1.3 impressions from eraser

[Eraser]

First I have to say THANK YOU to GSH, Ken and everyone else who helped get 1.3pb2 out!

After a long hiatus from playing bz2 1.2,  I reinstalled and installed 1.3pb1.    I'm mostly a single play guy, and loved screwing around in SP missions like I do with every game under the sun(One thing I wanted to do was use the plethora of new units and the bz1 units in bz2 sp when av's mod is out).  pb1 upset me, as I could no longer play the single player missions and mod things around, and was concerned about not being able to in pb2.

Now, I did a fresh install on a different drive to test 1.3pb2.   I am incredibly pleased with just about everything!  I can go through the shell in the bzedit exe, missions load and upon initial play testing, scripting, ai and everything works as it should and the editor is accessable!(meanwhile MP is still thankfully disabled so MP cheating ****ers can't ruin games.)

I absolutely LOVE all the options there are, that simply weren't present.  Too many to name... graphics and sound settings,  A great improvement to sounds, now we can adjust volume in small increments....bz2 was always either too loud or too low with the 10 sized intervals. 

I have one criticism so far: unit physics seem a bit quirky.  Flying around the scout, if I went up the smallest hill it seemed like I could do all sorts of bizarre acrobatics and manuevers, twisting my view at 90 degree angles to the ground at times...Is this intended?

Also, I turned on that bump mapping, but didn't see a single graphical differance, other than vegetation that was farther away wasn't faded.

One thing I would love to see implemented in the future:  from recent mods we can now do missions in MP(I haven't really read too much about it though)  I was hoping we could play cooperative through SP missions(stock, FE and mods)  A human wingman would add so much to the fun.

My test install, I'm going to make an un-screwed around with MP install with only 1 or 2 1.3 mods for MP (Av's, Dunecommand and FE when its 1.3 compatable)

[OvermindDL1]

Also, I turned on that bump mapping, but didn't see a single graphical differance, other than vegetation that was farther away wasn't faded.

That is very video card dependent.  It is a format that didn't take off well, so only a small subset support it.

One thing I would love to see implemented in the future:  from recent mods we can now do missions in MP(I haven't really read too much about it though)  I was hoping we could play cooperative through SP missions(stock, FE and mods)  A human wingman would add so much to the fun.

Mod material that is, go ahead and make it, it is basically pure C++ work for that.

[GSH]

Doing SP missions in MP would require surgery to every DLL -- to spawn in players, handle disconnects, handle the logic of deaths, and all scripting conditions. It'd also unbalance every mission, as 2-8 humans would tend to make short work of the AI. It's not trivial to do this. The number of games that allow online cooperative play thru SP missions can probably be counted on one hand.

-- GSH

[Eraser]

Mod material that is, go ahead and make it, it is basically pure C++ work for that.

I can't code my way out of a paper bag....in C++

Java I can squirm my way out with help.

I prefer to stick to the visual and story end of mod work.

It's not trivial to do this

Then don't worry about it at all.  Take time to enjoy the fruits of your labor
I expected that much trouble, but it was a hope.  Just imagine what people had to go through to get multiplayer to work in games like GTA or morrowind that didn't have it to begin with!

[General BlackDragon]

I think everything is great....

Hope everyone enjoys it and has a nice positive out look.

[OvermindDL1]

And considering the source is not out for the single player missions, they'd have to be rewritten from scratch, not that they would already of had to be anyway...

[Eraser]

One thing I forgot:  High detail shadows now work and look normal!

[OvermindDL1]

One thing I forgot:  High detail shadows now work and look normal!

Since when the frell have they worked properly?  They were not touched due to bad implementation to begin with.

[Eraser]

Odd

They were always really screwed up looking, and now they look like a real shadow...maybe its the video card....shadows were one of the things the latest geforces were supposed to greatly improve on.

[OvermindDL1]

It's probobly the object you are looking at.  The reason shadows are messed up is they seem to assume things about models that are not true in most cases, there are a couple that work, most don't...

[Lizard]

Actually most of the stencil shadows in bz2 work ok under the right conditions, there are a couple of absolute stinkers though ( such as the scion gunspire which is the absolute worst example I can think of ) and of course they don't work on bones animated objects suh as scion morph tanks and maulers which just have the usual low res blob for a shadow. Most of the ISDF ships and buildings look pretty good though, the guntowers can look a little funky with the turret shadow not seeming to be attached to the body, also if you set the sun at too steep an angle in your map the shadows can end up getting rendered in mid air instead of on the ground which looks stupid .



I usually play with them enabled despite the anomalies.