[jr2]

Tweaking - a dev has commited it and is just finishing off little adjustments
Done/Fixed - for when it's completely done

3.6.10
Features:

• new FS2NetD2 code (Taylor)
  
• OpenGL fixes (Taylor)
  
• reworked ships lab (Taylor)
  
• reduced memory footprint (Taylor)
  
• and better multi-format file loading (particularly for music).  (Taylor)
  
• ships.tbl level texture replacement (Skinning) (Taylor)
  
• Enhanced Autopilot (builting cinematics) (Kazan) Tweaking
  
• Fiction Viewer (Goober)
  
• fire-turret (Goober)
  
• invalidate-goal force (Goober)
  
• 'dynamicification' of MAX_PARSE_OBJECTS (Goober)
  
• Shield/weapon energy regen ship specific, measured in %/sec [Rqst: WCS]
  
• $disable linked fire penalty [Rqst: WCS]
  
• Ships.tbl "Flash"-effect flag needs work - brighter, quicker (<.25s duration) [Rqst: WCS]
• more explosion variety [Rqst: WCS]

Bugfixes:

• #1441  Able to target beyond max radar range (Kazan) FIXED
  
• #1315   FRED won't display ship info, such as name and co-ordinates (Goober)
  
• #1242  Mods being validated when they arent supposed to (Kazan)
  
• #1331 Crash on the Nebula color change (Kazan)
  
• #1431 Crash when setting cues in FRED (Kazan)
  
• #1203 Multi player host mission select list not displaying all missions (Kazan)
  
• #1281 After using cutscene sexps to teleport player to a new position warships have no collision detection (Kazan) FIXED[
  

3.6.11
Features:

• Compressed VPs (taylor)
  
• New scripting code (from HEAD) (WMC)
  
• SLDC (Shield Collision Trees) (Kazan)
  
• no collide subobject prop (if nobody else does it by then) (Kazan)
  
• Gravity Points (Goober)
  
• Explosion Time (Goober)
  
• Communications menu customization (Goober)
  
• Comm Taunting + Hostile death messages (me - they would go with the comm customizations) (Goober)
  
• Make alt-command briefing window - textbox at bottom, video window 2x large, video player capable of playing .mve/.ogg [Rqst: WCS]
• surface-shields would emit shield-hit ani [Rqst: WCS]
• taunts - four built-in message lines for taunts (random selection between list via 1 hotkey) - 2 taunts to target = 50% chance it changes target to taunter [Rqst: WCS] (same as what is already listed in roadmap under goober)
• Rework planetary orbits code - be able to specify "too close" distance [Rqst: WCS]

Bugfixes:

Features:
3.7

• Advanced Hazards System (better asteroids, mines, etc)  (Kazan & Goober)
  
• Objects behind other objects become sensor obscured (if occluding object is properly flagged) (required for AHS)
• Region-defined volumetric fogging [via shaders? if via shaders we can get shader soft-shadows too Big grin] (required for AHS) (Kazan)
  
• Draw/don't draw hazard objects based upon distance-to-observer (ie they blend into the fog so don't have to be spent drawing) (required for AHS) (Kazan)
  
• New section in .fs2 format for defining AHS entities (Kazan)
  
• Improved Starfield (adding bitmap stars of various sizes to current AAlines stars, skewing distribution toward galatic plane, and possible toward nebula bitmaps) (Kazan)
  
• OBJ3 http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,47751.0.html (Bobboau)
  
• damage decals return (Bobboau)
  
• wxFred  (Goober & Bobboau)
  
• First Person Shooter emulation (Goober)
  
• Custom HUD layouts per fighter [Rqst: WCS]
• Customizable Mainhall - with "doors" to other rooms (ex to mission simulator) [Rqst: WCS]
• HUD Weapon-selection alternative graphics (see 2j http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,39377.0.html) [Rqst: WCS]

Bugfixes:

Unscheduled
Features:

• Merge Imperial Alliance codebase (Goober)
  

Bugfixes:

Last Update: July 30, 2007

Nicely done.  Thx, Kazan.  :)

EDIT: Inquisitor, perhaps you could have copied that, instead of moving it!.... :p

[achtung]

• First Person Shooter emulation (Goober)
  

lol wut?

[jr2]

For when you eject & your escape pod lands on a Shivan-infested asteroid. 

[A2597]

question,
All this is well and good, and of progress has been made with this engine, but why are things such as shader implementation and shadows so far removed from being included in the roadmap? Surly these are things that can be done, and would be used to make the engine visibly more polished...

[Goober5000]

question,
All this is well and good, and of progress has been made with this engine, but why are things such as shader implementation and shadows so far removed from being included in the roadmap? Surly these are things that can be done, and would be used to make the engine visibly more polished...

Because we don't have any coders who will do them AND fix bugs at the same time.

Also, because there are a limited number of coders with a limited amount of time.  We can't add everybody's favorite feature; we simply don't have the manpower.  Find us some more coders and the situation might improve.

[jr2]

Where does one find coders that like to help out with volunteer game projects?  FS:SCP is good enough to get their interest if they are into that sort of thing.  Problem is matching the two.  So, where do these coders hang out?

[neoterran]

there aren't very many people who have the time, ability, and interest to do it.

Too bad FS2 isn't written in Ruby

[Tolwyn]

@Kaz: you forgot   $disable linked fire penalty feature

[TrashMan]

Shield/weapon energy regen ship specific, measured in %/sec

I've been begging for this from like....day 1

[Viper01]

This is excellent, many thanks. I can't wait to try out 3.6.10/3.6.11/3.7. I especially can't wait to see what the first person shooter emulation is about. Once again, thanks.

[G0atmaster]

any plans on the Red Alert bug?

And thanks for all the time you guys put into making this great game even better.

[Snail]

Also, because there are a limited number of coders with a limited amount of time.  We can't add everybody's favorite feature; we simply don't have the manpower.  Find us some more coders and the situation might improve.

What about Bobbaou's shadow stencils? They could be re-implemented, right?

[Turey]

This is excellent, many thanks. I can't wait to try out 3.6.10/3.6.11/3.7. I especially can't wait to see what the first person shooter emulation is about. Once again, thanks.

A primitive first-person shooter. All this really needs is some sort of physics feature that allows objects to glide over surfaces.  This would allow ships to be driven around like cars.  If you model a ship to look like a person, and you add submodel animations triggered by movement, you have a FPS.

[Goober5000]

What about Bobbaou's shadow stencils? They could be re-implemented, right?

Short answer: No.


Long answer: Read what I said above...

Because we don't have any coders who will do them AND fix bugs at the same time.

The way Bobboau creates features is he adds something that's 80% complete and full of bugs, then he posts lots of screenshots about it and disappears for six months.  It's tantamount to blackmail, because we feel obligated to finish his feature and fix his bugs since he got everybody excited about it.  That prevents us from fixing bugs that need to be fixed, and usually ends up significantly delaying release.

Right now, there are about three times as many bugs in Mantis as there were when 3.6.9 was released.  Taylor and I have both gotten a little bit burned out, and the 3.6.10 release has been delayed because of it.

EDIT: I don't mean to single out Bobboau here.  This is a problem that affects almost everybody in the SCP; Bobboau is simply the most obvious example.  The simple point is that we either need more coders dedicated to bugfixing, or we need the coders we have to fix more bugs.

[Nuke]

are the problems with rtt part of opengl fixes?

[Mongoose]

Gah...I swear, one of these days, I'm going to finally take a look at some part of the FS2 code, see what I can understand of it, and find out if there's any way I can lend you guys even a small hand.  It isn't fair to have so few in the community pulling the work for so many, and I'd like to give back in whatever way I can.

[jr2]

Just a quick question:  What version of SCP would this problem be resolved in?

The key problem with this ship, as has been mentioned already, is the subobject limit. Like it or not, FS2 has a 110 odd subobject limit, and you're not going to be able to effectively turret a ship 17 odd kilometers long with the 90 - 100 turrets you'll have left once the detail boxes and destroyable subobjects are done. In the old SW mod, the plan was to use this ship as a plot device - you might see it, it might kill a few ships at a great distance, or it might be a part of the background of a mission, or in a shipyard or something, but it would never be deployed as a standard combat ship. It's unkillable (or at least it ought to be) and thus plays hell with non scripted mission parts, and makes turreting it unneccesary. My advice, then, is to get it modelled and mapped but not to bother turreting it at all. If we need it to kill something, I can sort that out in FRED, but trying to treat something like this as a standard combat vessel is a recipe for, well, if not outright failure, certainly falling far short of what should be expected for a ship like this.

Before to choose this only option, why don't you asked to SCP coder to override the actual code to support more than 110 sub object ? I don't know the difficulties since I don't have the source code and well C++ isn't my langage of predilection

If it's just a value to modify, so it would be easy to have a ship with more than 110 subobject. If it's not the case and it's based on some mysterious parameter. :/

It looks like the limit may already have been removed, but you're still going to be left with an impossibly high number of turrets to path, table and properly pof, to produce a combat ready ship with no real mission value.

I tend to agree. I'd absolutely love to see this ship fully functional in-game, but simply for pure awe factor and not because it'd be of much use to a mission designer. Ships above a certain size, such as this and the Sath and Collie from FS2, are invariably little more than scenery or plot devices in most cases.

That said, I *can* think of a few cases where a fully armed version would actually be useful, so if you've got the time and inclination to take it all the way, then by all means... Just know in advance that much of the time it'll be a prop and not an actor. Though, without a doubt, a massively impressive and utterly astonishing prop.

Oh, and I guess another reason to do it might be to avoid the masses of whining Star Wars fans you'll have crawling up your alley once they download the game and realize this ship is not fully operational, expecting to be able to play the Battle of Endor and take out the bridge deflector shield, not realizing that it would take them a full 10 minutes at full thrust just to get from the tip of the wedge to their target due to the size of the ship

[TrashMan]

Well, there is a way around this... since you can't have 1000 turrets to cover such a large surface with NORMAL turrets...simply boost the range and firepower of the standard turrets..especially the range.

It would create the illusion of a far better armed ship, even tough it only has 100 turrets...not the best workaround...but it works.

[Nuke]

i tend to favor fewer beefier turrets myself.

[Inquisitor]

I am going to split this, this thread will remain informational, not a discussion to keep focused.