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Topics - GSH

#1
See http://www.visi.com/~nathan/bz2/bz2_13.html for download info.

Download from FilePlanet: Unofficial Patch 1.3 v5.1

The major improvements of 1.3 public beta 5.1, compared to the last release (tech alpha 5) are:

- Performance optimizations to DirectX 9 graphics, most noticeably in the terrain rendering. Satellite view should be far faster, especially on slower machines
- EMBM bumpmaps work once again. High res shadows are re-enabled, but still just as buggy as it's always been (since Battlezone II v1.0)
- Local fog should look better
- Various crash bugs fixed
- Max vertex count for models has been upped to 20,000 verts/model; old limit was 2730 verts/model. No stock assets have higher poly counts, but mods may take advantage of that.

-- GSH
#2
1.3 Public Beta 5: Tech Alpha 5 / 1.3 pb5.1 is coming soon
September 04, 2009, 04:47:59 PM
Just a heads up. 1.3 public beta 5.1 is pretty close to shipping. It's mainly up to the testers to tell me (on the private boards) if there's any showstopper bugs remaining.

Short summary of TA5.1: terrain performance optimizations in all views; satellite view should be far faster, especially on slower machines. EMBM bumpmaps work once again. High res shadows are re-enabled, but still just as buggy as 1.0. (There's a flag to turn it off for units you don't like). Local fog should look better. Lots of crashbugs fixed. Other improvements, mainly to AIPs. Max polygon count for objects is 20,000 polys/object -- 7.3x the limit of 1.0 - 1.3ta5.

-- GSH
#5
See http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/archive/SweeneyHPG2009/TimHPG2009.pdf .

Not surprisingly, it's a bit of a plug for using the Unreal Engine (and its future iterations), but it's got some interesting parts.

-- GSH
#6
Overdrive Terminal / Everything old is new again
July 30, 2009, 11:32:35 AM
http://kotaku.com/5326494/atari-founder-returns-to-development-with-battleswarm
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=100532

Note: they're not calling anything Battlezone 3. Which is what I've said that future titles like this would almost certainly have to do.

-- GSH
#7
If you're at the pilot login screen, and can't create a pilot, I bet you're running Vista or Windows 7. This is a known issue, and has been discussed previously on this (very long) thread. Solutions to the issue include:

1) Install BZ2 to C:\Users\{USERNAME}\Documents\BZ2 , and patch it up. Or, you can drag & drop your install folder of BZ2 to C:\Users\{USERNAME}\Documents\ via Windows explorer, and adjust your shortcuts.
2) Put something (preferably "/vista", without quotes) on the commandline, if launching BZ2 thru a shortcut. (If you don't know how to do this, it's probably not for you)
3) Wait for ta5.1's release. This will be some time.

-- GSH
#8
Overdrive Terminal / The Saboteur - trailer, videos
June 05, 2009, 03:27:19 PM
If you've read the changelog for 1.3ta5, you'll note that I'm working on The Saboteur at Pandemic as my day job. Here's a few links:

Official site: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/saboteur/
E3 trailer: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-the-saboteur/49867
Gameplay footage from E3: http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6211587/ (17 minutes)

Note that as the game is M-rated (i.e. mature, the equivalent of a R-rated movie in the US), these links are age verified. Other links and coverage definitely exists; I'm just linking what came out for E3 this week.

-- GSH
#9
See http://www.visi.com/~nathan/bz2/bz2_13.html for download info.

Fileplanet: http://www.fileplanet.com/199116/190000/fileinfo/Battlezone-II:-Combat-Commander---Unofficial-Public-Beta-Patch-1.3--version-TA5

The major improvements of 1.3ta5, compared to pb4a are:

- Updated graphics engine that uses (and requires) DirectX 9.0c for the best balance of compatibility and speed. Hardware transform & lighting is now supported, allowing a lot of work to be offloaded from your CPU and onto your graphics card. New DirectX features like fullscreen antialiasing (or multisample antialiasing) are supported to improve visual quality.
- Various lagout bugs in network games should be drastically reduced
- Further support for Windows Vista/7 -- should fully support being installed to paths with unicode, has high-resolution icon for Windows Explorer
- Music from the BZ2 CD is now distributed with this patch, in ogg vorbis format, allowing for better performance. You can also set up a random playlist of music to be played ingame, if you copy in .ogg files to the right place and the right name. (Note: other music needs to be user-supplied.)

Note: system requirements have changed; see more in the link above. The short summary of things is that ta5 requires Win2000 or later. It requires a CPU with Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) support, as did pb4a before it. Also, a graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0c with hardware Transform & Lighting (T&L) is required.

Note: There are a number of mods updated for ta5 or developed specifically for ta5. I've asked those modders to hold off on releasing them for 1 week so that people can enjoy all of the new items that ta5 has to offer. There's a ton of new options, recycler variants and new maps available out of the box.

Thanks to Ken Miller for his continued attention to BZ2, the loving support of my wife and daughter, all of the beta testers, and the BZ2 community for their continued interest in this game.

Why is this patch labeled 'Tech Alpha'?

Previous 1.3 releases were labeled 'public beta'. This is a 'tech alpha' because of the nature of the changes to BZ2. In short, because the graphics engine was rewritten to use the DirectX 9.0c fixed function pipeline, extensive work was done. From my professional work, as well as from reading about the PC Games Industry, ensuring compatibility with all of the myriad graphics cards and thousands of possible drivers is a really tough problem. Beta testers for this release have ensured that the game runs on their systems. However, we can't be sure that their systems cover the spectrum of hardware and drivers out there. If you've got a system like one of theirs, things will probably work as well for you as it does for them. If you've got a more unique set of hardware or drivers, results are not guaranteed. Until a larger community has run 1.3techalpha5 for a while, we would rather be safe and call this 'alpha.' If it works for you, great. If not, please drop by http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum and help us improve it.


-- GSH
#10
In fact, what century? One American president was born in 1790. And has two grandkids still alive. Not great-grandkids. See http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTRlMzE5NWU4OTc1ZDRmMmU4Y2YxM2YyOWJiODQwMGI= .

-- GSH
#11
Overdrive Terminal / Neat(?) clipboard tool
January 28, 2009, 03:16:51 PM
Someone at work passed around this link: http://bantamtools.com/clipboardcc.aspx . It's a pay app, but auto-saves images copied to clipboard, eliminating the need to paste it later. Someone might find it useful. Or know of a 100% free alternative.

-- GSH
#12
This is something that's already in the DLL source code readme for 1.3pbNext (i.e. post-pb4a), but since it should apply all the way back to people developing w/ Visual C++ 6.0 for BZ2 1.0. Just thought I'd share them, and I might revise the text for the readme based on comments.


a) Build a 'debug' build. Probably need to ensure that the output
    .dll filename is the same as the release build's output .dll
    filename. With the latest 1.3 source code distributions, debug
    builds should be linked against bzone.exe; if it's linked against
    battlezone.exe, then change this.

b) Put in breakpoints into your code. With default Visual C++
    keybindings, go to the line you want it to stop on, and hit F9 to
    drop a breakpoint. A red circle will appear left of the line

c) Right click on the project you want to debug, ensure it's set as
    the startup project

d) Right click on project you want to debug, select properties. Go to
    Config Properties -> Debugging. Set the command line to the full
    path to bzone.exe. (If you have BZ2 installed to multiple
    directories, then select the one that'll run the .dll you're
    building.) For the working directory entry, set it to the dir
    bzone.exe is in. As to the command arguments line
    (e.g. commandline params), for a MP dll, set the command line to
    "/win /host 0" (no quotes). If you're testing a SP/IA dll, you can
    use something like "/win mymap.bzn" . You should use /win unless
    you've got a multimonitor setup and put the debugger on the
    secondary monitor and let BZ2 take over the primary monitor. Leave
    the rest of the entries in this field at default.

e) Hit F5 (assuming default VC++ keyboard shortcuts) to start
    debugging.  Your breakpoints will turn to thin rings, because your
    DLL isn't loaded.  But, when you load the mission, they should
    turn back to solid circles.  If they never turn solid, then the
    DLL you built isn't loaded. Double check output dir, build
    configuration, etc

f) If they are solid, then when execution passes that line, it'll
    pause the game and drop you into in the debugger. You can examine
    variables in the locals/auto/watch window(s). Hit F10 to step one
    line, F11 to step into a function, F5 to resume full speed

   Note: when done, please be sure to switch back to the release build
type. A simple 'rebuild all' should help force that to happen.
#13
Overdrive Terminal / Core i7 (Nehalem) reviews
November 03, 2008, 12:06:07 PM
They're starting to trickle out. See http://techreport.com/articles.x/15818 , for example. Pricey, but powerful.

-- GSH
#14
Overdrive Terminal / Mercenaries 2 PC Demo
September 27, 2008, 04:46:52 PM
There's a Mercenaries 2 PC demo available now. See http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=91759 for links to a bunch of sites. Working on Mercs2 was my day job for the past 3 years, though I worked more on the console versions.

-- GSH
#15
Battlezone 2 / Gamespy servers appear to be down
September 16, 2008, 11:31:08 AM
The gamespy matchmaking servers appear to be having 'issues' -- where they show no games at all, not even any of the advertising sessions. Gamespy has had similar issues in the past, and it's cleared up. After a few hours. I hope that's what'll happen, but no guarantees.

As noted in nettips.rtf, Gamespy is merely a matchmaking service, where it tells prospective clients the list of servers. Once a client gets the server's IP address, Gamespy stays out of the picture. JoinIP should still work.

-- GSH
#16
See http://www.visi.com/~nathan/bz2/bz2_13.html for download info.

Mirror 1: FilePlanet

The major improvements of pb4, compared to 1.3pb3 are:
- More features, including weapon linking, thumpers, and variable gravity DM maps
- Increased Windows Vista compatability, audio works in WINE
- Many more modder features, such as 60-char ODF names, inheritance, tons of new tuning values, etc
- Performance optimizations
- Fewer resyncs, units (human & AI) should warp less online
- Ability to replace CD music w/ OGG files
- More crash fixes
- Easier to host games w/ automatic UPNP, Windows Firewall support(*)

*: requires router w/ UPNP support, and Windows Firewall as your primary firewall; other firewall software/hardware will still need some manual attention

Note: pb4a now requires a CPU with Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) support, which helps give a framerate boost.

Note: There are a number of mods updated for pb4 or developed specifically for pb4. I've asked those modders to hold off on releasing them for 1 week so that people can enjoy all of the new items that pb4 has to offer. There's a ton of new options, recycler variants and new maps available out of the box.

Thanks to Ken Miller for his continued attention to BZ2, the loving support of my wife, all of the beta testers, and the BZ2 community for their continued interest in this game.

-- GSH
#17
Battlezone 2 / BZ2 1.3pb4 is almost here!
June 12, 2008, 11:08:53 AM
I generally dislike announcements about upcoming releases. But, barring any catastrophic bug reports, I'm looking to release 1.3pb4 by the end of today (Thurs June 12th, 2008, by midnight PDT). There'll be more news posts on the boards here when it happens.

(update): Top level changes since pb3, from my list:

The major improvements of pb4, compared to 1.3pb3 are:
- More features, including weapon linking, thumpers, and variable gravity DM maps
- Increased vista compatability
- Many more modder features, such as 60-char ODF names, inheritance, tons of new tuning values, etc
- Performance optimizations
- Fewer resyncs, units (human & AI) should warp less online
- Ability to replace CD music w/ OGG files
- More crash fixes
- Easier to host games w/ automatic UPNP, Windows Firewall support(*)

*: requires router w/ UPNP support, and Windows Firewall as your primary firewall; other firewall software/hardware will still need some manual attention

-- GSH
#18
See http://www.visi.com/~nathan/bz2/bz2_13.html for download info.

BZ2 Patch 1.3 Public Beta 4 <== Download Mirror

The major improvements of pb4, compared to 1.3pb3 are:
- More features, including weapon linking, thumpers, and variable gravity DM maps
- Increased Windows Vista compatability, audio works in WINE
- Many more modder features, such as 60-char ODF names, inheritance, tons of new tuning values, etc
- Performance optimizations
- Fewer resyncs, units (human & AI) should warp less online
- Ability to replace CD music w/ OGG files
- More crash fixes
- Easier to host games w/ automatic UPNP, Windows Firewall support(*)

*: requires router w/ UPNP support, and Windows Firewall as your primary firewall; other firewall software/hardware will still need some manual attention

Note: There are a number of mods updated for pb4 or developed specifically for pb4. I've asked those modders to hold off on releasing them for 1 week so that people can enjoy all of the new items that pb4 has to offer. There's a ton of new options, recycler variants and new maps available out of the box.

Thanks to Ken Miller for his continued attention to BZ2, the loving support of my wife, all of the beta testers, and the BZ2 community for their continued interest in this game.

-- GSH
#19
Battlezone 2 / History repeats itself?
April 15, 2008, 05:24:41 PM
From http://www.splashdamage.com/?q=node/175&s=6a04894543e5a89567c7032d76efc19f :

Quote
First off, 1.5 is not an official Activision release like all the previous updates (this is actually the cause of the license troubles from a few weeks back), but instead something that we here at Splash Damage are funding ourselves and working on alongside our new project. As Activision's QA and localization departments are not available to help us out, we instead opted for an extended public beta phase to iron out any remaining kinks.

Spotted at http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=86927 .

I have zero knowledge as to what went on between Splash Damage & Activision. Just pointing out something I think is somewhat interesting.

-- GSH
#20
Modding Tools / BZ2 DXT Texture Generator updated
February 02, 2007, 10:40:29 AM
There's a new version of the BZ2 DXT Texture Generator available for download at http://www.visi.com/~nathan/bz2/BZ2DXTGen_v26.7z . This is for modders only. The file is compressed by http://www.7-zip.org/, a free compression/decompression app. You'll need that (or one of several other unpackers) to decompress it.

Update: posted a version # 7 of this. It's a slightly smaller download with newer nVidia compression libs, and uses DLLs more efficiently. To run this, you must install 'vcredist_x86.exe', which can be downloaded and run (once) before you can run this exe. That exe is also available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displaylang=en . 1.3pb4 will requite that same vcredist_x86.exe installed, so you might as well get a jump on it.

Update: posted a version 11 of this tool. Now has a relatively fancy UI on it that ought to be fairly self-explanatory.

Update: posted a version 12 of ths tool. Updated several 3rd party DLLs. Also made pre-scaling preserve more quality.

Update: posted a version 13 of this tool. Added a manifest file telling Windows Vista what security level it should run at. Also tweaked readme slightly.

Update: posted a version 14 of this tool - upgraded libpng to v1.2.29 (security update).

Update: posted a version 22 of dxtgen, released at the same time as 1.3ta5. v22 (and intermediate versions) have newer helper libraries, and has better support for upscaling 640x480 shell & loadscreen backdrops. This version also requires the Visual Studio 2008SP1 vcredist.exe, included as part of the 1.3ta5 download, or independently from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=en .

Update: posted a version 23 of dxtgen. Has fixes for black areas of textures appearing transparent, especially when upscaled. Also has lots of options for tweaking textures, including at the per-mip level. See the BZ2DXTOptions.cfg in it for more info.

Update: posted a version 25 of dxtgen. Has fixes for bugs in the new options, Win XP/Vista theming support, and also better crash logs (same as BZ2).

Update: posted a version 26 of dxtgen. Upgraded various DLLs used by dxtgen; no changes to the app.

-- GSH