enjoyed every minute of it.

Thank you, truly, for breathing new life into one of the community's most venerable campaigns, and for bringing to it a style and flair that is so clearly your own.  I've spent many an hour enjoying FreeSpace content stretching back even to the retail FS1 days, and it's an absolute joy to find continued innovation in the community twenty-plus years later.

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Thank you very much for that post, it was a delight to read. I am glad you stuck through getting it to run, and that you're getting what we hoped out of the reworks!
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

Offline EatThePath

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
2.6.0 uploaded just now targets FSO 23.0 and potentially fixes a few mission bugs.

Warmade Build x.11 just went up to. It is no longer needed for the mod but is currently trialing some new bloom changes
Name your damn turrets and sounds! Numbers alone aren't helpful!
"if disco is dead then I am the laser lich"
"...[Warmachine] keeps changing as fast as EatThePath can force the engine to do his dark bidding..."

 

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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
Just wanted to say, really big fan.

But I can only read this threads title in a Bill Cosby voice.
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....
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Re: Warmachine Release 2: ZIPSANDZAPSANDMISSLERACKS
I'm getting a crash to desktop on Universal Truth, shortly after the initial cutscene ends and shivan fighters start arriving en masse.  Interestingly enough, I was able to play through the entirety of Maximum Truth without experiencing a CtD.  This is with WM 2.6.0 and FSO 23.0.0-RC1, although it also happened when I tweaked WM 2.5.1 to run with a recent nightly build.

Running Fast Debug popped up several modal dialogs on game startup with warnings.  Shortly into the mission, I started getting spammed with dialogs referencing the Lua error at the bottom of the linked logfile.  I don't know for certain if this was at the same point as the original crash, because

  • I'd sped gameplay up a bunch to avoid waiting through the cutscene again, and couldn't tell exactly where in the opening sequence this triggered
  • After seeing the same error message pop up several times over, I got tired of clicking through the dialogs and hit "exit"
https://fsnebula.org/log/63a149753c97ea8ae9ccee8d