[GAME] EmptyEpsilon

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  • @HOU5E The only April 1st joke I pulled was giving someone a 30cm 3D printed penis. At the office ;-)

    This updated release is real. Bit rough around the edges, but real.
  • @daid as long as they enjoyed you giving it to them, that's the main thing :wink:

    It is real! Sorry for immediately finding/raising bugs, it's a odious habit of mine.
  • Tested the android version, the background is kinda messed up, the background pattern change everytime I launch the app.

    https://scontent-mad1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t35.0-12/12922405_10207610533015098_763590894_o.png?oh=c1c20602b0f295da2554cb0bf79563ae&oe=57008B21

    Tested on the PC, this does not happen.
  • Fouindor said:

    Tested the android version, the background is kinda messed up, the background pattern change everytime I launch the app.

    https://scontent-mad1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t35.0-12/12922405_10207610533015098_763590894_o.png?oh=c1c20602b0f295da2554cb0bf79563ae&oe=57008B21

    Tested on the PC, this does not happen.

    On my Note 3 (android 4.4.2) it seems to look fine. Haven't tested connecting.
  • Very cool! I love it! Just added my ships in and some other custom items (music included, gotta love that danger zone!)
  • 3/27 build... difficult to classify disconnects/crashes when communicating with friendly ships and stations. Affects both relay and operations. Does not reoccur with any detected consistency
  • @VolgClawtooth have you got the latest release from 1st April?

    There was an issue with Relay/Operations crashing which @daid provided a fix for that should be included in that release, worth updating as you may find your issue has already been resolved :smile:
  • I have the science relay ship death fix. This is different. It occurs when ops&relay is communicating with friendly npcs my buold was compiled 20160327
  • edited April 2016
    So some friends and I started playing this with larger numbers of players/multiple ships.

    After hearing back from everyone as well as my own personal experience as the GM, this is the feedback I would like to offer.

    -GM would like to be able to change missions without taking down the server
    -There seems to be a bug where when holding control and trying to use the comms dialog with AI ships will cause a crash.
    -Comms would like to be able to open up a hail to other ships through the GM not just NPC
    -Red Alert/Yellow alert is nice but the splash screen seems to annoy a lot, players said it should be toned down a bit
    -A few people mentioned they would like weapons akin to a rail gun.
    -Ability for GM to resupply/repair ships/stations without raising their hull/shields/missile slots
    -No one seems to be able to see global messages?
    -Possibly replace the hail chat with an MMO style one that can be moved around and contain tabs so that it is easier to keep track of what is happening and being able to communicate with multiple ships as various entities. Especially useful for GM.
    -Allow relay to reopen old message logs in case they miss some information such as location of designations
    -Rather than closing a hail when one party does, replace replace with " has disconnected" or similar.


    That being said, everyone had a great time and enjoyed their experience. Coming from a group that enjoyed Artemis and pulsar, everyone seemed to prefer this. We had some great games and even did a huge battlefield with only the helms man reporting slight jitters possibly due to packet loss in the 500 v 500 mode.

    From a GM point of view, controls are better in just about every single way and it is possible to actually make changes/create a campaign on the fly.

    During our initial shakedown, we had a slightly out of it weapons officer who killed about 3 friendly ships by firing mines directly into them. The captain would not offer an explanation to high command and was protecting the officer. This resulted in the federation disavowing the entire ship and sent out a task force to retake or destroy the ship. This entire scenario was done on the fly via GM tools.

    Keep up the great work!
  • Good feedback, let me comment on it!
    -GM would like to be able to change missions without taking down the server
    Some groundwork is done for this. But the UI and details not.
    -There seems to be a bug where when holding control and trying to use the comms dialog with AI ships will cause a crash.
    Don't think control has much to do with it. But it's most likely random. Can you email me the .RPT file? It should be next to the game executable. daid303@gmail.com That really helps me in tracking down this crash. As I think it's network latency related, as I've not been able to reproduce it yet.
    -Comms would like to be able to open up a hail to other ships through the GM not just NPC
    Not sure what you mean? Like the GM opening comms to NPC ships? Or the GM opening playership to playership comms?
    -Red Alert/Yellow alert is nice but the splash screen seems to annoy a lot, players said it should be toned down a bit
    Check the UI redesign topic. An update for the red/yellow alert is already in a mockup there. Think that solves the problems with it.
    -A few people mentioned they would like weapons akin to a rail gun.
    While not used on most of the stock ships yet. There is the HVLI, which is a bit like a railgun.
    -Ability for GM to resupply/repair ships/stations without raising their hull/shields/missile slots
    Yes, should fix this. This was possible at some point, but during a UI code overhaul it got removed by mistake.
    -No one seems to be able to see global messages?
    They show up on main screens. What's global about them is that all ships get it.
    -Possibly replace the hail chat with an MMO style one that can be moved around and contain tabs so that it is easier to keep track of what is happening and being able to communicate with multiple ships as various entities. Especially useful for GM.
    For the GM screen this sounds like a nice idea. For relay, I think it's nice for gameplay that you can only open 1 comms channel at a time. It makes it more of a tactical thing. Also, less problems code wise ;-)
    -Allow relay to reopen old message logs in case they miss some information such as location of designations
    There is the ships log in the latest version which does this.
    -Rather than closing a hail when one party does, replace replace with " has disconnected" or similar.
    Should be simple, something like this is already reported when the ship you are talking to is destroyed.



    How many players where you playing with? Just curious on the numbers now, to see what it at least can take.
    The 500vs500 ships is really designed to stress out the server. My machine slows down to like 10~15fps on that setup. I'm not surprised that it caused some jittering.
  • edited April 2016
    Ok .. silly keyboard at 5am.. Anyway sorry for the flaky incomplete posts over the weekend from my phone. I was running 30 hours (12 Friday, 12 Saturday and 6 Sunday) of Bridge Simulations at Who's Yer Con (A free gaming convention in Indianapolis, IN) and only had my phone to post from.
    We ran 2 bridges of Artemis and 2 of Empty Epsilon. First half of the convention, due to the popularity of Artemis form prior conventions, Artemis was more heavily played, but only slightly. By the end of the convention Sunday at 4pm I actually had to turn away players wanting to play Empty Epsilon, Artemis remained full as well, but noone was 'on deck'. Hats off to you Daid many people were thoroughly converted by the end of the weekend. The specs for the Empty Epsilon portion of the setup: 14 Fujitsu Lifebook T2010 stylus touch screen computers booted from Fedora 22 custom kickstart 8GB USB thumb drives, 1Gbps (totally overkill) network switches. 20160327 Empty Epsilon build.

    We ran basic scenarios most of the weekend. with few complaints (and do some of these gamers know how to complain)...

    Biggest complaints were the old (as in the 3/27 Linux build I did from Github) red alert.. Personally I find it entertaining.. but a few complained loudly...

    The random Relay station exits/failures during communication with AI ships occurred approximately 8 times over the 30 hours of run time. I'll see if I can find RPT files on the USB sticks. and be more diligent about collecting such going forward.

    We had 1 session which requested PvP. This was difficult as I was unprepared for the request and was unable to determine a good way of starting them and setting it up. Using a Basic scenario, I started each ship then moved them to opposite sides of the starting regions. Both ships had access to all probes launched regardless of faction the probes were assigned to or the faction the player ships were assigned to. Again I had not actually prepared to do this so did not research how to best do it in Empty Epsilon prior to the convention... I'll look at writing a Basic PvP scenario before considering this a real issue.

    Zoom functionality for the GM screen would have been helpful in selecting/moving ships which are in close proximity to each other.. maybe I've just missed where it is available.

    I'm still working up a suggested schema for making joystick inputs configurable in the config file with keyboard ones.


    We had 1 instance of a player ship being unable to dock with large station, requiring a deletion of the player ship in order to continue playing. There were no other ships docked with the station, no visible obstructions, but it would not complete final approach and docking... It was very odd. Given that and people accidentally hitting Dock instead of Jump caused problems a few times. Would it be plausible to have the 'Request Dock' change to an enable 'Cancel Docking Request' instead of a disabled 'Docking'.. this would allow the cancellation of unintended request and emergency cancellations when an enemy showed up.

    I also discovered if you are trying to communicate with a ship from the GM screen.. don't try and type normally.. Shift will prevent printing of a character in your conversation.. which made for an interesting message or two from Main Command to Players. Query: does the scripting allow for preprogramming an NPC to react to e GM message sent to it? I didn't try, but my addled sleep deprived brain just threw the idea out there..

    Thank you very much for the fixes for the Relay/science crashes! Thank you also for the Tactical Joystick fix as well! Overall we entertained 300 player hours over the weekend with Empty Epsilon. If it wasn't a 'free convention' I'd be sending you money now.. as it is.. I paid a bunch just to spend 30 hours doing nothing but playing GM and chief engineer for 4 bridges all weekend.
  • Quick comments on your phone post:
    * GM can zoom in/out with the mouse wheel. The GM screen is kinda designed to be used with a 3 button mouse.
    * The latest release contains a PVP scenario. (Thanks to Fouindor)
    * The red alert will be improved at some point. As the mockup design is already there, it's just a case of implementing that.
    * The linux build won't have crash report files. That's only in the windows build.
    * Docking can be canceled in the latest or next build (not sure if that change was merged before or after 1st of april)

    No need to send money. Bug reports and feature requests are currently worth more. (And run 4 EE bridges next time? ;-) )
  • I'll invest in more trackballs with scroll wheels for my engineering bay then so I can zoom the GM screens..

    Sweet. Thank you Fouindor!

    I like it the red alert.. but hey.. I'm odd.

    Ok. It didn't dump core so nothing to collect. I've also noted the whole stopping the server and starting a new one on Linux requires a 30-60 second wait between stop and start to allow sockets to close.. otherwise the start crashes out. Does the 'Close Server' explicitly close the open sockets?




    I currently run half and half.. because by the end of a convention.. I'm not up to teaching yet another under 10 year old anything more complicate than.. 'yes click here and it will blow up' so I keep the Artemis around for the very timid and the crowd that wants super simple. Although if I get more space next year.. I'll run 6 bridges total in stead of 4 and only 2 will be Artemis..
  • daid said:

    -There seems to be a bug where when holding control and trying to use the comms dialog with AI ships will cause a crash.
    Don't think control has much to do with it. But it's most likely random. Can you email me the .RPT file? It should be next to the game executable. daid303@gmail.com That really helps me in tracking down this crash. As I think it's network latency related, as I've not been able to reproduce it yet.

    Unfortunately, I don't think that person has the logs anymore. I will make sure to grab them for you if it happens again.

    daid said:


    -Comms would like to be able to open up a hail to other ships through the GM not just NPC
    Not sure what you mean? Like the GM opening comms to NPC ships? Or the GM opening playership to playership comms?

    Set a ship so that if a player hails it, it will open up the hail to the GM rather than the AI. Or possibly even a blanket statement.
    daid said:

    How many players where you playing with? Just curious on the numbers now, to see what it at least can take.
    The 500vs500 ships is really designed to stress out the server. My machine slows down to like 10~15fps on that setup. I'm not surprised that it caused some jittering.

    Two sessions. The 500v500 one was with about 6 players including GM, only helms man was slightly affected.

    The second session was just standard scenarios with about 13 players at its peak. All players were connecting via internet.
  • I understand what you mean about hailing ships and getting the GM instead of a Comms Script. Maybe GM needs a separate "Station" available for GM Comms because while they have a conversation going I recall they can't be doing anything else?

    Of course the appetite will always be for N+1 chat windows where N is the number of windows provided... But maybe is there a way for a commsEntity station to be created each time the GM starts chatting, without the need for the GM to jump out to main menu and back in? Of course you would want to be able to choose to close that station completely OR just switch tabs.

    One bonus this approach could provide for the GM is having the name saved to that station so no having to re-type "Admiral Daid" every time you want to send a new message... No more "Admiral Said/Fair/Raid/Admira Laid" from eager/clumsy fingers.
  • [...] I've also noted the whole stopping the server and starting a new one on Linux requires a 30-60 second wait between stop and start to allow sockets to close.. otherwise the start crashes out. Does the 'Close Server' explicitly close the open sockets?

    Perhaps the socket used for listening for connections was (possibly deliberately) not set up with SO_REUSEADDR ?

    Something along the lines of...

    rc = setsockopt(rendezvous, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, (const char *) &on, sizeof(on));

    (and maybe also SO_REUSEPORT might be needed since linux 3.9 ?) to allow the next invocation to bind to the same addr/port combo.
  • smcameron said:

    [...] I've also noted the whole stopping the server and starting a new one on Linux requires a 30-60 second wait between stop and start to allow sockets to close.. otherwise the start crashes out. Does the 'Close Server' explicitly close the open sockets?

    Perhaps the socket used for listening for connections was (possibly deliberately) not set up with SO_REUSEADDR ?

    Something along the lines of...

    rc = setsockopt(rendezvous, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, (const char *) &on, sizeof(on));

    (and maybe also SO_REUSEPORT might be needed since linux 3.9 ?) to allow the next invocation to bind to the same addr/port combo.
    Most likely, yet. I haven't looked into the details of this. But most likely SFML does not do this for us. And I'm using SFML for the sockets.



    As for the crash, tracked it down thanks to the crash report in the mail!
    What happens, if in comms, you open comms to a station, select the 2nd option. Now this button gets "focus" by the system. And if the next menu in comms only has 1 option, this button gets destroyed. However, this button still has focus. Focus on itself does not do much, EXCEPT when you press a keyboard key, then this key is forwarded to the focused element first (for text fields). Which in this case, is an element that no longer exists, and thus crashes the game.

    So:
    * Start game
    * Enter relay station
    * Open comms to a station
    * Select the 2nd option (next menu will have 1 option due to no waypoints)
    * Press a keyboard key
    * Crash!

    Now, most likely there where a few other ways to cause this crash. But this is the easiest one.
    Fix is up: https://github.com/daid/EmptyEpsilon/commit/4120faf83167890981824b73b3d2d6a639b15e90
  • (And working on the GM screen right now)
  • Nice pick up! That's a sneaky one :smile:
  • Set a ship so that if a player hails it, it will open up the hail to the GM rather than the AI. Or possibly even a blanket statement.
    Ah, yes, the "intercept all/some comms to GM station". That will require a bit of work, but is most certainly possible. But first I have to rework the GM comms dialogs then, as you do want the option to open multiple of these then. And you also need a way to see which target you are talking to. (and in case of intercepted comms, which original target was set)

    I did rework on the "tweak" menu in the train this morning. Now it allows for more tweaks to ships (you can now change the stored missile amounts, as well as active shield and hull levels). I also combined the tweak and refit screens into one "tweak" option, with multiple pages.
  • daid said:


    Ah, yes, the "intercept all/some comms to GM station". That will require a bit of work, but is most certainly possible. But first I have to rework the GM comms dialogs then, as you do want the option to open multiple of these then. And you also need a way to see which target you are talking to. (and in case of intercepted comms, which original target was set)

    I did rework on the "tweak" menu in the train this morning. Now it allows for more tweaks to ships (you can now change the stored missile amounts, as well as active shield and hull levels). I also combined the tweak and refit screens into one "tweak" option, with multiple pages.

    More along the lines of we want the communications officer to specifically be able to open a direct communication window to the GM without the GM being the one to initiate these dialogues. As it stands in the current build, the GM can open a communication window with a ship that will appear to the player, but the player cannot do the same in return. This might be a bit of a fringe case that isn't used often, but it would be nice to have available for times when trying to communicate with a role played asset that isn't physically present in the game world, such as a "high command" or some such.

    In case its not obvious I was in Gamage's game and was one of the people putting forth input for his post. Also the one that sent you the RPT file for the comm's crash. Keep up the great work! I'm going to bed!
  • It may confuse the GM-less players.
  • Fouindor said:

    It may confuse the GM-less players.

    Which is why I most likely make it so the GM can flag ships/stations that it wants to intercept comms. And if you want to communicate to "high command", you just put a station somewhere called "high command".
  • So if I'm understanding correctly, you propose that if the GM tags an entity (e.g. "High Command" station) as a Comms Interceptor, that entity will have a button or something added to the Relay screen so they can hail that entity whenever? Or would they need to be in visual range?
  • edited April 2016
    image
    Work in progress on chat screens for the GM.

    I also made it possible to edit beam weapons trough the GM screen.
    HOU5E said:

    So if I'm understanding correctly, you propose that if the GM tags an entity (e.g. "High Command" station) as a Comms Interceptor, that entity will have a button or something added to the Relay screen so they can hail that entity whenever? Or would they need to be in visual range?

    No. What I envision, is when the GM screen tags an entity. It will look exactly the same for the player. But when they open comms with it, a dialog will pop up for the GM, and you are actually communicating with chat to the GM instead of with the station by normal means.
  • edited April 2016
    Nice to see the progress :)
    Downloaded the latest build, I still have the corrupted background graphics problem on Android (Archos Neon 101c with 4.4.2.). It shows the old EE icon. Everything else seems to work perfectly besides that
  • Hello,

    We tried the last build yesterday evening with some friends (2016.04.07). It was a lot of fun, as usual, but we observed two things (not espacially problems):

    1. The game was quite laggy sometimes. We don't know why. We tried to change the computers we used, we changed the host for the server. But we still got lags some times. Maybe it is due to the fact that we were using a wifi connection between the computers? Anyway, the lag sometimes was up tu 5 sec delay between the server and the others stations. Two of our games had to be stoped because it was unplayable.

    2. We tried the scenario Beacon of light and we observed that after rescuing the VIP, if you have nukes charged in the tubes, you can keep them after the script takes your nukes away. I guess it is due to the script that does not check the tubes. Maybe it could be change?

    For the rest, the game seems to go in a very promissing direction. We love what we played and will keep playing the next builds.

    We were also very pleased to see some changes that my friend Kliver pointed out several weeks ago! Especialy the ship log!

    Thanks a lot!
  • We played a session yesterday. Last one was quite a while ago, as people hadn't experience the new science minigame yet.

    It went pretty flawless, except that the game still can crash under certain conditions on keyboard input (happened when we wanted to quite anyhow), only happened on the server, as that was the only machine with a keyboard :) so somewhere there is still a crash related to that...

    New graphics looked awesome. But did notice I forgot to work on the damaged/nopower overlays. As those didn't contain any graphics at all and just showed up as purple blocks.

    Also added icons to the engineering system buttons after that game, as someone who was on engineering for the first time pointed out that that would have helped in understanding which room is what.

    And someone new pointed out "I was excited and on the tip of my toes at all times, even when I had totally nothing to do. It was great! Really exciting experience".
    Most likely especially because they just had an ambush in the previous part of the mission, while in the next part, no enemies where around. So they had to stay alert as they knew the mission could surprise them. But even when nothing happened, they where still on high alert and excited.
    (The "beacon of light" scenario ambushes you twice, and then suddenly when you would expect an ambush everything goes normally as "intended")


    And I just fixed the icon for Android. It was indeed still using the old graphics.
  • I just tested the 4-7 release and it crashed during a battle near a station. Both server and client stopped. Here is the RPT if you are interested. I was playing the start-up default scenario all on one computer. I had one instance of the server and one client handling all the other stations.
    ------------------- Error occured on Saturday, April 9, 2016 at 11:56:25. EmptyEpsilon.exe caused an Access Violation at location 0052C0D9 in module EmptyEpsilon.exe Reading from location 00000000. Loading symbols... done. Registers: eax=00000000 ebx=00000000 ecx=0623f7f0 edx=08330e90 esi=006621f0 edi=0ff1c4d0 eip=0052c0d9 esp=0623f790 ebp=0623f808 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr na po nc cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00210246 AddrPC Params 0052C0D9 0623F87C FFFFFFFE 006D1510 EmptyEpsilon.exe!orderDock [/home/daid/ee/EmptyEpsilon/src/spaceObjects/cpuShip.cpp @ 173] 0066237F 082BCF2C 0FE44C50 062DD6E0 EmptyEpsilon.exe!function [/home/daid/ee/SeriousProton/src/scriptInterfaceMagic.h @ 555] 00613CB2 10512520 0FE44C60 0FF1C480 EmptyEpsilon.exe!luaD_precall [/home/daid/ee/SeriousProton/src/lua/ldo.c @ 337] 0061FBF7 EB09907B 00000000 6E695F5F EmptyEpsilon.exe!luaV_objlen [/home/daid/ee/SeriousProton/src/lua/lvm.c @ 500] 07000004 00000000 6E695F5F 00786564 EB09907B 6E695F5F 00786564 4EFAF7C4 EmptyEpsilon.exe ntdll.dll 6.2.10586.122 KERNEL32.DLL 6.2.10586.0 KERNELBASE.dll 6.2.10586.162 apphelp.dll 6.2.10586.0 ADVAPI32.dll 6.2.10586.63 msvcrt.dll 7.0.10586.0 sechost.dll 6.2.10586.0 exchndl.dll 0.7.7.0 RPCRT4.dll 6.2.10586.0 sfml-audio-2.dll SspiCli.dll 6.2.10586.0 PSAPI.DLL 6.2.10586.0 CRYPTBASE.dll 6.2.10586.0 SHELL32.DLL 6.2.10586.122 bcryptPrimitives.dll 6.2.10586.0 sfml-graphics-2.dll USER32.dll 6.2.10586.20 cfgmgr32.dll 6.2.10586.0 GDI32.dll 6.2.10586.63 windows.storage.dll 6.2.10586.162 sfml-system-2.dll sfml-window-2.dll sfml-network-2.dll combase.dll 6.2.10586.103 mgwhelp.dll 0.7.7.0 shlwapi.dll 6.2.10586.0 libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll kernel.appcore.dll 6.2.10586.0 libstdc++-6.dll shcore.dll 6.2.10586.0 openal32.dll powrprof.dll 6.2.10586.0 profapi.dll 6.2.10586.0 WS2_32.dll 6.2.10586.0 IPHLPAPI.DLL 6.2.10586.0 OPENGL32.DLL 6.2.10586.0 ole32.dll 6.2.10586.162 WSOCK32.DLL 6.2.10586.0 WINMM.DLL 6.2.10586.0 dbghelp.dll 6.3.9600.17029 libwinpthread-1.dll 1.0.0.0 VERSION.dll 6.2.10586.0 GLU32.dll 6.2.10586.0 DDRAW.dll 6.2.10586.0 WINMMBASE.dll 6.2.10586.0 DCIMAN32.dll 6.2.10586.3 IMM32.DLL 6.2.10586.0 DINPUT.DLL 6.2.10586.0 HID.DLL 6.2.10586.0 SETUPAPI.DLL 6.2.10586.0 DEVOBJ.dll 6.2.10586.0 WINTRUST.dll 6.2.10586.0 MSASN1.dll 6.2.10586.0 CRYPT32.dll 6.2.10586.0 uxtheme.dll 6.2.10586.0 clbcatq.dll 2001.12.10941.16384 PROPSYS.dll 7.0.10586.0 OLEAUT32.dll 6.2.10586.0 dsound.dll 6.2.10586.0 MMDevApi.dll 6.2.10586.0 AUDIOSES.DLL 6.2.10586.71 wintypes.dll 6.2.10586.103 MSCTF.dll 6.2.10586.71 nvoglv32.DLL 10.18.13.5891 WTSAPI32.dll 6.2.10586.0 ntmarta.dll 6.2.10586.0 dwmapi.dll 6.2.10586.0 WINSTA.dll 6.2.10586.0 mswsock.dll 6.2.10586.0 NSI.dll 6.2.10586.0 dhcpcsvc6.DLL 6.2.10586.0 dhcpcsvc.DLL 6.2.10586.0 WININET.dll 11.0.10586.122 iertutil.dll 11.0.10586.122 ondemandconnroutehelper.dll 6.2.10586.0 winhttp.dll 6.2.10586.71 WINNSI.DLL 6.2.10586.0 DNSAPI.dll 6.2.10586.0 urlmon.dll 11.0.10586.122 rasadhlp.dll 6.2.10586.71 fwpuclnt.dll 6.2.10586.0 bcrypt.dll 6.2.10586.0 Windows 6.2.9200 DrMingw 0.7.7
  • Looks like some ship wanted to dock with a station that was destroyed, causing the crash...
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