Some feedback for Windows Alpha Build - 10/03/06 (1.63)

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:17 pm

Hi all. First of all, great work overall. Played my way up to Competent, and am whoring the anarchies around Isveve, exploiting the advantages of witchspace fuel injectors quite successfully :-)

Am running an Inspiron XPS with a 1920x1200 widescreen display and an "ATI Mobility 9600/9700 Series" thingy with 128M and smeared with Omega 2.6.87 drivers. Windows XP, SP2. Running the game in 1024x768 fullscreen.

Firstly, upon initial install and running the game, it seemed to have tried to detect screen resolution and come up with something that was stretched horizontally, set at a fairly low resolution, and extending both horizontally and vertically off the screen (so some parts of the menus etc were not visible). Setting a new resolution fixed this up nicely, but man would it be sweet to have widescreen :-)

Hitting F11 corrupts all the text on screen into yellow boxes. Made it very hard to exit the first time (searching for game options menu key), it didn't want to let me have desktop sop I had to power off.

Alt-tabbing/hitting windows key/windows+d combinations usually manage to minimize the game, and it sometimes pauses in the process. This is fine, and I pause before doing so now. However, if some evil program like Skype pops up a window in the back, or any of the crazy windows programs that steal focus from you in defiance of all logic, Oolite locks up completely. Desktop appears fine, but you can't get back to the game. Black blank screen. I was in space at the time. Here's the system log:

2006-03-26 14:59:15.000 oolite.exe[2292] ... for a total of 29 ships
2006-03-26 15:10:11.000 oolite.exe[2292] Creating a new surface of 1024 x 768
2006-03-26 15:10:12.000 oolite.exe[2292] OPENGL_DEBUG GL_ERROR (1280) 'invalid enumerant' in: Universe before doing anything
2006-03-26 15:10:15.000 oolite.exe[2292] Creating a new surface of 1024 x 747
2006-03-26 15:10:15.000 oolite.exe[2292] OPENGL_DEBUG GL_ERROR (1280) 'invalid enumerant' in: Universe before doing anything
2006-03-26 15:10:43.000 oolite.exe[2292] Found mode {Height = 768; RefreshRate = 0; Width = 1024; }
2006-03-26 15:10:44.000 oolite.exe[2292] Found mode {Height = 768; RefreshRate = 0; Width = 1024; }

Hostile ships I often find dead in space. They turn, and are pretty accurate, but nevertheless are stopped dead, even in formation. After taking a beating, they will take evasive action and run or attack, but untill then they just sit there.

I was able to take out an Offender withing the Safety zone of a station without repurcussion. Unsure if this is deliberately allowed.

Post by **winston** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:32 pm

Hot keys to get you out of graphics-related borkage:

F12 - toggles full screen (without saving it as a preference)
Shift-Esc - Bale out now

The stationary pirates is a known issue in 1.64. Giles is working on it.

_Some_ offenders (and all fugitives) may be shot at in the station's aegis without repurcussions.

You can explicitly set the full screen mode's resolution in the F2 (Load/Save/Settings) menu. By default it asks your hardware what mode it is currently running in and uses that (although I'm not sure what the status of that is for the Windows build, the Linux build does that - it seems that SDL doesn't have a platform independent way to find out the current screen res/depth). There's no real reason (as far as I know, I don't have any hardware to actually do this!) that it shouldn't run in widescreen - the game itself can run in any aspect ratio (if the worst comes to the worst, play in windowed mode and maximise the window).

Other than that, visit http://wiki.alioth.net 's Oolite section too.

iceman · Post by **iceman** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:29 pm

i have found i get periodic slow downs. maybe once every five minutes for 5 - 10 seconds and then everything goes back to normal. not normally a problem unless it happens while trying to dock. happened once after my doc computer got damaged in a fight. i got splatted all over the side of the station.

Post by **dajt** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:57 pm

The yellow blocks thing is a known problem. It is something to do with the textures being corrupted when you switch resolution or screen mode.

I think the fix is to throw away all the cached textures, but I've not done it because I just set the res in my defaults file and restart. Not the ideal solution, I know.

Now the PC version seems to be taking off these remaining rough edges might have to get looked at...

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sun Mar 26, 2006 8:06 pm

Oolite works almost-fine in wide-screen resolutions - I run at 1440x900 regularly. However, it scales the content based purely on the width of the window, meaning that wide-screen modes are truncated vertically (in terms of what you see in space – the HUD and UI adapt properly).

It currently doesn’t support non-square pixel aspect ratios, though.

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 3:40 pm

Running nicely now at a glorious 1900x1200

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 4:09 pm

Regarding the switching resolution thing - I noticed that if you switch res (to get the blocks) then arrow down to the option for quitting to main screen and hit enter, the graphics come back. I can't remember the exact wording of the option I used, as I'm at work right now.

Just remember where the option is before switching res and you're laughing.

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:30 am

Selezen wrote:
Just remember where the option is before switching res and you're laughing.

Yeah, once I learned what all the buttons do and where menus were, I was able to get by even with a black screen.

Seems much more stable at my native resolution now, and I managed to rescue the game from the depths of madness a few times.

Once I heard sounds of my ship being battered (skype had dumped me out during a fight in an anarchy), so I switched back in but had a blank screen. I could hear my own ship respond to commands so I did my best at flying blind evasive and trying to conserve what little witchspace fuel I had left.

When I finally ended the call, I toggled fullscreen on and off and got back half of the graphics. Blocky text, and enemy ships were invisible, but I could fly and see cargo. Was getting badly battered and unable to fire back when I got a target lock by chance and used the recticule to waste the fucker. Then I got the idea that if I used a zoomed scanner, and used fuel injectors to get up close, I could get a target lock on the invisible ships. Took a while, but I managed to defeat them all, scoop up cargo, survive a couple more battles, and limp into the station. Repairs set me back a bit, but I kept an awful lot of kills. :-)

Evil Juice · Post by **Evil Juice** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:58 am

gosh, that seems one of commander winston's (the literary one) tall stories!

CheshireNoir · Post by **CheshireNoir** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:18 am

winston wrote:
There's no real reason (as far as I know, I don't have any hardware to actually do this!) that it shouldn't run in widescreen - the game itself can run in any aspect ratio (if the worst comes to the worst, play in windowed mode and maximise the window).

It certainly can! Currently I run my windoze oolite in 1024X1280 (Yup, Portrait mode) with no problems. It's a bit wierd and I couldn't reccommend it for long term play but it is fun.

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 7:57 am

It certainly can! Currently I run my windoze oolite in 1024X1280 (Yup, Portrait mode) with no problems. It's a bit wierd and I couldn't reccommend it for long term play but it is fun.

1920x1200 here :-)

Speaking of portrait, when do we get a PocketPC port? My Axim has some kind of 3D card in it, but I have no idea if it uses any easily portable form of tech.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:52 pm

There’s ElitePPC. At least, there is in theory. They’re stuck in copyright limbo. :-/

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:51 am

Not much of a hinderance if you really want to aquire it though.