Author Topic: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.15.0-dev+73b131a (combined launcher/installer)  (Read 422798 times)

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Nothing, Bryan just tends to make random "what about" questions that are vaguely related to whatever topic he posts in.


Some minor comments regarding development mods :
- Packages kind of confused me the first time around, if it's not already on the TODO list may I suggest adding a small blurb in the "Add package" popup to describe what it is ? Something along the lines of "A package represents a single .vp file, and must be structured like <Knossos mod library>/<my mod>/<my package>/data/[missions|tables|models|whatever]"
- In the launch FSO tab, the buttons go :
[Play] [FRED]
[FRED Debug] [Fast Debug]
I feel it would make more sens to "align" those, like
[Play] [Fast Debug]
[FRED Debug] [FRED]
or
[Play] [FRED]
[Fast Debug] [FRED Debug]

Note to self : figure out how difficult it would be to submit a proper pull request for both these suggestions. Knossos is on github, right ?

 
Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
You can use wxLauncher and Knossos at the same time. However they use different folder structures so you'll have to use two different game folders.

You can install Knossos on any hard drive you want. However, the directory you select in the installer will only contain Knossos. The actual game files (mods, FSO, etc.) will be stored in a separate directory which you can select after starting Knossos for the first time (though you can change it afterwards in the settings). Make sure to select a directory outside of C:\Program Files for that.

Thanks! I installed everything yesterday and it works great. Much more comfortable than WXLauncher.

 

Offline ngld

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
- Packages kind of confused me the first time around, if it's not already on the TODO list may I suggest adding a small blurb in the "Add package" popup to describe what it is ? Something along the lines of "A package represents a single .vp file, and must be structured like <Knossos mod library>/<my mod>/<my package>/data/[missions|tables|models|whatever]"
There's already an explanation on the dev tab that's displayed until you add the first package. Adding it to the add package dialog is probably a good idea though.
The path should be something like this: <Knossos mod library>/<TC>/<my mod>/<my package>/data/... (you forgot the TC part)
If the mod is a normal FS2 mod, then the TC folder is FS2.

- In the launch FSO tab, the buttons go :
[Play] [FRED]
[FRED Debug] [Fast Debug]
I feel it would make more sens to "align" those, like
[Play] [Fast Debug]
[FRED Debug] [FRED]
or
[Play] [FRED]
[Fast Debug] [FRED Debug]
That's a bit complicated since those buttons are automatically generated based on the selected build. For example a recent nightly will additionally have the buttons "QtFRED" and "QtFRED Debug".

Note to self : figure out how difficult it would be to submit a proper pull request for both these suggestions. Knossos is on github, right ?
Yes, here's the code for adding a new package and here is the code to generate the launch buttons. The first button there is the play button and the second is a for loop that generates all the other buttons.

Finally, here's the package explanation I mentioned earlier.

If you have any questions (how to set it up, where everything is, etc.), feel free to ask.



@Knarfe1000: Thanks for the feedback! :)  Let me know if you encounter problems / bugs.

 
Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Loving the Knossos portal! made it super easy to get back into freespace.

Got a minor bug that I should let you all know about. (I'm on version 0.13.3)

The second time I tried to launch the new MediaVPs campaign I got an error saying something about an unrecognized joystick. I have never used a joystick since getting the launcher, and did not have one plugged into the computer. Went into settings, nothing was detected. I noticed that the "force feedback" box was checked. I unchecked it, and it started working for me.

So it seems to me that theres some code conflict where having it checked forces the client to look for a joystick.

Let me know if you have any other questions about the bug.

 

Offline ngld

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
The force feedback actually doesn't matter in that situation. Simply saving your settings already solved the problem.

That error message shows up if a joystick is configured in your fs2_open.ini, that joystick can't be detected and you haven't saved your Knossos settings with a recent version. There's a problem with the SDL2 library that more recent FSO builds use which can result in FSO not detecting your joystick. I've added a workaround in Knossos for that but to make it work, Knossos has to save your selected joystick in its own settings. If that hasn't happened yet and FSO can't detect the currently selected joystick, Knossos doesn't know if that is the result of the SDL2 issue or simply because the joystick isn't present. Once you've saved your settings (regardless of whether you changed anything or not), Knossos remembers your selected joystick (or if you select "No joystick", that instead) and can handle the situation appropriately.

So, "working as designed", I guess.

Quote
Your fs2_open.ini contains a joystick which this FSO version can't detect and Knossos doesn't remember your joystick. Please go to Knossos' settings, select your joystick, save and try again.
That's the error Knossos displayed and pretty much says the same stuff I explained above (though it isn't as long-winded  :P).

 
Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Hi it's been a long time since I last launched fso and as I don't use knossos (yes I know what a loser I am) I got a little question: when I click I want to download individual files I know what i'm doing is the hash provided from the 7zip archive or from the vp file itself?

Edit: well nvm my question is dumb it's the 7zip obviously...it would be nice for users like me who love to manually install to have a way to know which of the files are updated to avoid downloading the whole mod again if only the core has been updated for example. Perhaps adding a date with the hash to know when the file was last updated in knossos?
« Last Edit: November 04, 2018, 10:38:13 am by krevett62 »

 

Offline Novachen

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
After some time i have used to establish several other installation methods, i thought about to reupload newer versions of some of my other mods on Knossos, so that it can be used as an alternative installation method.

But because of two issues, i was not able to do that, so far. Even the second one would be fixable with the 'To bury one's head in the sand' method. The first one is not.
Quote
"Your mod" requires "MediaVPs" which has conflicting requirements: ~3.8.2 (Your mod), ==3.6.10 (the base mod)

In my opinion only a mod developer by itself should have the responsibility that its own mod is working. I think it would be better, if the requirements of the base mod should be ignored if the mod is used as a requirement of another mod or overriden atleast if there are different versions of the same requirements.

Quote
character limit of the description
Well, because of my (this time it is only in english) detailed description together with an also detailed changelog, i once again hit the online character limit of the description of one of my mods.
Maybe you should display the available characters i have left in the editor screen, because otherwise i have to check the description lenght everytime with another program, which is not very intuitive. Also the character limit is not in effect if you use Knossos offline only. Online and Offline descriptions should show the same behavior in my opinion. So there should be a limit in the editor field at general or we are talking about the deletion of this limit once more :).
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Offline Bryan See

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
What about private mods?
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Offline ngld

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Sorry for the lack of replies. Didn't have much time to work on Knossos lately.

Perhaps adding a date with the hash to know when the file was last updated in knossos?
That information isn't stored right now so I'd need to add it but that shouldn't be too hard. I'll add it when I have time.

In my opinion only a mod developer by itself should have the responsibility that its own mod is working. I think it would be better, if the requirements of the base mod should be ignored if the mod is used as a requirement of another mod or overriden atleast if there are different versions of the same requirements.
This has been discussed on Discord as well with the result that I'll try and change the dependency resolver allowing mods to override the version requirements of other mods in the same dependency chain.

Maybe you should display the available characters i have left in the editor screen, because otherwise i have to check the description lenght everytime with another program, which is not very intuitive. Also the character limit is not in effect if you use Knossos offline only. Online and Offline descriptions should show the same behavior in my opinion.
Sounds like a good idea. I never thought anyone would hit the limit so I hadn't considered displaying (or checking) the limit in Knossos itself. Clearly I was wrong.

So there should be a limit in the editor field at general or we are talking about the deletion of this limit once more :).
Removing the character limit is not practical since there's also a limit imposed by the DB storing the metadata and having huge descriptions could cause problems elsewhere. For the record, the current character limit is 10240 (~ 10 KiB).

What about private mods?
What about them?

 
Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Just letting you know I've found a rather interesting bug. After some time (exact conditions uncertain, will update if I figure them out), launching mods with FS2 3.8.1 just... stops working. After Knossos starts, trying to launch a mod with 3.8.1 for the first time yields an "FSO is launching" notification for about five seconds after which the notification disappears and nothing happens. Further attempts to launch the game result in the same message for about half a second.

Deleting all data in the \appdata\Roaming\HardLightProductions folder except the "data" folder seems to fix the issue until it breaks again some time later. It's likely that there is one specific file in there that is causing the problem, but I haven't been able to experiment enough to find out what it is yet. If I do find out, I'll update this post.

FS2 3.8.0 and earlier versions work fine; the problem is only with FS2 3.8.1.

 

Offline Iain Baker

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Just letting you know I've found a rather interesting bug. After some time (exact conditions uncertain, will update if I figure them out), launching mods with FS2 3.8.1 just... stops working. After Knossos starts, trying to launch a mod with 3.8.1 for the first time yields an "FSO is launching" notification for about five seconds after which the notification disappears and nothing happens. Further attempts to launch the game result in the same message for about half a second.

Deleting all data in the \appdata\Roaming\HardLightProductions folder except the "data" folder seems to fix the issue until it breaks again some time later. It's likely that there is one specific file in there that is causing the problem, but I haven't been able to experiment enough to find out what it is yet. If I do find out, I'll update this post.

FS2 3.8.0 and earlier versions work fine; the problem is only with FS2 3.8.1.


I have noticed this as well. As a workaround, I have found changing the 'Preferred Engine Stability' setting from 'Stable' to 'RCs' or 'Nightlies' sometimes fixes this.



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Offline ngld

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Hm... could it be that this bug appears after you unplug a controller and disappears once you go to the settings page and save (don't even need to change anything)?

@ruger392: Instead of deleting everything in the AppData folder, deleting (or renaming) the fs2_open.ini is probably enough. Would be interesting to see the difference between one version that causes the bug and another that works fine.

 
Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Hm... could it be that this bug appears after you unplug a controller and disappears once you go to the settings page and save (don't even need to change anything)?

@ruger392: Instead of deleting everything in the AppData folder, deleting (or renaming) the fs2_open.ini is probably enough. Would be interesting to see the difference between one version that causes the bug and another that works fine.

I've done some more in-depth testing and come up with some interesting results.

If I delete fs2_open.ini, connect a new controller and disconnect the previously selected one, then start Knossos, then run a mod, the game launches fine. If I try to start it again, I get the bug. The newly created fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=None
If I then select the new controller in settings and save, fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944
If I then start a mod, it launches and fs2_open.ini changes to
CurrentJoystickGUID=030000004F040000FFFF000000000000
From there, the game launches every time and has no problems.

If I disconnect the selected controller, the game still runs. If I save settings without changing anything (the joystick drop-down is blank), I get the bug and fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944

If instead of saving settings, I restart Knossos, I get the bug and fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=030000004F040000FFFF000000000000
Reconnecting the controller doesn't change anything. Saving settings without changing anything (the joystick drop-down shows the controller) doesn't help and fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944
Switching the joystick to "No joystick" and saving allows the game to launch. fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=
Re-selecting the controller and saving yields the bug and
CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944
Manually setting CurrentJoystickGUID to 030000004F040000FFFF000000000000 doesn't help.

With CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944 or CurrentJoystickGUID=030000004F040000FFFF000000000000, restarting Knossos from that point allows the game to launch and everything works fine.

Working and bugged fs2_open.ini files attached (in an archive because the site wouldn't let me upload .inis)

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]

 

Offline bling

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
I really like Knossos and prefer it to installing mods the old-fashioned way.  :yes:

I've encountered an issue and am not sure whether it's related to Knossos, specific mods, or my configuration.  :confused:

Some mods run using the settings I specify for them using Details > Options > FSO Settings.

Some mods seem to ignore those settings altogether, and instead use 640x480 resolution with special effects off.

Please help me troubleshoot this issue.

 

Offline ngld

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
@ruger392: So first, a little background on the different UUIDs: Newer FSO builds use a more recent version of SDL (2.0.8) than the latest stable builds. Unfortunately, SDL changed how UUIDs for joysticks are generated which means that the same joystick has a different UUID depending on which SDL version you're using (great, isn't it? /s). Knossos thus detects which SDL version is currently in-use and writes the appropriate UUID to fs2_open.ini. This bug appeared around the time I added this feature so I'm fairly certain that the code handling this process is causing the issue. I haven't been able to reproduce the bug or figure out what is going wrong so I haven't been able to fix it.

CurrentJoystickGUID=None
This isn't ideal (the value should just be an empty string) but doesn't matter since it doesn't affect FSO.

If I then select the new controller in settings and save, fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944
If I then start a mod, it launches and fs2_open.ini changes to
CurrentJoystickGUID=030000004F040000FFFF000000000000
From there, the game launches every time and has no problems.
The first is the UUID from the old SDL version (which Knossos uses internally) and the latter is from SDL 2.0.8. So this is to expected.

If I disconnect the selected controller, the game still runs. If I save settings without changing anything (the joystick drop-down is blank), I get the bug and fs2_open.ini shows
CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944
[...]
Manually setting CurrentJoystickGUID to 030000004F040000FFFF000000000000 doesn't help.
[...]
With CurrentJoystickGUID=4f04ffff000000000000504944564944 or CurrentJoystickGUID=030000004F040000FFFF000000000000, restarting Knossos from that point allows the game to launch and everything works fine.
This seems to suggest that some kind of internal state (which is cleared on restart) gets messed up when launching FSO if the currently saved controller isn't found. However, this is caused by the value stored in Knossos' configuration and not the one stored in fs2_open.ini (both values are checked before starting FSO). The weirdest thing is that Knossos is supposed to leave the FSO configuration alone if the joystick specified there is detected by FSO. The fact that setting the correct value manually indicates that the bug occurs before Knossos can compare the two values. It also further proves that this is a Knossos bug and FSO is behaving properly.

What happens if you trigger the bug and set CurrentJoystickGUID to an empty string (CurrentJoystickGUID=) before launching FSO again? Does that solve the problem?


@bling: I'm glad you like Knossos! Can you list one mod which is working properly and one that's not? Also, please post a debug log for a mod that's ignoring your options. You can do that by clicking on the dropdown button for the mod (or the Options button on the Details page) and selecting "Run FastDebug". Once you're in the mainhall, exit the game and click "Upload debug log" in the same menu as before. Finally, copy and paste the link here.

 

Offline bling

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
@bling: I'm glad you like Knossos! Can you list one mod which is working properly and one that's not? Also, please post a debug log for a mod that's ignoring your options. You can do that by clicking on the dropdown button for the mod (or the Options button on the Details page) and selecting "Run FastDebug". Once you're in the mainhall, exit the game and click "Upload debug log" in the same menu as before. Finally, copy and paste the link here.

Blue Planet Complete runs using the set resolution (1920x1080).
Ancient-Shivan War runs using what I suppose is the default resolution (640x480), even though I have it set the same way as for BPC.

Here's the log file, which curiously shows 1920x1080 resolution set.

 

Offline ngld

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
Is the resolution ACTUALLY 640x480 or do you think so because you see black bars on the left and right sides?

 

Offline bling

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
It's... more of a feeling, actually.

I've attached a screenshot of each.

To me, it seems ASW is low-res. Barely anything can be seen on the screen, the ships seem huge.

Whereas BPC seems high-res.

Could it just be the UI scaling differently? Or models of different detail?

[attachment deleted by admin]

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
I'd say it's fine - both screenshots are in 1080p, but ASW is kinda old now and uses a custom HUD that was made like that. On the other hand, BPC's hud is scaled differently and much more transparent. Take into consideration that BPC uses a different font in some places, which IMO is more readable than the one used in retail, and in your second screenshot the camera is about... 1 kilometer or more behind your vessel.

Also, if you have got black bars on the sides of your screen in menus and it looks like they're displayed in 4:3, try the "Strech interface to fill screen" flag under Details -> Options -> FSO options -> Gameplay. Though I think it should be on by default.

(I might be a bit wrong here, I haven't played ASW in a long time)

Also, does ASW use a different fancy animation on its mission load screens? I recall it being a very nice touch that some mods around could use.
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Re: PUBLIC BETA: Knossos 0.13.3 (combined launcher/installer)
What happens if you trigger the bug and set CurrentJoystickGUID to an empty string (CurrentJoystickGUID=) before launching FSO again? Does that solve the problem?

It does, in both bugged states (after deleting the .ini and after restarting Knossos with a disconnected controller)