[karajorma]

Stick an exact description of the problem in Mantis and which missions cause it and I'll look at it this weekend. I'm planning to spend the whole weekend looking at multiplayer bugs.

[captain-custard]

Stick an exact description of the problem in Mantis and which missions cause it and I'll look at it this weekend. I'm planning to spend the whole weekend looking at multiplayer bugs.

can u fix mantis login bug , cant create an account it sends no confirmation mail , and im not alone

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Stick an exact description of the problem in Mantis and which missions cause it and I'll look at it this weekend. I'm planning to spend the whole weekend looking at multiplayer bugs.

Will do.  Just trying to narrow it down a little more first.

[karajorma]

can u fix mantis login bug , cant create an account it sends no confirmation mail , and im not alone

I'm not in charge of Mantis so I can't fix the problem. If you post on the Mantis thread in SCP forum it should hopefully be fixed for you.

[captain-custard]

can u fix mantis login bug , cant create an account it sends no confirmation mail , and im not alone

I'm not in charge of Mantis so I can't fix the problem. If you post on the Mantis thread in SCP forum it should hopefully be fixed for you.

thanks

[karajorma]

Coincidence can be a real ***** at times. I was thinking it was some sort of species bug since EA ships were fine and everyone else was screwed. Once I found the cause of the bug though I checked the weapons tables and found out that the last EA weapon is also the 128th weapon in the table. I'll bet any programmers reading that are starting to get a hunch what the cause was. If I say that instead of registering the nial's secondary as number 131 the client was looking for number -125 they'll probably be certain.

I suspect that this is another case of TBP's very size biting it on the arse again as with the Vorlon fighter's bug. I doubt any other multiplayer mod every had 128+ weapons so no one ever noticed the problem.

I'll post a build tomorrow as there are some other multiplayer bugs I'd like to fix and I might as well add them to the BtRL build too.

[Vidmaster]

*looking forward to play B5 Quidditch*

although we should rename it and explain the rules in the briefing to be sure

[karajorma]

This build should fix the weapons not showing up as well as the forced-jump problem.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I'll give it a try tonight.

BTW:  That EA explorer class ship has a ton of hiding places. 

[Vidmaster]

but also tons of glitches. Better disable any turrets because it looks absolutely silly 

[FUBAR-BDHR]

OK anyone have any feedback or bugs from todays session (or any other sessions for that matter)?  So far I have:

Spelling and grammar which I already knew about.  That's usually the last thing I do.  Of course 90% of the briefing and debriefings are from the V MT06 and MT07 or MD07 so they should be fine.  Will be working on this tonight.   DONE

Nova debriefing is backwards.  Easy fix. DONE

Whitestar hulls which was already in the readme.  Special hits in multi dogfight now there is a can of worms waiting to be opened.  DONE Hull strength reduced by just over 60%

Spawn points for the heavy shadow missions.  Not sure what I can do about this one.

Shadow base dogfights have self-destructing caps.  Easy fix just need to flag them as unknown.  Or so I thought they are flagged as unknown and I have no idea why they are self destructing.

Vorlon base missions cause crash. Happens when played over internet but I can't reproduce over LAN.  Don't know what to do about this one either.

People seemed to like the Shadow dogfight asteroid field density so I will be going with that one. 

Bases in the dogfight missions will be hidden.  I'll keep the other versions just in case something is ever changed with the targeting.  So basically I'll be renaming the a versions to the regular versions and vice versa. 

Also fixed a couple of minor loadout imbalances; all are now balanced, 1 mission with a missing weapon, and a couple of dogfights with not enough of a weapon to go around. 

[IPAndrews]

Major problem for me is too many variants on the same mission. I can imagine a mission having upto three. You've got the standard variant, the fixed to get around unknown targetable as hostile bug variant, and often now a CQ (close quarters) variant. Personally I think it's too much and there should be one version of each mission.

With regards to the unknown targetable as hostile bug. Does setting the ships as Neutral solve this problem? If not I can easily create a new IFF class for "Non-com". In other words non-combatant. Which will never be considered hostile be anyone.

Mission playability seems to have improved leaps and bounds since the last time. The gauntlet missions and nova encounter mission are especially fun. Spawn points still too close for my liking in many cases. Reappearing 200m from the nearest enemy and instantly being zapped is frustrating. But there seems little we can do about that.

I would like to see a complete weapons and ships free dogfight mission where you can choose any ship you like. I think this is an essential in the mission pack. Sure there is scope for everyone choosing a Vorlon fighter but you can set the ground rules in gentlemen's agreements in the chat room before hand.

Unfortunately I'm not 100% convinced these missions are completely ready after last night. This is a shame because with a couple of tweaks I will make later I believe the core is now 100% ready. Certainly the nothing weapon behaved itself last night.

The game engine is seems will never work flawlessly in multiplayer. That appears to be a feature of 3.6.9. Maybe it will improve in 3.6.10 but that's irrelevant for the purposes of TBP. It has improved substancially from where we were a few weeks ago thanks to the fine work done by Fubar, Vid, and Karajorma. But we're just going to have to bite the bullet at some point and admit that perfection is not on the cards.

Fubar, Vid, we need to get together and have a chat and select some missions we are completely happy with to include in the core. You can then override those in updated vps later, but we should provide something out of the box.

Thanks to everyone who turned up and helped us test last night.

[karajorma]

To be honest I tend to think you should release as a single player mod and work on 3.6.10 for a multiplayer release. But if that's not on the cards we can just work on getting 3.6.9 as stable as possible. The next thing I really want to fix is the double respawn bug. I thought I'd killed it before but it's apparently still occurring so now I'm taking it personally.

[IPAndrews]

This release is focused on single player. Multi player support is very much second cousin twice removed. Remember I will not be working on this when 3.6.10 is released. So having some multi player support, however much a token gesture, is a must for me. Even if we decide just to release what we have now with the B5 dogfight scenario I would be happy with that. But hopefully we can do better than that. Single player is paramount though and we must be careful our multi player aspirations don't end up trashing the single player game. 

Getting missions to actually finish did seem to be a problem last night. So if you can nail that one I guess it would be a good thing. But if it proves too much to fix, or looks like it'll take a while, or looks like it'll risk the single player experience. Then we will go with what we have.

[karajorma]

Did you have problems ending the matches after I left? Cause before that the code was working well, it was just that the kill/time limits were set too high or not set at all.

[Shade]

There's really no need to have a metric ton of MP missions before you release. A small core of good ones, like the ones that are being tested now, is more than enough. After release, 3rd party missions will eventually start to crop up to fill out any gaps. Sure, they won't be validated, but then you can do like it was done for the FS2 missions: Pick the worthy ones, get them validated, and pack them up in a VP as a mission pack release.

Basically, as long as the core is there, the rest will follow on its own as long as people stay interested in B5 multi.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Major problem for me is too many variants on the same mission. I can imagine a mission having upto three. You've got the standard variant, the fixed to get around unknown targetable as hostile bug variant, and often now a CQ (close quarters) variant. Personally I think it's too much and there should be one version of each mission.

There are only 2 variants of the dogfights.  One targetable caps and one with the caps hidden.  Since I didn't think there was a way around it I just flipped them around with the thinking that only the hidden.  So right now as the missions sit anything with an a at the end isn't the release version it's just an alternative version.  As far as the CQ missions are concerned They don't need to be included but I don't want to just toss them since some people found them fun. 

With regards to the unknown targetable as hostile bug. Does setting the ships as Neutral solve this problem? If not I can easily create a new IFF class for "Non-com". In other words non-combatant. Which will never be considered hostile be anyone.

No neutral is what they are set to now.  If you could make that class I could have them all changed to use it in about 10 minutes and do away with the a versions entirely.

Mission playability seems to have improved leaps and bounds since the last time. The gauntlet missions and nova encounter mission are especially fun. Spawn points still too close for my liking in many cases. Reappearing 200m from the nearest enemy and instantly being zapped is frustrating. But there seems little we can do about that.

I agree some are more fun then others.  I don't know why the spawn points are doing what they are doing.  For now the only thing I can do is make a note of it and hope there is a fix. 

I would like to see a complete weapons and ships free dogfight mission where you can choose any ship you like. I think this is an essential in the mission pack. Sure there is scope for everyone choosing a Vorlon fighter but you can set the ground rules in gentlemen's agreements in the chat room before hand.

I actually have 4 levels already planned.  One for light fighters only something like the lite EA, Centauri, Narn, Brikiri, and Drazi.  Then a medium version with the heavier fighters, from the above classes and the light shadow ships and whatever else fits the hit point / weapon range.  Heavy would be something like Minbari, Shadow, Vorlon.  Then there is the Pilotable caps one with things like the SH scout, Whitestar, etc.  I could just make each level allow the lighter ships as well so that if you pick the Pilotable caps you would get everything.

Unfortunately I'm not 100% convinced these missions are completely ready after last night. This is a shame because with a couple of tweaks I will make later I believe the core is now 100% ready. Certainly the nothing weapon behaved itself last night.

Nothing worked great.  Only had one graphic glitch and that was during a major lag spike where I thought I was going to crash at game start.    As for the missions they more testing is always better but as they sit right now they are probably lest buggy then what V released with FS2.    Most of the bugs are engine related not mission related.

The game engine is seems will never work flawlessly in multiplayer. That appears to be a feature of 3.6.9. Maybe it will improve in 3.6.10 but that's irrelevant for the purposes of TBP. It has improved substancially from where we were a few weeks ago thanks to the fine work done by Fubar, Vid, and Karajorma. But we're just going to have to bite the bullet at some point and admit that perfection is not on the cards.

Kind of figured that all along.  After all TBP multi is in it's infancy.  Hopefully it will grow up some day.

Fubar, Vid, we need to get together and have a chat and select some missions we are completely happy with to include in the core. You can then override those in updated vps later, but we should provide something out of the box.

I was wondering how they would be included.  Is part of the core the best way or an add on VP in the root directory?  I've got an appointment in a little while but should be available later on.  Unfortunately me and Vid seem to work in 12 hour shifts.  Good for development bad for communication. 

Thanks to everyone who turned up and helped us test last night.

Ditto. And remember you can continue to do testing on your own.  It's not like FS2NetD support goes away between sessions. 

[karajorma]

I strongly suggest sticking the multi missions in a VP with a name that starts with a letter late in the alphabet. That way if you need to override it later it's easily done.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Did you have problems ending the matches after I left? Cause before that the code was working well, it was just that the kill/time limits were set too high or not set at all.

I think the whole issue with this was the host setting a respawn limit in a dogfight.  Respawn limit does nothing in a dogfight.  It has to be a time limit or I think there is a kill limit.  The briefings even use the instructions V wrote which is "This exercise will end when the time limit is reached or at the host's discretion".  Time limit did work.

[karajorma]

With regards to the unknown targetable as hostile bug. Does setting the ships as Neutral solve this problem? If not I can easily create a new IFF class for "Non-com". In other words non-combatant. Which will never be considered hostile be anyone.

In dogfight mode everyone gets converted to the traitor IFF just before the mission starts. Traitor targets everyone as hostile including other traitors (which allows you target everyone else in a dogfight without needing 12 different teams).

A non com IFF would solve the problem.