Mac - Gemini Gold & Privateer Faults

Afterburner

Spaceman
Congratulations to all those who have worked on these 2 titles.
Fantastic work!

I've become addicted to Gemini Gold and only discovered Privateer yesterday.

Gemini Gold vs Privateer
1) Sound is much better in Gold than in Privateer. The music and sound (weapons and speech) are balanced. In Privateer the sounds of the weapons and the speech is too low while the music is too loud, by default. This is a major problem as the individual controls to adjust the music and sound don't work. Adjusting either adjusts both sound levels, so to hear the weapons you are deafened by the music.
2) The asteroids in Privateer are ridiculously fast. You should attach comet tails to them if you keep them at warp speed.
The asteroids in Gemini Gold are much better as they travel at a more realistic speed.
They are probably a little too fast, but at least you can travel through a field of them.
3) The map system in Gemini Gold allows the new player to easily see the sector and galaxy map, while in Privateer I can't see the sectors or the whole galaxy to plan a route.
4) Both versions should show the cargo mass required for each mission and also the current free cargo space when at the Mission Computer and at the Merchant Guild computer. The player has to return to the Commodities section to check the available free cargo space to see if he/she can select another cargo mission.

Gemini Gold Faults:
1) Turrets don't fire on the Galaxy when you are piloting the ship.
Using Control+T or Control+W or Alt(Command)+T has no effect whatsoever.
This is my favourite ship, yet without the turrets firing automatically at enemy ships it is continously hammered.
If the turrets can't be made to fire automatically at enemy ships, then they should at least fire forwards by default so that the player gains some advantage from fitting them. Jumping into them during a dogfight is fun the first few times, yet the ship ends up being destroyed much more quickly as noone is manning the other weapons.
2) The set up options don't save the results correctly.
Terminal states - "Command not found"
3) Can't find the separate config file in the mac version.
4) The Ship Salesman states that the Galaxy is quite fast, yet it is the same speed as the Taurus.
5) The Shipyard should have an option to inspect the ship stats.
6) Some of the black asteroids magically appear, in front of the ship at the last moment, causing immediate destruction of the player's ship.
7) Some missions disappear randomly after landing. If there is a time limit to some of the missions, as in EV NOVA, then it should be stated in the mission details.
8) When the player fits Generator 2 and 3 to their ship it only shows Generator 2 on the Galaxy when checking for damage while flying. On the Centurion(heavy fighter) it shows both generators/reactors when checking for damage while flying. There should be a way to reduce the size of the text so that all components are shown on the screen.
9) There should be an option to play at higher resolutions - at least 1024 and 1280.

Privateer Faults:
1) Major sound problems as listed above! Sound files should be replaced with the ones from Gold.
2) Disappearing missions.
3) ASTEROIDS ON STEROIDS! Should be replaced with the ones used in Gemini Gold.
4) Set up problems. Changes not recorded properly at all times when setting up the game. No visible config file so no way to permanently save changes to setup.

Terminal text:
"Last login: Sun Aug 14 02:39:13 on ttyp4
Welcome to Darwin!
cd ~/.privateer110; pwd; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="`[John-s-Computer:~] john% cd ~/.privateer110; pwd; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="`cat /tmp/setup.pwd`"; setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH "`cat /tmp/setup.pwd`"; "`cat /tmp/setup.pwd`/vssetup"; exit
/Users/john/.privateer110
tcsh: export: Command not found."

5) Planet/Mine pics in the onboard monitor are poor quality, especially when compared to those in Gold.

--------------
Mac OS X 10.3.8
Apple Dual Processor 1 GHz PowerPC G4
1792MB DDR SDRAM
BTO Ullta SCSI 2 x 180 GB HD
NVIDIA GForce4 Ti 4600 128MB
 
At the risk of starting a flamewar... Have you also tried Wing Commander Universe? It's basically the third "brother" mod to these two. It's still in heavy development though since we want ALL the systems in the Big Map.

Re asteroids: Yeah, we know ^^; fixingness in progress.

Re turrets and resolution: Those are actually deactivated on purpose in GG.
 
You activate them in GG if you want. Just go to vegastrike.config file, open it with wordpad.

You will see all the keyboard commands, now browse it until you see the ctrl+t command for the turrets. You will notice that in the line of the command there is something like

---> <bind>( then here goes the command line )

just remove the "---->" thingy and turrets will work.
 
Afterburner said:
Gemini Gold vs Privateer
1) Sound is much better in Gold than in Privateer. The music and sound (weapons and speech) are balanced.
I've been adjusting the balance for my computer, John has been doing the same for his. Funny how the balance works out to be so different sometimes.
2) The asteroids in Privateer are ridiculously fast. You should attach comet tails to them if you keep them at warp speed.
agreed ;) A real solution to asteroids (with some dynamic generation) is a bit farther off, but speed is easily tweaked.
3) The map system in Gemini Gold allows the new player to easily see the sector and galaxy map, while in Privateer I can't see the sectors or the whole galaxy to plan a route.
Press the 'up' button for sector view
1) Turrets don't fire on the Galaxy when you are piloting the ship.
Intended, as that is how it was in the original. You can change that yourself as noted above, but you'd be moving away from the spirit of GG, which exists to remove such things.
4) Set up problems. Changes not recorded properly at all times when setting up the game. No visible config file so no way to permanently save changes to setup.
We'd be interested to hear the specifics on the developer board. At any rate, the config file is vegastrike.config, though I really couldn't say how to find it on a Mac (Not my department). I guess that's exactly the problem you mention ;)
 
Remake Faults

On Mac OS X the config file is located in "user" (log in name) -> privateer110 -> vegastrike.config

Privateer:
1) In Privateer after jumping through the wormhole you enter the Rikel system in the middle of an Asteroid field, yet in Gemini Gold you enter the system outside the field.
The major problem with this is when you are blinded by the jump flash and therefore can't see the asteroids in order to avoid them.

2) The AutoPilot does not work in Nitir or in Surtur when heading towards the planets yet it works when outbound. Strange!

3) The Double Cursor Bug appears most of the times I load the game. The standard 'Arrow' is always to the left and below (5 o'clock position) the default in-game cursor. Out of approx 30 times it has shown the double cursor all but once.

4) Please list the address for the Developer's Board.

5) I can't load WCU. There doesn't seem to be anyway to load Wing Commander Unlimited.
I'd be interested in testing it if I could get it to load.

6) Strangely there are never any pirate ships in the pirate base systems.

7) Enemy ships appear to be able to hit my ship when they are outside the Radar's reach. The ships are just outside or on the outer visible on the radar screen.
Do the 'Wraithi' (hope that the correct spelling) ships have cannons that can fire over 2000m?

There is a related Major Radar Bug as enemy ships and asteroids that are clearly closer than 2000m are shown on the radar as being on the outer ring.
I have asteroids crossing the cokpit screen yet on the radar they show up as being distant. I can destroy these same asteroids with the laser cannons so they must be less than 475m away as that is the range of the laser.
I have Wraithi ships destroying my shields yet they are supposedly 2000m away!

This, as you can tell, is really pissing me off!

The bug seems to be that the enemy Wraithi are able to hit my ship with their cannons from the very second that they make a lock.

The game makes no allowance for the range of the Wraithi cannons.

This is a MAJOR Game Destroying Fault!

I've set the game to easy yet I'm being slaughtered constantly by these uberships.

Is there an easy way to rebalance the game so that my weapons all have a 2500m range?

8) Enemy ships go into hyper mode when you enter the blue sphere (wormhole) as they are able to move from one side of the Radar screen to the other at warp speeds.
 
Privateer Remake Faults:

1) After taking off from Erewhon in the Shangri La system the map says that I'm in the Saxtogue system.
Only jump point is to Oxford.
Land back on Erewhon and take off again and the map still shows I'm in the Saxtogue system and states it at the top in text.

Quit the game and restarted and the map is now correct.

2) Second cursor has vanished as well.

3) Sound is much better as well, but still not as well balanced as in Gemini Gold.


ps I can see why Wing Commander is considered a Classic!
Brilliant work in bringing it back to life!
 
Privateer Remake Faults:

1) The Hunter AW Infinity advanced radar no longer displays AFHH.
The ships on the radar screen are all white instead of Blue or Red.
I've had several regular maintenance checks, but the mechanics don't charge as there is no damage to the ship.
I've checked the radar at the outfitter's and the text for it shows up as white and not yellow, orange, red or dark grey. So there is supposedly nothing wrong with it. Hmm!

2) The double cursor bug has resurfaced. No big drama. Just a minor annoyance.
 
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