[GAME] EmptyEpsilon

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  • Thanks for you advice. I'll try out your suggestions.
    Chris
  • HTTP server problem solved. Moved the EE folder from C:/ProgramFiles to MyDocuments and everything seems to be working as expected.

    Not sure why this is the case, I had amended premissions for the EE folder and contents within C:/ProgFiles but clearly Windows was still not happy with that.

    Thanks for advice. Now that I can access the API, on with the project. I have WiFi connected LED lightbulbs which I want tocontrol in line with Alert Status.

    Chris
  • @Xansta
    I now tried what the dickens too (solo) and made it until the multi-phobos-attack, and I agree with daid, it definitely is fun. Thank you for that cool mission!
    Some comment/suggestions about it:

    I also think the river effects should be explained, at least if you are experiencing the first time. It also doesn't make much sense that the crew don't know about the effects of an anomaly that close to their home station.

    I also suggest to add the sector names if a target is mentioned, so you can play this mission also on a limited setup without relay.

    Some general comments about the speech files that you are using in your missions:
    - actually, I think they often feel a bit out of place. One reason might be that it happens outside of the relay station, so the relay officers job to inform the crew about them might be diminished. But I think what bothers me the most is that they are so clean. That might be one of the things where less realism (in the future they probably will have hd radio) could feel more immersive. I tested and aplied a highpass filter to London1 for a more radio-like voice, and several effects on Marley1 to "ghostify" it, and found it much more fitting. What do you think about the idea of some effects on it?
    -by now, the speech files are about 90MB in total, that is about a quarter of the whole game. If you would convert them into ogg, which the engine also can play, they would be much smaller.

    My problem with the "clean" samples might have to do with my solo play and might not be as noticeable with the full crew, but they still might create a better atmosphere if filtered.
  • Multi-Phobos attack indicates you were using the normal or "Hard" variation. For solo play, I suggest the 'Easy' variation.

    I'll switch to OGG files for sure. I'll be adding in explanatory messages after a player "falls" into the river, too. I'll also add more info about the river to be uncovered in other contexts. The engineer definitely notices the river impact immediately. I tried to set it up so that the engineer can quickly inform the captain/crew before the ship systems get too damaged. Without an engineer, the ship likely gets extreme damage before any notice is taken of the river effect. I also made impulse immune to the effect so that the ship can at least "dog paddle" out of the river if necessary.

    I like the ideas about processing the audio files. I admit, they were kind of an after-thought and I've been playing with more people online lately, so the audio files are less important to me since the players are not all in the same room with the server. If you've already gone to the trouble to apply the effects, I would enthusiastically endorse the changes being made to the repository. Along those lines, if you also convert them to OGG files (as perhaps you already have while processing them), that would be one less thing I'd have to do.

    In other scenarios I've written, I give a button to Relay or Operations to trigger the audio and the text gets placed in the log. This gives Relay or Operations control of when the audio is played for the captain/crew. The feedback has been mixed on this approach. Perhaps I need to make the mechanism clearer. Because of the mixed feedback, I went back to auto-triggering the audio when the conditions are met. It's also easier to auto-trigger than it is to add the controls and I was trying to finish this scenario in time for Christmas 2018 (a rationalization/excuse, I know). Let me know if you think it's worth putting in these controls to re-delegate this responsibility back to Relay/Operations.

    I'm all for making the experience more immersive and entertaining. It could increase the potential draw for players, thus sharing this great game, Empty Epsilon, with a wider audience.

    I'll add the sector names to the messages referring to destination bases. I sometimes forget about the Operations screen because I often have both Relay and Science selected together since it's so easy to switch between them (F5 for Science and F6 for Relay). When I test scenarios, I run 5 screens and switch between them as needed (F2-F6). I prefer that to the solo screen approach or the Tactical/Operations/Engineering+ approach.

    Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the scenario.
  • Now tried easy, and the now single-phobos-attack was no problem. Instead, I failed to bring tim to turkey surprise in time. Probably the time limit should be adjusted by the difficulty.

    Yeah, if you (and your speakers) are fine with it, I would like to do the editing stuff - at least for what the dickens, maybe also on the others that are published by now, depending on how much work it turns out to be - and if you like the result at all, of course.

    Here is a preview so you can see/hear the general direction.

    https://github.com/aBlueShadow/EmptyEpsilon/commit/cd3b64b12657014ed212c4c5edb60ebadc02a8b8#diff-6f865a3d1992aa4277b70ff192230eeb
    I sometimes forget about the Operations screen because I often have both Relay and Science selected together since it's so easy to switch between them (F5 for Science and F6 for Relay).
    Actually, when having only two stations, it's even easier: Just use [tab] to toggle between them.

    For solo play, I usually do Tactical/Engineering+/Operations while tabbing through them. I feel that is much more comfortable than switching between 5 stations. I am actually a bit surprised, did not thought that combat could be handled well on a 5-station solo play, as you have to constantly switch between helms and weapons.

    All in all, I like the 3/4 stations, and find them quite useful. So I appreciate any mission that support using them and am glad that you did that addition.
  • I listened to the files. They sound good to me. I think they'll add a nice immersion touch to the folks that have the luxury of playing with the server audio
  • Not sure that is technically possible, but a second audio output to headphones could combine "awesome audio" and "Relay has the comms". Plus: Uhura headphone!
  • edited February 2019
    It seems I made a mistake. I figured the sound file name "kralien" would refer to "kraylor alien", but actually they are ghosts. So a robot-y voice seems to be more appropriate than the pitch down I made before.

    I now have tried multiple times to get to turkey surprise in time and defend it, but everytime it gets destroyed either just before I jumped(though only on the first 2 attempts), some seconds after, or shortly after Tim was transfered. I was playing on easy and am not sure how to get there much faster. Maybe with a full crew I could buy some additional seconds, but there doesn't seem to be a big margin.
    Looking in the code, I saw there will be even more enemy ships on higher difficulties, I have no clue how you are supposed to get there in time on those. Am I missing something?

    edit: if I have further questions, it would be probably better to open a new thread.
  • I did not have that much trouble in my testing when I was the only crew, set on easy difficulty. However, I also knew I should run over there ASAP. I probably need to increase the amount of time Tim has to live, especially on the easy difficulty. There is a random placement factor that could be inadvertently preventing you from getting there in time (or conversely, my test play-throughs were more fortunately placed).
  • While it can't hurt to increase tim's ttl on easy, the biggest problem is the vulnerability of turkey surprise IMHO. I now made it through the mission, but only after some cheating. At first I tried reducing the phobos's shield, so I could sit right next to the station, destroy the phobos with a single missile, then immediately dock and continue. But even then I didn't make it in time before TS was destroyed. The next time, I teleported the scrooge using the GM screen, right next to the TS. Now there was enough time - ironically even though I forgot this time to lower the difficulty. Shortly after Tim was transfered back, Turkey Surprise was destroyed, so it did not feel much like a victory. The rest of the mission was fairly easy again and the future christmas part brings in a nice variety.
  • ...uhh.... can anybody say "Kobiashi Maru?"

    ;]
  • If anyone's interested, I've posted a write-up for our latest main event this last Saturday.

    http://bridgesim.net/discussion/427/kilted-klingons-leadership-lab-events#latest

    Hint, there's a big reveal at the end... ;]
  • @daid Hope all is well.

    Just curious, are you thinking of putting a new release up anytime soon? I have a another significant event coming up on 5 Apr (but this one through work), and I'm starting to point people to the download page to grab a copy and do the tutorials before the event. We're also thinking of having remote teams in the event, so obviously we all have to have the same version, and I'd really like to be able for everyone to have the updates that amir-arad did for the Relay map.

    Thanks for considering, and for your time!
  • I rather not release within the next 2 weeks, but after that is fine (people are moving and using our setup without me present, and that's running the version that is released right now)
  • Sure, sounds good. Tks much!
  • edited March 2019
    I have a question: What is libudev-dev (which is mentioned in the wiki guide and also used in the netboot script) used for? Is it for dmx or other things?
    I am asking because I made a build script and recently tested it also on antix, a debian based distro meant for old hardware. The script failed on the install part, turned out it was because antix don't use systemd, and therefore uses eudev instead of udev.
    I probably could have installed libeudev-dev, but I rather ended up installing neither. To my surprise it did compile, and the game seems to run.
    So can I safely skip installing libudev-dev or will I run into some problems sooner or later?
  • I think it used to be a dependency of SFML, EE itself isn't using that library directly.
  • edited March 2019
    G'day everybody,

    Quick question: is there a way to manipulate the camera 3rd person position on the main view screen?

    (Last thing I found said it was hardcoded, but that was from 2015.)
  • To further clarify: I'm not talking about camera screen or changing the view to left or right. I have a custom player ship that looks a bit small, and I was wondering if there was a way to script the camera closer.
  • Hey Terandir, sorry my response comment went to private chat. Not sure how it did that as I responded directly underneath your original question here in this thread. Weird.
  • No problem. I'm always up for a good chat. :-)
  • Did you try adjusting the scaling factors in the model data for your custom player ship, like setScale() and/or setRadius()
  • Thank yu daid, good to know. Since nowadays a sufficiently recent sfml version should be included in most recent distros (wich means the sfml's dependencies should be handled by the package manager anyway), this is no issue then.
  • Xansta said:

    Did you try adjusting the scaling factors in the model data for your custom player ship, like setScale() and/or setRadius()

    Okay, that seems to do the trick. Thank you. Is there an important difference between scale and radius?
  • radius sets the collision radius, while scale only influences the 3D model size if I remember right. The camera distance/height is influenced only by the collision radius.
  • So, got this working, and it seems okay. I'm not sure what setcollisionbox does in this context, though, especially if it uses more than one numeric value. Can somebody explain this to me, please?
  • The collision box is for when your ships model cannot really be represented with a circle, so it puts a square box around it as collision instead of a circle. For example the larger space stations are more boxy then circlish, so they work better with the box collision.
  • Thank you! :-)
  • edited May 2019
    I'm not sure if this is the correct page for suggestions, but I would like to see a few new things. For example, I think it would be cool if there was, like, a missile that was effective against a large group of weak enemies (perhaps call it an Anti-Swarm Projectile, or ASP) with a huge area of effect (maybe 3u) and damage at center like a nuke. I tried to mod it, but I'm not sure how to. What do y'all think?
  • Is there a change log ?
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