PiArmada .08 released

Z

ZOmegaZ

Rear Admiral
PiArmada .08 is now up for download! Check out https://sourceforge.net/projects/piarmada/ .

The main change in this release is the incorporation of HellcatV's awesome Vega Strike engine! He really did almost all the work on this release, without him it would never have happened. The interface between the two engines isn't completely clean yet, and I'm pretty sure killing a carrier in flight doesn't translate back to the strategic game. But it works! If for some reason the flight engine keeps crashing on you when it starts loading, try running PiArmada itself in windowed mode. It helps on my laptop, I have no idea why. S3 makes poor chips, it seems.

Still looking for help coding, if anyone's interested. A total rewrite of my combat code is in the works, since what I have now is horribly ugly and doesn't work so great sometimes (like with the carriers). What would be very helpful at this point is feedback. The feel of the flight engine could probably use some tweaking, and more or less anything is tweakable. Too slow, too fast, refire rates, whatever comes to mind, say so. And anything else that comes to mind, say that too. :)

Enjoy!
 
Windows XP. Double clicking the PiArmada shortcut. Tells me to check the error log in ./armada/strategic/dist

log says:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Armada_Init.py", line 29, in ?
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Armada_Init.py", line 29, in ?
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
 
PeteyG said:
Windows XP. Double clicking the PiArmada shortcut. Tells me to check the error log in ./armada/strategic/dist

log says:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Armada_Init.py", line 29, in ?
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Armada_Init.py", line 29, in ?
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Click to expand...

ditto

Sony VAIO PCG-FRV26 <cruddy yeah i know... (sigh) oh well>
ATI 345M IGP <i think it has 64MB>
2.8 GHz<i think> Pentium 4
Windows XP
512 MB DDR SDRAM
 
What tha...

I download, I click, I run, it goes. This is confuzzling.

It's dying on the soundserver...

Can someone who's having this problem verify that armada\bin\soundserver.exe exists?
 
Just tried it now and I'm getting the same error message as PeterG and TurboTim07.

armada\bin\soundserver.exe exists after unpacking - size is 228KB -- is that the correct size?

Cheers,


BrynS
 
Yeah, that's the right size...

It looks like when I figure out how to fix this, you can just replace the executable. That way, you all won't have to download 60 MB all over again! But I can't reproduce this error, so I'm gonna need help. If someone that's having trouble could contact me tomorrow on IM with some time to spare, I can try and troubleshoot this. Screen names are on your left. Unfortunately, I only have tomorrow afternoon, after that I'm offline until next Friday evening. I hope we can get this bug squashed by then.

I really am sorry about this, guys, I didn't see it coming. I've never done an open-source project before, am I allowed to retroactively declare this an open beta? :)
 
Ohhhhhh. Duh. I'm jumping to conclusions too fast. The game works fine. The SHORTCUT is broken. In fact, based on this, I would argue that Windows shortcuts in general are broken. The target seems to be a relative path, but the start-in directory is absolute! What's with that?

Those of you who have already downloaded it, just go to \armada\strategic\dist and run armada.exe. That SHOULD work fine. I'll try to get a fixed download up in a couple hours, either with a new shortcut, or instructions on how to get to the executable. :)
 
Figured out the shortcut. Game looks real promising. But, had a crash to desktop when I brought a Banshee to the enemy carrier for the first time.

VS and PiArmada logs zipped up and here
 
I'm not sure that was a crash, Petey, that's how the game ends at present. Attacking a lone carrier with a bomber also immediately exits combat, like the original game. (May change that later, bombing runs are more fun.) Also, combat with carriers is iffy at the moment, so it may be a crash after all. My combat code is a huge kludge. Menus, intros, exits, and a rewritten combat system are for version .09. I just wanted to get the flight engine out there, now that it was working, so y'all could see it. :)

Based on one last test, I decided that J'rathek were a wee bit slow. I mean, if they're sitting ducks for arrows, what's the point of flying one? So I kicked the speed up on the fixed upload, labeled .08b. Again, feedback on that would be wonderful. If you want to change the speeds yourself, edit the game_speed variable in vegastrike.config. That variable is a multiplier for the speeds of all ships. It's near the end of the file, and currently set to .03. Happy fiddling!

Oh, yes, and BTW, it's fixed now. Added code to change the current working directory from within the game, again thanks to HellcatV. :)
 
Hmm... netcode could take some time to implement, since VS doesn't have multiplayer at the moment. However, they are working on that.
 
Awesome!

Hey ZOmegaZ I've been playing your game all night! Very cool.
One really annoying bug is the simulation_atom variable set at .15
this is way too high and causes some lag whenever a player presses a key
you *need* to set the default CPU to at least 512 megs of ram... which internally in the config is pentium 500--and even if they do, that simulation atom is too low for the computer to even aim on a dralthi. Make sure all simulation atoms are set in the config to be at most .1

Anyhow other players can fix this by running setup.exe in the bin directory and selecting more ram :)

Everything else is awesome
I should make my script wait at least 10 seconds before quitting the game--because a quit right then makes it seem like a crash :)

I'm sure all of this will be ironed out in 0.9 but as far as seamless combat integration it's great!
 
'nother thing I noticed: this game works upon the honor system.
I clicked on the enemy base and was able to demolish it :) (they may have taken over my base)


DAHH the terrans have no honor!
 
You can demolish enemy bases!?!?

...if it were anyone else's game I'd be falling out my chair laughing. :) Easy fix, thanks for pointing it out. I'll fiddle with those settings you mentioned, I bet it'll help a lot. And as for the Fraltrha model... because I totally forgot, I guess, 'cause I don't remember it at all. :) We'll have to discuss that when I get home for the weekend. And here I thought I'd have MORE free time when summer came! Arg!
 
ok. got it to work :) it's a really great game. i very much enjoyed it. but here's some of my suggestions:

1. can you make it where the player can choose which ship they fly out of the ships available in his/her fleet?

2. can you also put in an option where you don't have to fight and the battle will fight itself?

that's all i'm asking. keep up the good work
 
Actually, I think you can already switch ships using [ and ]. Not sure, I should familiarize myself with the engine more. I was more interested in the self-destruct command so I could end battles quickly. :)

And yeah, a choice for automated combat is on the to-do list. I HOPE that .09 will be out before another five months go by. :)
 
i gotta say, this is pretty damned fun! dig it a lot, the space combat bit leaves a bit to be desired yet (trying to nail a dralthi is about impossible at this point) but since this is an early release, test deal, its all good :) Its a lot of fun to play, and shaping up very nicely. good work!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top