Author Topic: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [CLOSED - 1/1/14]  (Read 60309 times)

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Offline Hellzed

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
Just checked the coop missions bug.
http://www.hard-light.net/mantis/view.php?id=859
To me, with nightly builds and mediavps 2014 beta 2, this is not fixed.

 
Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
Hi,

I understand that MediaVP_2014 is going to get its 1.0 release early next year, so here is sort of a final FS2 campaign related "bug/oddity" collection from me. I won't guarantee that it contains everything, but at least here are some bugs/oddities that MIGHT need to be fixed one way or another. Note that some of these have been present all the way since FS2 retail, but some of these are clearly FSO related. I also included a couple of larger design-related issues, that could also be discussed here (since I know that FSU is avoiding major overhauls).

I used the build 10222 with these missions.

Earlier mentions (not sure if fixed yet)

- Iceni is unable to destroy the enemy Sobek in time in the first SOC mission (Rebels & Renegades).

- Dialog desynchronization in "Feint, Parry, Riposte", where NTD Repulse starts its acceleration towards Colossus way before the dialogue notifies of this. Here is the proof video

Additional oddities

- The mission "A Flaming Sword"  is too easy to break. If you follow the original waypoints for Alpha, you engage the Astaroths, but this either ends in all Astaroths getting destroyed without being lured to the friendly Sobek OR you escaping alone to Sobek and getting all your wingmates killed. Only the latter gets the secondary objective completed.

The main problem presents itself if you try to be smart. You can try this yourself:

1. Pick a Horus for yourself
2. Order all your squadmates to guard Sobek as soon as the mission starts.
3. Proceed by yourself to harass the Astaroths, but disengage as soon as they start to follow you.
4. Fly back to Sobek and be amazed how ALL friendly ships have now become pacifists, including the Sobek. The secondary objective isn't marked as completed either. Either you have destroy the Astaroths by yourself, or they will massacre your squadmates while Sobek is just standing idly by.

- SOC 3 (But hate the traitors) bad ending lets you continue the campaign. If you decide to massacre the civilian transport, the debriefing is very judgemental and harsh even to the point that it seems your tour of duty ends there. But I was actually amazed that I was able to continue the campaign like nothing had happened. Disclaimer: I don't remember how this was in the retail, but it seems to me that the intention was a clear "mission failed", even though I personally think that one is forced to do unethical things to remain in cover.

- In the mission "Endgame" the Colossus bounces up and down a few times as soon as it exits the subspace. It's nothing serious really, but just unintentionally hilarious.

- Every time Sathanas destroys something on difficulty level Medium and upwards (meaning that the beam refire time is practically zero) the dialog on capital ships is abruptly terminated. Now, some people might appreciate this as a catalyst for grim mood, but storytelling-wise it's a bit odd that huge chunks of texts are simply ignored and the player somehow knows what dying commanders were going to say before they died. This includes the Phoenicia, Psamtik and the Colossus. A crude fix would be to make these ships invulnerable at 1% until they have finished their dialog lines.

These might be SCP engine related, but I'm not sure (might as well include them here)

- In the mission "Dunkerque" the whole Arcadia station is vibrating a little bit everytime it is docked with one of the evacuation transports.

- (Warning! Lots of speculation) In the mission "Game of TAG" the super AA -beams are a bit less accurate than I remember. I remember that previously they only rarely missed their shots, but it seems that they miss far more often now. However this might be my imagination, so don't get mad if I remember it wrong  :D

Well that's it folks! I hope I have been even somewhat helpful on these forums, even though I have a bit bad tendency to blame wrong things (or more specifically, blame the right things for wrong reasons :P).

 

Offline Goober5000

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
- The mission "A Flaming Sword"  is too easy to break. If you follow the original waypoints for Alpha, you engage the Astaroths, but this either ends in all Astaroths getting destroyed without being lured to the friendly Sobek OR you escaping alone to Sobek and getting all your wingmates killed. Only the latter gets the secondary objective completed.
As mentioned earlier, changes have been made in SVN that should make this more robust.

Quote
- SOC 3 (But hate the traitors) bad ending lets you continue the campaign. If you decide to massacre the civilian transport, the debriefing is very judgemental and harsh even to the point that it seems your tour of duty ends there. But I was actually amazed that I was able to continue the campaign like nothing had happened. Disclaimer: I don't remember how this was in the retail, but it seems to me that the intention was a clear "mission failed", even though I personally think that one is forced to do unethical things to remain in cover.
This was true in retail as well.  It might be considered a bug; report it on the HLP Mantis (as you should do with all your other bugs) and see what the MVP people say.

Quote
- Every time Sathanas destroys something on difficulty level Medium and upwards (meaning that the beam refire time is practically zero) the dialog on capital ships is abruptly terminated. Now, some people might appreciate this as a catalyst for grim mood, but storytelling-wise it's a bit odd that huge chunks of texts are simply ignored and the player somehow knows what dying commanders were going to say before they died. This includes the Phoenicia, Psamtik and the Colossus. A crude fix would be to make these ships invulnerable at 1% until they have finished their dialog lines.
Voice for any ship sending a message is cut off as soon as it's destroyed.  Not just destroyers and not just on certain difficulties.  This has been true ever since FS1 and is not something you can easily fix.  Do you expect the game to retroactively chop the remaining words off the message on the HUD if there's no voice playing for them?  If so, how do you propose to match the voice file with the words?

 
Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
Voice for any ship sending a message is cut off as soon as it's destroyed.  Not just destroyers and not just on certain difficulties.  This has been true ever since FS1 and is not something you can easily fix.  Do you expect the game to retroactively chop the remaining words off the message on the HUD if there's no voice playing for them?  If so, how do you propose to match the voice file with the words?

Uh, I think you misunderstood me. I know perfectly well, that voice messages cut off for destroyed starships, but Sathanas is so effective in Medium difficulty and above, that there is a certain missynchronization between dialog and action. And that is why suggested that Colossus, Psamtik and Phoenicia would be invulnerable at 1 % hitpoints UNTIL they get the chance to say whatever they have to say.

 

Offline Goober5000

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
Uh, I think you misunderstood me. I know perfectly well, that voice messages cut off for destroyed starships, but Sathanas is so effective in Medium difficulty and above, that there is a certain missynchronization between dialog and action.

Well, that's not what you wrote above.

As I recall, Volition recommended that the campaign be played on Easy difficulty, so maybe that's where they got their timing from.  A better solution would be to delay beam-free'ing the Sathanas one or two seconds until the messages trigger.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
I don't think that's a particularly good solution either. Just do the easy thing - change the message source to #Phoenicia so the game doesn't care when the Phoenicia's killed. (I recall this should work, if not, there are a bunch of other workarounds in the same class.)

 

Offline SypheDMar

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
Quote
- SOC 3 (But hate the traitors) bad ending lets you continue the campaign. If you decide to massacre the civilian transport, the debriefing is very judgemental and harsh even to the point that it seems your tour of duty ends there. But I was actually amazed that I was able to continue the campaign like nothing had happened. Disclaimer: I don't remember how this was in the retail, but it seems to me that the intention was a clear "mission failed", even though I personally think that one is forced to do unethical things to remain in cover.
This was true in retail as well.  It might be considered a bug; report it on the HLP Mantis (as you should do with all your other bugs) and see what the MVP people say.
I believe this is intentional. In Rebels and Renegade, GTVA gives you authorization to "fire in self-defense or to complete your mission objectives." In ...But Hate the Traitor, there was no way of truly knowing that Niven figured us out unless we played it before. If I destroyed the civilian transport, I did it to complete my mission. Since I'm working as an SOC operative, I believe Command, despite the shock and dismay, did not indict Alpha 1 because Alpha 1 made the right call at the time.

Edit: In short, [V] is not as nearly as punishing as the ST:R team. :p

 

Offline Echelon9

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
This does bring up one question for me.

Is there going to be a new stable build released for FSO?

I ask because as a guideline mods are "supposed" to be developed for the current stable build, and yet we have perhaps the most important mod in the community preparing to release using features/changes created after this point.

We've yet to fully discuss this in the SCP, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a 3.7.1 build out in the near future. A couple of recent code bugs have been found and fixed that improve stability even further.

We'll discuss this with the MediaVPs team to try to line these up timing wise.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
We've yet to fully discuss this in the SCP, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a 3.7.1 build out in the near future.
You mean 3.7.2? We've got lots of 3.7.1 builds out. ;)
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Offline FSW

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
In MatthTheGeek's screenshot of the Colossus, the turrets on the underside of the head appear to be floating just off the hull itself.

Is this a flaw with the model, or am I looking at debris? Unfortunately, I am currently unable to check the new MediaVPs in-game myself.

 

Offline DahBlount

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
In MatthTheGeek's screenshot of the Colossus, the turrets on the underside of the head appear to be floating just off the hull itself.

Is this a flaw with the model, or am I looking at debris? Unfortunately, I am currently unable to check the new MediaVPs in-game myself.

Checked it out in game and it appears to be part of the detail box as there are mounts that appear when you get within a certain distance of the Colossus.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: The MediaVPs 2014 Open Beta [BETA 2 - 12/7/13]
Thank you for playing. The Beta is now closed and the downloads will be removed. :)
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