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I just picked up a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium.  Yeah, I hate Creative, but let's not go into that.  I finally have hardware 3D sound again in BZ2.  Over 100 channels of sound... yeah!

One of the worst things in Vista is being forced to use the software audio mixer.  Blah!

If anyone is interested in trying it, please grab the file from the link below.  Made a few minor changes, mainly to improve Scion AI vs. rocket tanks, made the AI slightly more random, and changed how the AI tries to win in late game (it's a surprise sort of).

Ah, I hope everyone knows where the files go....

Link

[5]

Hi guys!  There are now 5 levels of difficulty (ranging from "easy" to "insane") + stock 1.3 AIPs.  Thanks to GSH for fixing many, many AIP-related bugs.

Watch as the AI uses the bomber like it's going out of style, or play "count the Maulers" as they ravage your base.

Yes, the AI does scrap cheat on the harder difficulty levels, but it should be "smarter" than before.  Oh well, that's what you get without DLL magic.

Cheers!  Yeehaw!

When will Nathan or Ken drop us a quick line?  I'm dying to see some of those 1.3 bugs get fixed.  Would make a nice X-mas present!  Please, please, please!

A couple friends and I were playing MPI using the TTB recycler (+ smart trucks) and something kinda weird happened.  The AIP attacker plans all executed just once and never staged another attack.  So after surviving the first few waves, the computer sat there and did nothing (until the AIP switched files).

Going back through the log file, the attacker plans were still in "attack" mode, even though I was pretty sure no units were left in staging.

I'm not 100% sure it's a problem strictly with the TTB recycler, but I don't recall the regular recycler having this problem.

Anyone else notice this?

I was leading a force of assault tanks into a Scion base, but couldn't target anything.  I know there was a jammer up, but shouldn't I be able to target things within visual range?

I moved the assault tanks into range to see if they would initiate attack on their own, and all they did was sit around, waiting for the spires to take them out.

I thought the jammer only took out radar targeting, not visual targeting as well....

A friend and I were just testing in strat and when I blew up his tank, he said that the site camera (wire frame) mode was still active for his pilot.

It turned off after he entered another vehicle.

Could someone help verify this?

Call me a silly whippersnapper, but I've got an idea.  One of the major hurdles with adding F11 and F12 keys is the GUI.  Well, why not add them *without* the need for the icons?

I'd like to see F11 and F12 used for a 5th and 6th player, where the most important function is to pass vehicles to those players.  I don't need to *see* an icon to do that.  In single player/IA, not having F11 and F12 isn't a big deal, IMHO.

Using something like Teamspeak, the extra "functionality" that the icon would add isn't really required.  If people have problems with invisible icons, then make it a poweruser option or something.

What do you guys think?

I'm been fiddling with the MPI AIPs for a little while now, and in testing, there seems to be a major problem with the basebuildminimum for two buildings:
- Training center
- Tech center

Depending on the build order and the map, either building may fail to build.  The constructor goes through the motions (with sound fx), but nothing materializes (not even the wireframe).

My guess is there is a bug with the available space check, since both of those buildings are an odd shape (2x1 grids).  Donextonfail does not work to bypass this condition, so there's no easy way to work around this problem.

I've got a test AIP (nothing but scrap collecting and base building) and AIP log files.  GreenHeart suggested I replace the IA AIP and make a save file to show this... is the log file enough?

So, am I on glue, or is this a real bug?

I know the whole tracked physics thing has been brought up before, but service trucks seem to be affected worse than the others.  Maybe it's due to its small size, but I generally have one or two of them pretty much permanently stuck in my base at any given time.

Also, sometimes they like to climb walls/objects/monuments and get stuck, and sometimes they hit some invisible object and do the twirling dance in mid-air.

I'm not looking for how far they will fix things or how "smart" they should be.  I just want a service truck that can follow me around. :s

When there are multiple save files, if you click save without moving which file it highlights, it uses the last name on the list instead of the highlighted name.

So, for example, with highlight on file One,

> One <
Two
Three

Immediately click save, and it becomes,

> Three <
Two
Three

Maybe someone has already done this in a previous thread, but I'd like to thank the map makers that contributed to the 1.3 effort.

Not taking anything away from the great work Nathan and Ken have done, but it seems nobody talks about the new maps, which I think adds a lot to the replay value.

Cheers!

Don't think a lot of people still use the old Aureal sound cards, but unfortunately I am... hope Nathan sees this anyway.  :s

This applies to WinXP, using the crappy the WDM driver.  The problem is with sounds clipping and not playing above 16 channels.  The problem arises because the driver reports (in the log file) that there are 96 (!!!) sound channels (buffers) available, where in reality it seems to be only 16.

When you set sound buffers to use hardware for Directsound and Directsound 3D, and greater than 16 channels, the sound problem occurs.  Using the "auto" setting doesn't help either... I think it tries hardware buffers first, then falls back to software ones, but since the driver reports that there lots of hardware buffers left, it never happens.

After pissing around with the options, the best workaround is to set Directsound 3D to use hardware and Directsound to software.  The reason to do it this way is that you lose the phase shift/doppler effects if Directsound 3D is done in software (at least I think).  Set Directsound 3D to 16 channels, and total sound channels to 64.

While it's only 16 channels of full 3D, the extra stereo channels adds immensely to the ruchness of the sound, especially in big battles.  So far I've seen and heard the game use up to 62 channels... oh man, nirdvana indeed!

The fix would be a proper WDM driver (yeah, right), or an option (probably in gameprefs.ini) to override the number of hardware buffers, so we can use "auto" sound buffers properly (Nathan?).  But the workaround is probably okay I guess.

Cheers