[Droid803]

How do you get that it is mission related. I think its code related. It's an assert, it tells me nothing. Absolutely no chance of fixing it.

Get me a callstack and a team of coders to help interpret it...

[Dragon]

Well, then, I'll do some more testing. Are you sure there's nothing in the log?

[Droid803]

I don't need more testing all I need is a call stack, take it to #SCP.

[Dragon]

Hmm, weird. I don't know what I did, but I can't reproduce any of the bugs but one (the one I've reported to SCP). That's puzzling, because they appeared consistently before.
Anyway, I'm past that mission. The scanning mission was great, and I don't have any bugs to report so far. However, there's a very important moment in the Amaterasu attack mission, which could really use a checkpoint (it's also a perfect moment for it, and I expected a checkpoint there). It's rather easy to get killed just after it, and it's after a rather difficult marathon.

Spoiler:

The moment in question is just after you plow through the entire Exarchy fleet.

[AndrewofDoom]

Really? That's the part where I can go on mental autopilot since it becomes real easy to complete once you reach that.

[Dragon]

Yes, if you do it right. If you slip up (especially on insane) or some random thing goes wrong, you have to redo the mission. Not to mention it's a really good place for a checkpoint, since you know the exact state of things at this moment. I've got my mission messed up by a random collision, and this capship killing marathon isn't exactly short.

[Droid803]

That is one mission where I will not add a checkpoint in, because it would require saving the position of the player AND the entire fleet which are both moving. There is no good place to put a checkpoint, as I don't require anyone to actually destroy any of the secondary targets, I can't simply make them all disappear either. There is no point in the mission where the location of everything is known - it is all relative, it depends how quickly you clear things! It is far from a perfect moment for it, and if you follow the command briefing you shouldn't even be shot at from that point on.

Also, the mission has three (or was it four?) versions rolled into one, each with a different set of enemy ships, so adding a checkpoint to that just exponentiates the amount to testing required... I found it wasn't worth it, just take it slow and careful!

[General Battuta]

Can you just approximate the positions of the fleet, or is it totally unpredictable?

Also devs are the worst judges of a mission's difficulty

[Droid803]

Well you're flying towards the fleet and they're flying towards you, so the absolute positions aren't known.
Putting in relative/approximate positions could put you into the range of ship you may or may not have destroyed, etc...

Also, first report of anyone having trouble on this mission at all (none of the testers did either!). Page 15. I would say I did a pretty good job judging the difficulty.

[MatthTheGeek]

I finished that mission today. If you have trouble doing it, then you're playing it wrong. It's that simple. You're flying a superfighter that can down gunships in one shot, so what the f*ck are you complaining about ?

[Dragon]

Well you're flying towards the fleet and they're flying towards you, so the absolute positions aren't known.
Putting in relative/approximate positions could put you into the range of ship you may or may not have destroyed, etc...

Ah, I didn't know that. The fleet moves via waypoints, so if you measure the time, you know their position (FRED has enough math operators for calculating this). I forgot that blowing the fleet up isn't mandatory though (I guess there isn't an easy way of saving a list of strings to one variable), and the fact there are three versions of the mission certainly complicates the matter.
I got shot down, because I scraped the Amaterasu's hull and bounced around. On insane, collisions are pretty dangerous, not to mention it threw me into the turrets. Ships in FS have a tendency to bounce around like a superball in tight spaces, and DE's physics amplify the problem.

[General Battuta]

Well you're flying towards the fleet and they're flying towards you, so the absolute positions aren't known.

Putting in relative/approximate positions could put you into the range of ship you may or may not have destroyed, etc...

I'm not totally following the problem with a checkpoint here (not that I have any idea if it's necessary or not). Are the ships going to be in the same place each time?

Storing destroyed states for all the ships should only take one var using bitwise.

[qwadtep]

Yeah, I'm not seeing the technical issue. You store the position of the player and stick them there, and store the position of the Amaterasu and offset the fleet accordingly.

Since you can just fly over the fleet I don't think it's very high priority, though.

[Droid803]

It's not even a long or particularly hard mission, why does it even need a checkpoint.
It ruins the "awesomeness" if you don't blow through the fleet and just HIT 1.
I added a bunch of checkpoints in the last testing run, none of my missions even breaks 10 minutes except the scanning one which has TWO checkpoints. I feel adding anymore would be like babying people. If you want to be babied don't play on insane! There is NO AI DIFFERENCE between difficulty levels, just how much damage you can take, so if you need a checkpoint, try lowering the difficulty...

Either way you get minus manly points.

Until someone explains to me how to actually do bitwise, don't tell me to use it, because AFAIK its some obscure thing buried in FRED. I use a really simplified checkpoint system that only stores mission states, not states for any ship at all. Did it for every other mission with a checkpoint. Even storing the position of one ship is more complex than what I feel necessary! It is best to keep things simple.

[General Battuta]

You're probably right about not using a checkpoint.

Bitwise is really simple except for one stupid (but still really simple) thing you have to get your head around. I can hit you up on IRC.

[Dragon]

OK, you're right about this mission being easy. I've took a break, then changed an ingress vector and got in. The only difficult part after fighting the fleet is the egress, which I've got wrong on my first try (though maybe on lower difficulties, briefly flying into Amaterasu's flak pocket and is more survivable). Other than that, my leading cause of death were spontanous explosions, which I suspect to be debris collisions. I might've just been really unlucky regarding that, but those were rather annoying. Also, it seems that if you skip the fleet, it'll get destroyed anyway. Those cannons do an impressive job at killing everything that comes into range.

Also, it disappointed me a bit that the campaign simply ended after that. I kind of expected that there'll be a wacky Gradius homage (yes, I've looked through the assets), some (more) time travel, a wacky Thunder Force homage and an unexpected twist ending. The modpack contains about twice as many assets as the campaign, and plenty of things are left hanging. A sequel would really be appereciated.

[CKid]

Spoiler:

Um... All assets are used. Did you play the 2nd version of chapter 2?

[Dragon]

Nope, how do you get it?

[CKid]

Ace the test in the Quiz Mission.

[Dragon]

Gonna try that someday.