[Kirby]

Seems to be a problem with rendering transparency with this RC2.....shield hit detection on other ships appear fully black, as well as the outer trails of the Hornet missles...

RC1 worked fine

[ShivanSpS]

Abut pactching the VPs, what happend if I extract the MV_effects and MV_adveffects and just override the needed files availible in MV_alpha patchs?

[taylor]

Seems to be a problem with rendering transparency with this RC2.....shield hit detection on other ships appear fully black, as well as the outer trails of the Hornet missles...

Not a build issue, it's a problem with the media files.  Grab the alpha VP patches linked in the first post and you should be fine until the fixed MediaVPs can be released.

[CaptJosh]

Some comments. Last night, I finally got this set up and I was thrilled to see, that, having left my FS2 Disc 2 in the drive, the build played the MVEs right off the disc. Thank you, Taylor. Something not so good, it will only try with the FS2 discs. I tried putting in my Freespace Disc 1 for purposes of playing the movies for FS Port and it complained that the wrong volume was in the drive. I'm not sure that this is a build issue though. However, once I just copied the MVEs from the discs, FSPort played the movies just fine. Excellent work. Now if my new video card will show up so that things like high poly asteroids in the mission to clear out 4 vasudan wings in the Great War don't make my half dead one keep locking up.

[taylor]

Something not so good, it will only try with the FS2 discs. I tried putting in my Freespace Disc 1 for purposes of playing the movies for FS Port and it complained that the wrong volume was in the drive. I'm not sure that this is a build issue though.

That stuff is hard-coded in the binary and not something that's easily changed for mods.

I did (or do, in an old code tree) have a new feature which would allow mods to customize this stuff via a table.  It allows them to set what mission names are in a campaign (so that they can not show up in the single missions list), what missions need certain CD volumes (for the purposes of movies), and also custom icons for use in the multiplayer and simroom UI, all via a table.  Although this was thought of as a good idea, it still doesn't have much support from the community.  It just doesn't do enough to warrant yet another tbl.  Even I think it should do more, just not sure what.  So, that's something that is coming at some point in the future, if I ever figure out what else to do with it.

[CaptJosh]

That's cool. If I have any ideas on the subject of that table, I'll let you know.

[Ace Pace]

Build initially worked for me, now launcher refuses to load aswell as game. When the game did work I got the following error. This happens when acording to the fs.log file it is:

Code: [Select]

Initializing OpenAL...
  Using 'Generic Software' as OpenAL sound device...

Code: [Select]

fs2_open_d caused an Access Violation in module ntdll.dll at 001b:7c911f52.
Exception handler called in FreeSpace 2 Main Thread.
Error occurred at 6/16/2006 17:31:56.
I:\Freespace2\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_d.exe, run by Unknown.
1 processor(s), type 586.
1024 MBytes physical memory.
Le edit: Any previous build, such as the build bundled with the FS2 SCP pack fred2_open_r-20060323.exe dosn't give me any issues.

[karajorma]

I did (or do, in an old code tree) have a new feature which would allow mods to customize this stuff via a table.  It allows them to set what mission names are in a campaign (so that they can not show up in the single missions list), what missions need certain CD volumes (for the purposes of movies), and also custom icons for use in the multiplayer and simroom UI, all via a table.  Although this was thought of as a good idea, it still doesn't have much support from the community.  It just doesn't do enough to warrant yet another tbl.  Even I think it should do more, just not sure what.  So, that's something that is coming at some point in the future, if I ever figure out what else to do with it.

Why do we need a new table for this? Surely this is cutscenes.tbl's raison d'etre?

[taylor]

Why do we need a new table for this? Surely this is cutscenes.tbl's raison d'etre?

CD volumes are specified in the mission list for purposes of data retrieval, including movies, but not exclusive to movies.  The main purpose is to allow you to use VPs off of a CD rather than having all of them installed.  The cutscenes.tbl already has a required $cd: setting if I'm not mistaken.  The purpose of the new table isn't specifically for this, and I should have made that more clear.  The cutscene code just needs to not directly specify a freespace 2 cd volume name, with an optional volume name option in the cutscenes.tbl.  So, even though my new code includes this as part of the upgrade, it can be fixed without the new code I was working on (better that way anyway), but it's still not going to happen until after 3.6.9.

[The Spac]

Well I got the debris crash. I can target debris but mostly when there is action I press Y and it'll target it and crash. I know it's a known bug I just wanted to say I got it. Other then that on the third mission on the FS2 campaign, I had the Psamtik take forever to arrive. Also missing speech. It's unusual, I think my computer no longer has enough memory 1gig to run a FS2 mission with advanced effects on lol. I will be testing with normal effects only and will let you guys know If there are as many problems.

[Pnakotus]

Spac, the debris issue has been resolved in one of taylors newer builds.  I'm hoping for a new RC soon.

[Mars]

Hey spac, if it gets really annoying, you can use this build, it may not be as stable as RC 2 but I haven't had any problems with it, it's fine as a stop gap mesure until RC 3 comes out (or maybe it'll be 3.6.9.0)

[Shadow0000]

I have a question regarding the Alpha VP patches, specially the Advanced effects patch:

Why the *.TGAs were saved using RLE Compression ?

[taylor]

Build initially worked for me, now launcher refuses to load aswell as game.

Delete your flags.lch file and see if that makes a difference.  If the launcher just won't load the RC2 build (or newer) then I might have an idea why.  I'm going to update the Launcher binary later tonight and see if I can't get that fixed.

Why the *.TGAs were saved using RLE Compression ?

Why not save them with RLE?  It makes the size of the VPs smaller and that alone is a pretty good reason to do it.

[Ace Pace]

Build initially worked for me, now launcher refuses to load aswell as game.

Delete your flags.lch file and see if that makes a difference.  If the launcher just won't load the RC2 build (or newer) then I might have an idea why.  I'm going to update the Launcher binary later tonight and see if I can't get that fixed.

No, didn't.  Using the 5.3, I can get the RC2 build to give me this error:

Code: [Select]

fs2_open_d caused an Access Violation in module ntdll.dll at 001b:7c911f52.
Exception handler called in FreeSpace 2 Main Thread.
Error occurred at 6/16/2006 17:31:56.
I:\Freespace2\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_d.exe, run by Unknown.
1 processor(s), type 586.
1024 MBytes physical memory.

Problem is in my install?

[Mars]

Have you tried the 5.4 launcher?

[Goober5000]

Try rebooting.

[Ace Pace]

Launcher now works, but I still cannot get the RC2 build to run.

Nor the debris fields build.

Same bug thats traced to a windows DLL file.

EDIT number N: The problem is in the sound somewhere, disabling Music dosn't help, but it runs fine without sound. Atleast loads, I can't play without sound. 

[Don-DiZzLe]

Would it be wise to merge all of the FS2 vp (smarty, sparky, root etc) in one single vp. I prefer one big file rather than multiple smaller ones.

One more thing I extracted the interface files from both sparky and sparky_hi in one interface folder, then when i try to add them with VPCS, I get an message saying It cant find the HUDConfig file, however this file is present.

[The Spac]

Okay After Testing This is my final list of problems encounted. I'm not really looking for fixes just wish to announce problems I've encounted for bug testing purposes.

Here are the PC specs.

AMD AthlonXP (non semperon/old cpu architecture) 2500+
1500mb of system memory
256mb nVidia 6800GT 400core/1000mem mhz
Sata 1 80meg HD
Windows XP SP2
FS2 SCP 3.6.9 RC 2
Media VP 3.6.8 Zeta with alpha patch.

1. Debris crash with the target under redical command (Thanks for the advice on this however I will use the current RC for the testing purposes. TY Again though)

2.  In Mission Rebels and Renegades the Iceni moves around as if it's a fighter engaging the enemy ships, problem with this is it likes to ram you when it moves. I don't recall it move around so much in the retail. Once it gets the order to goto the node it acts normally.

3. A Lion at the Door Shivan fighters using old teal subspace jump effects. Also Poor performance on this mission.

4. The Sixth Wonder the GTI Arcadia(enif station) blue light on the top that goes across has alpha problems( black backgrounds)

5. A Weird Random crash for no paticular reason, gone after upgrading my video card to a GeforceFX 6800GT from an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

6. Inproper alignment of menu sections on resolutions 1280x1024 and above on ATI Radeon 9600 Pro card (proper alignment on my GeforceFX 6800GT.)

7. Problem loading openAL with motherboard running nforce onboard sound. (works after nvopenal.dll is deleted, don't have issues with that file installed with other openal programs.)

8. Final movies in FS1Port 3.0.3 do no start.

9. After going commit on multiplayer game hosting, game crashes while in the waiting room while waiting a reasonable time, if all playes commit no problem because it's not in the waiting room for any amount of time.

Hope all this helps.