In-game debug tool?

There is also Debug menu resource in serverresources.dll. I guess code part of this was cut off too.

@Stormblast:

Maybe if we could get our grasp on the Freelancer beta, we could compare both the versions and reconstruct the debug tool.

The issue with that is finding someone willing to break their NDA.

I’ve played with these silly things for months… all i got to work “agian” is the shiproll and that cant be used in freeflight …
silly bits of redundant code are everywere in FL… what about the “test” missions in m01a.ini ?.. i must have spent a good month trying to recode them to work (and contless sacrifices to the DA/MS gods) only to conced defeat when i realised the other half of the code was either missing or “never there”…

They never intended FL to be what it is now… in fact i belive they never “finished” FL and the main reason were not getting the holy “code” is more a matter of “pride” than licence…
They rushed it… we fixed it… & now they can’t look themselves in the mirror anymore and say “i Rock!” … and were all to blame loooooool

@Stormblast:

Maybe if we could get our grasp on the Freelancer beta

The elite style radar which was around in the earlier versions of FL would be cool. So much easier than what we have now, god only knows why they dropped that but like Xarian_Prime says, ‘They rushed it… we fixed it… & now they can’t look themselves in the mirror anymore and say “i Rock!”’ Much as i’d love a poke round in an earlier version of FL, can’t see M$ doing us a favour in any way sad to say.

They must realise there is a market for this type of game, i mean look at the interest that Jumpgate Evolutions is stirring.

Nah, I think they’re too busy looking at Halo 3 sales and watching their army of Xbots try to conquer the world to care. PC gaming died for them a while ago, just look at the supposed Holy Grail of gaming that Vista was supposed to be (DX10, game rating, game panel, whatever…).

And if past form is anything to go by, Windows 7 will be just as crap as Vista. Will take them around 2 years to sort out most of the bugs, just in time for Windows 8 lol

XP was actually released 25th October 2001 but as with any of their operating systems, takes years to iron most of the bugs. I hope they do release the SC, just to stop us moaning but i’m not holding my breath lol

lol would love to see bill gates

“GRRR! STUPID PROGRAMMERS!!! THE ONLY THING THEY EVER MADE ACTUALLY WORKING IS XP!”

Yeah, you look back at the footprint of '95 and '98 compared to the heaping, lopsided, greedy Vista’s 1GB… I definitely miss those days with only a fraction of the useless sh!t running in the background that we have now. Touch up the interface to be all round n stuff like XP, make it 64bit and flat memory addressing, and bam better than Win7 -which is really only Vista with a bunch of useless junk removed - though you can guess there’s still plenty of useless junk.

QQ I’d be all for going full on xNix but there’s just not enough driver support and base of games. It is however, nice to have endless free programs available.

hmmm lol, i didnt have that experience with win 95 and win 98, they meant reinstall every 2 week, and XP is reinstall every 8 month lol

Hrm, yeah I seem to have forgotten what a BSOD looks like since I’ve been running XP. Well, actually I got my first one in… years, while playing a game and using Windows Media Player 9 classic, like 2 days ago. But yeah, reliability goes to XP for sure. Footprint -as expected, goes to 95/98.

i got reminded what a BSOD is when i switched to vista on my laptop

Hi guys, sorry for the late bump, but I just registered today. and am perusing the forums.

An observation (or 2), and a query. I’ve been playing with computers since the Sinclair/Timex Z80, circa mid '80’s. (Couldn’t afford a Commodore64.) Anyone remember 300 baud modems? Currently have 4 networked PC’s, 3 running Win98SE, and a 4th with Win95 (a shame the monitor died).

I still use DOS programs. I hexedit in it. The only text editor I know of that lets me select text in a box is a DOS program.

Frankly, I seldom see a BSOD, cause I keep the machines pretty clean. Freelancer and many other games run well on them. I’ve even got the .NET (I think v1.2?) running without problems.

More and more, though, I find developer’s (both pro and non-pro) neglecting any kind of backward compatibility. I appreciate the allure of using the latest greatest developer’s tools. I’m a little sad, though that some of the modding tools being developed today (not just for Freelancer) require XP or better, or .NET v2.0, or Java whatever, just to install, before you can even get to a readme file.

I play Simcity4. Love it. New, great tool comes out. Everyone loves it, “ya’ gotta get it!” Multi-mbyte download, run install .exe, can’t install errors, crash. Dig through forums, others have problem, developer says, try this, that. People can’t make work. Did some more digging. Requires XP to install, requires XP to run. Contact developer, ask if tested on 98SE, “No, don’t have access to one.” Asked if he could update file description to advise others it is XP and beyond only. Wasn’t interested, didn’t bother.

I own an still-sealed copy of XP. Bought last copy at Staples, when M$ said they would no longer support 98SE. Not planning to install it anytime soon for a couple of reasons I won’t go into here.

My point: Freelancer is an old game. In the forums I see much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the players dropping off, the community dying. But there are many, many of us out here just now discovering it for the first time. Many of us, also, are running older machines & OS’s out of either necessity or choice. Please don’t forget or neglect us, we might surprise you.

All that being said, my query (apologies if OT): I’ve long been wary about installing XP on my PC, a) because of the stupid activation/registration process/limits; and b) I don’t have the capability to make sure everything I have on this machine is 100% backed up. Any thoughts or comments on the perils of upgrading the OS, should I choose to finally do it?

I’ll just say that '98 is nothing short of ancient and that unless all your computers were built pre-2000, you’re probably not taking advantage of their capabilities.

If you are scared of losing your data, I’d just suggest buying a second hard drive and either making the old one a slave drive or even putting the old one in an external enclosure so it doubles as offline backup storage. Then you can safely get Win XP on the new drive without any chance of losing your data bar hardware failure (which wouldn’t be related to Windows XP in any case).

Otherwise, your 4 networked computers should provide ample space to keep any data in them.

As for activation, I haven’t heard about that many issues with it. Vista’s is far more drastic.

@FriendlyFire:

I’ll just say that '98 is nothing short of ancient and that unless all your computers were built pre-2000, you’re probably not taking advantage of their capabilities.

If you are scared of losing your data, I’d just suggest buying a second hard drive and either making the old one a slave drive or even putting the old one in an external enclosure so it doubles as offline backup storage. Then you can safely get Win XP on the new drive without any chance of losing your data bar hardware failure (which wouldn’t be related to Windows XP in any case).

Otherwise, your 4 networked computers should provide ample space to keep any data in them.

As for activation, I haven’t heard about that many issues with it. Vista’s is far more drastic.

I appreciate the spirit of what you are saying. (If I were the sensitive type, I could take offense at something 11 yrs. old being called ancient. I was already in my 30’s in those Z80 days. Has anyone here even heard of it? 2Kb memory, cassete storage, TV monitor, $29.95 US at K-Mart? 300 baud modems? Anyway, you do the math. Old doesn’t neccessarily mean decrepit.)

And yes, all my machines are all pre-2000. And I’ve spent a lot of time maximizing their capabilities. Not the point. Try doing a batch file rename in Windows, without writing a program. I don’t believe it’s possible. It’s a simple command line in DOS using wildcards. Using 4Dos, I even have long file name support, so I’m not limited to the “8.3” DOS names. My system as it stands supports just about everything I would normally need to do on a day to day basis.

I understand that developers need bigger better tools to do bigger better tasks. I’m just asking that, while they are coding the the next great modders app, they at least try to keep backward compatibility in mind. It’s very frustrating to read glowing descriptions of a tool, dl say a 2MB installer .exe without a readme, hope the installer doesn’t do something weird to the registry, breathe a sigh of relief when it doesn’t, find a readme (or not) in the app’s folder, then discover you need to go to Micro$ucks to dl 10-20-100 MB of the latest greatest OS update that may or may not be of any benefit to anything but that app.

I don’t want to rant, just trying to make an observation. Take it for what it’s worth or ignore it. Your choice.

On the XP issue, 'fraid all my drives are packed to the rafters. Sometimes I have to make the difficult choice to delete something to make room for something else. And yes, the economics of new equipment is an issue.

My major concern is not so much losing data, 'cause all most everything could possibly be re-created. I’m more concerned with issues involving installed apps, and whether I’m going to have to spend weeks re-installing so they and XP co-operate. Just how seamless is the XP installation
in that regard?

**Ok, to speak from a programmers side of things.

Support for '95 & '98 would be great for us, it would mean our tools would work on older machines. Problem is our programming tools of choice do not allow that. They depend on the SDKs they are provided with. In the past few years since XP has come out all support for older Windows versions have been dropped in favor of new layouts. Unfortunately for us that meant either we upgraded our code or it no longer would compile. In those cases you would need to get an older version which will no longer be supported or upgrade your Windows to support the new features. Even I haven’t been immune to this. This also means you would most likely need to upgrade your hardware to something more recent.

What we are trying to say is backwards compatibility is a very slim chance, we just aren’t able to offer what we are not allowed to build…**