1.4.x Information and Suggestions

[Lady Fifi]

so when is the 1.3 being released? and is it gonna be beta?

[NiteHawk]

Soon as most of the bugs are complete. Aiming for a week and some for 1.3 to get SF to a more playable status.

And yeah, first week will probably be just a trail/test, and then fix any new bugs that may of occured during these bug changes.

[Boar]

There will still be offline ranking and credits earning right? because there are times where I wont be able to connect to the servers at all and will just want to play my off line captain and kick some ai butt.

[NiteHawk]

Of course. But the issue is when we edit profile settings to have more things in the options (rigth now options/offline profiles are together) the offline profile gets reset.

The only real way to solve this while being able to play ships you have gained is to edit the sf_data_ranks.sec for now so you can play on the ships you wish, etc. 1.3 will reset offline unfortunatly because of all the adjustments for offline profiles, and may happen until we are a bit more settled with 'sf' options and adjustments. But there are ways around this, and if you do need help, just leave a PM and I can prep something up.

[Boar]

Also I have found making a online and off line profile is usually best for such a thing (oops erased all my offline stats again lol) but it would be nice to have SF recognize when you play vs comp and play vs players. On that note how does SF handle lan games stats?

[NiteHawk]

Also I have found making a online and off line profile is usually best for such a thing (oops erased all my offline stats again lol) but it would be nice to have SF recognize when you play vs comp and play vs players. On that note how does SF handle lan games stats?

You can use offline profiles if you don't have the server register with the nexus, basicly Just have to untick the register with the nexus button on the server and start it up.

[Banjo]

Can you try to add support for jpeg and mp3?

[NiteHawk]

Check the logs, anywho.

I did convert midis to mp3s, however, changing the image system is going to require alot more then just a few lines. Going to be doing it for next version, not this one, because its going to take a bit to do.

Everything revolves around framerate and bmps. Theres no real way to change it unless you start from scratch, since it seems to be a BMP only system. Unfortunatly, a good amount of files have several lines of the graphic system, and all run through bmp transparency, mapping, drawing, etc.

I'll most likely be using LIBPNG (http://libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html) which supports basic PNG files. The rest would be incorperating it into our system, making it buffer all the images properly, rotations, etc, etc. Will be more then a week job most likely..

Framerate works with the bmp system, which is a downer and needs to be changed. Currently, if you change the framerate to something higher, for example 36 frames a second, everything speeds up, images, the game, physics, etc.. You can hardly move because of the gravity and gun fire vanish quickly, etc... Like I said again, framerate revolves around the game, so just increasing the framerate and adjusting a few things like I hoped isn't going to be possible, it needs a overhaul.

I will most likely be doing the images and the framerate next version, right now my goal is to get out a playable SF version that doesn't crash as often, and reduce some bugs/expliots. I am also trying to decrease lag issues for this version, and then after we solve the image/framerate, I will recode the network entirely. Simply put I'm leaving the big things that will take much more time then bugs. It's like recoding the game, which is a bummer. I was really hoping it supports other then just BMPS, but it really doesn't look like it without extensive coding.

The mp3 system was the same, I removed all the midi coding and added mp3 encoding, however, playing sounds isn't nearly as hard as a graphic system at all. For now I just left it the same style as it currently is (sf-music1.mp3, etc) However, in a later version, I will add a small player so you can add your own music if you want.

ATC has contributed some very nice remixes of the old SF tracks, and some new ones, all in all, they make the game sound great.. Too bad the normal wav files are such low quality, kind ruins it currently

[NiteHawk]

Aiming to release it by the end of the next week as long as everything is well.

Mobo is working on a few security issues on the network end, and I'm just touching up the coding I've added. I still however need to test some coding with a couple for a quick test on a couple things as well..

But so far looks good. Alot of bugs are removed, seems pretty good now.

Soon as 1.3 is released, the fun stuff can start.

Oh and modules are raised to 20, and 8 gunpoints.

I'm adjusting ships a bit to test too, if you don't like it, you can always adjust or use the old ships. But honestly, we need to work on BALANCING ships, so the best thing would be to adjust as you see. I've played with a few of them, and they seem pretty okay for now.

Starbases are bigger tanks, but can die. We need to balance these for damage/popdamage ratios as well.

[Staker]

SB = .05cc XD

[Sandtrooper]

SB = .05cc XD

Anything lower than .10 cc can't orbit a planet, plus the gravity of a planet might trap a base so it can't get out.

[Staker]

Make the base come out of moon or astro XD

[NiteHawk]

.10 is a fine speed.

You have to remember boost is degraded, and generic speed increased.

For example without boost, a scout flies at only .25. A dread was like.. .19 or .17 .. Not much different, boost was the main part of speed. Which it shouldn't be.

I adjusted it like I stated so that the minimal ship speed is the main part of speed, and the boost is just that, a boost. However you can adjust it to be the same way by increasing normal boost speeds to be very high, but I feel this is a better change. For example Boost:1 on a .69gu scout, is about .76gu, for example. It gives a good boost, but doesn't hurt the minimal engine speed so that the ship is unplayable without boost.

Where I'm going with this is, simply that mass effects the amount of boost you can have, therefor a starbases boost:3 only gives about .3gu, for a total of about .13gu. (I think abot .128gu but it doesn't round off.) Overall, you can then make heavier boosts that only bigger ships can use, as volume has been changed a bit.

Simply put, we need to balance all the ships by testing and playing.

The starbases are pretty tough, and we most likely need to increase damage they take.

Theres also an extra shield/engine/power for now, but the last shield is identical to the currnet ones, so shield:7 is identical to shield:8, but I've added a middle shield for middle class ships that has a high volume, about 2000 (The high ones if you look are a bout 4500).. This is to balance even more so middle class ships actually get something instead of a scout using the same shielding as a dread.. For example.

Though temp, there will be different sorts of shields/etc in the future, (Maybe ones better on energy or one protecting on projectiles better. Nothing huge, maybe 20-30%, etc. but not yet.)

Overall I want it to still have a easy gameplay feel, and be more interesting.

[NiteHawk]

Should be released Sunday or in the early week, long as everything goes as planned

[CloakedKiller]

Awesome! Can't wait to fly with the new speed system. I think it will improve the game a lot.