[karajorma]

Adding the SEXPs would take me all of 3 minutes to do.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

More Whitestar problems.  Seems client side can't handle 3 primary weapons or something as it assigns the ships a standard Nial loadout.  It also show the hosts ship as firing the main beam even when it's only firing bank 2 or bank 3.  Strangely enough it did count kills even flagged as a gunship.  Maybe it's a dogfight instead of TvT thing. 

Surprisingly it looked like special hits for player ships works in a dogfight.  At least for the client dying from the host.  Didn't try it the other way around. 

It does work both ways.  I wasn't able to duplicate the Whitestar ending up with the Nial loadout but the other primary bug still exists. 

[Vidmaster]

More Whitestar problems.  Seems client side can't handle 3 primary weapons or something as it assigns the ships a standard Nial loadout.  It also show the hosts ship as firing the main beam even when it's only firing bank 2 or bank 3.

this would explain why everybody just used their beams at the last session (from my point of view).
Still, I have to ask if this is absolutly confirmed!

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The Nial part isn't I only had it happen once.  The other I tried several times and it happened every time and that's over LAN so it's not a lag issue.  Also even thought the client is assigned the nothing weapon it shows none in his secondary list.  That doesn't really hurt anything but is probably a symptom of the same problem.  I have no idea what client firing at client will do.  Might have to do a 3 computer test on that one.

[karajorma]

I'll be spending a quite large chunk of tomorrow fixing bugs so give me details on which issues are currently the biggest problems and I'll try to concentrate on them.

Better yet, stick them in Mantis. I find it much easier to fix bugs based on a Mantis report than I do from forum chat.


BTW I added the num_assists, ship_score, player-deaths and respawns-left SEXPs to the BtRL build. As I said it took me all of about 3-4 minutes to do. I'll stick a build up later today or early tomorrow.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The real question is which ones are actually bugs and which ones are just table problems or maybe both?  If I thought it was an engine bug it would be in Mantis already.  How about I make a list of everything that is still a problem and then if you say Mantis it I will.

-Three primaries on Whitestar.  All kinds of stuff with this one.  Player loadout screen is messed up on both host and client.  Using red-alert to bypass loadout results in client side primary issues such as wrong secondary weapons display, showing first primary (beam) firing when only primary bank 2 or 3 is firing, and the yet unconfirmed Nial loadout glitch. 

-Gunship flag results in hits and kills not counting in coop and TvT.  Seem to work in dogfight though.  Fixable by changing to fighter flag in tables but is it a code problem too?  I only know of 2 player ships with the flag:  DH Raider and the Whitestar (starting to hate this ship)

-The Vorlon splat.  No idea what is causing this one yet.  Can't reproduce it over a LAN game.  Also didn't notice it in coop so I don't think it's anything with the fighter itself.  Possibly something to do with the VE Dreadnought?

-Respawn points and large ships.  When flying the SH Heavy Assault no matter how far apart I put the ships in FRED they respawn on top of each other.  I did not notice this in testing with only 2 ships but when there are more players it happens.   It just hit me I wonder if they are all trying to spawn on Alpha 1's spawn.   I have Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 set to spawn on opposite sides of the base but the rest are mixed up.  If I kill Alpha 2 it will spawn where Alpha 1 originally did.  At lest it did last time.  Might have to play with this one some more.


Also one question on asteroid fields.  I noticed that if I make a passive field that the asteroids will start real close together then spread out.  For instance I made a field with density around 180 and a box 4x4x4 thousand.  At start they are all bunched up.  5 minutes into the game they are 10000+ away which is not in the box limits.  Now if I make the field active they all stay so close together that you can't move.  Is this intended behavior?  This is in a dogfight if that makes a difference.

[karajorma]

I'll take a good look at them but I'll point out that the vorlon dreadnought gives a whole sequence of errors in debug 3.6.10 (and I don't mean the null MOI error that just about everything gives) so there is a good chance something is wrong with either its model or the table. I can't remember off-hand which errors it gives though.

I'll look into the others and see if I can figure out where the problem lies.

[IPAndrews]

The real question is which ones are actually bugs and which ones are just table problems or maybe both?  If I thought it was an engine bug it would be in Mantis already. 

If it works in single player and doesn't work in multiplayer it's not a table bug.

-Three primaries on Whitestar.  All kinds of stuff with this one.  Player loadout screen is messed up on both host and client.  Using red-alert to bypass loadout results in client side primary issues such as wrong secondary weapons display, showing first primary (beam) firing when only primary bank 2 or 3 is firing, and the yet unconfirmed Nial loadout glitch. 

The Whitestar works in single player therefore it's not a table bug.

-Gunship flag results in hits and kills not counting in coop and TvT.  Seem to work in dogfight though.  Fixable by changing to fighter flag in tables but is it a code problem too?  I only know of 2 player ships with the flag:  DH Raider and the Whitestar (starting to hate this ship)

I don't see how this can be easy to fix. Fighters and bombers only scoring kills to me appears to be hard coded. I can't confirm that because I haven't checked the code. I'm concerned about hacking in a "solution" where gunships or whatever are added to the list. I think we should just exclude the ships from mutliplayer missions and add a warning to the FAQ.

-The Vorlon splat.  No idea what is causing this one yet.  Can't reproduce it over a LAN game.  Also didn't notice it in coop so I don't think it's anything with the fighter itself.  Possibly something to do with the VE Dreadnought?

Take the VE Dreadnaught out of the mission and see if it happens. We need confirmation rather than more questions or we'll be here all year .

Also one question on asteroid fields.  I noticed that if I make a passive field that the asteroids will start real close together then spread out. 

That's just what the game engine does. It's a pet hate of mine about asteroid fields. I asked the SCP to do something about it but nothing ever happened and I would rather a hacky fix wasn't thrown into 3.6.9.

[IPAndrews]

I'll take a good look at them but I'll point out that the vorlon dreadnought gives a whole sequence of errors in debug 3.6.10 (and I don't mean the null MOI error that just about everything gives) so there is a good chance something is wrong with either its model or the table.

The model has a few issues but the game really shouldn't CTD because of data fed into the system. There seems to be a culture started by kazan of blaming data for CTDs. It's just not good programming practice. Debug warnings are fine and really very useful. Game stopping errors and CTDs are not. No personal offence intended.

[karajorma]

My opinion tends to be a little different. Nothing, but nothing should CTD a debug build with no error. However if you run a standard build with bad data then yes, it's a perfectly reasonable outcome. The only way to completely avoid the problem would be to include all the debug warning in the release builds which sort of defeats the point of having debug builds in the first place. I'm all for extra bulletproofing but there is a limit on the amount you can do.

Many of the CTDs are caused by bad data which the debug builds do pick up. If someone simply clicks no on the warning and carries on it's hardly surprising if the game then crashes on the bad data it's been fed. That's why I've always said that you should be able to run the game without any debug warnings before you complain to the SCP about bugs. TBP is actually pretty good at that in 3.6.9 builds as it only really complains about trying to read the extra ships (which shouldn't cause errors as ships after 130 will be ignored).

There is another error about a couple of the EFF files actually. I forgot about that one cause it annoyed me enough that I simply fixed it myself.I can give you the fixed EFF files if you don't already have them.

That said 3.6.10 is even stricter than 3.6.9 is and it throws up a whole bunch of null MOI errors. I'm not certain what effect those are having.

[IPAndrews]

Ok let's agree to disagree and move on. Though the direction you are headed re-enforces my assumption that TBP doesn't have a rats ass chance of running on 3.6.10. You have to understand that from a developer's point of view it does seem that very little is done by the engine to be tolerant or helpful and the goal posts do seem to move on a frighteningly regular basis. On the other hand I'm not looking past 3.6.9 so I guess it doesn't matter to me or TBP so just ignore my grumpiness today.

[karajorma]

I don't know why you're so pessimistic about it running on 3.6.10. It does at the moment. And all the extra warnings are actually things that are still an issue in 3.6.9.

[IPAndrews]

The multiplayer setup thread has a new patch. This introduces a new IFF called Non Combatant. This appears as Blue when targetted. It is not attacked by any other teams including traitor. The only thing is it doesn't have a hotkey for cycling through ships of that type. So if you want to target a ship of non combatant IFF you have to do it by getting it in your crosshairs and pressing Y.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Thanks.  Just downloaded it and I'll get those changed today. 

I was speculating that the VE Dreadnought is causing the problem as I haven't seen the problem in the NWTR Vorlon mission which is a copy of the base mission without the Dreadnoughts.  Also haven't seen it in testing of any of the Gauntlets that have the VE Fighter.  I've run the Vorlon Base TvT a dozen times on my LAN with no crashes so it makes it hard to narrow down.  I'll make a test version and see if I can get someone to host tonight while I run debug build. 

IS that asteroid behavior retail FS2?  I don't remember it working that way in V's Light Asteroid Dogfight.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The multiplayer setup thread has a new patch. This introduces a new IFF called Non Combatant. This appears as Blue when targetted. It is not attacked by any other teams including traitor. The only thing is it doesn't have a hotkey for cycling through ships of that type. So if you want to target a ship of non combatant IFF you have to do it by getting it in your crosshairs and pressing Y.

Just tried it and in a dogfight shipw with that IFF still target with the H key.    I know it was the right one because the ships target blue now.   Haven't tried using it in anything else. 

Works fine in single with the player set to traitor.

[Shade]

I don't know why you're so pessimistic about it running on 3.6.10. It does at the moment.

Yep. In fact, as far as my testing goes, it doesn't just run - It runs perfectly. 3.6.10 is not some demon that will swallow otherwise working mods and spit them out in little, broken pieces

[IPAndrews]

Thinking forward compatability. This H key "problem". Two questions:

1) Is this behavour that is seen in Volition's own multiplayer missions. If not, how do they get around the problem? For instance I remember a dogfight around an Arcadia station. Did that station come up when the H key was pressed?

2) If we remove the behaviour that selects all ships with the H key we are taking a step away from the behaviour of the standard builds. I would want to be sure that this is seen as a *bug* and we are not tying ourselves to special builds. In fact this goes for all bugs that kara has fixed for us especially in the 3.6.9 branch. But especially for ones we can work around like this one. It is not high prority to have non-combatant (background) vessels targetable in multiplayer by any means.

[Shade]

Just checked the mission file for the [V] mission. The Arcadia is set as hidden from sensors, which would be the reason it is not targeted by H.

[karajorma]

I wouldn't stick a bug fix in the BtRL build unless

a) The same fix is going in 3.6.10
b) A better but 100% compatible fix is going in 3.6.10

It's too much of a headache for me otherwise to deal with all the "Why doesn't this work in 3.6.10" posts.

[karajorma]

Okay, Looking at the bug now. It's pretty easy to fix but I might as well clean up a few other little bugs while I'm at it (For instance the F key shouldn't target traitors either).