Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Marcov on October 14, 2009, 09:20:16 am

Title: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Marcov on October 14, 2009, 09:20:16 am
I simply just don't get it why FRED keeps on crashing everytime you create a certain amount of ships (like over around 150, I think), is there a file limiting the amount of ships per mission? And can this problem be solved? I simply want to mass-produce ships :nod:
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: The E on October 14, 2009, 09:25:47 am
There is a hard limit on the number of ships in a mission.

For further education, look at this:

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Engine_Limitations

These are absolute limits, and they probably won't be changed in the near future. After all, noone really needs that many ships in a mission. And even if you did, FSO is so damn inefficient that it would reduce most machines to a crawl if you hit those limits. Not to mention that going near those limits will cause weirdness, with weapons not being able to fire or not being rendered correctly, or the collision detection simply failing.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Black Wolf on October 14, 2009, 01:22:28 pm
Yeah... the limits are there for a reason. I would strongly advise just finding ways to better use the ships you have available.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Thaeris on October 14, 2009, 03:31:59 pm
Certainly the engine is old, but what coding-wise causes it to be so inefficient?
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Blue Lion on October 14, 2009, 03:49:08 pm
I can still never get why you would need that many ships. The mission would be insanely large in scale or ridiculously long.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on October 14, 2009, 03:54:08 pm
Wait the limit on the number of ships in FRED is 400 so 150 should not crash it.  Yes there are ways to use more then 150 ships without being a BOE.  Just because they are in FRED doesn't mean they are in the mission at the same time or even show up under certain circumstances. 

Now if you mean ships in the tables 130 is the limit for normal builds but you can do 250 (or is it 300) if using  Inferno builds.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Thaeris on October 14, 2009, 03:56:26 pm
I can still never get why you would need that many ships. The mission would be insanely large in scale or ridiculously long.

Those are actually kind of fun in a way... so long as your computer can run the mission.

It reminds me of playing WarBirds 2.77 on the old iMac in a way... I'd play offline (1. who in their right mind pays out to whazoo for an online game? 2. dial-up internet) and just keep blasting through waves and waves of enemy warplanes. That was a ton-o-fun for me, at least...  :D

Speaking of Inferno, isn't the SCP finally merging Inferno with normal builds?
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on October 14, 2009, 04:01:48 pm
It is planned if all testing goes well. 
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 14, 2009, 05:22:26 pm
You'll hit the projectile limit before the ships one usually, so any mission hitting the ships limit is almost certainly unplayable...
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: deathfun on October 14, 2009, 10:52:02 pm
I tried having a grand Battle of Endor style mission in the first FRED
Things didn't hit as they were supposed to, collisions but no damage, bullets would go straight through...

Tried it with FRED2, but instead it just crashed
I went nowhere near 150 ships though
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: TrashMan on October 15, 2009, 01:04:29 am
In BOE missions, using weapons with low RoF is paramount.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on October 15, 2009, 11:12:26 pm
Flaming Sword's Shivans! v0.21 mod has a BoE mission, in which it is claimed that engine limits were reached, to the point where weapons will not fire on occasion due to too many things going on.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: Droid803 on October 15, 2009, 11:27:23 pm
Pfft. Reaching the projectile limit is hardly rare.
Half the missions of the 158th do that.
Title: Re: Limited amount of ships?
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on October 15, 2009, 11:30:05 pm
In retail you could hit the limit with an asteroid field and 5 or 6 caps.  Used to call them ghost guns because they went right through the target.