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1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 3:26 am
by george moromisato
http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/news.hexm?id=434
Beta 2 is ready for downloading!
If you run Beta 1, it should upgrade automatically. However, there was a bug in prior builds which might cause the automatic upgrade to fail. If that happens, please download the file manually (
http://kronosaur.com/downloads/TranscendenceNext.zip). [This bug is fixed in Beta 2.]
You can read about the main changes in the article above, but I want to highlight two things:
1. Beta 2 has 120-facings for all player ships! Yes, finally! I should have done this earlier. I've also been experimenting with 120-facings for large ships and I've already converted almost all large ships in Corporate Command (you'll get the new images when you upgrade to Beta 2). In the future I plan on having a (free) expansion which overrides all large ships in the core game with 120-facings. [I don't want to do it by default yet because it will radically increase the download size.]
2. Beta2 uploads stats for unregistered games. This means that you'll be able to see high scores for any non-official mods. You must be signed in to post games (and we don't post debug games or games with a score of 0). If you want to see some scores, use the following URL:
http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/transHighScores.hexm
This shows a high score across all games (registered and unregistered).
You can add "username" as a query parameter to see the games for a specific user:
http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/transHi ... starstrike
You can add "unid" to the URL to see high scores for games using a particular mod:
http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/transHi ... e:00800000
(remember the "Transcendence:" prefix).
Lastly, you can distinguish between registered and unregistered games via the "league" parameter (use either "registered" or "unregistered"):
http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/transHi ... registered
And of course, you can combine two or more of the query parameters.
As always, thanks to everyone who reported bugs and feedback. Check out the new beta and let me know what you think!
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 1:19 pm
by PM
Transcendence 1.3 Beta 2 wrote:•Fixed reactor display mask (thanks to PM).
What did I do for this? Someone else did this.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 2:57 pm
by AssumedPseudonym
Armor hits are coming from the right direction now, but the order is badly out of whack on the armor select dockscreen.
PM wrote:Transcendence 1.3 Beta 2 wrote:•Fixed reactor display mask (thanks to PM).
What did I do for this? Someone else did this.
Yeah, that was pixelfck, actually.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 4:36 pm
by PM
Armor hits are coming from the right direction now, but the order is badly out of whack on the armor select dockscreen.
The cursor on the HUD at the right of the screen jumps all over the place - from first to third to fourth to second. How will this UI eyesore be fixed?
* * *
Comments for beta 2 so far...
* I noticed the Sapphire and Wolfen turn slower. Sapphire almost feels like a mini-freighter now. Wolfen turns as fast as it did before 1.3.
* The 120 facings HD sprites seem to have thick black borders around the ships. The ships also seem shinier. In case of Wolfen, it seems a bit more desaturated, almost grayscale.
* I like the extra facings.
Question:
* Is there a function that checks if a point intersects a target?
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 6:30 pm
by george moromisato
AssumedPseudonym wrote:Yeah, that was pixelfck, actually.
Sorry, that's my error. I'll fix that.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 9:08 pm
by Atarlost
The change to the Sapphire completely ruins it. There is almost no point to having it if it turns like the freighter since the freighter has more mass to prevent slowdown, more cargo, and more total slots. The Wolfen noticeably worse as well, but at least retains some zip.
Fine control is dependent entirely on rotationAccel, not maxRotationRate and there is no reason to reduce the latter.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 10:24 pm
by george moromisato
Atarlost wrote:The change to the Sapphire completely ruins it. There is almost no point to having it if it turns like the freighter since the freighter has more mass to prevent slowdown, more cargo, and more total slots. The Wolfen noticeably worse as well, but at least retains some zip.
Fine control is dependent entirely on rotationAccel, not maxRotationRate and there is no reason to reduce the latter.
I'm happy to revert the Sapphire back to 9.0 (degrees per tick). How about the Wolfen? Should that go to 12.0? That seemed too fast to me. Maybe the Wolfen should stay at 9.0 but increase its turning acceleration to 4.5 (2 ticks to get to full turning rate).
Thus we'd end up with:
Sapphire: 9.0 degrees per tick, accelerate at 2.0 degrees per tick^2.
Wolfen: 9.0 degrees per tick, accelerate at 4.5 degrees per tick^2.
What do you think?
Remember that prior to all these maneuvering changes, both the Sapphire and the Wolfen turned at 1 facing per tick (9 degrees per tick). That was the fastest you could turn with 40 facings. Now that the turning system is better (decoupled from facings) we can have higher max turning speeds, at the cost of skipping facings.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 11:03 pm
by PM
I loved the faster 12 degrees on the Wolfen, when it did not gain enough mass for its (former) rotation stats to interfere with it. It gives me a reason to play the Wolfen instead of the Sapphire. Now that the Wolfen has 120 facings, I do not think it will suffer the problems it had in beta 1.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 12:25 am
by Atarlost
george moromisato wrote:I'm happy to revert the Sapphire back to 9.0 (degrees per tick). How about the Wolfen? Should that go to 12.0? That seemed too fast to me. Maybe the Wolfen should stay at 9.0 but increase its turning acceleration to 4.5 (2 ticks to get to full turning rate).
Thus we'd end up with:
Sapphire: 9.0 degrees per tick, accelerate at 2.0 degrees per tick^2.
Wolfen: 9.0 degrees per tick, accelerate at 4.5 degrees per tick^2.
What do you think?
This is completely the opposite of the correct solution. High acceleration makes ships hard to maneuver finely. Low maximum makes it hard to put your guns where you need them for short range dogfighting. Saving a couple ticks getting to full turn rate when you want to make a 60 degree turn makes hardly any difference at all, but having a maximum turn rate 33% higher is a big deal.
Acceleration always needs to be low on playerships for fine control. Maximum rate does not to be limited for interface purposes as long as it doesn't get ridiculous. 20 or 30 might be pushing it but 12 is not. If it were it would have caused problems in beta 1 because the effects of maximum rotation rate don't depend on the number of facings.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 1:58 am
by PM
Played with beta 2 more. The extra facings makes a big difference for a Wolfen with rotation speed of 12. No longer am I skipping frames when trying to aim by tapping on the arrow keys. No more just frame nonsense - yay!
Noticed EI500 has the fastest rotation acceleration, not that it helps much due to slow max rotation.
While we are on the topic of rotation, can the playership Manticore rotation (in CorpCom) be sped up to match NPCs? Watching NPC Manticores turn twice as fast as my Manticore is blood boiling! NPC Manticore stats should be updated to match playerships - six armor segments, rotation, off-centered weapon mounts, etc.
P.S. One more comment: It seems the 40+ facings AI bug is finally gone! This is good!
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 8:34 am
by EditorRUS
Welp, with new 120 facings feature, game became easier for me. I shoot pretty accurate and thus i will never miss because of facings anymore...
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 1:36 pm
by pixelfck
What happened to the Manoeuvring thrusters effects? They seem to be missing in 1.3b2?
edit: I should learn to read the release notes.
~Pixelfck
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Sun May 25, 2014 2:02 pm
by PM
Transcendence 1.3 Beta 2 wrote:•Maneuvering thruster effects removed (but can be added back with showManeuverEffects option in Settings.xml).
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 4:42 am
by george moromisato
Atarlost wrote:This is completely the opposite of the correct solution. High acceleration makes ships hard to maneuver finely. Low maximum makes it hard to put your guns where you need them for short range dogfighting. Saving a couple ticks getting to full turn rate when you want to make a 60 degree turn makes hardly any difference at all, but having a maximum turn rate 33% higher is a big deal.
Acceleration always needs to be low on playerships for fine control. Maximum rate does not to be limited for interface purposes as long as it doesn't get ridiculous. 20 or 30 might be pushing it but 12 is not. If it were it would have caused problems in beta 1 because the effects of maximum rotation rate don't depend on the number of facings.
I'll try a Wolfen at 12.0. The nice thing about that is that it differentiates it from other ships.
Any thoughts on the 3 CC ships? Right now they are:
Constellation: 4.5 max degrees per tick, 4.5 acceleration (consistent with EI500)
Freyr: 9.0 max, 3.0 acceleration
Manticore: 4.5 max, 4.5 acceleration.
Re: 1.3 Beta 2
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 5:40 am
by Atarlost
From my own experimentation I do not believe an RotationAccel above 3.0 is acceptable on a playership with 3 degrees between facings except if MaxRotation is less than 6.0, but if MaxRotation is less than 6.0 there's no difference between RotationAccel between 3.0 and MaxRotation inclusive so you may as well drop RotationAccel to 3.0 there too. MaxRotation of 15.0 is probably ideal for dogfighting. MaxRotation of 18.0 is a bit too high, but quick players could probably become accustomed to it if they had slightly better keyboards than I.
So MaxRotation 12.0 is dandy and leaves room to one day make an even more nimble ship if that becomes desirable in D&O II or some other future expansion.