Forums » General
Changelog:
- Border Skirmish is back, now with HUD indicator
Ship info is in the middle of the screen if you are using the TargetLS plugin...
- Border Skirmish is back, now with HUD indicator
Ship info is in the middle of the screen if you are using the TargetLS plugin...
now with hud indicator?
HUD indicator.. the little graph showing you how the respective sides are doing (number of casualties). See newspost.
Note, we're still tweaking aspects of this, so not everything is implemented yet.. like the buildup to the weekend war. But, working on it. Hopefully you can all give it a shot and provide some feedback on balance and so on.
Note, we're still tweaking aspects of this, so not everything is implemented yet.. like the buildup to the weekend war. But, working on it. Hopefully you can all give it a shot and provide some feedback on balance and so on.
I haven't tried this one yet. But on the test server friendly fire was really annoying.
Most of the time whoever killed a cap ship got kicked from the group because its explosion took out everyone near it, which are usually a bunch of allied bots.
Most of the time whoever killed a cap ship got kicked from the group because its explosion took out everyone near it, which are usually a bunch of allied bots.
The HUD indicator is messing pretty seriously with other elements.
I first noticed it with a plugin, but I just ran an escort mission and it pushed the group box into the middle of my screen.
If it's going to be activated even when we are not part of a BS, can we get a tick-box to deactivate it, please? :)
I first noticed it with a plugin, but I just ran an escort mission and it pushed the group box into the middle of my screen.
If it's going to be activated even when we are not part of a BS, can we get a tick-box to deactivate it, please? :)
Had a couple of goes with bs today , real fun , with a bit of polishing it will be a great step forward.
Spuck: We'll work on the friendly fire issue. I expected there would be a fair amount of stuff like that that would crop up and need tweaking.
Hijynx: The HUD indicator should only activate when you're in a sector undergoing BS. We'll (probably) eventually change that to only activate when you're part of the BS *mission*, but we're still developing the right mechanisms for handling that. Anyway, any other sector, the HUD graph shouldn't be there.
Davejohn: Cool, glad the basic idea is fun. I thought it was pretty neat, in my own testing, although it still has some issues. We'll be focusing a lot of development energy on improving/expanding this area of gameplay over the coming months, so it should get polished up before long.
Hijynx: The HUD indicator should only activate when you're in a sector undergoing BS. We'll (probably) eventually change that to only activate when you're part of the BS *mission*, but we're still developing the right mechanisms for handling that. Anyway, any other sector, the HUD graph shouldn't be there.
Davejohn: Cool, glad the basic idea is fun. I thought it was pretty neat, in my own testing, although it still has some issues. We'll be focusing a lot of development energy on improving/expanding this area of gameplay over the coming months, so it should get polished up before long.
Excellent , one quick observation . The mission lasts about 30 mins atm , so increasing the frequency from 4 hr to 1 hr intervals would let a lot more folk test it .
Really fun, but damn does it get laggy there. :D
Awesome. Especially since I already hang around Deneb... I like the war-driven combat, what can I say?
I'll be testing this today. :3
I'll be testing this today. :3
About the ability to disable the graph, I think that we should still have the option to see how our nation is doing somehow.
Could build it into the same spot as the mission timer, can't have both going at the same time and it is along the same lines of purpose being a mission related countdown.
I also had problems with the hud lay out.
Is there a way to cut down on the about of cargo that gets left behind, I think that might help with the lag.
Other than that it was way fun.
[img=http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4363/dump0007go4.th.png]
Is there a way to cut down on the about of cargo that gets left behind, I think that might help with the lag.
Other than that it was way fun.
[img=http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/4363/dump0007go4.th.png]
The HUD indicator may not be visible unless you are in the sector/mission but the spacing is still present and does affect other parts of the HUD.
So far only TargetLS and the HUD:PrintSecondaryMsg has been affected. I have a working fix for TargetLS and personally I do not find anything wrong with the HUD:PrintSecondaryMsg location.
Ed
So far only TargetLS and the HUD:PrintSecondaryMsg has been affected. I have a working fix for TargetLS and personally I do not find anything wrong with the HUD:PrintSecondaryMsg location.
Ed
When bots start to die in mass it covers a lot of the screen.
What are strategies to limit lag in the scirmishes?
It depends on what kind of "lag":
If the ships are skipping around every few seconds, suddenly vanishing and appearing somewhere else, but your ability to turn your view is still "fast".. well, that's a bandwidth issue. Avoid doing anything else with your bandwidth, like bittorrent, etc. If you're on dialup.. well, uhh, good luck with that. Big battles are always going to be problematic for modem people.
If your ability to turn your view around is very jittery and slow, and your framerate is poor (especially when looking at lots of.. stuff).. that's because your computer is having trouble keeping up with the scenery. You might consider lowering your detail settings (just set them back after the skirmish is over). Turning off full-scene glow is a big speed boost, if you have it enabled. If that's already disabled, try lower Visual Detail settings with texture compression enabled. Yes, it'll be a bit uglier, but it'll be faster.
The actual server should not be lagging out, thanks to work Ray did earlier in the year. Most of the cluster machines haven't even hit 100% CPU. Most "lag" will be the above two issues.
If the ships are skipping around every few seconds, suddenly vanishing and appearing somewhere else, but your ability to turn your view is still "fast".. well, that's a bandwidth issue. Avoid doing anything else with your bandwidth, like bittorrent, etc. If you're on dialup.. well, uhh, good luck with that. Big battles are always going to be problematic for modem people.
If your ability to turn your view around is very jittery and slow, and your framerate is poor (especially when looking at lots of.. stuff).. that's because your computer is having trouble keeping up with the scenery. You might consider lowering your detail settings (just set them back after the skirmish is over). Turning off full-scene glow is a big speed boost, if you have it enabled. If that's already disabled, try lower Visual Detail settings with texture compression enabled. Yes, it'll be a bit uglier, but it'll be faster.
The actual server should not be lagging out, thanks to work Ray did earlier in the year. Most of the cluster machines haven't even hit 100% CPU. Most "lag" will be the above two issues.
People who use the TargetLS LUA plug in ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/9/17440 ) experience more jitters than most. Turning down the re-fresh rate reduces this, but I suspect that this script will have to be optimized a bit to control how active it is with so many targets.
I did notice that very often the Green message alerts came in spurts, often long after the event took place. I was getting a steady stream of group messages, and then a repeat of them in the green, but all at once. I am on Cable, and was downloading nothing, so it's not likely to be lag on the part of bandwidth.
I did notice that very often the Green message alerts came in spurts, often long after the event took place. I was getting a steady stream of group messages, and then a repeat of them in the green, but all at once. I am on Cable, and was downloading nothing, so it's not likely to be lag on the part of bandwidth.
I've optimized targetLS quite a bit. It should run fine in the new hive skirmish and border skirmish missions. I'm not saying it takes no CPU to run targetLS in such active sectors, but it shouldn't be cause lag... I'll see about imporving targetLS performance some more though, and as you said you can always turn down the refresh ;)
NOTE:
I run VO on my AMD64 single core Athlon 3700+, with 2GB of PC3200 ram, and a Nvidia 7600 256MB video... in 64bit linux...
It's not a crazy gaming rig by any means... and I still manage to get 15fps (with full graphics settings) in the new border skirmish missions with targetLS set to 12 players size and 1.5second refresh. Maybe this thing just runs smoother on my 64bit system =9 I'll test it on my new lappy soon(tm)
NOTE:
I run VO on my AMD64 single core Athlon 3700+, with 2GB of PC3200 ram, and a Nvidia 7600 256MB video... in 64bit linux...
It's not a crazy gaming rig by any means... and I still manage to get 15fps (with full graphics settings) in the new border skirmish missions with targetLS set to 12 players size and 1.5second refresh. Maybe this thing just runs smoother on my 64bit system =9 I'll test it on my new lappy soon(tm)