Fleet Operations Light

posted on February 7th, 2011, 8:54 pm

some laptops are built to be expandable, some arent built to be exapandable, but with time, knowledge and effort can be expanded anyway, but sadly 90% cant be expanded at all

i wouldnt bother buying an AGP card for my old machine, since the processor is an old budget celeron and the chipset is crappy and has a low ram limit, i think of 2GB. it was a budget pc lol.

it had an interesting graphics bug, when running halo combat evolved master chief's armour is white. when i run it on my laptop he is green as he should be lol.

i really wish i could play halo 2 on my laptop, but it fails the WEI test lol. halo 3 didnt even have a pc release, which is pants. maybe they were annoyed people pirated halo 1 and 2 lol

[Anonymous]

posted on February 7th, 2011, 10:03 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 7th, 2011, 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

  When I read you guys arguing about the polys and whatnot, I was screaming *its the mesh-groups you dummies!*

so yeah, the polys aren't so much an issue, and the textures aren't either.  The more mesh-groups you have, the more the game seems to get hung-up.  This is evident in the explosions and especially emitter sprites which are in effect, multiple mesh-groups.  Weapon effects cause lag too.  Basically, anything having to do with sprite references slow the game.  Ships themselves do not cause lag, but the glows might, terrain objects slow the game significantly, and weapon effects do. (but specifically emitters and explosions)

If you want to reduce lag, I would suggest that you reduce explosions, weapon effects and map objects.  In which case, you end up with a really bland game.


Or, you could just reduce your resolution and/or live with a little lag.    

posted on February 7th, 2011, 10:51 pm

it had an interesting graphics bug, when running halo combat evolved master chief's armour is white. when i run it on my laptop he is green as he should be lol.

i really wish i could play halo 2 on my laptop, but it fails the WEI test lol. halo 3 didnt even have a pc release, which is pants. maybe they were annoyed people pirated halo 1 and 2 lol

Wow that's weird. Yeah, Halo 2 was Vista only, although there was an XP hack of sorts. That aside, I've played Halo 2 on a machine that's probably worse off than yours: 1 GB RAM, 2 GHz Pentium 4 (non-Hyperthreaded), 512 MB nVidia 6200 (I think). I had to turn everything down to low, but it was decently playable except that any fog or mist was all pixelated and "solid" (rather than translucent) and made it very hard to see on some levels. But it was playable; and I completely ignored the WEI rating; it's more of a suggestion anyway.

I do hope/wish that they would release the later games for PC also, I've never done any console gaming, and don't quite see the benefit over a PC. Unfortunately everyone seems more interested in making games for consoles  . And even those that are also done for PC are console ports and never quite work as well as native PC games. Star Wars: Force Unleashed (1) is case in point; good game, but the PC port is horrible, it's like molasses in January. In fact it's not even as though the game is "slow", but the input and graphics are extremely sluggish. So the game logic is running at full speed, but the visuals and input are only running at half speed. I'm actually stuck at one point because of this and probably won't be able to finish.

In which case, you end up with a really bland game.

That's the point. Sacrifice the flair for playability. Although removing stuff like ranks and modules kind of strips out the game play bits that make FO worth it.

  When I read you guys arguing about the polys and whatnot, I was screaming *its the mesh-groups you dummies!*

so yeah, the polys aren't so much an issue, and the textures aren't either.  The more mesh-groups you have, the more the game seems to get hung-up.  This is evident in the explosions and especially emitter sprites which are in effect, multiple mesh-groups.  Weapon effects cause lag too.  Basically, anything having to do with sprite references slow the game.  Ships themselves do not cause lag, but the glows might, terrain objects slow the game significantly, and weapon effects do. (but specifically emitters and explosions)

That may be true in part, but for those without dedicated graphics, reducing textures and polys will reduce the load on the CPU and RAM, which will help older rigs.

posted on February 7th, 2011, 10:58 pm

I believe that optec meant that the updated FO engine handles alot of that for you.  I'm pretty sure the reason people's computers lagged with higher poly ships in the past was not because their computers couldn't handle them, but the game engine couldn't.  At the moment, the things i mentioned are what the game engine has problems with.  That is why even those with higher end machines still get a little lag at times.  I never even realized how much lag I have until  I went back and played stock.  There is no reason at all for my computer to not be able to handle the kind of graphics there are in FO.  It is the game engine, not the computer.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 3:17 am

True, although the two are connected.The original engine was written with older hardware in mind and so has some self imposed limitations, the 2GB RAM limit, original poly count limitations, etc, if only because the designers didn't foresee their game lasting this long. It makes sense that the engine would take on more graphics processing, since GPUs weren't all that powerful in 2000.

To be honest, I haven't really noticed very much lag on my rig, except for when it loads files for the first time. But otherwise, even explosions in large numbers don't give me any trouble. Granted, I have a fairly powerful rig, even for a laptop.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 1:59 pm

Wow that's weird. Yeah, Halo 2 was Vista only, although there was an XP hack of sorts. That aside, I've played Halo 2 on a machine that's probably worse off than yours: 1 GB RAM, 2 GHz Pentium 4 (non-Hyperthreaded), 512 MB nVidia 6200 (I think). I had to turn everything down to low, but it was decently playable except that any fog or mist was all pixelated and "solid" (rather than translucent) and made it very hard to see on some levels. But it was playable; and I completely ignored the WEI rating; it's more of a suggestion anyway.

I have tried it on vista and 7 on the same laptop and both times it refused to start cos of wei lol.

Maybe cos the low end machine u described had a dedicated graphics card with ok vram, my laptop has 224mb of system ram used as vram lol.

And even those that are also done for PC are console ports and never quite work as well as native PC games.

Legacy got that treatment too, people said legacy was tolerable on 360, the pc manual mentioned xbox buttons lol. Controls werent custom mappable, despite the fact that many console titles have had this for years.

I think legacy was a failure full stop, for so many reasons.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 2:15 pm

I have tried it on vista and 7 on the same laptop and both times it refused to start cos of wei lol.

Maybe cos the low end machine u described had a dedicated graphics card with ok vram, my laptop has 224mb of system ram used as vram lol.

Legacy got that treatment too, people said legacy was tolerable on 360, the pc manual mentioned xbox buttons lol. Controls werent custom mappable, despite the fact that many console titles have had this for years.

I think legacy was a failure full stop, for so many reasons.

Yeah, i have to agree about legacy.  It was almost as bad as Dominion Wars.  The only redeeming factor of legacy is that it is moddable, so I can at least get rid of some of the things I dislike and Add ships I do like.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 4:12 pm

yeah, but legacy modding is kinda shoddy. Single ship stuff. You do the same for a2 with your eyes closed

The best mod for legacy is probably ultimate universe, which leaves mp broken for most OSs and feels like it was a bunch of single ship mods shoehorned together with a terribly scripted workaround. The game still crashes randomly and is heaps performance sucking nebulae on most maps. Its not all UUs fault, it doesnt have anything to work with, the blame is with bethesda for making a failure that is irredeemable

Compare it with mods of fleetops quality and disappointment is the only result.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 4:53 pm

Remember though that FO actually goes so far as to hook into the engine and inject new code. That kind of work takes a lot of programming skill and time and effort; unless you have all three of those there's no point in trying to modify the engine. I don't know if UU does anything similar, though it probably doesn't. Honestly, the Legacy engine is probably just too scrambled and poorly coded to do anything much with it. My understanding is that it's just a modified A2 engine. That's entirely Bethesda's fault for using an engine that was probably too old for what they were trying to do. They probably also didn't put enough people - or enough with skill - on the project and ended up with far more than they could manage on the time table they had.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 7:04 pm

Well imo its foolish to take an RTS engine and thy to make a sim out of it. Maybe im wrong but it just doesnt sound like a good idea i guess we will all have to wait a few years for excaibur.

posted on February 8th, 2011, 8:01 pm

yeah, but legacy modding is kinda shoddy. Single ship stuff. You do the same for a2 with your eyes closed

The best mod for legacy is probably ultimate universe, which leaves mp broken for most OSs and feels like it was a bunch of single ship mods shoehorned together with a terribly scripted workaround. The game still crashes randomly and is heaps performance sucking nebulae on most maps. Its not all UUs fault, it doesnt have anything to work with, the blame is with bethesda for making a failure that is irredeemable

Compare it with mods of fleetops quality and disappointment is the only result.

I prefer aftermath, but thats just my opinion.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 2:18 am

Back to the topic.

For the Federation, how should I handle the warp-ins because of the rank-removal?  Should I take out the warp-in slots all together, or make some of the warp-in ships buildable at the shipyards?  A ship that is warped-in will never get off of the warp-in slots.  Well, if someone runs out of warp-in slots, they can always build a Nova.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 5:29 pm

I'd go with the 'buy Warp-In slots' effect building the Nova gives.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 1:21 am

Okay.  What about alternate technology trees?

Techtree 1:  Standard Tech (cannot build warp-in vessels but can buy extra slots using the Nova)
Techtree 2:  Buildable Warp-Ins (can build warp-in vessels but cannot buy extra slots using the Nova)
Techtree 3:  Super Warp-Ins (can build warp-in vessels and can buy extra slots using the Nova)
Techtree 4:  Free Tech (same as Super Warp-Ins, but everyone is instantly at the top of the techtree)

Techtrees 1 and 4 are already in stock.  2 and 3 would give the host extra options on warp-in rules.

Because of the Borg's excessive use in textures, I'm going to remove them for the initial release until some lower-detailed models can be built.  The interface will still be there, they just won't be playable anymore.

I've almost completed removing the ranked vessels weapon files.  Then I will merge the special weapons and abilities of the ranked vessels with that of the non-ranked vessels.  Oh, and I'm going to make the small blocking trigger have a visual on the map editor like the large blocking trigger does.

posted on February 12th, 2011, 10:50 pm

Okay, I've completed the Dominion A-20.  1 ship down, several dozen to go.

I'll be making further updates on this mod here instead of on this forum.