Dune Legacy News

[TheGouldFish]

Definatly not a high priotity, was just thinking about it while drinking last night :)

when playing in 800x600, the distory button for the Devistator appiers bellow the slecction pane, and in the new section that I added to the UI Bar.

Also the new Icon is damn cool :)

[MuLLeT MaN]

I've posted a bug-fixed version now.

MuLLeT MaN: Are you sure the death hand will crash the game? I tried launching many missles off the map, and could not get it to crash. Perhaps one the other bugs occured at the same time?

It did one time in my game.

The missle inaccurately flew off the bottom of the map, and the game crashed me back to my desktop.

[MuLLeT MaN]

Hmm..Must of been one of those bugs in the patch that got fixed that caused the game to crash.

And that missle went off the map at the right time. :)

[nemafakei]

I know what my problem is, now: the dune.pak is wrong. Does anyone have a v1.00 dune.pak?

You asked about buttons?

Here is, based on the texures used in the original game (like the background gold in choam.cps), a background texture (tesel), and a darkened background texture for selected buttons, as well as some construction pieces, if you can get them to work. Hope this can be of some use.[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Gobalopper]

I've always used the one from Super Dune 2 as it it says the Dune 2 version I have is not correct.

[MuLLeT MaN]

Hi all. :)

TonyD, ye still hanging in there?

GouldFish, you got AIM? ICQ? MSN Messenger?

[TheGouldFish]

Just updated me profile, (By the way I have ICQ but I don't run it that often)

[TonyD]

Yep, im still here. I got double buffering working nicely now, so the map scrolls nice and smoothly much like dune2k does. I think I'll finish networking completely before the next release which is not too much work.

[stefanhendriks]

nice, the only drawback i found from smooth scrolling is that you have to do some extra calculations to determine the precise unit location and stuff. The demo release on the web has a bug in it, so for now i just made my smooth scrolling going 16 pixels a time :) No smooth scrolling anymore and perfect precision. Still have to squash the real bug :)

Do you use libnet Tony? I found this library so you can make your own networked games. It is quite interesting. Although it will be a lot of work to get the basics working (from that it will be more easy), i am still interested in getting it work.

[TonyD]

I use SDL's SDL_net library, its pretty good, I'm sure it will be quite similar to your libnet one.

You say you have to do some extra calculations for smooth scrolling? I too started with 16 pixel movement, but all I did to achieve smooth scrolling is offset the map drawing by between 0 and 15. There wasn't any need for anything more complicated then that. Good luck finding your bug :). I too have noticed a mystery bug occuring in my game unfortunately.

[stefanhendriks]

For scrolling i also have just one offset. The problem is not in 'finding' a unit location actually. There was more kind a bug of 'the right offset between mouse and scrolling'. Like, lets say you scrolled for 4 pixels, the mouse has a specific layout and the middle of that is the actual 'dot' (for moving). BUT when a normal mouse it is the upper-left. I don't want to code 100's of extra if statements, surely not when i am now going into the MOD style direction.

Thats the difficult part ;)

[TonyD]

Another version is uploading now with full networking done. Things will jump around a bit on client machines because there isn't perfect syncronisation going on. I'd like to get an idea of how the newer games keep things nicely syncronised. Anyway few other things fixed like map with less then six players required will now work... no-one noticed :'(. And a number of other things and bug fixes too.

Oh, the game will no longer bomb out to the desktop when it crashes, but will rather go back to the main menu of the game and write a small error report in the stderr.txt file. If anyone experiances a crash, it would be excellent to see what that file says.

[MuLLeT MaN]

GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;D ;D ;D ;D

[stefanhendriks]

i got a chance on testing this baby on the network.

Things i have found:

- still in resolutions > 640x480 the mouse 'flickers' (as does any other gfx) in the black box at the down-right of your screen. It needs to be cleared in some way , i get nuts by those 100 fps flickering :)

- networking, great, i can find the game, join it. Play it even , some suggestions though:

- there should be a check for the map , i had 2 different maps and it just played, but it gave tons of errors when trying to move units around on the client.

- You can hear a 'cannot buy' sound on the other computer when some one else cannot buy it. So the sound is not played at the right computer! :)

- The units do not move the same! Odd, when i move 7 units to a spot, the will group in a way. But on the other computer it groups different. I understand the path finding is done seperatly but it looks odd. I think you need to change the 'goal cell' so they appear right although their paths should still varey.

- on the client you could not get units from a frigate. The frigate does come, but just sits there and does nothing. Sometimes it does go away, but still, nothing you get (shame, bought a lot :))

The computer played well on the network, although only Player 1 (host) got attacked... i had a simple match as a client. A friend of mine, playing this game for the 1st time had a hard time! :D (he always is a host on networking games)

hopefully this is of some use ;) good work tony, its a good game so far! :D

[Cyborg]

- The units do not move the same! Odd, when i move 7 units to a spot, the will group in a way. But on the other computer it groups different. I understand the path finding is done seperatly but it looks odd. I think you need to change the 'goal cell' so they appear right although their paths should still varey.

How is the pathfinding done?

If you move a group of units and move them back at the exact spot they were placed in the beginning and then move them again, will they move exactly like they did the first time?

In networking, all objects must be on the same spot on all computers at all times.

It would be great if the pathfinding always chose the same route from one specific cell to another because then you could do with sending the waypoint cells through the network.

[stefanhendriks]

i assume that Tony only sends some info that some units are moving to a specific cell. The pathfinding is probably done on each computer seperately. This means that the units can behave differently and even end up at different cells as they are supposed to be.

I know sending a complete path will take more bandwidth and cause more lag. However, there still needs to be an explenation for this? Because i still think its strange how units pick another spot to move to. Probably by some randomness?

[Cyborg]

the randomness is what I'm talking about.

If there were no randomness in paths, the system of only sending the target cell would be great.

However, if units ended up using different routes to their target, then someone could end up crushing someones vehicles on the wrong side of a structure e.t.c

[stefanhendriks]

exactly, that happened to me. In fact, something weird (probably a lag issue) caused that at my screen (client) the base of my friend (host) has a harvester stuck between buildings. While at his screen that same harvester (he only had one) was happily harvesting around.

All in all, we where able to finish the game ;) Oh, with LOADS of lag at the final battle. My units just jumped suddendly to their spots, weird, but it worked... basicly ;)

i still think its a great job, i can imagine (after reading basic tutorials on networking) this is a very hard job to accomplish for an rts game. :)

[Cyborg]

i haven't played your game, but a good networking idea(if you have problems with synchronisation) is:

The host is doing all the calculations that each computer would've done randomly.

Random event's like where the death and will hit, is a good thing to calculate on the host and just send coordinate to each other pc.

A good idea would be to try to fix the pathfinding system for network play, or implement a synchronisation device that correct all item's positions with the host's item positions if they do not match.

[MuLLeT MaN]

Sent some more mail to your email-address, Tony! :)

[TonyD]

I think the easiest way to keep it syncronised is just to send the path when it is recalculated, so I'll probably just do this. I'll have to improve the efficiency of the networking first though because there will be a hell of a lot more net traffic.

I'll fix those bugs mentioned. ;) Thanx guys for playing it!.

[MuLLeT MaN]

Thanx guys for playing it!.

YE R WELCOMED!

Dune Legacy's going to be extremely popular! [Looks into the future and sees it coming!]

[XTF]

- The units do not move the same! Odd, when i move 7 units to a spot, the will group in a way. But on the other computer it groups different. I understand the path finding is done seperatly but it looks odd. I think you need to change the 'goal cell' so they appear right although their paths should still varey.

How is the pathfinding done?

If you move a group of units and move them back at the exact spot they were placed in the beginning and then move them again, will they move exactly like they did the first time?

In networking, all objects must be on the same spot on all computers at all times.

It would be great if the pathfinding always chose the same route from one specific cell to another because then you could do with sending the waypoint cells through the network.

Now this is one of the reasons to publish the source code before you're finished. If the code was available, we would be able to provide better help.

[TonyD]

Your right Olaf, Im getting tired of all the issues :(, I think its time to release the source! Besides I'm sick of the game right now, other people can take over or perhaps some of the code could go towards the freecraft dune2 project or something. Theres many more people involved in that anyway. So, I'll make my final decision, and probably release it on a sourceforge page within the next few days.

I'll be able to start on something new! :D

[stefanhendriks]

I can see why it is a reason for publishing source, but also why it is not. The exact same reason. Anyhow, the issue 'pathfinding' is not even the case here, both computers will exactly produce the same path if its not done randomized. The only thing that could be randomized is the eventual goal. If the host figures that the unit cannot move to the cell and 'change' the goal to create a group of units, then all it should do is send the new goal cell to the client before it even tries to create the path. (Sort of confirmation).

Anyhow, i am still anxious to see the code, and it will probably take some time to 'learn' how to read the game structure and code. Also, Tony is using the SDL library (which is in 'competition terms' the 'other side' of Allegro ;) if i have to believe the communities).