MPR++ v0.2.6c open for alpha testing

[Kakaru]

I'd be interested in testing it as well

[Flocke]

welcome to afc, sent you a pm with the links

[adi]

I have been playing for a few hours on win8; the 1024 version one over UDM3.0.1dc with my ship list; I mapped the hob names in shiplist to the models available in hobmapping file as targets so that worked fine also.
A few crashes here and there in battles but did not found a pattern yet.
Ships look awesome and i did not notice any slowdown as more ships came to the battle; so that is ok now.
A few things:
1. At the begining of the battle sometimes (maybe 1 in 3 times) some enemy ships occupy the same place as my ships. Battle does on ok except for the ships not being able to fire so close in the first round.

2. Some modes are out of scale; the Klingon bird of pray(B'rel) is 3 times the size of the cruiser (K'tinga); unless it is intentional because that model is K'vort in other moods. Also the outpost are ship size; they should be bigger;
3. A nebula in the battle screen here and there is fine, but in every battle, you get tired of them; and they are in the way of seeing the ships ok. Also there are to many stars in the sky in the battle screen for my taste; the small colorful dots. It looks too much like a X-mas tree.
4. At the beginning of the battle (before pressing turn the first time) sometimes the camera stops at an angle where you can not see the enemy ships; u need to use the arrows to get into position.
5. The autosave feature is awesome; having the last 5 turns there is amazing.
6. When you go full screen, on my wide monitor is looks awkward with the stretching; Can it be made to keep the ratio and have black strips on the sides? Short of that i just change the resolution on my screen to 1024x768 that accomplishes what I want.

[thunderchero]

At the begining of the battle sometimes (maybe 1 in 3 times) some enemy ships occupy the same place as my ships.

I added the code for ship separation during install of MPR++ (demo UDM only) after release I noticed this bug too this happen with cloaked ships. I am still not sure how to fix it, but this is not MPR++ related, With same code it happens in non mpr++ too.

Some modes are out of scale

This must be due to the changes you have made as you see below what the models would have been sized to if you made no changes

brel sizeX="178.9" sizeY="110.2" sizeZ="181.5
Ktinga sizeX="247.1" sizeY="97.9" sizeZ="349.5
kvort sizeX="780.6" sizeY="124.2" sizeZ="578.2

thunderchero

[Flocke]

thanks for the feedback adi, I appreciate it

to your listing:

1. as tc already noted, he's the one to blame for, that has nothing to do with mpr++
2. mpr++ allows to scale each ship model in the mpr++\packages\Demo_ship_pack\package.xml file, however for the phasers and ship selection botf still uses old hob so they need to be aligned
   furthermore however mpr++ also applies the scale used by botf to render the hobs, so if you copied one hob that might mess scale tc used for the ships
3. that was my first skybox I ever did, and only ever meant for testing and experimentation with different gimp render filters
   I'm waiting for a better one!
   in the next mpr++ version it's planned to select skyboxes sector dependent, however it would first require an artist to do some
4. these camera issues are not mpr++ related, but it bugs me too
   sadly it requires quite some work before I can attempt to fix that with mpr++ too, I have no control on camera placement yet
5. love it too, specially the autosave history you might not have found yet
6. in mpr++\mpr++.ini below [gsmain] enable the FIXEDASPECT flag, refer the INI-Manual for more info

as for the crashes, that might not be mpr++ related either, but please check Crash.log, and whether mpr++\ogre.log states an exception/error in it's bottom line only when it happens again
further, if you find it, check the windows event log in windows system control -> management -> event log for details on the crash
there are alot of bugs with botf that for now I can't fix with mpr++, but I hope the game doesn't run less stable than before

cheers

[adi]

brel sizeX="178.9" sizeY="110.2" sizeZ="181.5
Ktinga sizeX="247.1" sizeY="97.9" sizeZ="349.5
kvort sizeX="780.6" sizeY="124.2" sizeZ="578.2

thunderchero

Yes, this is what i meant; the brel was showing smaller; but the kvort was much larger than the ktinga; in UDM kvort is the first tier destroyer and it used to be smaller than the cruiser. But it is now larger.
I'll try using the scaling in the package file Flocke mentioned; let's see how i can manage using it.

[ruthlessferengi]

Mind blowing graphics... Appears to be reasonably stable in mp and rock solid in sp.... So far so good

[SAmatthews]

Ive just recently re-installed BOTF. Saw this mod and was amazed at the level of detail in these new models and would very much be interested in testing it out please

[Flocke]

sure and welcome to afc

[Tuvix]

MPR++ is great. My BOTF is more stable than it has ever been. I would like to be added to the alpha to test it out.

[thunderchero]

Hi Tuvix,

I sent a PM with links

thunderchero

[Kakaru]

Last week I tried BOTF for the first time in years. Win 8 x64 now. Vanilla worked slow, and about turn 100 became really unplayable. You couldn't scroll the map.
Then I found this and I tried your mpr++. Amazing work you've done, everything is super fast. Like hardware acceleration versus software.

Game is pretty stable, some rare crashes. I tried an impossible slow game, and only about now, around turn 320, 1/4 galaxy colonized and no major war yet is the game becoming a bit slower and random crashes start appearing a lot more.

Once again, great work and thank you for reminding me how great BOTF is.

I also don't think this is alpha version. It's clearly way more stable than that. beta or even a RC status is appropriate.

PS. I hope in weekend to get some free time to search a bit for the 1024 version you mentioned in PM. I had the original CD and nothing more, so I assume i must play the 800 version. If you have a link to for instructions where to download/how to install I'd appreciate if you posted.

[Flocke]

Once again, great work and thank you for reminding me how great BOTF is.

am happy to hear so, thx

I also don't think this is alpha version. It's clearly way more stable than that. beta or even a RC status is appropriate.

I spent alot effort to keep it stable. Of course this doesn't prevent from other botf crashes that aren't related to the graphics engine, and mpr++ has a few quirks left too.
Beta however is a term used for feature complete demos, and mpr++ is far from feature complete.

PS. I hope in weekend to get some free time to search a bit for the 1024 version you mentioned in PM. I had the original CD and nothing more, so I assume i must play the 800 version. If you have a link to for instructions where to download/how to install I'd appreciate if you posted.

No need to search, all needed is included with the 1024 mpr++ installer in pm.

[thunderchero]

I had the original CD and nothing more

you should also download and install the main multi installer (full game) from download section. this might help to prevent some of your random crashes.

thunderchero

[adi]

i have a UDM version without MPR++ and a version with MPR++ on the same computer; i wanted to keep my original one, so i just installed UDM again in a different path and instaled the 1024 MPR++ on that one.
however, now the original version, the one without MPR++ still references files from the new installed path (like saved games, stbof.res maybe others). How can I disconnect it from the latest installation path and make it point to the files in it's own directory?

Maybe unrelated; I got a crash in the non MPR++ version a few times i never got before; was playing feds attacking Cardassia; they had some ships there and a star base. Through first round of battle the starbase moves to a different position, phasers and torpedoes still fire from where it was. After the first round when hovering over the starbase in order to target it, the game exits immediately to desktop. Anyone encountered this before? Checked the starbase, no speed on it. I let them alone for a while, i will try attacking there again to see if crashes the same way. If it does i'll search for those crash logs you guys mentioned and post them.