[dizzy]

Hi there

As you can see from the subject I have a fairy exotic setup (seems so by reading the other threads). Anyways, I just played the first mission of the B5 Earth Minibari War demo and it TOTALLY KICKS ASS! You guys are awesome! You changed almost EVERYTHING in this game, it almost feels like a complete different game, heh. Anyways, congrats!

Fantastic job providing the torrents for the files, I downloaded them in no time and didn't had to deal with the fileplanet issues that I have with almost all the other FS2 mods.

Now to the critics. First of all considering that there are not only win32 users out there (like me) it would be very nice to have your releases also as zip/rar files instead of only as NSIS installers. I had to use wine first to install it with the installers and then get the VPs from the game directory.

Another issue with the installer is that it seems (I really doubt it happens only with "wine" emulation) that the installer first unpacks the VPs in the temporary windows directory and then copies them over to the final destination. This is very bad as the game actually requires double disk space at installation than it says (it requires minimum 1.4Gb not 700mb as it says). This problem again can be solved nicely but having a zip/rar release.

I have copied all the .vp files from the "program files" directory where B5 and the campaign seems to have installed to the directory where from I launch fs2_open. It seems that it cannot see the campaign. In the campaign list I have only that "demo" campaign. Might be just me beeing stupid, is that what EMW 2.0 should say ?

The file list is:
$ ls -1
B5-Core-3_2.vp
B5-C-sp-EMW01-intelanims-1_0.vp
B5-C-sp-EMW01-missions-2_0.vp
B5-C-sp-EMW01-speech-1_0.vp
fs2_open_r
fs2.sh
Root_fs2.vp
server.txt
sparky_fs2.vp
sparky_hi_fs2.vp
stu_fs2.vp

Please advise! Thanks!!

PS: what is the thing with the "data" directory after installation ? besides the freddocs and pics it just seems to have a lot of files in "data/cache"; AFAIK these files are created (if needed) when you run the game so they might be needed at all to be in the installation  right ?

[karajorma]

You haven't actually downloaded raider wars!

That would add B5-C-sp-RW01-2_0.vp or something like it.

[dizzy]

Well yeah, I downloaded Earth-Minbari War 2.0. This is suposed to show up as "Earth Minbari War demo" in the campaign list ?

I assumed that the "demo" was something with which the "base" came (yeah I know they say the base does not include any campaign). It is strange to say "demo" if it's a finished campaign (they don't refer to it as "demo" on their site). Besides this issue the rest seems to work fine (still have to download Raider Wars and check it out).

[karajorma]

Ah. The EM war is indeed just a demo. It was originally written to show off TBP release 1 and hence was called a demo (As in demo for the game rather than demo for a campaign).

[Fury]

Guess I need to add that "demo" to the campaign description in the site then.

Anyways, currently we offer no support whatsoever to any other operating systems than Windows, this is mainly limited by the fact that none of the active staff use other operating systems. Sorry, but the minority just gotta live with those issues you mentioned. That said, in the future there will be official releases to both linux and OSX operating systems. Still, technical support will still be mainly limited by the number of community's knowledgeable linux and osx users.

As for the installer, nothing we can do about that apart from using a different installer. NSIS is an open source installer, and one of the best free-of-charge and license-free Windows installers at that. All installers have their own little problems, and this is quite a minor issue.

[dizzy]

Thanks guys for the replies!

@Mr. Fury: ah I think you got me all wrong. I don't ask for any official support for other platforms (I understand that's kinda of impossible when no developer uses such a platform, I too am developer for a lot of other projects and I cannot offer support for Win32 because I don't use such things but luckily some other devs can heh). One request only, whould be possible that besides the nicely packed releases (with executables and so on) to make just data files (so far seems just .vp files) releases in a zip/rar archive ? This is all I ask for heh, thank you!

[dizzy]

Ok, seems that this has been raised by "taylor" too so I will just shut up for now. Just think about using double disk space (but you said that switching from NSIS is not an option) and the files in "data/cache" which I think they have no place in the distribution ?

[taylor]

Originally posted by dizzy
the files in "data/cache" which I think they have no place in the distribution ?

It saves the end user from having to generate them on the first run which makes the mission load faster.  I've been trying for a while to get everyone to include IBX files with their mods so seeing them there put a big smile on my face.

I would still rather have them in a VP for ease of distribution but it's understandable how it was done give the rendering problems at the time.  Now that the NaN bug is fixed and the OGL rendering issue has been squashed maybe that decision will be reconsidered for the next big release and the IBX files will be included in the VPs.  And it's quite possible that PCS2 will have an IBX generator in it which will make things easier for the model makers.

And regarding the files being in Windows only packages, I'm going to use Loki_installer for a Linux version when 3.6.7 goes final.  It's easy enough to extract the files at that point without actually installing it if wanted.  Loki_patch/update will be used for version updates since binary patches are cool and will seriously cut down on download times.  If you've got any opinions or objections to using Loki stuff better speak up now.

[IPAndrews]

I have solved many mission loading problems in the past by deleting .ibx files. Something I couldn't do easily if the file was hidden away in a .vp. On those grounds alone I would not want .ibx files on the vp. I am willing to forego the relatively small advantage of having fewer files in my TBP directory in order to keep the option of deleting corrupt/incompatible ibx files. Don't worry though Taylor. The team does generally do the opposite of whatever I suggest so you'll probably get your own way.

[taylor]

Originally posted by IPAndrews
I have solved many mission loading problems in the past by deleting .ibx files. Something I couldn't do easily if the file was hidden away in a .vp. On those grounds alone I would not want .ibx files on the vp. I am willing to forego the relatively small advantage of having fewer files in my TBP directory in order to keep the option of deleting corrupt/incompatible ibx files. Don't worry though Taylor. The team does generally do the opposite of whatever I suggest so you'll probably get your own way.

A good bit of work has been done to fix these issues though.  New builds have a -noibx cmdline option so that you can test whether it's the IBX or not without having to delete them and the bug that made some type of random data end up in the IBX has been fixed.  There have been problems, I readily admit that, but hopefully it's good enough now that the files can safely be included in a VP.  Time and some testing is needed to prove that, but I will win you over.

[dizzy]

Thanks for the "data/cache" explanation. If those files tend to be considerably bigger than the rest of the distribution I think then the download size argument will matter more than the load time on the first run Of course, this does not apply with Babylon because the rest of the files count for aprox 700mb so 24mb in "data/cache" shouldnt be an issue for download time...

Originally posted by taylor

And regarding the files being in Windows only packages, I'm going to use Loki_installer for a Linux version when 3.6.7 goes final.  It's easy enough to extract the files at that point without actually installing it if wanted.  Loki_patch/update will be used for version updates since binary patches are cool and will seriously cut down on download times.  If you've got any opinions or objections to using Loki stuff better speak up now.

I have used Loki installers/updaters back in the old days with their original titles but only with their GTK+ interface. Now I know the project has been continued or something because I have seen many such releases on icculus. Does a Loki installer of some package allow extracting of files without doing ANYTHING interactive ? (I'm just thinking from a position of a possible future Gentoo packager for Babylon5 releases and fs2_open in general, heh)

Which gets me to another point, whould any of the TBP guys have anything against me making the ebuilds for Gentoo for a possible future TBP release that whould support Linux too ? Actually if not for no fs2_open release supporting Linux I would have started doing it right now. So the only technical thing keeping me now is a fs2_open release including the latest CVS codes (which seem to support Linux just fine, yeah, besides the "static" sound known problem). Then Gentoo users could install B5 with a command as simple as: "emerge fs2-tbp" (or whatever name you wish for it, I thought "fs2-tbp" is a good choice as I will also probably make ebuilds for a "fs2-icculus" and a "fs2-open").

Also I agree with what Taylor said on another forum that Linux B5 packages containing the fs2_open source whould probably be better

[taylor]

Originally posted by dizzy
I have used Loki installers/updaters back in the old days with their original titles but only with their GTK+ interface. Now I know the project has been continued or something because I have seen many such releases on icculus. Does a Loki installer of some package allow extracting of files without doing ANYTHING interactive ? (I'm just thinking from a position of a possible future Gentoo packager for Babylon5 releases and fs2_open in general, heh)

Not sure if that's changed or not.  Last I checked there was a confirmation before running the installation part.  It would be simple to add the ability to just extract the files though and require no other input so I'll try and remember to do that.

Also I agree with what Taylor said on another forum that Linux B5 packages containing the fs2_open source whould probably be better

There will be a source tarball available to anyone that wants it but for the installers at least it will be binaries only: x86, x86_64 and PPC (OSX and Linux).

I still haven't been able to track down the static bug, but it's not an OpenAL problem.  It's something in the general streaming code.  I did fix an Int3() crash with some of the ADPCM files which had bothered me for a while but no progress on the static yet.  3.6.7 is not going to be held up for the static fix but if it does get solved later then the official source and binary releases will be updated with the fix.