[Hellbender]

Has anybody looked into bumping the limits of the number of individual ship entries you can display in the Tech Room, and the same for Fred?

I did look, so before someone misunderstands let me explain what I mean.  

What I can find points to the number of ships allowed in missions being upped, and the allowed file size of the ships.tbl file being increased substantially.

This works great for huge fleet engagement fans.  The issue is not with that, though nice work there folks.  

The issue is that with every release I have tried  including the latest builds, the maximum number of unique ships that will display in the Tech Room is 130.  Fred will not react well to any ships after this number of unique ship table entries as well.

There is more as well: any number of ships in the ships.tbl over 102 causes random characters to display for the name of the first ship in the list in both the Tech Room and in Fred's ships list.  The only way I've worked around this is to make a dummy ship entry for the first entry in the ships.tbl

Since I've seen numerous posts mentioning table limits being increased, I'm hoping this will be a simple solution - would sure be a lot more convenient than having to replace existing ships.tbl entries in order to add in new ships once the 130 entry limit is reached.  

With the slew of new mods out and upcoming, I'm hoping that one of our coders can look into this.  It is a lot less aggravating to append an entry than to replace it.

H

[kasperl]

well, AFAIK, going over 130 means breaking multi.

[Hellbender]

Hmm, I dunno much about the source, but if there are ship table limits tied into multi, wouldn't it be a matter of changing a few numbers?

From a modder's standpoint, it is always easier to append an entry to a table than to have to cut and splice, and deciding what gets turfed in favor of the new toys.

From a player's standpoint I like to be able to see and use all of the old, as well as the new.

From a tesing standpoint, it is a lot nicer to have the option to balance test a mod against all the origional items - the comparison helps prevent the creation of super-deity mods.  

Few things irritate me more than trying a mod that looks gorgeous and well put together instantly outclass everything else in the game.  I'm sure every one of us have been tempted, but being the baddest boy on the block provideds no challenge, and loss of interest.  

Colt's early revolver was called the Peacemaker.  It earned that name.  The reason being that it very quickly provided even the weakest of specimens with effective, portable, personal defense from becoming a vitim of violent crime.

Gawd, I'm getting old!  Now I'm putting anecdotes in my conversation to underscore a point...

[Goober5000]

Stop it with the anecdotes.  From someone who "doesn't know much about the source", it's obnoxious.

If it were a matter of changing a few numbers, it would have been done already.  (And it has, in certain special non-multi builds such as Inferno.)  But multiplayer makes it vastly more complicated.  The number of ships must be transmitted in multiplayer packets, which are specifically coded with certain sizes in mind.  Numbers above that size require rewrites to accept the new limits in every place where a ship limit packet is sent.

[Flipside]

Well, if it can't be done, it can't be done, 130 isn't exactly a small amount if used right, but if anyone can, Kazan can

Flipside

[terren]

I'm going to asume you cant more quickly change the multiplayer data to transmit only the ships being used in the mission?  Or is that what you ment and I missed it...

[SadisticSid]

Because multiplayer wasn't an issue when we made Inferno, and the ship limit was, Phreak made a special build that upped them for us. You can find a link in his signature, get the Inferno build (though the current version seems to be a little buggy on the HUD front).

[Hellbender]

Hmm...

Stop it with the anecdotes. From someone who "doesn't know much about the source", it's obnoxious.

And that kind of mature comment was anything but?

It's just my way of speaking, and I made a wry comment afterward.  Whoop-dee-do. Not knowing much about a particular subject needn't imply that a person is uneducated.  I cited an exasperating issue and asked questions that I might obtain a better understanding.  I won't be offering apologies for what passes for my sense of humour.

If it were a matter of changing a few numbers, it would have been done already. (And it has, in certain special non-multi builds such as Inferno.) But multiplayer makes it vastly more complicated.

So let me get this straight then, it can be done but the net-code is messy enough that no one wants to touch it?  

The number of ships must be transmitted in multiplayer packets, which are specifically coded with certain sizes in mind. Numbers above that size require rewrites to accept the new limits in every place where a ship limit packet is sent.

What kind of numbers of checks are we talking here?

It doesn't have a whole lot of eye candy punch, but would make a positive impact on things for modders and players.  Hopefully someone will tackle this in the future.

Thanks,

H