One quick question, does anyone have a copy of the game / demo Star Trek BattleStations?

It is similar though better then the current version of my demo, and i lost my copy when my hardrive was corrupted.

Regards Wolfe

When loading pre-defined state, I got a nice battle without any weird ghost firing but with strange shield ellipsoid that took up 10 times more space than the whole ship it should circumvent and some of them were largely distorted, so the ellipsoid parameter a was enormously larger than b. Don't know what causes this behaviour, might be my old Radeon 9200 card. you got the 11 mb *.tmp file still in the package . Actually with OpenGL it works in GUI mode though I managed to crash the program while 10 minutes in battle when selecting circle command and clicking an enemy ship to circle.
I tried setting up a battle with Direct3D 8 or 9 with the GUI, but it boiled down to a memory exception error right when entering the battle:

Strings' game as mentioned as missing on page 1 is now here: http://svn.star-trek-games.com/birth/De ... meV2.5.zip . Both Battlestations and this game won't stay forever on their current place for clearness reasons so if one wants to move them elsewhere..

I've got a copy of strings' combat system myself already Mal, so i'll upload that once Jig gives the all clear for us to start rebuilding the downloads section.

I've just downloaded the new version of the combat system so i'll go blow up some Klingons.

Edit - I encountered a crash too. Luckily it's in English this time.

It crashed at the exact moment a torpedo hit the Klingons shields. The Klingon ships seemed to flash blue for a split second (I'm assuming it was the shield effect) and then the combat system died.

It still takes a long time for the ships to get close, Wolfe. Could you move the starting positions closer or add a Warp speed function or something?

in pre-defined game state, they are already in firing range. A warp function would of course top the whole thing, along with cloaking/decloaking command, but of course with a timer included so that one cannot warp or cloak/uncloak his ship as often as one wants to but has to wait for the warp drive and cloaking device to actually "recreate" after let's say 2-3 warp jumps and cloaks in a short row. Also, warping and cloaking should result in no shields the moment it takes to get to warp or cloaking status so the ship is vulnerable to critical hits at these seconds.

The distances can be changed, thoug i agree with Malv that with a warp effect it should negate this somewhat, it does give some time for the player to set up ships and move them about.

Your error, looks strange lol, seems it couldn't find the ship that was selected, it may have been destroyed and a check wasn't placed within the code to make sure a ship scenenode is there.

Regards Wolfe

Well I set three Defiants against a single Klingon Raptor, so it wasn't exactly a fair fight. The Raptor ws destroyed after two torpedo hits.

It may be the crash happened when the ship blew up - it was looking for the ship that had just been destroyed. I think you're going to have explain what "ship death" means to the combat system again Wolfe.

wow, the Armada II Fleetops 3.0 screenshots look really hot (literally ). Although I think the phasers are a little over the top. The torpedos as well. Ours do look better. The underlying engine is of course different to ours and I assume they also used parts of stock Armada II graphics but maybe they could share one or two selfmade textures and stuff..

I hope you don't mind Mal, but your links didn't work so I fixed them for you. I just hope these are the right ones lol.

I don't have Armada 2, mainly coz everyone tells me that Armada 1 is a much better game. I might have to think about downloading it to try out this mod though...

I've just updated the first post of this thread with new download links and info for both of the combat systems. I've also moved Wolfe's combat system to the top of the post since Strings is no longer developing his combat system. I've also added some new screenshots I made of the latest version of Wolfe's combat system.

do you have ftp upload access matress? if so you could upload the engine to a folder on the server here. even if the downloads are down for the moment the files could still be direct-linked. If you noticed, all (old) files are still on the server, only the download section on main site has been deleted.

Err...I don't even know what ftp means, Mal. That probably means I don't have access.

I already tried uploading the combat system to Sharepoint, but the 7mb problem came up again. It would definitely be useful if we could get a more permanent file hosting solution for large files though.

I tried the battle system demo but it isn't working i put it in the correct place but i keep getting an error

Description:
Stopped working

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: botfii demo v2.exe
Problem Signature 02: 1.0.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 49453a73
Problem Signature 04: PresentationFramework
Problem Signature 05: 3.0.0.0
Problem Signature 06: 4858c681
Problem Signature 07: 6259
Problem Signature 08: e1
Problem Signature 09: System.Windows.Markup.XamlParse
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

do you have .NET 3.5 Framework installed dan?

moe, ftp is like http (hence the name similarity), only in this case it's for files, not html pages. never mind, download filezilla and try to get acquainted to it and then ask jig if he can give you ftp server access (it's pretty much the same as with sharepoint, you get an account and a password and the rest works with drag&drop). Speaking of sharepoint, did you try my WebClient - method with the \\www.botf2.com\DavWWWRoot thing (see general chat)? It shouldn't have the 7mb upload limitation then. It's really not that complicated. Just start your webclient service in Windows (if not started already) and type the above line into the regular explorer. Then when prompted type in PUBLIC36\Matress_of_Evil or whatever your username there is and your password. you need to do that twice and then you got folder access via a different protocol than your browser uses when using Explorer View. That difference in protocol usage should hopefully mean you don't have the 7mb upload problem anymore but I can't guarantee that. You need to try that out.

I did see your post Mal...but I didn't understand a word of it.

I've never heard of this filezilla thing, but i'll google it and see what I can find.

*Edit - which version do I download Mal? Client or Server?

By the way, I already have upload access to Joomla, so does that mean I have ftp? It wasn't drag-and drop to my knowledge though, there was an upload box. I just had a look at Joomla to see it it's stable enough for me to upload files onto, but it's bringing up the wierd error message again.



Jig hasn't sorted out Silverstripe yet, but once he does i'll upload the combat system to that then.

...



Do you see the bit I hilighted in red, Dan? I have no idea what any of the error reports in either Supremacy or the combat system mean, but .Net is the cause of 99% of the problems reported. The fact that the error reports contain a signature number that coincidentally refers to an old version of .Net is highly suspicious and therefore likely the cause of the problem, which is why I agree with Mal's diagnosis. The version that both Supremacy and the combat system needs is .Net 3.5 Service Pack 1 (AKA .Net 3.5 SP1)

You can download the correct version of .Net from Here. It's an incremental update so it will fully update your version of .Net regardless of how recent or old it is. There have been a few rare reports of it not installing correctly so if the combat system still doesn't work afterwards, try completely uninstalling .Net, restart your computer, then install .Net again.

Let us know if that fixes your problem. Fingers crossed.

always download client . Server versions are something for the server backend admins like jig and mike. We need frontend.

Filezilla is pretty easy to handle. After installation, start program, go to "File" server manager. In the box, click on new server, and in the right fields, type in all the stuff jig tells you on pm . For example as server: star-trek-games.com (only works if jig sets you up an account). Let FTP and normal in the fields below as they are. Further below type in your account details like username and password which jig gives you on pm. Then press connect button and you are on server. You see then your own pc explorer-like on the left and the server on the right and can copy files to and fro.

The other thing with accessing sharepoint via Windows Explorer works without asking someone already so you could try that out sometime when you feel like daring it .

Err...what works? And what am I supposed to be asking people?

I've installed filezilla, just waiting for Jig to reply to the PM.

okay. with the other thing I meant sharepoint access via Windows Explorer (the post you didn't understand ). just try out the following for fun:

open double-paned windows explorer. go to address bar at the top and type in \\www.botf2.com\DavWWWRoot . See what happens .

I uninstalled .NET 3.5 SP1, and reinstalled it and installed the updates but the Battle demo still doesn't work. I haven't had a problem with Supremacy.

it does not work in Windows Vista yet (your os code says you're running vista: 6.0.6001 ). Problem is Irrlicht.NET CP which causes string problems in vista.

OK thank you ill just wait until it works for Vista

Oh, sorry about that Dan. I noticed the 3.0.0.0 but not the version of Windows.

I wonder what the 3.0.0.0 refers to then?

probably the WPF=Windows Presentation Framework is Version 3.0.0.0 and wasn't changed with .NET 3.5. Not all versions of subprograms and -routines in a package need to be version-upgraded in a minor release. Maybe they just work perfectly then you won't need to change their version number.

camera movement is still all over the place even in windowed mode, the top of the skycube is white, (texture not assigned?) the grid is no longer visible is that intentional? apart from that looking good.

Personally I prefer the look of it without the grid. The grid made it look more like it was playing on a 2D plane, even if it isn't. Of course it's harder to tell if your ships are actually moving without it. (You really do need to increase the speed of the ships Wolfe) If the grid is going to be in, i'd rather if it was a feature that could be turned on or off, so everyone is happy.

As for the skybox, I noticed that even though you've got lots of skybox images in the files, Wolfe, the combat system only seems to use the images in Sky_Box_Space_IX (The one with the big moon, one big starfield, then really sparse starfields for the other sides) So I replaced the sparse starfield images with rotated versions of the dense starfield. It looks MUCH better now...but it can be really hard to find enemy ships against the dense starfield now.

You can't see it very well in this image, (Which I suppose is half the point) but three sides of my "improved" skybox are visible here:



So all it really needs is some denser - but darker - images and it'll look a lot better. So then I had an idea - what would the Nebula background from Supremacy look like? So I tried it.



Ok...maybe not as big a success as I hoped. The edges need to either line up, or, better yet, not have anything near them that would show as an obvious line.

...

I also noticed that the z-button bug (Set course with a green line) is still there, Wolfe - if you press z twice, a green line will show up permanently on the map. It's not as bad as it used to be though. It doesn't constantly create new green lines as the camera angle moves. It only makes one permanent green line per z-button press now.

...

I also noticed there is a problem with the Galaxy-class model - parts of the texture are missing:



...

And one final thing that I noticed. The shield recharge rates are wrong, Wolfe. You've got them set as physical numbers, (Eg. all Borg ships recharge 17 shields) but they are supposed to be percentages. (So the Borg are supposed to recharge 17% of their maximum shields over time)

However, when I changed the numbers to their correct percentage amounts, it became impossible to even damage ships - they seemed to recharge their shields after every weapon hit, instead of every 10 seconds or so. How frequently have you set the shield recharge to occur, Wolfe?

WTF?

I'm looking at the Galaxy model right now and it's OK...

Could just be the way Irrlicht handles loading of textures in the engine for 3DS files.

Regards Wolfe

Yes, I have seen different programs load the models with change of both
axis and texture. That is especially the case with a change in file type
as you would expect.

I try to check each model out but there are so many. Some are
bound to be messed up. I will double check the Galaxy now on
SharePoint when I get home.

I got the same result as Trashman. The Galaxy Explorer II looks OK in
Ultimate Unwrap and in MilkShape. There is a transition from one mapped
group of polys to another that kinda sorta lines up with what you are
seeing. I do not see any difference in the setting for the two groups.

I know it's called skyBOX, but why not try using a sphere? Ends up looking better.