Argh
Once again I could not get through to you by email...
The email I sent came back.
Mancer ask me to get these files to you so I assume he had trouble also and since I cannot reach you by email
I will let you download the file from here on Lancers

Finally I had time to jump into 1.2 (I still was on 1.1 ) - very nice job, thanks for the balancing-adaptions, Argh.
Some observations and questions (as always: mentioning them doesn't mean critisizin' )
- "Silver Streak" bought on West Point: Some important difference between specs and Infocards: IC///in game
/* weapons 4/1 /// 8/0
/* 'weaker than Rhino' /// stronger than Rhino
/* Cargo 200 /// 50
The ship is not THAT cheap - and it is sold in NY. If a player invests his $ in a (veery nice looking) freighter-fighter then he could feel - ehhm - cheated with only 50 cargo-hold
- Ship Dealers on pirate bases
I have not been everywhere - but I have made the same experience in 1.1.: You meet pirates in 'their' ships - but you can't buy those ships on any of the pirate bases. Example: the Xenos fly ships (sorry I forgot the names) you can't buy on Ouray - and Barrow or Nome do not have a ship dealer.
For the same reason it is also a pity that Ames, Java and Falkland (I'm sure there are some more, but I have not been everywhere yet ...) and Freeport 10 do not have ship dealers.
- Something completely strange: I tried to edit a SP-savegame with Ioncross. I just wanted to add more credits for testing purposes. Impossible. CTD every time i wanted to buy equipment. I tried with different settings: money only, ship, location, equipment - CTD as soon I tried to interact with equipment or ship dealer.
Ioncross found some 'wrong' hash codes and WXP named the common.dll to be the problem. MY problem: i do not know what to do

** edit: I have seen that Ioncross shows a strange ship name instead of starflier. When I changed to another ship then sometimes a complete other ship was showing in game **

A fresh reinstall did not solve the problem. But as I changed to Multiplayer I could edit new players to whatever money, ship, location or faction etc. I wanted.

Btw: I was not able to play ToolKit 1.2 with the FL-Server on the same computer. I made several attempts sto start FL-Server first or TK 1.2 first - then LAN game, the Mod showed up -but "Connect" made crash FL-Server.
I have NOT installed FL-Server 1.1.
Running Server and FL on this same computer (without another PC connected) usually works on my system; it does on Evo 1.28 e.g.)
After i started my second PC and madi ir running FL-Server the game was stable as rock in MP.

Edit: added info about ship-list in Ioncross


Edited by - zazie on 7/11/2005 2:07:04 AM

I'm adding ShipDealers to all of the Independent Worlds, etc. for 1.3, along with some other enhancements and minor fixes. I, too, do not like how most of the Pirate bases are "missing" such an important feature.

This is the second report that I've gotten about MP problems. I'll look into it.

I have no idea what's happening with the Character Editor for SP issue. I'll have to see what (if anything) can be done. I just use Chip's OpenSP Lite for testing purposes... if you just want to start with decent cash, I suggest using it, since that's what I'm using.

As for the Streak... oops. I believe you're reading the Infocard for the Light Hauler, which I probably just cloned while coding the Streak. I'll have to go fix that one

The next version, in addition to having ShipDealers for every Base in the game, will also feature at least one new ship (the Bandit) and several revamped planets with much better graphical quality, and I think I'll include the Random Treasure Generator Zones in at least a few areas as examples, and maybe I'll make a few more of the FL ships buyable/flyable, including the Battleships/Dreadnaughts. There are a few issues with really huge ships that haven't been ironed out to my satisfaction, but I haven't had time to figure it all out just yet, because they involve technical issues of various kinds involving the way that ships are "placed" in the FL engine- basically the short answer is that the engine was never intended to deal with very large ships, and fixing the problems is a pain.

wow - you are quick ! my compliments
Some major mods made special files for the Ioncross - maybe your mod with its tons of changes needs this too ?
Good idea to put (even) more FL-ships. I suggest player should be able to buy a gunship/BS on a shipyard when he sees one of them in the dock (like Baltimore now - look awesome !) - and if he can afford it, of course hehe .

1. I don't really have plans to produce IONCROSS hashes. Nobody's expressed any interest in running the mod online at this time, and it's more of a dev kit than anything else- I didn't even bother to give the EXE a new version number. The objective has never been to build an entirely new game design or to make gigantic enhancements, but provide FL modders with a better starting-point.

2. The Cruisers and Gunships can be bought at Shipyards that make perfect sense. For example, the Rhineland military ships can be bought at the Ring. I'm not going to tell you where the Kusari stuff's being sold, but it's in an obvious place, trust me.

3. I have just completed a very, very cool model of a Rogue/criminal VHF. It's entirely like the FL style, but different enough to qualify as a new design, and I'm very proud of it- expect a screencap when I get around to skinning it Why the Rogues/Mollies need a VHF is beyond me, but now they can have one, hehe. I'll probably have it guarding a Rogue base somewhere as a nasty surprise for those who aren't friendly with that Faction

Is it just me or does it seem the Repair ship gives me a CTD whenever i click on it?

Hey Argh,

I just wanted to congratulate you on a job VERY well done. I've been playing around in 1.2 and am truly impressed. If there's any advice that you can offer me for converting parts of Rebalance to your XML format, then I'd really appreciate that. Rebal is gonna be a tough conversion, but Ithink that in the end, it might actually be somewhat (ahem) more stable (knock on wood).

Anyway, again, excellent job with the XML Toolkit, it's truly a good thing

Thanks for reading
ArchKaine

Some say ignorance is bliss, I say they're just too blissful to know better.

Forget i said repair ship, i meant the Heavy Lifter, whenever i click on it i get a CTD. Script looks ok so not sure what's the problem

Ok, after more experimenting, coming to the conclusion it's the .cmp file as the image of the ship doesn't show up in game, just a CTD everytime

Anybody else having problems with that Repair Ship? I've double-checked everything over here, and the CMP is fine... Repair Ships show up in the game just fine, and I can select them without crashing... buy them without crashing... etc... etc...

My conclusion is that you may have a corrupt CMP... in which case, you should re-download and re-install the mod.

Here's proof (albeit, this shot's from the dev. of 1.3, but I will swear on a stack of Athlon64's as high as my head I haven't touched the CMP or code for the Repair Ship since 1.1's release). As you can see in the shot below, I've selected the Repair Ship... and I'm flying one (and I double-checked the icon, etc. to make sure everything was OK). I've scanned them, chatted them up, etc... nothing caused a crash

This is not to say that there probably aren't bugs somewhere... speaking of which, I fired up a MP server on my machine, to test whether MP's broken... and... um... maybe I'm just special, but it's running OK here. Cleaned out my FL install directories and all auto-saves, reinstalled everything, and tried it again, and MP does not hang on my machine.

So, being extra paranoid, I installed a virgin copy of 1.2 again, and tried it as well. No hang when running the mod MP on my own machine, with me playing on the same machine.

My conclusion? I'd like to hear your system specs. If you have 256MB of RAM, then you're probably having memory problems. Otherwise we'll have to explore this a bit more and discover the cause with some more detailed experiments

Thx for the reply Argh, as you've noticed its the Heavy Lifter not the Repair Ship but i'll dl it all again and see if it's ok. I only said .cmp as it was the last place i was looking as everything else looked fine

Doh... Heavy Lifter... ok, I'll check it out... although, having used lots of them for target practice during testing, I'm going to be awfully surprised if they're causing trouble...

@Archkaine:

Hmm... well, switching ships over is really pretty easy (lots of work, but not hard work, if you get my meaning). Just follow the directions specifying how filenames should be written- if it's not already obvious, the XML files all start with a number for a reason. And the mod was designed with a lot've deeper features to enhance/change weapons that nobody (yet) has been taking advantage of- I basically "tagged" all of the variables one needs to alter to do a whole bunch of weapons-balance changes without doing it in the INIs (or, if you do it there, at least it's easier, because you can now search for a ROGUE weapon, instead of lr_gun01).

As for adding the other features of ReBal... well, I dimly remember playing it at one point, and remember that it added lots of things like upgrades to armor, energy storage, etc. Putting them in by following the same format as the Power Generator Upgrades (which make use of a special "shield" hardpoint, but that's arbitrary) shouldn't be a problem. I didn't do these things because... quite honestly, it's very hard to make such things really, truely game-balanced for MP.

The Toolkit addressed the game-balance of ships at different levels, and I think it did a great job there... everything feels a lot more fair. The Power Generators enhance this a bit, making smaller, lighter ships a little better-able to go toe-to-toe with heavier opponants at the highest levels, without making the Titans, Hammerheads, Sabres and Eagles of the mod too weak to fight against their more-manueverable brethren. This is a very different philosophy than the game-balance of ReBal, which... and forgive my bluntness here... did not address that problem at all, and in fact made it worse in many ways, with things like shield regen enhancements, which make uber ships that much more uber

I just don't like a game where eventually nobody who hasn't made gigantic amounts of money is even a slight challenge, no matter what their relative skill level, so I balanced things much, much differently. I wish more FL mod devs would follow suit, but they don't seem to "get" that...

See the section entitled "Ship_Stat_Changes.txt" for more details about the formulas used to produce better balance, no matter what the ship's configuration is.

The only exceptions in the Toolkit are monstrous ships like Gunships and Cruisers, which use their own system, and have weaknesses (such as the fact that they can't change their weaponry) to make up for their relative strengths.

Heya Argh,

Thanks for the reply

Regarding Rebalance's lack of balance insofar as ships power and such, that's one of the many things that we're going to address in the latest release, whenever that one comes out. When we do bring it out, It'll still be Rebalance, and recognizable as such due to certain things, but there will be a real sense of "balance" in the Mod. I'm thinking that we may finish up SirEx, then possibly use the core codebase from that, and some XML tweaks thanks to yourself, to make RB truly unique, and more importantly... STABLE

I've also been thinking of ways to incorporate some XML tweaks into SirEx but have been having trouble keeping up with the core code base. I gotta get the latest from Ro9ue before I can implement certain ideas that I've had, thanks in part to your toolkit (I've been having so much fun with that).

Thanks again for a great toolkit Argh, truly appreciated
ArchKaine

PS
BTW Argh, we could use a talented Coder such as yourself on SirEx Wanna join up?

PPS
Also, regarding the memory thing and systems with 256 meg of RAM... Toolkit 1.2 runs great on my box, without any trouble whatsoever, so I truly doubt that Memory is the problem. Just my 2 cents.

Some say ignorance is bliss, I say they're just too blissful to know better.

Edited by - archkaine on 7/15/2005 12:33:11 PM

Edited by - archkaine on 7/15/2005 12:40:03 PM

@ Argh

Mmmm, well i downloaded everything again and i'm still getting the same problem with the Heavy Lifter. Icon shows up ok, it appears for sale at the base i've put it on, but everytime i click to buy it... CTD. As stated earlier, this is the only ship i'm having problems with *** bangs head on table and thrashes about a bit ***