Flight Cmdr 1.3 Released

[eddieb]

Hi all:

You can now download the new Flight Commander. The main features introduced in this release is the new scripting system, and some AI improvements.

Scripting opens up a whole new world for new sophisticated mission design. I've included 4 demo missions showing some interesting scripting:

• Timed missions with multiple waves
• Cargo inspection missions
• Custom in game comm menu for allowing players to make choices during a mission
• Capturing an enemy ship

There's also plenty of documentation on how to get going with scripting.
Releated to scripting is the new scriptable mission debriefing screen, shown below


On the AI side, formation flying is now working. You can even customize the formation positions of each ship. Also, the AI now knows how to do collision avoidance.

Other goodies include:

• Traitor detection
• Cargo containers
• New original simulator music
• A few more ships

Of course, to handle all the new options, the mission editor has been upgraded.

• Can now edit where ships initially face, their initial orientation
• Can edit mission objectives in the gui
• Attach script functions to ships and navpoints within the gui.

So you can download 1.3 from the usual Flight Commander home page

[eddieb]

A note on the maturity: I've only tested on my machine, so those on modems may want to wait a week or so. But last time the beta was the same as the official release, because there were no show stoppers. We'll see how it goes.

[Iceblade]

WooHOO!!!

I'll find time to do a little beta testing. Make sure there are no serious issues with it. Should post by tonight.

[Ptarmigan]

Yay! Sounds cool to me! Any more work to be done for FC? Got a busy schedule though.

[Iceblade]

Didn't notice anything fatal. Was a bit of pain getting it off my flashdrive, but I doubt that has anything to do with the FC 1.3.

Oh, eddie, could you post the undated missioned.zip. I don't have 24 hour easy access to the internet. (basically I can't go online whenever I want) Thanks.

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Iceblade

Didn't notice anything fatal. Was a bit of pain getting it off my flashdrive, but I doubt that has anything to do with the FC 1.3.

Yeah, copy it off the flash drive first, then install, that would be faster.

Originally Posted by Iceblade

Oh, eddie, could you post the undated missioned.zip. I don't have 24 hour easy access to the internet. (basically I can't go online whenever I want) Thanks.

Done.

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Ptarmigan

Any more work to be done for FC?

Sure, there's some stuff that got postponed till 1.4. There will always be more fun features to add.

[Kevin Caccamo]

Out of most of the wing/flight commander modders out there, I am probably the most active modder. Can you just quickly tell me if Flight Commander 1.3 still uses ".Mission.xml(s)" anymore? Or is it all in scripting now?

Eddie, I got a problem on both the simulator and shipviewer menu. As soon as we see the object spin -not before-, the mouse cursor vanishes, the mouse ends responding and I have to kill the application. If this help, the keyboard still works.

I Alt-Tab to the DOS windows and it reads:

GL error on line 190 in file C:\cs\174\finalproj\triangletest\GameFlo w.cpp
stack underflow
GL error on line 42 in file C:\cs\174\finalproj\triangletest\FixedCa mera.cpp
stack overflow

This also happened on the previous version (the Alpha one).

Any ideas?

[Iceblade]

@Kevin: Of course the mission.xml file format is used. Just open up the file with the editor and correct what is in the drop-down boxs.

As for the issue with the sim and shipviewer menus. The problem looks like it lies in missing, corrupt, or incompatible files--probably the .obj or .mesh.bin file. Have you tried reinstalling FC 1.3? Also, where are placing the file anyway (which drive and under what main directory ("Program files", "Games", etc)?

It might also be an issue with your hardware. What are your PC specs: operating system, processor speed, video card, and memory?

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Kevin Caccamo

Out of most of the wing/flight commander modders out there, I am probably the most active modder.

And you have the most humility as well .

Originally Posted by Kevin Caccamo

Can you just quickly tell me if Flight Commander 1.3 still uses ".Mission.xml(s)" anymore? Or is it all in scripting now?

Yes, it should be completely backwards compatible. Simple missions are still simple, can be done solely in the mission editor without scripting.

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Eddie, I got a problem on both the simulator and shipviewer menu. As soon as we see the object spin -not before-, the mouse cursor vanishes, the mouse ends responding and I have to kill the application. If this help, the keyboard still works.

I Alt-Tab to the DOS windows and it reads:

GL error on line 190 in file C:\cs\174\finalproj\triangletest\GameFlo w.cpp
stack underflow
GL error on line 42 in file C:\cs\174\finalproj\triangletest\FixedCa mera.cpp
stack overflow

This also happened on the previous version (the Alpha one).

Any ideas?

It would be helpful if you pasted all of the text that appears in the dos window. Also your os version. But don't think anyone else has been able to reproduce this, so it may be a driver problem. Where you install shouldn't matter.

Think you can manage a linux release soon? :-)

[Alch]

Hi eddie,

now that FC 1.3 has been released, is there something to be done with the previous 1.2 alpha 1? I downloaded it, but not yet installed.

Does the shippack work with 1.3?

BTW: I've tried the following:

If in-game text to speech does not sound correct, please install this program.

and the link doesn't work

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by hellcat

Think you can manage a linux release soon? :-)

Haven't looked at FC linux since 1.1. I can post my 1.3 source and answer questions if someone is interested in looking into this.

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Alch

Hi eddie,

now that FC 1.3 has been released, is there something to be done with the previous 1.2 alpha 1? I downloaded it, but not yet installed.

Use 1.3.

Originally Posted by Alch

Does the shippack work with 1.3?

Yes, as well as it did in 1.2

Originally Posted by Alch

BTW: I've tried the following:

If in-game text to speech does not sound correct, please install this program.

and the link doesn't work

Thanks, try again now.

[Ptarmigan]

Originally Posted by eddieb

Sure, there's some stuff that got postponed till 1.4. There will always be more fun features to add.

Perhaps, a land battle, like in WC3 and WC4 or allow introductory movies?

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Ptarmigan

Perhaps, a land battle, like in WC3 and WC4 or allow introductory movies?

I was thinking about a terrain engine, but the effort involved is as much as creating a new engine from scratch. Movie playing is easy, but I haven't seen anyone create one yet.

Some brainstorming/ideas on 1.4 directions. Just ideas, nothing is set in stone.

• More detailed damage model. That is hull damage causes weapons, comms, and afterburners to malfunction. This would be really easy to do if someone would tell me precisely what the rules are in the WCP for this, so I can do something similar.
• Continue AI improvement
• Some day turrets will have AI
• A nice glow effect on weapons and thrusters
• Add enough scripting to do cutscenes
• Docking

[ChrisReid]

Those all sound like pretty great additions for the next upgrade. Along with cutscenes, is there a quick and easy fiction viewer that can be included? Some of the current mods rely on that because of the relative difficulty in cutscene creation.

[eddieb]

Yes, a fiction viewer has been in there since 1.2

[Ptarmigan]

Originally Posted by eddieb

I was thinking about a terrain engine, but the effort involved is as much as creating a new engine from scratch. Movie playing is easy, but I haven't seen anyone create one yet.

Some brainstorming/ideas on 1.4 directions. Just ideas, nothing is set in stone.

• More detailed damage model. That is hull damage causes weapons, comms, and afterburners to malfunction. This would be really easy to do if someone would tell me precisely what the rules are in the WCP for this, so I can do something similar.
• Continue AI improvement
• Some day turrets will have AI
• A nice glow effect on weapons and thrusters
• Add enough scripting to do cutscenes
• Docking

I like your ideas. Pass the terrain anyways.

[Aplha 1-1]

Hey mate haven't played Flight Commander for some time now so my memories a little hazy, but how bout an in-game menu for selecting which bird we wanna take for a spin WC3/WC4 style?
Same goes for ordinance too if possible.

[eddieb]

Yes, do try out 1.3, you can already select ships for a sim mission.

[Aplha 1-1]

Cool i'll DL it later but i wasn't referring to the sim missions. Something like the loadout terminal blair uses before every mission in WC3/WC4 for the main campaign. Would make a good feature to attract mod makers if it could be turned on-off.
(bit of code similar to the ship selection in the sim to put in after the briefing but before launch perhaps?)

Saw your (i think it was yours anyway...) talking heads revalation on the boards a few days back, perhaps talking to characters aboard the ship as well as being implemented to briefing scenes?

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Aplha 1-1

Cool i'll DL it later but i wasn't referring to the sim missions. Something like the loadout terminal blair uses before every mission in WC3/WC4 for the main campaign. Would make a good feature to attract mod makers if it could be turned on-off.
(bit of code similar to the ship selection in the sim to put in after the briefing but before launch perhaps?)

K, I'll think about it

Originally Posted by Aplha 1-1

Saw your (i think it was yours anyway...) talking heads revalation on the boards a few days back, perhaps talking to characters aboard the ship as well as being implemented to briefing scenes?

Someone would have to buy crazytalk.

[QuailPilot]

Planetary bombardment would be great.

[Iceblade]

Alright, with all the recent flying in FC, I have come across some nasty bugs--nothing fatal, just terribly annoying.

A) The AI runs up your a** to attack you or any other fighter. You should definitely add a little buffer space code into the AI, so maybe it would not be right on top of me. I mean, all the AI does all day in combat is a series of continuous loops. It's just like the old FC AI fighting capships, loop and shoot. I think a buffer zone would improve the AI's overall combat ability.

Also the AI gets stuck in loops trying to avoid colliding with asteroids, it is very funny.

B) Any craft, friend or foe, can scan cargo.

C) This one is more of a design problem, but I really think the mission time should start when the player enters nav0. I know this has no bearing on the script, but it seems to be more accurate (considering black boxes and all are supposedly where the mission time is kept and the briefing is done before the pilot ever steps onto the flight deck).

D) An inconsistant error with the recording of mission time. Sometimes at the end of a mission, the time will say one hour and some seconds. This does not happen everytime, so I am checking for what might cause this to see if this may be caused by the script (don't think it should) or if this is a hardcode error. Also I will be looking for how long the mission timer has reached before this error occurs.

Has anybody else seen this error?

E) On an earlier bug, I finally found the other culprit for the voice briefing anamolies: the period! It seems to be fairly random, but some sentences cause the text-to-speech device to produce voice anamolies. I think this may be caused by some words and puntuation that comes before the period. I will try to see a pattern, but I won't be too involved in this area considering RG will use voiceovers for briefings.

That is all for now.

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Iceblade

Alright, with all the recent flying in FC, I have come across some nasty bugs--nothing fatal, just terribly annoying.

A) The AI runs up your a** to attack you or any other fighter. You should definitely add a little buffer space code into the AI, so maybe it would not be right on top of me. I mean, all the AI does all day in combat is a series of continuous loops. It's just like the old FC AI fighting capships, loop and shoot. I think a buffer zone would improve the AI's overall combat ability.

Also the AI gets stuck in loops trying to avoid colliding with asteroids, it is very funny.

B) Any craft, friend or foe, can scan cargo.

C) This one is more of a design problem, but I really think the mission time should start when the player enters nav0. I know this has no bearing on the script, but it seems to be more accurate (considering black boxes and all are supposedly where the mission time is kept and the briefing is done before the pilot ever steps onto the flight deck).

D) An inconsistant error with the recording of mission time. Sometimes at the end of a mission, the time will say one hour and some seconds. This does not happen everytime, so I am checking for what might cause this to see if this may be caused by the script (don't think it should) or if this is a hardcode error. Also I will be looking for how long the mission timer has reached before this error occurs.

Has anybody else seen this error?

E) On an earlier bug, I finally found the other culprit for the voice briefing anamolies: the period! It seems to be fairly random, but some sentences cause the text-to-speech device to produce voice anamolies. I think this may be caused by some words and puntuation that comes before the period. I will try to see a pattern, but I won't be too involved in this area considering RG will use voiceovers for briefings.

That is all for now.

A) Yes, there's still more to do on the attack AI. 1.3's AI improvements mainly concentrated on formation flying, and using afterburners. The will have to wait till 1.4.

B) Hmm. To get identified, the ship has to first target the cargo, then get close to it. Do you have something which causes this to happen? I was thinking of adding a script function to disable scanning
by a given ship, that should do it, right?

D) Tell me how I can reproduce this.

Thanks for the great bug reports.

[Iceblade]

Well, I know it happens in mission, not sure where yet.

[Iceblade]

Dang, two hour edit limit.

Alright in the code I have two ships that actually target a transport. And I would say that something like this should be default, so that only the player can scan a ship, but that other ships could do so as well with a toggle function command invoked.

As I already stated the error with the mission time is something caused before finishing the mission. And I know precisely what the error is. When coding the mission time you left off a zero.

I know this because, you know how when the clock hits 60 seconds or 60 minutes it goes to one minute or one hour, respectively. Well:

6 minutes == one hour

A very simple error in coding, and I am suprised nobody else has noticed it. I mean since you can now see the time at the end of the mission. You know I found it really screwy when I saw 1:00:34 at the end of a mission, which only took me, apparently, 00:06:34 time to complete.

Very simple error to fix--I probably could do it.

[Iceblade]

Okay, something that I didn't mention before: your wingmen don't know how to fly straight while in formation. I'll e-mail a pic.

Also, I am implementing several scripts that have not been built-in (they are currently commented out):

Ship_setSpeed(string id, decimal percentage);
Video_playCutscene(video file); (this is an in-game cienmatic initiated during the mission)

These are based on what I have seen out of your current scripts. I am not sure, though, what script function you are planning on using for the jumping of ship.

The briefing message cuts off too quickly if the message goes too far into the second line.

[eddieb]

Ok, I'll keep this in mind as I add scripting for in game cutscenes and other areas.

I already know about the formation flying not lining up their up vectors.

[Iceblade]

Ship_setEnabled(shipid, bool); this script is for making a ship disappear, say if that ship gets out of range or something, WCPPas has the similiar code

Just curious, but are you going to include all the scripts used by the WCPpas compiler?

Oh, are you going to add the target square at longer ranges (eg be able to see the box that is around a targeted ship at ranges greater than 50000)?

Is the fact that the ITTS and missile lock are always active just because you haven't gotten around to editing them?

[eddieb]

Originally Posted by Iceblade

Just curious, but are you going to include all the scripts used by the WCPpas compiler?

Similar functionality should exist, depending on needs. But don't expect the syntax or semantics to be the same.

Originally Posted by Iceblade

Is the fact that the ITTS and missile lock are always active just because you haven't gotten around to editing them?

Huh? What should the behavior be?

[Iceblade]

ITTS and missile locks active well out of a particular armament's max range. In fact, they are active whenever the targeting box is active.

These systems should activate based on the particular range of a weapon.