Starting perspective - I’ve owned X2, X3:Reunion, X3:TC, X3:AP.
I’ve been a massive X fan, always got the games and even written a 2 mission walkthrough on X3 release to try and appease the screaming from people going mental (no tutorial provided).

This is NOT X4, it’s different. Obviously a large proportion did NOT consider this and bought. More fool them.

So - that said - I’ve got the game, and to be fair, it’s horribly bugged. I’ve barely played 3-4 hours of it - and I’ve considered asking Steam for a refund. The ranting is over the top on the forums, it’s beyond compare, but the game is seriously flawed from bugs at present. Many of the key features of X games don’t work as expected yet.

I’ve faith that this WILL be great sometime as I’ve seen enough hints at what they’ve tried to do to know where it may end up.

But currently it’s a fricken bug fest with the basics of the game barely working. I’m used to their releases being buggy so was not surprised, but this is beyond compare.

Give it 6-12 months and maybe it’ll be worth picking up and playing.

I was well aware of it being a 1 ship affair, but currently it is executed so poorly that it is a major PITA on the mind. Maybe if i play more i’ll realise it’s okay. But right now, I’m missing having different ship classes to fly… even though in most X games people end up with 1 ship and sticking with it always (for their personal ship).

This is in single player storyline mode I assume.

If you look at the mission file, there will be action triggers etc. Chances are, there’s something missing (it does say “Beta appears to be multi-player only” at the start of this thread).

My guess is that it’s a cut scene - which would explain the lack of controls and everything else.

Have a poke around, find out how the cut scene gets triggered (probably an enter system trigger).

If you get crashes, do some good old fashioned debugging based on what sort of crash it was. Chances are, there exist bugs which are fairly trivial to be rid of given the experience around

Confused, is it originals on left new on right? Or is this just the new? It’d be nice to compare, otherwise… don’t really know what I’m looking at

Something someone posted, probably relevant - or you can shoot it full of holes too.

Posted by another user on the RSI forum (Flashpoint) but I believe this is something all the Cynics should read.
……

I posted this as a reply on another thread, as it suddenly dawned on me what the success or failure of this game actually means.
I thought it might be good to give it its own thread…

I have a simple question for you lot: Do you like space sims? Yes or no?

If the answer is yes, be that the Wing Commander style or the Freelancer/Privateer style, then you MUST back this game.
Why?
Remember this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZfURi4it5M

Look at the words at the beginning of that trailer and remind yourself how long it has been since the last AAA space sim.
Remember how many industry ‘experts’ said it was a dead genre. Remember how many times you’ve said to yourself, friends or forums that you’d kill for a new AAA space sim.

This game is a challenge to those experts. It’s a blatant ‘prove you wrong’ piece and if it fails, a thousand developers, publishers and ‘experts’ will shake their heads and smugly say ‘We told you so’, and then the space sim WILL truly be dead.

If you don’t back this now (and remember that a pledge of just $30 gets you the finished game. How cheap is that???) for whatever reason you choose to dig up, if you don’t back it because the Wing Commander element comes before the Freelancer element or because the game might not be 100% exactly containing everything you exactly want, if you just let everyone else do it, then you lose the right to complain about no more space sims.
If Squadron 42 is a massive success, then Star Citizen will be a success like the PC has never seen. If this happens, there will be new space sims springing up all over the place. So even if Star Citizen ends up not quite doing what you wanted, the chances of someone else doing it increase exponentially.

IF THIS IS A SUCCESS THERE MOST PROBABLY WILL BE THE FABLED FREESPACE 3 (A point which I am about to make to the SCP forums).

This is not 23 days to make this game viable, this is 23 days to save our genre.
If you don’t help to do it, you have nobody else to blame.
If we don’t do it, who will?

I know there are cynics amongst the midst - the “it’s not Freelancer 2” folks, the “I don’t think he can do it” folks and the “argh it’ll interfere with my own dreams” folks.

Sadly being a cynic is almost a self fulfilling prophecy - if everyone was one. If no-one pledged money, then it’d go nowhere. Lastly, with enough coverage, we may well see the “death knell” of the genre. I hope some people’s enthusiasm isn’t negatively affected by others derision. Things will have their supporters, detractors, cynics, sceptics, fan boys etc. Make your own mind up, don’t be put off by criticisms - especially if they’re criticisms from sectors I’d label as “non professional” (i.e. those actively involved in development, or having extensive knowledge of, what is required to achieve his claims)

p.s. Related to hitboxes and so on. FPS games generally have relatively simple models and scenery I would admit. Yet they manage 50 odd players running around blatting weapons and more without any lag issues. Does that instantly translate to Space? Not really, but rest assured that clever folks can make many optimisations - and we’re talking 10 years since FL. The computational power increase is… insane.

With FL, a lot of “lag” was graphical - during big battles.

And yes, you can use “big” hitboxes too - because if something doesn’t intersect that hitbox, you have zero need to perform further calculations. If it does, then you can start calculating what it hits, or whether it actually misses.

For all the criticisms being levied I’d ask what are the qualifications to be in a position to really offer an insight into the troubles being faced. For instance, hosting for a persistent universe won’t be on a single box you know… nor on your home network either.

p.s.s Need to clarify. Not saying people shouldn’t be cynical - that’s their prerogative. What I am saying is that unless the cynics are offering up a reasonable base from which they’re cynicism is borne (if being mentioned) you should be simply not take what they’re saying as truth.

It is entirely possible there is a publisher out there who said “prove their is an audience/appetite”.

This is proving it… maybe

They probably thought it’d help alleviate lag issues. After all, if lag is bad, and players have high pings to the servers, then why play.

May as well cut them out to minimise lag to those who have good pings and may therefore stay.

I really like the fact he has been enthused about what advances people have done with Freelancer - and the constant mention is bringing hope that this may be more Freelancer 2 than WC x.

After reading one topic in particular on that site though, I really hope the few thundering ego’s who have (imo) tragically straddled Freelancer, imposing their self righteousness, don’t damage the perception of the entire fan base.

Other than that, still giving a big WOOOHOOO! Posted about it on the Egosoft forums, as I know a fair number there enjoyed Freelancer as well

Times like these it’s a good job I don’t have the archive membership list… I’d be mass emailing people with a link

I am surprised by the muted response O_O Heck, surprised by the what i’d call semi hostile response from one!

I want to shout, to scream - HELL YEAH! Seriously, hopping up and down with excitement - which given my age is kind of embarrassing This isn’t just another unknown person making the announcement - it’s Chris Roberts. Seriously. AWESOME! So very very happy and excited.

A quick FYI for the person moaning about times/dates/length of time until potential release. Here is a quick copy/paste from another space sim which was announced a long time ago and also got me excited…

Date Registered: November 27, 2005, 07:46:23 PM

That’s Infinity, Quest for Earth.Knocking on 7 years now and still nothing. 2 years is nothing, a drop in the ocean! Time flies V fast.

I look forward to reading more and more about it, hearing more, discovering more. Getting teasers and bits of information, releases etc. You know, that period of time when you can get excited in anticipation of something! Looking FORWARD to that

Am I the only one that’s REALLY excited here? Guys - get out and spread the word Would love for him to see there is a good number of fans who are interested, enthusiastic, and supportive! Whiners need not apply (would ask the ages of those who are impatient. I think it is bourne of our “modern” era )

Xalrok wrote:
Recently I was told that stationary battleships in the mod I’m working on weren’t dangerous enough. I decided to test this and found that some shields won’t drop when they reach 0.

I’m not sure why they don’t drop. Some shields, like those on Light Fighters, seem to behave normally. Heavy/Very Heavy Fighter shields on the other hand seem to stay up.

I can take fire from a battleship with turrets that do 50000 damage, 140000, damage and several with 11400 damage and continuously taking fire from two fighters armed with around 6 8.33 refire 240 damge guns.

My fighter, which is sitting still, has a shield capacity of 11038 and has around 12000 hitpoints and can survive this onslaught for around ten seconds with 0 shields (all impacts give shield effects, the hull doesn’t drop) before one shot randomly gets through. NPCs don’t seem to have this problem because with the same ship type and shield, they start taking hull damage right after the shield drops and their regeneration rate isn’t really noticeable.

I’ve also tried resetting WeaponModDB, but the problem is still there afterwards. What would cause the shields to stay up at 0 percent for several seconds?

This is really unclear. Do you mean the shields are “down” - what makes them stay down? Or the shields are 0 capacity but not “down”?

I think even with 1 hp of shield left, a 100000 shot will still take it to 0 (shields failed) before hull takes a beating.

If the shield is down and shots aren’t doing any damage, look to your sur files. In particular, do you have the sound associated with shots landing on the hull or do the just pass through?

Sorry if this seems silly, but it is actually hard to understand what the issue is.

Possible to remove everything but the basics from the system to which you jump into and see if the error still appears? (i.e. just the very minimum declarations for content in a system - the jumpgate and the headers required at the top of the file).

If it disappears, keep adding things back until you find what it was?

Guessing it only appears when the system is loaded into the server memory - ergo, it’s a solar. Just which one is causing the issue

I think you misunderstood the post entirely. For instance, there is far more going on than you realise. NPCs are worthless without the formations, the ships and their loadouts… which means all the weapons, engines and other files those items are referenced from.

System files are worthless without the same files, as well as the asteroids and other files (yes, an exclusion zone defined in the asteroid file can cause a crash in a system… funnily enough).

What you need is a means of troubleshooting because staring at the code is NOT going to solve the issue. It certainly isn’t going to work just shoving up to 100,000 lines of text for others to look through either. Who has the time?

You need a process of elimination, a means of attempting to find out what it is without staring at line after line after line of completely irrelevant code.

One method is to go through your problem file and comment out every single encounter. This includes patrols and population zones. Do you still crash? If you do, it immediately helps to narrow down the issues…

Infact, I’d just start out with the zone around the Jumpgate.

Assuming Li04 I would start by commenting out this:

[zone]
nickname = Zone_Li04_to_Li01
pos = 12771, 0, -90152
rotate = 0, -159, 0
shape = SPHERE
size = 3000
comment = NY gate
sort = 1
toughness = 3
density = 10
repop_time = 10
max_battle_size = 4
pop_type = jumpgate
relief_time = 15
faction_weight = li_p_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_alg_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_hsp_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_me_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_ni_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_os_grp, 5
faction_weight = co_rs_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_ss_grp, 10
density_restriction = 4, unlawfuls
;encounter = area_defend, 3, 0.060000
;faction = li_p_grp, 1.000000
;encounter = area_armored_prisoner, 3, 0.030000
;faction = li_p_grp, 1.000000
;encounter = area_trade_freighter, 3, 0.110000
;faction = co_hsp_grp, 0.330000
;faction = co_me_grp, 0.330000
;faction = co_ss_grp, 0.330000
;encounter = area_trade_transport, 3, 0.110000
;faction = co_alg_grp, 0.170000
;faction = co_hsp_grp, 0.170000
;faction = co_me_grp, 0.170000
;faction = co_ni_grp, 0.170000
;faction = co_rs_grp, 0.170000
;faction = co_ss_grp, 0.170000
;encounter = area_trade_armored, 3, 0.040000
;faction = co_os_grp, 1.000000

Also try commenting out trade lane traffic, patrol paths that converge on the gate etc.

I would also try going to the system via a jumphole or via the gates from other systems too

Still crash? Use OpenSP to put your starting position on a station (preferably not near the gate) and see if you can launch…

Process of elimination means that with a quick bit of use of a text editor you can cut out half of the files. Or more.

IF it is a encounter, you can further narrow it down by simply de-commenting them out one at a time and finding when you crash. Then you know where to look … at what that particular npc ship/loadout combo is, what equipment etc.

It appears that the method of troubleshooting and bug hunting is, if anything, getting worse in the remaining FL community. Stop relying upon spewtext and others, start relying upon some deduction and detective work. It isn’t hard, it’s far quicker, and you learn more about the game

Shameless near self plug of work done from 2003.

http://www.lancersreactor.com/archive/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=24781

Reading such things can help a little with identifying your crash - and far more than some “error spew” which has been nothing other than misleading in this instance

So try reading through there - probably a few most have never heard of… and it’s nearly 9 years since I wrote it.
Crap i feel old

Yeah, sorry about that, will try to sort it out tomorrow night.
Had too much wine and have to be up early for work to find source and compile it again

wait, your systems are empty? As in no encounters at all?

Those errors don’t cause crashes. They are errors to fix, but they’re not your crash

If you haven’t, remove all encounters from your system - and patrol paths, or any paths at all. Do you still crash?

Sketch up? new one to me, although used blender previously I hadn’t heard anyone modelling with it - but awesome stuff

Good luck with the project though - sounds interesting. As for development and time issues for development - the bane of modding Everything takes a lot longer, and there’s never enough damned time … and to top it off, people keep asking if it’s done yet

but all the best

Is the error 100% always happening? Does the crash always occur?
Does it still exist if you remove the entry for Kruger rather than correct it?
Does it crash without hook?

I’d be very surprised if that’s your issue and not an encounter outside the base.

Quick addition as not many seem to know it. The Bartender on the New Berlin is named after the creator of Lancers Reactor - Christian Koerner (Bargib)

You can also see a few of the original “staff” of TLR in the multi-player screen shot in the Freelancer manual Several of the US guys got to go to Austin, Texas, to meet DA

Indeed, one staff member who was involved in beta testing (nearly all of the original staff were) ran the only allowed test server outside of the DA offices (i.e. online!) during the beta.

All this used to be common knowledge, but appears no-one knows anymore - even those who make claims about their role in FL history (non present here).

No space sims in the last 8 years?

Off the top of my head…
DarkStar One
Space Wolves
Space Force: Rogue Universe
Black Prophecy
Dark Horizon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_flight_simulator_games

Is it the “looking for Freelancer 2” issue, or Space sims in general?

Did this problem exist in Freelancer WITHOUT all the mods/patches etc.