What? What?? WHAT???

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Lestradae
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What? What?? WHAT???

Post by Lestradae »

My specs: Pentium IV, 2GB RAM, NIVIDIA GForce 8600M GT, Vista

Tested something with a new install. Included the 1.03.8 version of Local Hero.

Windows Vista is a really weird, crappy system. :x It puts everything that rewrites itself while running in a special folder - the

C:\Users\*Name*\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\

folder.

So I attempted to install Oolite as a whole into that folder, with the idea to reduce drag on the system. OK. Perhaps this has made a difference.

Other two differences to before: Upgraded Local Hero from 1.03.6 to 1.03.8 and switched shader effects from simple to full.

Then the madness started.

First, a whistling sound, and a message: Switch to your system screen, incoming call. I assume this might be the newly upgraded Local Hero and enter "7". System Screen. Nothing happens. I get that message again and again. But no incoming call, nothing. :(

Second, suddenly there were only ships that were completely white, without any texturing at all. This didn`t go away.

I exited and restarted Oolite. Still with shaders in "full" setting. Now shaders seem to be there, but everything is very dark. Nearly can`t see ships. :?

OK. I am currently in an Anarchy, TL 4. There is a "B" on the space compass. I go look what it is. It leads me to a space station, surrounded by asteroids. I assume it might be a Random Hits station.

Anomaly Number Three. I land on the station and look at the equipment screen. I press "3" again. Ships to buy has only ever worked at the main station for me. Was that always a bug? Or is what comes next the bug? :? Because here it is, the shipyard, of the random hits station! Never seen it before outside the main station ...

Then I have a closer look at the equipment screen. And then (Number Four - WHAT!?)

:shock: :shock: :shock: There it says: Thargoid Laser (salvaged from a Thargoid ship) :shock: :shock: :shock: It`s cost is 23000 credits. I immediately buy it!!! :)

And then I try to switch over to the "5" screen to have a look at the way this thing shows up. Thargoid Laser! Have I gone mad? But my screen suddenly blurs. It jumps between two positions, still on the equipment screen. I can see that the Thargoid Laser has gone from the equipment menu. But I can no longer leave this blurry screen. I have to switch Oolite off.

OK, try that again. The stderr file has recorded the following hiccups:

2008-02-25 10:05:01.242 oolite.exe[3604] [script.AsteroidStorm.cleanup]: Asteroid Storm finished, or player in another galaxy. Disabling script.
2008-02-25 10:05:01.242 oolite.exe[3604] [script.javaScript.exception.22]: ***** JavaScript exception: TypeError: this.missionScreenEnded is not a function
2008-02-25 10:05:01.242 oolite.exe[3604] [script.javaScript.exception.22]: AddOns/AsteroidStorm.oxp/Scripts/AsteroidStorm.js, line 103.

*

2008-02-25 10:15:00.333 oolite.exe[3604] [exception]: ***** Exception: NSRangeException : Index 10 is out of range 6 (in 'objectAtIndex:') *****
2008-02-25 10:15:00.334 oolite.exe[3604] *** NSTimer ignoring exception 'NSRangeException' (reason 'Index 10 is out of range 6 (in 'objectAtIndex:')') raised during posting of timer with target 0x1574b48 and selector 'performGameTick:'

OK, again, the four anomalies observed:

1. Local Hero (?!?) whistling sound and message to look at system screen. At system screen, nothing happens.

2. With full shaders on, either completely whited-out ships or very dark and don`t see much of the shaders. Could there be a problem with my graphics card (NIVIDIA GForce 8600M GT) or Vista?

3. Suddenly, I can access the shipyard at a station that is not the main station. Is this now working for the first time ever or is this a bug?

4. A Thargoid Laser. I thought it was not possible to script alternate lasers in?? Well, the game stopped in a strange way after buying this (flickering between two screen settings, it seemed?)

So, perhaps this helps to squash some bugs. Or at least helps me, I want to continue playing!

(5.) One last - fifth - thing, while we`re at it. My trumble. It doesn`t get bigger, it doesn`t propagate, it doesn`t change. Since one year real-time play, and who-knows-how long in-game. Could someone knowledgeable have a look at my savegame, perhaps? Or what reason could there be for my immortal, unchanging trumble?

Bug-hunting Lestradae again,

over & out.
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Hoopy
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Post by Hoopy »

i've had the all white objects thing as well. It only occurs when I first start Oolite and seems to sort itself out after the first few jumps. That's using XP and a 7600GT card.

Some trumbles grow quicker than others - sounds like you got a slow one...
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Lestradae
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Trumble growth + additional testing

Post by Lestradae »

Some trumbles grow quicker than others - sounds like you got a slow one...
Well, mine doesn`t grow at all. It must have been there for a few hundred hyperjumps. No change at all.

By the way, visited the Random Hits station again. The Thargoid Laser is still there! :shock:

And it seems to be the thing that produces that weird crash. The screen seems to jump forwards & backwards and loop - no way out but to exit Oolite.
i've had the all white objects thing as well. It only occurs when I first start Oolite and seems to sort itself out after the first few jumps. That's using XP and a 7600GT card.
The white objects also didn`t reappear at another test on my system. The shaders on Griff`extensively shadered station also seemed to work correct.

I hope this mess can be sorted out ...
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Post by Svengali »

The message [exception]: ***** Exception: NSRangeException : Index 10 is out of range 6 (in 'objectAtIndex:') comes from Localhero. I've tried to set the timer-interval to a faster level, but it is to fast to be executed. So if there are some more scripts active, Oolite has not enough time to execute the tickle-event and stops the execution at this point. But I think on the next tickle it is processed again. I've had this specially in the later missions when more ships are added to the universe. Fixed. The sound message is also fixed. You can delete 2 of your points from the list :wink:

I'll upload the fixed version in a few minutes.
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Post by another_commander »

Windows Vista is a really weird, crappy system. It puts everything that rewrites itself while running in a special folder - the

C:\Users\*Name*\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\

folder.

So I attempted to install Oolite as a whole into that folder, with the idea to reduce drag on the system.
Bad idea. Really bad. VirtualStrore is a Vista system folder. You are not meant to install stuff there.
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Kaks
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Re: What? What?? WHAT???

Post by Kaks »

And I'm afraid it looks like script.AsteroidStorm.cleanup isn't doing too good a job.

My fault. I did a last-minute tinker with the javascript to improve mission screens compatibility, but it looks like I forgot to update the cleanup script. I'll have the fix for that asap.
Hey, free OXPs: farsun v1.05 & tty v0.5! :0)
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Lestradae
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Vista Reloaded & Thargoid Laser & Local Hero

Post by Lestradae »

OK ...
Bad idea. Really bad. VirtualStrore is a Vista system folder. You are not meant to install stuff there.
Did reinstall everything on the D:/ ... so no Vista weirdness.

Results:

1. White-out spaceships again. Perhaps they will also re-texture again.

2. Local Hero .9 has no message for me now. Is that OK? I`m in an Anarchy TL4 anyways - shouldn`t the messages be only in corporate systems or something like that?

3. The Random Hits station is still there. The Thargoid Laser is still there. The shipyard is still there, but now empty. If I buy the Thargoid Laser, the same result: Looping strange-looking page.

:shock: Thargoid Laser? Anyone? No? Anyone? ... :shock:

Will come back in a few hours, have RL to do :)

Thanks for feedback for now!

L
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Post by another_commander »

Any errors in stderr.txt?
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Eric Walch
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Post by Eric Walch »

Lestradae wrote:
(5.) One last - fifth - thing, while we`re at it. My trumble. It doesn`t get bigger, it doesn`t propagate, it doesn`t change. Since one year real-time play, and who-knows-how long in-game. Could someone knowledgeable have a look at my savegame, perhaps? Or what reason could there be for my immortal, unchanging trumble?
I don't know. Have you tried to kill the beast. Is that al least working? If it is killed, I could give you a pm with code to restart the mission. But the old one must be killed first.
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Svengali
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Post by Svengali »

Lestradae wrote:
2. Local Hero .9 has no message for me now. Is that OK? I`m in an Anarchy TL4 anyways
Yupp. The whole campaign is placed in confederacy systems with a higher techlevel. Read the included FAQ. No messages is totally ok. :D
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TGHC
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Post by TGHC »

Don't worry about your Trumble, it's just constipated!
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Post by LittleBear »

On the Random Hits Station, the Shipyard is meant to be there. An OXP station will have a Shipyard if has_shipyard is set to true.

Random Hits stations generally have higher tech levels than the Main Station, so more equipment is available. I've no idea however why you were able to buy a Thargoid Laser there. The Thargoid Laser is part of Oolite's native equipment.plist see:-

Code: Select all

	<array>
		<integer>99</integer>
		<integer>150000</integer>
		<string>Thargoid Laser</string>
		<string>EQ_WEAPON_THARGOID_LASER</string>
		<string>Captured Thargoid weapon, self-aiming.</string>
It should only be available to buy at tech level 99 (ie impossible). Different Random Hits Stations have different tech levels, but none are as high as 99 so I don't know why the game is allowing you to buy it. Its not something that happens on XP! I suspect that although the Laser is buyable its not linked to any code, hence the problem, but there no way you should be able to buy it in the first place. Suspect this is some oddity with Oolite and Vista. :shock:
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
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Post by JensAyton »

Tech level 99 is special. Level 99 items can be made available by setting the mission variable “mission_TL_FOR_<equipment key>” – in this case, “mission_TL_FOR_EQ_WEAPON_THARGOID_LASER” – to 14 or lower. However, player-mounted thargoid lasers are not supported.
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Post by LittleBear »

Ahh. Some of the Random Hits Stations do have tech 14 tech levels, but I haven't set the mission variable for the Thargoid Laser. I've a vaugh feeling Charlie may have done this in Navy Starships OXP, so it might be that one thats making the Laser available.

Whether there are any ships for sale though is another matter. Sometimes there just arn't any!
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
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Re: What? What?? WHAT???

Post by Screet »

Hi, it's quite some time since you did post that message...however, it pretty clearly describes what happened to my Oolite experience after upgrading to the version 1.7.2.

Lestradae wrote:
First, a whistling sound, and a message: Switch to your system screen, incoming call. I assume this might be the newly upgraded Local Hero and enter "7". System Screen. Nothing happens. I get that message again and again. But no incoming call, nothing. :(
Did you ever get that thing to work? I've exactly the same experience.
Lestradae wrote:
Second, suddenly there were only ships that were completely white, without any texturing at all. This didn`t go away.

I exited and restarted Oolite. Still with shaders in "full" setting. Now shaders seem to be there, but everything is very dark. Nearly can`t see ships. :?
That happens since the upgrade of the game...the whole graphics are messed up in 1.7.2, the nebulae look like colored rectangles, ships sometimes white, sometimes black, most often textures with uninitialized memory / overwritten memory (the cause of the crashes, I guess).

Switching shaders to full makes it all worse. Luckily, I've pretty much adapted to those bugs, but I'd really like to see a solution.

I can tell you for sure that it's NOT your graphics card. I use an AMD card and experience the same stuff!
Lestradae wrote:
Anomaly Number Three. I land on the station and look at the equipment screen. I press "3" again. Ships to buy has only ever worked at the main station for me. Was that always a bug? Or is what comes next the bug? :? Because here it is, the shipyard, of the random hits station! Never seen it before outside the main station ...
Maybe some 'customers' didn't make it out alive? ;) Yes, even for me they offer ships, but highly limited.

What's worrying me much more is, that some Addon I recently installed changed all shops. Now I can even trade all goods at the bar (especially also BUY them). Same for Rock Hermits (prices almost as common station), Shipyards (just a second station) and many of the dockable ships.
Lestradae wrote:
:shock: :shock: :shock: There it says: Thargoid Laser (salvaged from a Thargoid ship) :shock: :shock: :shock: It`s cost is 23000 credits. I immediately buy it!!! :)
I only had to pay around 7K for that experience of having aft(nil) weapon ;)

Some of the dockable ships also sell that equipment, as well as cloaking device, scanner-jammer and scanner-filter...pretty annoying, because after several times, it's just too tempting to spend that excess money ;)

However, that's why I wonder if I can run those AddOns, but have the StarWars/Star Trek ships removed...I think they don't fit in, even though many of them are drawn very nicely. Ever seen a fugitive constitution fly to the main station and explode during the docking attempt, because the ship's bigger than the station and faster than almost anything else?
Lestradae wrote:
2. With full shaders on, either completely whited-out ships or very dark and don`t see much of the shaders. Could there be a problem with my graphics card (NIVIDIA GForce 8600M GT) or Vista?
I also run vista...however, those bugs came with the version upgrade, so I'm pretty sure that it's something from the game.
Lestradae wrote:
(5.) One last - fifth - thing, while we`re at it. My trumble. It doesn`t get bigger, it doesn`t propagate, it doesn`t change. Since one year real-time play, and who-knows-how long in-game. Could someone knowledgeable have a look at my savegame, perhaps? Or what reason could there be for my immortal, unchanging trumble?
I killed my trumbles. They also were not very reproductive. Interestingly, they cared more for alcohol than for food. However, I didn't like them as I liked the ones from original Elite, as the trumbles there had two very good effects:
- they did attract a LOT more pirates
- they reproduced VERY quickly and when I killed some of them, I had some tons of fur
In the beginning of the game, both these things can be pretty nice.

Some other oddities I encountered:
- While I flew the Python (no Addons at that time), I had about one fuel leak per hour. I never had any fuel leak with any other ship. Maintenance also did not change that fact.

- The Boa Class Cruiser seems to be somewhat "hit-proof". I had substantially less hits against my ship when I flew that one. After installing upgrades, I switched for some reason (insufficient energy supply of the BCC) to the Dredger Trader....

- The Dredger Trader is the only ship so far that I flew where the aft shield was being hit about 100% of the time a Wolf Mk2 would fire directly from the front at me....and vice versa with Wolf behind me, hitting the front shield. The DT is a big ship, but that appears to be a bug to me, as most other ships hit the proper shield and this thing only happened to me with the DT. Also, I had much more troubles with the laser going right through enemy ship's hulls without doing any damage, but that was also only in conjunction with very specific ship models that can be crippled by shooting at. Luckily, the BCC and DT are very well equipped for ramming. If the target is an agile ship, just attempt to shoot a bit in order to soften it up...and ram it!

- Finally, I wanted to leave the trading stuff...was tired of freighters, even though both the BCC and DT appear to be too agile to me...it feels more like a much smaller ship. However, I then switched to a much smaller ship, the Merlin (also considered über-Ship? I didn't read posts into that direction). For assassinations, it's really just the right ship. Swift, agile, but vulnerable. Where the BCC or DT can easily be hit by a missile and the shields are still up, the Merlins equipment gets damaged or the Merlin completely destroyed. However, the Merlin is SO small (too small?), that enemy lasers barely hit it, especially in combination with the speed of that ship. It pretty much feels like a powerful fighter - but has hyperdrive and a little cargo space (to cover the immense maintenance costs). Also, the Merlin cannot ram...nothing happened when I tested it, guess it's really too small for that. However, the laser does appear to be very much stronger than on all the previous ships I had - am I just hitting more precisely or is there something with that ship that dramatically increases laser power? On C64 Elite, I often was attacked by groups of Krait or Mamba...and on the first approach often killed all of them with my military laser. That wasn't possible on any later version or clone....but now the Merlin enables such a thing again. Übership-phenomenon? Personally, I believe that firefly, Kestrel and Merlin, IF they stay (I like the look of Kestrel/Merlin VERY much), they should be resized to better match the other ships, as they appear MUCH too small to me. However, for a fighter, I think, the speed is acceptable and the agility compared to a BCC or DT should match (probably all of them need to be less agile?). Also, the game appears to run much faster itself since I switched from DT to Merlin?!?

- Obviously from Random hits comes a message after Witchspace jumps...I belive it's some kind of timer for retaliation by friends of the assassinated NPCs. Still believe that that message should be invis to the player.

- There are more fugitive capital ships than clean navy capital ships...and they definitely don't require a (ds) (Deep Space pirates) behind their names...as if the whole navy is deserting. I believe something needs to be fixed, but where? I even had three pirate condors in one system...and the third hit my DT with some dozen missiles, as I was out of fuel after evading the first two Condors missiles. Strange thing though is, that an empty Condor does not retreat in order to load new missiles...they are just waiting to be shot down after wasting their whole payload within a few seconds. Maybe the AI could be improved on that one? My suggestion would be to fire 3-5 missiles per target...and only fire again if the previous missiles got destroyed. That way the Condors effectiveness should be dramatically improved.

- While the Churchill limits the abuse of weapons trade, Realistic Shipyards opens an immense income factor: Buy military lasers and Q-bombs at the shipyard and then sell them either at the station in the same system or fly on a trading mission to some planet with a more expensive shipyard and sell the weapons there, as the price is even higher than on the stations. However, flying 10 Q-bombs and 4 mil lasers from shipyard to the closest station already delivers more than 5K credits.

As memory leaks have been discussed...the current version with all those addons installed causes Vista to constantly complain - but the memory usage does has it's peaks and drops down again...it doesn't appear to be a leak but just a heavy amount of memory usage to me. The stupid thing is, that the vendor equipped my 4GB "64bit technology" machine with Vista 32 and claimed that this could not be exchanged for 64bit vista, thus I can "only" use 3GB of memory...but as soon as an application goes over the 1GB mark, Vista starts constant screaming because of "low memory" - as if 2 GB (or 1.5 when running oolite or some DX10 game) are not enough for the system cache?!? I am sure that it's not always the game causing trouble there, but that Vista has some immense problem itself.

Screet
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