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[Pishtaco]

It isn't working for me. First I got something that looked like a missing directx file, but updating my directx got me past that. Now I get a lot of text that looks like stuff loading, and then "hardaether.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close." The last page or so is:

Code:

Info: Freetype returned null for character 162 in font Frontier
Info: Freetype returned null for character 164 in font Frontier
Info: Freetype returned null for character 165 in font Frontier
Texture: FrontierTexture: Loading 1 faces(PF_BYTE_LA,256x256x1) with  hardware g
enerated mipmaps from Image. Internal format is PF_BYTE_LA,256x256x1.
Bad overlay attribute line: 'arbiter/Cockpit' for overlay arbiter/subtitleOverla
y
Bad overlay attribute line: '{' for overlay arbiter/subtitleOverlay
Bad overlay attribute line: 'entity cockpit.mesh(cockpit)' for overlay arbiter/s
ubtitleOverlay
Bad overlay attribute line: '{' for overlay arbiter/subtitleOverlay
Bad overlay attribute line: 'position 0 0 0' for overlay arbiter/subtitleOverlay

Bad overlay attribute line: 'rotation 0 0 0 0' for overlay arbiter/subtitleOverl
ay
Parsing script Compositor.overlay
Parsing script DP3.overlay
Parsing script Example-CubeMapping.overlay
Parsing script Example-DynTex.overlay
Parsing script Example-Water.overlay
Parsing script gui.overlay
Bad element attribute line: 'horiz_align center' for element MouseCursor in over
lay arbiter/CursorContainer
Bad element attribute line: 'vertical_align center' for element MouseCursor in o
verlay arbiter/CursorContainer
Texture: cursor_select.png: Loading 1 faces(PF_A8R8G8B8,16x16x1) with 4 hardware
 generated mipmaps from Image. Internal format is PF_A8R8G8B8,16x16x1.
Parsing script PythonOgreDebugPanel.overlay
Texture: popanel.png: Loading 1 faces(PF_A8R8G8B8,638x90x1) with 5 hardware gene
rated mipmaps from Image. Internal format is PF_A8R8G8B8,1024x128x1.

C:\Documents and Settings\Neil\Desktop\hardaether-0.0.5>PAUSE
Press any key to continue . . .

[Galaxy613]

It's working fine for me, I just need to find the manual.

[nihilocrat]

I just need to find the manual.

What do you mean... "manual"? :D

No, seriously, WASD to turn, X to thrust forward, Z to thrust back, 1 to target ships, 2 to switch weapons, 3 to target missiles. I probably forgot to put the manual in the zip... my build process isn't exactly clean and orderly if you can't tell.

I'll have another build out soon with another attempt at a fix for all the other people. I think it involves bombarding the main directory with OGRE-related DLLs. Also, this new build will have fully-interactive buttons. I am too lazy right now to make the buttons light up when pressed, so instead they just make noise (which I think is enough response for a decent UX anyways). Still needing to wrestle with ship/missile deletion; hopefully I can get interception to properly work, meaning the game is :gasp: gameplay-complete in a gimpy way.

[Fuzz]

It keeps on telling me that it doesn't have necessary OGRE-related DLLs, so that'll probably help it.

[nihilocrat]

I think it's the case where, for some reason, it doesn't include them. What's confusing to me, and what makes this very non-obvious, is that I can run the builds in any random directory, not just a subdirectory of PythonOgre, and the game seems to work for people with Vista out-of-the-box.

Anyways, I'll push out a build in a bit. I'm still working on managing the death of missiles and ships, so it might crash if you die or you shoot down a missile or something.

update: Haven't made much progress today, because the game finally has core gameplay finished! I have mainly just been playing one-on-one engagements and refining tiny things here or there. I am surprised by how fast the ships and weapons travel given their current accelerations of 1G ans 2G respectively, it's making me think I've got the math wrong somewhere.

On the other hand, there are a handful of new and old bugs that I'm having to fix, and I'm a little concerned that it becomes easy for missiles to completely miss their target (overshoot and have way too much velocity to hope of ). I wanted this to be possible, but not to the point where engagements at high speeds were impossible because the missiles would never hit. I'm not intentionally putting inaccuracy into the missile tracking algorithm, it is just a gimp one because I'm bad at math, which happens to work with my other games / demos because the speeds are relatively low. I think I heard once that a proper target-prediction algorithm involves some sort of differential calculus, and I haven't found a straight answer anywhere with Google.

Next items on the menu: a main menu, debriefing screen (when you die / kill everything else), and a never-ending "gauntlet" mode which will be the sole mission available for the compo version.

After that, I hope to have a compo-final version. If the deadline gets extended, I will try and add a 3D icon to the target screen so you can actually see an image of the craft targetted (like what TIE Fighter did), which should make engagements a lot easier because you know exactly what you're targetting without having to consult my cheezy code-names.

After that, a slightly more difficult feature, would be a much-needed compass/attitude indicator overlay to replace/compliment the STATUS screen. Right now it's pretty terse, just a series of numbers, and you have to sort of imagine which way you are going. I could even add indicators to help you point yourself at your chosen target, but that make the game too easy ! The information is already there, it's just hard to use.


Also, it should be present in the 0.0.5 build, and it will be present in the 0.0.6 build (hopefully people can run this one!), but you can modify the game in minor ways through the files media/data.py and media/missions.py. Data.py is pretty straightforward, and missions.py has a convenience function that lets you create enemy formations in a single function call, so hopefully it's not hard to create your own missions.

[nihilocrat]

New techdemo. It involves a 1v1 against an active AI opponent. Don't worry, he is too stupid right now to shoot down your missiles, but he'll still launch them at you. Your missiles can be launched at 300 km, because of the way I coded the weapons I can't currently tell the player that when they try to fire a weapon and fail because it's out of range. Your laser has a range of 100km, and you need to target missiles with the MISL button before you can shoot them down with the M301. I didn't suspect the gameplay would be nearly this twichty (you've only got about 10 seconds between when a missile gets in range of your lasers, and it scoring a hit on you), I am probably going to increase the distances and weapon ranges even more for the final version.

Because of my gimpy object-removal system, there are still a lot of loose ends, so don't be surprised if the game crashes when you are killed or you kill the other guy.

I included all of the .dlls that OGRE brings along with itself, so it /really should/ work. If for some reason it still doesn't, then you can try to a) install OpenAL, and b) find and put msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll in the same directory as the game. Otherwise, I have no clue.

[Fuzz]

I included all of the .dlls that OGRE brings along with itself, so it /really should/ work. If for some reason it still doesn't, then you can try to a) install OpenAL, and b) find and put msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll in the same directory as the game. Otherwise, I have no clue.

msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll are already in the same directory as the game. Still doesn't work, even after I installed OpenAL. It's possible I don't have the right drivers/graphics card/something, though.

[nihilocrat]

Well, I guess I could look into copying over all the .pyd's as well, or properly installing Python-Ogre into my Python distribution, instead of having it as a standalone directory like it installs itself. Just like last time, I am digging deeper and trying new things, but at the same time I've got to keep developing the game.

Thanks for constantly downloading the new builds and trying them out, it's probably a real pain.

[Fuzz]

Well, I guess I could look into copying over all the .pyd's as well, or properly installing Python-Ogre into my Python distribution, instead of having it as a standalone directory like it installs itself. Just like last time, I am digging deeper and trying new things, but at the same time I've got to keep developing the game.

Thanks for constantly downloading the new builds and trying them out, it's probably a real pain.

Only when I get desperate and try things like downloading the latest DirectX and finding that nothing has changed (which I just did).

[nihilocrat]

edit: Crap. Didn't realize you could also try downloading + installing this: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=32bc1bee-a3f9-4c13-9c99-220b62a191ee&displaylang=en

Try that before the stuff below:

I guess another desperate thing to do is replicate my development environment. Obviously, I don't want to force people to do this, but hey, push has come to shove.

Install Python 2.5, Python-Ogre 1.6.1, and might as well install py2exe as well. Here are the links:
http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.4/python-2.5.4.msi
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/python-ogre/Python-Ogre-1.6.1-r845-py252.exe
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/py2exe/py2exe-0.6.9.win32-py2.5.exe

Install them in their default directories, and in the order presented.

[Fuzz]

Shit. I was halfway through downloading OGRE when you edited that. I'm trying it now.

EDIT: The Visual C++ 2005 installer was acting up.

[nihilocrat]

Thanks for taking my invitation anyways, .

I've managed to program a slightly hacky scene-changing system. There's now a main menu which successfully transitions into the game!



Also, I've just noticed that my method of coloring ships via materials is actually pretty bad for performance, it requires a material switch, which I think requires a seperate batch sent to the graphics card. Not too concerned for the compo version, but for later versions and especially for later games with the same engine, I need to find a better method.

[Mikademus]

New techdemo. It involves a 1v1 against an active AI opponent. Don't worry, he is too stupid right now to shoot down your missiles, but he'll still launch them at you. Your missiles can be launched at 300 km, because of the way I coded the weapons I can't currently tell the player that when they try to fire a weapon and fail because it's out of range. Your laser has a range of 100km, and you need to target missiles with the MISL button before you can shoot them down with the M301. I didn't suspect the gameplay would be nearly this twichty (you've only got about 10 seconds between when a missile gets in range of your lasers, and it scoring a hit on you), I am probably going to increase the distances and weapon ranges even more for the final version.

Because of my gimpy object-removal system, there are still a lot of loose ends, so don't be surprised if the game crashes when you are killed or you kill the other guy.

I included all of the .dlls that OGRE brings along with itself, so it /really should/ work. If for some reason it still doesn't, then you can try to a) install OpenAL, and b) find and put msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll in the same directory as the game. Otherwise, I have no clue.

Ｔｈｅｓｅ　ｐｒｏｂｌｅms usually are due to that the app is compiled in debug mode. While you can distribute Ogre debug DLLs there are no MSVS debug redistributables, so it won't work for someone who hasn't got VStudio installed. The solution of course is to compile in release mode.

The again, it might be something completely different...

[nihilocrat]

Debug/release doesn't enter into it, I'm using Python-Ogre, which most definitely packs Release versions of the DLLs.

Based on what I read on the Python-Ogre forums, I think the VC redistributable is the key here that I'm missing. I will include it with the game and advise people to run it before running the game. It's actually the VC 2008 redist, not 2005, so the link in my last post is probably bad, you should use this instead: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

I think this package alleviates the need for people to actually install Visual Studio (which I haven't! Code::blocks and GCC, please) to use DLLs that link to the VS runtime. So, it's /sort of/ what you were talking about

Somewhat related to this, it seems that there are no recent binary builds of Python-Ogre for Mac or Linux. Putting it all together and compiling is apparently a little complicated, more complex than just untar/configure/make. If I get bored, I will look into building it on my virtual Ubuntu box. Hopefully, I don't have to compile Ogre itself from scratch, and can just use release binaries sitting around somewhere. I plan to use my codebase / hacked-together engine here for future projects, so it's important for me in the long term to support Mac OS X and Linux, I just probably won't get around to it for the compo.

[Fuzz]

It works!
You were right about it being the VC '08 redist.