0.3.0_alpha4872: Bugs (no Release process :) )
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Phytotron
- Formerly Oscilloscope
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I think you should start by not forcing users to edit all that stuff by hand. However simple and straight forward you programmer guys might think all that is (somehow I remember a quote from Lucifer saying something like "I read code like others read text"), the average user is going to take one glance at that page, get overwhelmed, and say, "forget this." I would include myself here. No way in hell would I want to bother with learning all that jargon and everything else—nevermind bothering with the next step of actually going through all that crap just to change up the appearance my HUD. But I would be really put off if there was a bunch of crap on my screen that I didn't want (or did want), but my only recourse was to give myself a crash course in designing widgets (whatever those are).
I think you should instead take your cues from other video games that allow users to customize one visual or another, whether it's a character, or a car, or whatever. (Do I need to elaborate on what that means? I think most people have seen this.) That would be much more user friendly, and a nicer presentation, too.
I think you should instead take your cues from other video games that allow users to customize one visual or another, whether it's a character, or a car, or whatever. (Do I need to elaborate on what that means? I think most people have seen this.) That would be much more user friendly, and a nicer presentation, too.
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wrtlprnft
- Reverse Outside Corner Grinder
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That's kinda weird. Bear in mind though that the default FONT_TYPE setting is 3Lackadaisical wrote:When you use a custom font and change font_type to something and then back to 1, the spacing and placing of text is weird.
edit: a restart doesnt seem to fix this.
Does anyone else get something like that screenshot with FONT_TYPE 1?
Uh, err, that's why there's an easy way to distribute those cockpit files, so someone who knows how to and wants to spend time with it can create them, publish them, and others will use them.Oscilloscope wrote:blah
That's already what the COCKPIT_FILE setting is for. If the file is on the default resource repository it will be automatically downloaded. In future there will be a GUI for this that somehow gets a list of available files including brief descriptions and maybe screenshots from the server and offers the user to choose between those.
Ingame customisation of cockpits will probably be limited to disable gauges. The UI for creating and moving around gauges would take a long time to create, and I'm not willing to do this as it has absolutely no use for me personally and I doubt many people would really use it.
Oh, yeah, you do not have to read the entire cockpit tutorial to modify an existing cockpit file. It is there as a reference or for people who want to start an entirely new file. See Vanhayes' post above, it doesn't seem to be too hard.
There's no place like ::1
Hmm after testing it some more. Its just becoming a bit more problems. My FPS is 5-10, on 0.2.8 I get ~230. The screen feels like im in a 747 plane, just too much on the go at one time, maybe thats why my FPS are low ?
Only other thing I noticed (maybe your not finished devleoping it) but the only way I can seem to glance is by press my glace button about 2 or 3 times before it gets where I want it to, then I got to press it more to move it back to front.
Only other thing I noticed (maybe your not finished devleoping it) but the only way I can seem to glance is by press my glace button about 2 or 3 times before it gets where I want it to, then I got to press it more to move it back to front.
Invader
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Lucifer
- Project Developer
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Yeah, this is a develoopment release, it's not a finished product. So it's not really fair to compare it to a stable release (unless you're just pointing out differences ).
The idea behind running a development series, rather, ideas, are these:
First, we're working on more ways to extend the game. This goes beyond multiple moviepack support, we're talking special soundtracks, sound effects, gui skinning, grid skinning (what was formerly a moviepack, at least what I'm calling it to distinguish it from gui skinning), scripting, and maybe some other stuff. The cockpit is part of that and the most advanced of our current efforts to that effect. If we keep it to ourselves until it's time to release a stable release, then we'll have 1.0 with all this wonderful extension capability, but no extensions. Putting out a development release makes it possible for people who want to make these extensions to work on them, and by the time we release the next stable release, we should have a good body of mature, stable extensions for the game. That'll be nice, won't it? There's no lack of enthusiasm around here for that kind of work, let me tell you...
Second, we want regular users who don't know two things about version control software or building software to be able to give us really useful and helpful feedback directly into the development process. Previously you had to be able to checkout the code from cvs and build it to be able to see what we were doing, test it, and provide the kind of useful feedback we're hoping for. A series of regular development releases creates the opportunity for non-technical players to participate.
The combination of these two is what creates an environment where everybody really and truly can contribute to development, which is why I say we won't take "I can't code" as an excuse for not contributing any longer. Not that everyone has to contribute, y'all do what you want, we'll take what we can get. Just that "I can't code" isn't acceptable anymore. If you really want to contribute, you can.
Third, we want to have a longer testing cycle. The last beta process was really long, painfully long, and the final release came out far past even my most pessimistic projections, and I don't know of any projections that were more pessimistic than my own. So, even though a lot of code in 0.3.0 will be virtually rewritten along the ways, the new stuff is getting tested, and that means the cockpit and sound right now. As we bring in more of the stuff that is the final creation, so to speak, it'll get tested, and it gets a longer period of testing than it otherwise would have gotten.
Fourth, we want to do so much without biting off more than we can chew that the next stable release could be quite a ways away. With that being the case, we have something of a political need to show that the project isn't stagnating in the meantime.
There are other reasons, and I'm sure I can dream up more political reasons at least, and there's probably some technical reason I've missed, but that's pretty much the gist of it. If you're just looking to play a good, bug-free game, you should continue using the 0.2.8 series and upgrade there when a new release comes out, because new 0.2.8 releases are bugfix releases. It's the most stable armagetron there ever was, and it'll get more stable. We won't abandon it until the next stable comes out, but neither will we be adding new stuff, only bugfixes. (There's some minor things we want to bring back that users want so we can get it done for 0.2.8 and move on to the trunk, and maybe some minor things will creep up along the way that we'll want to toss in, but after 0.2.8.3, we're declaring an arctic feature freeze on 0.2.8 and only bugfixes will be done)
So this alpha is a sanity check on 0.3.0 to make sure we put out a 0.3.0 that people can actually use, because if people can't use it, we get no benefits from putting it out in the first place. OTOH, what you see is essentially foundation work and digging, in the house metaphor. We still have some more digging and foundation to lay, and I genuinely hope we'll have that stuff done for 0.3.1, but the really significant improvements probably won't start showing up until 0.3.2, I'd guess. I could be wrong. But 0.3.0 is a lot of foundation work, and it wil hopefully kick off a couple of things: people making sound effects, cockpits, and working with fonts.
Make sense?
).The idea behind running a development series, rather, ideas, are these:
First, we're working on more ways to extend the game. This goes beyond multiple moviepack support, we're talking special soundtracks, sound effects, gui skinning, grid skinning (what was formerly a moviepack, at least what I'm calling it to distinguish it from gui skinning), scripting, and maybe some other stuff. The cockpit is part of that and the most advanced of our current efforts to that effect. If we keep it to ourselves until it's time to release a stable release, then we'll have 1.0 with all this wonderful extension capability, but no extensions. Putting out a development release makes it possible for people who want to make these extensions to work on them, and by the time we release the next stable release, we should have a good body of mature, stable extensions for the game. That'll be nice, won't it? There's no lack of enthusiasm around here for that kind of work, let me tell you...
Second, we want regular users who don't know two things about version control software or building software to be able to give us really useful and helpful feedback directly into the development process. Previously you had to be able to checkout the code from cvs and build it to be able to see what we were doing, test it, and provide the kind of useful feedback we're hoping for. A series of regular development releases creates the opportunity for non-technical players to participate.
The combination of these two is what creates an environment where everybody really and truly can contribute to development, which is why I say we won't take "I can't code" as an excuse for not contributing any longer. Not that everyone has to contribute, y'all do what you want, we'll take what we can get. Just that "I can't code" isn't acceptable anymore. If you really want to contribute, you can.
Third, we want to have a longer testing cycle. The last beta process was really long, painfully long, and the final release came out far past even my most pessimistic projections, and I don't know of any projections that were more pessimistic than my own. So, even though a lot of code in 0.3.0 will be virtually rewritten along the ways, the new stuff is getting tested, and that means the cockpit and sound right now. As we bring in more of the stuff that is the final creation, so to speak, it'll get tested, and it gets a longer period of testing than it otherwise would have gotten.
Fourth, we want to do so much without biting off more than we can chew that the next stable release could be quite a ways away. With that being the case, we have something of a political need to show that the project isn't stagnating in the meantime.
There are other reasons, and I'm sure I can dream up more political reasons at least, and there's probably some technical reason I've missed, but that's pretty much the gist of it. If you're just looking to play a good, bug-free game, you should continue using the 0.2.8 series and upgrade there when a new release comes out, because new 0.2.8 releases are bugfix releases. It's the most stable armagetron there ever was, and it'll get more stable.
We won't abandon it until the next stable comes out, but neither will we be adding new stuff, only bugfixes. (There's some minor things we want to bring back that users want so we can get it done for 0.2.8 and move on to the trunk, and maybe some minor things will creep up along the way that we'll want to toss in, but after 0.2.8.3, we're declaring an arctic feature freeze on 0.2.8 and only bugfixes will be done)So this alpha is a sanity check on 0.3.0 to make sure we put out a 0.3.0 that people can actually use, because if people can't use it, we get no benefits from putting it out in the first place. OTOH, what you see is essentially foundation work and digging, in the house metaphor. We still have some more digging and foundation to lay, and I genuinely hope we'll have that stuff done for 0.3.1, but the really significant improvements probably won't start showing up until 0.3.2, I'd guess. I could be wrong. But 0.3.0 is a lot of foundation work, and it wil hopefully kick off a couple of things: people making sound effects, cockpits, and working with fonts.
Make sense?
Be the devil's own, Lucifer's my name.
- Iron Maiden
another windows user here....
a few things ive noticed so far...
i created a m3u playlist and music does not play. when i open the executable file i get really wierd almost high pitched "clicking" noises until i get into a game then it stops....it also did this when i had my sounds being used, i moved my sounds folder to another folder within the game folder and that took care of the noises within the game, but i still get them when im on the game menu.
when using glance mode 2 and glancing backwards, sometimes the camera gets stuck and i had to hit the glace back key another time to get it to release and return forward. i tried getting a recording of this but couldnt recreate it that time, though it did happen to me 2 times while playing on the bugfarm fortress server, so z-man, please disregard where i said "bug" which happened around 9:00PM CST (-6 GMT)
i like the new meters on the bottom, but can we make them so they aren't so tall? also, the font is too large it gets in the way, even in full screen mode with my monitor resolution being 1280x1024
i will keep testing with the new glance modes and maybe bind some keys for looking left and right also (i dont use them when i play so i havent tested it yet)
i also agree that colored text for a persons name should be added, sounds like a great idea
if i find anything else i will report back
a few things ive noticed so far...
i created a m3u playlist and music does not play. when i open the executable file i get really wierd almost high pitched "clicking" noises until i get into a game then it stops....it also did this when i had my sounds being used, i moved my sounds folder to another folder within the game folder and that took care of the noises within the game, but i still get them when im on the game menu.
when using glance mode 2 and glancing backwards, sometimes the camera gets stuck and i had to hit the glace back key another time to get it to release and return forward. i tried getting a recording of this but couldnt recreate it that time, though it did happen to me 2 times while playing on the bugfarm fortress server, so z-man, please disregard where i said "bug" which happened around 9:00PM CST (-6 GMT)
i like the new meters on the bottom, but can we make them so they aren't so tall? also, the font is too large it gets in the way, even in full screen mode with my monitor resolution being 1280x1024
i will keep testing with the new glance modes and maybe bind some keys for looking left and right also (i dont use them when i play so i havent tested it yet)
i also agree that colored text for a persons name should be added, sounds like a great idea
if i find anything else i will report back
"(20:26:04) Your_mom_arma: hmm armagetron .3 just decided to start working for no reason
(20:26:16) wrtlprnft: be happy?
(20:26:26) Your_mom_arma: no more crashes and internal sound works
(20:26:38 ) Your_mom_arma: kinda wish i knew what happened
(20:26:42) wrtlprnft:
(20:27:20) Your_mom_arma: nm its broken again
(20:27:35) wrtlprnft: o_O
(20:28:34) Your_mom_arma: thats what i get for turning it off to announce my victory"
...
"(20:46:06) Your_mom_arma: hmm
(20:46:36) Your_mom_arma: i played a local game for about 5 mins the sound effects started working and 2 rounds later it crashed
(20:46:44) wrtlprnft: o_O
(20:46:53) wrtlprnft: wait for Lucifer_arma, he's the sound guy"
(20:26:16) wrtlprnft: be happy?
(20:26:26) Your_mom_arma: no more crashes and internal sound works
(20:26:38 ) Your_mom_arma: kinda wish i knew what happened
(20:26:42) wrtlprnft:
(20:27:20) Your_mom_arma: nm its broken again
(20:27:35) wrtlprnft: o_O
(20:28:34) Your_mom_arma: thats what i get for turning it off to announce my victory"
...
"(20:46:06) Your_mom_arma: hmm
(20:46:36) Your_mom_arma: i played a local game for about 5 mins the sound effects started working and 2 rounds later it crashed
(20:46:44) wrtlprnft: o_O
(20:46:53) wrtlprnft: wait for Lucifer_arma, he's the sound guy"
taking a shot in the dark i had the idea to rename the var and resource folders. Low and behold somehow the crashing problem is fixed and sound effects and music (to some extent) work.
I've had sound come back garbled on one restart but other then that its been okay. Also couldnt get a custom playlist to load after trying several times.
I've had sound come back garbled on one restart but other then that its been okay. Also couldnt get a custom playlist to load after trying several times.
From Bugfarm Fortress, a clientside bug for Wrtl:
Code: Select all
[14] Vogel: BUG: tab thing does not work with color codes
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2020
- Outside Corner Grinder
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:21 pm
- Location: the present, finally
wow
feels very different
no sound
i like the display potential
and team menu suggests future developments...
hope to get down to some hard play testing
once i do the van to the displays
eg
in one mode
there were two map displayed on my screen at the same time
and rubber is mentioned twice etc...
would be nice to share your settings van...
well done guys
feels very different
no sound
i like the display potential
and team menu suggests future developments...
hope to get down to some hard play testing
once i do the van to the displays
eg
in one mode
there were two map displayed on my screen at the same time
and rubber is mentioned twice etc...
would be nice to share your settings van...
well done guys
hold the line
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wrtlprnft
- Reverse Outside Corner Grinder
- Posts: 1679
- Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:42 am
- Location: 0x08048000
- Contact:
Yeah, known bug, will be fixed with the next build.2020 wrote:in one mode
there were two map displayed on my screen at the same time
and rubber is mentioned twice etc...
Luke, can you please enable cockpit uploads for the resource repository? The format will hopefully stay compatible from now on, so there's no reason to prevent people from sharing their cockpitswould be nice to share your settings van...
thankswell done guys
There's no place like ::1