Ok, an alpha has been posted

[tcsoccerman]

ok..i pres play game and a white window pops up and then dissapears. do yoiu know why??

 

EDIT:basicallly whenever i open "TSmain.exe" it closes.

Edited August 24, 2007 by tcsoccerman

[L.C.]

Mill, you really need a seperate website and forums for Thirdspace. Bug reports might get messy.

 

First thing I noticed that would be real nice is if I could configure the keys myself. Kind of annoying having to use arrow keys + mouse.

 

Usually I used WASD and Arrow Keys for aircrafts (ie. Battlefield 2 aircrafts). The mouse isn't particularly my thing for flying aircraft. D:

 

Second: remove the maxplayers limit. You can do this in a few ways -- "Auto" (something you can check/uncheck, or is a button) the client would make a few calculations using a tested upstream speed and automatically set that as the maxplayers. If you try set maxplayers to 0, it would basically mean that there is no limit. Or you could set the maximum to 128 or 256 (read next paragraph).

 

In the future you should probably lift the arena size limit altogether (or increase it by 10 to 100+ times the current radius).

 

Graphics Settings:

Texture Quality: Low, Medium, High, Ultra High

Model Quality: Low, Medium, High

Antialiasing: (autodetect or..) 2x 4x 6x 8x 16x 32x

Anisotropic: (autodetect or..?)

Maximum Visibility: xx%

 

Something like that..maybe some more stuff (such as mouse, keyboard, joystick sensitivity). Music and SFX volumes. Maximum visibility would be an atmospheric fog (fades player ships out to the background/structures/etc - basically controlling the transparency of the ships until it his 100% transparency, which it then completely cuts out of the net and rendering process [z maximum]).

 

Tried this on a computer with 320MB RAM, 1.6GHz CPU, and I think a crappy Radeon 8500LE (not sure, might have been a card far worse than that). Pretty chuggy on 640x480. Though most modern cards (mid-ranged included) should be able to handle it. Tried it on my cousin's laptop (wasn't designed for gaming) and works perfectly on 1024x768.

 

Still yet to try it on my PC (1.5GB DDR400 PC3200 RAM w/ Dual Channel, 2GHz AMD Athlon XP [maxed out on SocketA clocking], nVidia Zogis 6800XT Overclocked [with huge 3-PCI heatsink + heatpipes]).

 

When you first launch the game, it would be nice if there would be a proper window around the menu (so that for example, I could move the window around on my desktop, rather than it being locked and occupying the center of my screen).

 

In my opinion you should just go ahead and use the menu animations for ships 1 through 8. For the wasp, it may require some "reverse engineering" ( ) to replicate the animations (or photoshopping). Just open some of the files that come with Subspace v1.34 in a resource editor to get the original animations -- but I think you've already got that part long long ago accomplished.

[Hakaku]

I just tried it, and I gotta say it's pretty cool.

It took me a bit to figure out that I had to use a new player name or else it wouldn't enter the game.

 

1 note: there's no thirdspace website for news

 

As for the game, It's really hard to shoot or anyone. I hate the fact that my controls are as follows:

-mouse (for movement)

-left click (shooting)

-^ arrow key (for advancing)

-!@#$%^&*+tab (special weapon)

 

In all, it's really hard to do all that when the keys are considerably far from each other. Perhaps add special weapon (e.g. thor) as the mouse's right click. And advancing as center click. - Or even better, allow users to set their own controls.

-Another way would also be to give control to the arrow keys instead of mouse.

And maybe a newbie option that "snaps to enemy", that is, the center locks on to a player, or atleast make it glow dark red when a player is straight ahead.

 

I haven't really tried anything else, but from the looks of it, it's really promising.

 

Edit: And I have no clue how multiplayer works. The main screen shows a few server IP adresses, but they don't actually connect to those servers. It sends me to the in-game menu, and tells me to push the multiplayer button and add the IP manually. Which is kind of a pain and doesn't work anyways.

-And I can't actually host my own game, just change the offline gameplay settings.

 

And default should be "Beginner", not "advanced".

"packing fudge" crashes game...

 

Edit2: I didn't realize right click was also 'advance'. But the recharge on that and the guns is really terrible, and bots>me.

Edited August 25, 2007 by Hakaku

[tcsoccerman]

Once again, i can't play!! Please suggest something ffs. I pres play and it goes black, then it goes to normalish screen, black, then back to what it was like when it started.

[Hakaku]

ok..i pres play game and a white window pops up and then dissapears. do yoiu know why??

 

EDIT:basicallly whenever i open "TSmain.exe" it closes.

Go back to the main screen and select options, then change the name from "Player" to something else

[tcsoccerman]

i have set it to "name:tcsoccerman".

[rootbear75]

i went to Practice Offline, and it crashed my computer... i cant afford to lose anything on this machine. this has all my schoolwork on it....

 

do i need to put it in compatability mode for XP?

Edited August 25, 2007 by rootbear75

[L.C.]

Once again, i can't play!! Please suggest something ffs. I pres play and it goes black, then it goes to normalish screen, black, then back to what it was like when it started.

Lower the resolution the game wants to play in or set one -- do this in Options.

 

Having two different menus/GUIs is confusing (the in-game one and the Windows GUI one).

 

No doubt you will, but it is kind of funny to play with the arrow keys and the mouse while the tab button fires thors and missles. Ironic, eh?

 

packing fudge

That stuff is awesome. For nearly 3 hours now I've been downloading TSinst.exe off of HLRSE (88% complete as I write).

 

I'm imagining the day where Thirdspace GUI will be nearly a perfect clone of the Subspace v1.34 (of course with some minor imperfections from the process of replication). The oldschool nostalgia feeling (and style ). Some parts of the work shouldn't be as hard, since you can just rip some of this data straight out of the *.dlls of v1.34 (such as the coordinates and sizes for textboxes, each window, options windows, etc).

 

Sorry, just a bit excited. :]

[L.C.]

You can play in other ships such as the Borg, U.S.S. Enterprise, F30X Class Fighter, Dummy Plane, Spectator, Voyager or the disabled Weasel. In order to do this you must go to your \Thirdspace\shipdata\ directory and edit your shiplist.txt file. Just replace any of the 8 ships displayed in shiplist.txt with anything in the following list (in the same given order):

borg.txt (Likely to crash client)
F304.txt (Incomplete model)
plane1.txt (Very easy to maneuver and control; thumbs up!)
spec.txt (Invisible, invincible, and can kill using bombs and missles; bots try to kill you anyway)
voyager.txt (Very big yet easy to control, poor camera positions and hard to move around small obsticals; strong on bullets I think)
weasel.txt (Easy to maneuver and combat in)

 

You can add custom resolution dimensions to Thirdspace by editting resolutions.txt and restarting Thirdspace. It should be very much self explanatory on how you would be editting this file. You should first realize how and where to change your resolution in Thirdspace before editting this file so that you have some awareness.

 

Controls (TSConfig.xml):

1 - Offensive Modes
2 - Defensive Modes
3 - Flight Modes
Tab - Bomb
~ - Toggle Scores
` - Toggle Scores
Left - Roll Left
Right - Roll Right
Up - Forward Thrust
Down - Reverse Thrust
T - Target Lock
V - Change Camera
Escape - Pause
R - Fire (Special)
Control (CTRL) - Fire

 

EDIT :: Crashed on weasel when I moved it (thrust).

EDIT2 :: Second time client didn't crash at all. Could use Weasel completely without a single problem. First time (above edit) was with bots, this time I did it without bots. Mind you that I'm running Windows XP with DirectX 10 installed (not Microsoft approved ).

EDIT3 :: Ya, I can confirm it. I confirm that somehow Bots + Weasel (atleast you using it) = Crash. Without bots the Weasel is perfectly fine.

Edited August 25, 2007 by L.C.

[Samapico]

As the doc says, weasel crashes the game unless you have DirectX 10... and only very recent video cards support that

[Hakaku]

The weasel's really flat. Anyhow, it crashes when you try to shoot (DirectX 10) or after a few seconds of gameplay

and lol @ plane1 (half model)

Edited August 25, 2007 by Hakaku

[L.C.]

As the doc says, weasel crashes the game unless you have DirectX 10... and only very recent video cards support that

I'm using Windows XP and an nVidia Zogis 6800XT (DX9c, Overclocked) with DirectX9.0c (December 2006) and DirectX10 installed ("unofficial" installation).

 

Works perfectly fine if you have bots turned off. Would recommend replacing nightwasp.txt with weasel.txt; the latter the ships (closer to Ship the less bots that will be up that range. Start Multiplayer with no bots and you shouldn't have a problem with the weasel. Turn bots on -- and if you move your ship (or a bot gets into that ship and moves) then your client crashes.

 

Shooting does not cause it to crash.

After a few seconds of gameplay is because a bot probably happened to jump into the weasel and start moving it.

 

I don't think it was meant to be DX10 only either, by the way. If you take the DirectX10 files and pop 'em into your C:\WINDOWS\system32\ folder, they seem to work backwards-compatible with Windows XP quite fine. (Many months ago there was an article on the frontpage of Slashdot regarding this.)

 

Mill, I hope that eventually you'll be restoring (or importing) a clone of the Continuum HUD. Trench Wars map is really messed up.

 

1680x1050 Widescreen

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0000.jpg

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0001.jpg

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0002.jpg

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0003.jpg

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0004.jpg

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0005.jpg

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0006.jpg

 

Made a 640x480 recording (SATA-I sucks; it is pretty much the same thing as a regular IDE). If I had a camera I would have produced a 1680x1050 recording @ 30 to 60 fps.

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/ts0000.wmv (NOTE: Don't even try to download this until 4 hours have past from the time of this edit)

Edited August 25, 2007 by L.C.

[Hakaku]

Well I realized it was the bots and not my own ship, but I was too lazy to edit Anyhow, Millenium man said the weasel was messed up before the release, so it's not of any surprise.

[MillenniumMan]

Wow, I forget a few things (like docs) and I become the villian of the hour

Yeah, the FE isn't 100% capable of editing the settings yet, just name and resolutions, working on the rest.

The Trench3D model seems to have gone a bit hinkey. I'm still certain that the model for the Weasel is the culprit of the crashes and not the code itself.

 

Packing fudge :ROTFLMAO: That comes from something my brother says when something goes seriously wrong *FU**ING FUDGE PACKER!* or similar derivatives, usually at a piece of equipment or one of the people who work under him at the machine shop where he's a supervisor.

 

In the 3D environment, using features of a 3D xradar was seen as the better choice, other games have done the same thing, but theirs just look like stupid circles with no depth. Not to mention when the !@#$%^&*pit interiors are finished, the layout will blend in well with them.

 

Dx10 is more of a reccomendation rather than a rule, you can easily get away with Dx8, but you may not like the result.

 

So much to touch on in only a couple hours, so I may have forgotten something. Ahh well.

[MillenniumMan]

Almost forgot, anyone hosting a server at the moment? If so, post the IP so it can be added to the server.txt lists of anyone who wants to play against humans.

 

Which reminds me, the 32 player server limit was set to avoid major lag. I was going to do it at 50, but that would be too much of a burden for most servers.

[tcsoccerman]

I have a 2002 windows xp, 320 mb ram, Intel 82810 Graphics Controller. and it isn't working. Edited August 25, 2007 by tcsoccerman

[»jabjabjab]

JUST REMOVE THE !@#$%^&* WEASAL -.-

[L.C.]

Which reminds me, the 32 player server limit was set to avoid major lag. I was going to do it at 50, but that would be too much of a burden for most servers.

Which also means the netcode needs optimization. O_o By the looks, I honestly don't think any lower than 56k to 112k is all it takes to play with a few people. You should check out the netcode (indirectly) for Half-Life, as it is very well made and is a good example of what 3D netcodes should be like in my opinion.

 

cl_upspeed

rate

cl_rate

fps_modem

sv_sendvelocity

sv_maxrate

sv_minrate

 

There's a few more commands but I'm too lazy to look them up. Compared to Half-Life2, Half-Life2's netcode to Half-Life is worse. Not as flexible when it comes to configuring it for dialup play.

 

Dx10 is more of a reccomendation rather than a rule, you can easily get away with Dx8, but you may not like the result.

I strongly disagree for the support of DX10. That's like trying to force everyone to upgrade to Vista (which we all know is a total piece of sh*t and has no or ultra terrible backwards-compatibility...and is an eye candy and memory-hogging operating system -- my cousin bought 2GB more RAM for his laptop, which already had 1GB, and that STILL isn't enough for his Vista).

 

DirectX7 is more than capable enough to handle all the graphics that are displayed in Thirdspace as we speak. Thirdspace won't get very far if it's overally "restricting" or "forcing" users to DirectX10 systems. If you plan on having DX10 support, I would strongly recommend that you atleast implement either DX7, DX8, or DX9 - or possibly all three stages. It wouldn't be a wise business move to make by not having proper support for the majority of players. However, DX9L is a work in progress I believe and is equivilant to DX10, but for Windows XP.

 

Intel 82810 Graphics Controller

Probably the number one reason why.

320 mb ram

I would recommend getting more RAM.

2002 windows xp

Windows XP.

 

 

I experimented with the Weasel for about 30 to 45 minutes; on my end I can confirm that the analysis I gave on the weasel (of when it does and does not work/produces a crash) is correct. Bots + Weasel = Insane Potential for crash; if no bots are in a weasel but you are, as soon as you start moving around the client crashes. You can shoot and do whatever you want as long as you don't move (and by not moving I'm only using CTRL, TAB, and the mouse itself [discluding right click/thrust]). Obviously bots can't sit still very easily, so as soon as one hops into a weasel the game will crash. If you turn off bots altogether than you can use the weasel to its full (100%) potentials.

 

EDIT :: Hosting zones, billers, bots, etc really shouldn't consume much bandwidth. C&C Renegade for example - its netcode is quite efficient for a 3D game (featuring helicopter-based aircrafts). I've seen 64 player servers with perfect latency. The only thing that held anyone (the server or player) was whether the player's computers could handle it or not. I personally prefer the idea of "as long as my/your computer can handle it" limits. Someone with a very high-end machine would be able to exceed the "limits" of the average gaming computer, why lock it out? Unlocked ftw. Shouldn't be limited to everyone, but as much as any person wants it (and to them, it's a situation where they figure the limits of their machine). C&C Renegade can handle up to 128 players; all that matters is whether players' computers can handle calculating that many players, whether the server can handle it, and whether they all have enough internet juice to handle it. THAT is a good limit.

 

PriitK could have made the netcode for Continuum to use a high amount of bandwidth per player, but he didn't. Continuum is very compatible with dialup. The more players that are within a dialup user's visibility, the higher the latency for the dialup player. For a game like Thirdspace, I see no reason to have some of the current limits. If some of the current limits are there only because of the netcode - then the netcode can be rated on a scale on 1 to 10 (10 being a very terrible netcode).

 

For some reason I'm having a massive amount of difficulty trying to say exactly what I'm trying to describe in a few words (ie. last night I couldn't remember the word replicate, but kept thinking recreate). A netcode should only be what needs to be/happen. Eh? Take Continuum's client-side and server-side netcode for example. All that has to be done is really to fight cheating, which shouldn't be a big deal after a presentable and ready-to-start-relaxing-more release.

 

EDIT2 :: I should (or must) mention that before I went to bed last night, I had found out that I didn't quite install DX10 - as I was missing a key file that would get DX10 working altogether. So anything that I've said before this time of edit was on DX9c (Dec 2006).

Edited August 25, 2007 by L.C.

[MillenniumMan]

I have a 2002 windows xp, 320 mb ram, Intel 82810 Graphics Controller. and it isn't working.

 

When you say not working....................?

 

I'm looking at the setup, the only iffy thing on there might be your gfx controller. The game is optimized for Nvidia chipsets but I... wait, thinking thinking... *click click click* my GF had this same problem when she was trying to run some game called sid meirs pirates or something that sounds like that. NEway, the HP crap that her mother bought her a few years back had an intel video chip set just like you're describing.

 

I bought her a PCI based NVidia card with 64mb of memory on it and it ran fine. Something having to do with the way that the game processes textures on top of polys that most games don't like. Is this an on-board chipset or a card?

[»jabjabjab]

Lol. If anything setup a Default server (For other zones to connect.) Maybe you know ask the continuum's reg servers. also you should add the editor as a (*EXTENSION*) dload to stick in the BETA as optional and run it by pressing a button on Edit up on the top toolbar or something

[MillenniumMan]

Actualy, I got some of those ideas from an old copy of Q2 and duke nukem 3d. In the end, I'm thinking the only ones that can keep up with older hardware are the ones who lower their resolution and fps. But you're right about the netcode, there's a lot of work needed in there. As you probably know, it took some doing to pull it from the old engine into the new one.

 

On Dx8, that was me being facisious... facisu... fascist...? anywho, I only had the chance to test on three systems, two of which were running DX10 and the last, a used laptop with DX8. The librarian told me no video games in the library unless it was a library sponsored student community game night, but that is neither here nor there, but a great way to plug subspace and thirdspace in the future... The laptop ran like crap (mostly because it had a 550mhz cpu, 128mb memory and a first generation "guessing" NVidia laptop chipset. Then the game crashed and spewed half a dozen errors, most of which had to do with DX.

 

When jumping into the Weasel myself, the game automaticaly crashed time and time again right after I lost my HD in the initial build stage. I was able to recover most of my work, even the models. But I'm afraid that when I lost my drive, I lost part of a working game. I'm more than certain it's the model and not my code.

 

On key setup, I'm going to work something out in the FE to make key mapping easier in the GUI

 

L.C., BTW thank you for hosting a copy of the game. That will help loads.

 

 

Which reminds me, the 32 player server limit was set to avoid major lag. I was going to do it at 50, but that would be too much of a burden for most servers.

Which also means the netcode needs optimization. O_o By the looks, I honestly don't think any lower than 56k to 112k is all it takes to play with a few people. You should check out the netcode (indirectly) for Half-Life, as it is very well made and is a good example of what 3D netcodes should be like in my opinion.

 

cl_upspeed

rate

cl_rate

fps_modem

sv_sendvelocity

sv_maxrate

sv_minrate

 

There's a few more commands but I'm too lazy to look them up. Compared to Half-Life2, Half-Life2's netcode to Half-Life is worse. Not as flexible when it comes to configuring it for dialup play.

 

Dx10 is more of a reccomendation rather than a rule, you can easily get away with Dx8, but you may not like the result.

I strongly disagree for the support of DX10. That's like trying to force everyone to upgrade to Vista (which we all know is a total piece of sh*t and has no or ultra terrible backwards-compatibility...and is an eye candy and memory-hogging operating system -- my cousin bought 2GB more RAM for his laptop, which already had 1GB, and that STILL isn't enough for his Vista).

 

DirectX7 is more than capable enough to handle all the graphics that are displayed in Thirdspace as we speak. Thirdspace won't get very far if it's overally "restricting" or "forcing" users to DirectX10 systems. If you plan on having DX10 support, I would strongly recommend that you atleast implement either DX7, DX8, or DX9 - or possibly all three stages. It wouldn't be a wise business move to make by not having proper support for the majority of players. However, DX9L is a work in progress I believe and is equivilant to DX10, but for Windows XP.

 

Intel 82810 Graphics Controller

Probably the number one reason why.

320 mb ram

I would recommend getting more RAM.

2002 windows xp

Windows XP.

 

 

I experimented with the Weasel for about 30 to 45 minutes; on my end I can confirm that the analysis I gave on the weasel (of when it does and does not work/produces a crash) is correct. Bots + Weasel = Insane Potential for crash; if no bots are in a weasel but you are, as soon as you start moving around the client crashes. You can shoot and do whatever you want as long as you don't move (and by not moving I'm only using CTRL, TAB, and the mouse itself [discluding right click/thrust]). Obviously bots can't sit still very easily, so as soon as one hops into a weasel the game will crash. If you turn off bots altogether than you can use the weasel to its full (100%) potentials.

Edited August 25, 2007 by MillenniumMan

[»jabjabjab]

I'm still waiting on the new editor to work on maps.... MM.

[MillenniumMan]

I'm still waiting on the new editor to work on maps.... MM.

 

 

It's MilkShape. I can only do so much at one time Jab.

[»jabjabjab]

lol. I can do that then just got to figure out how to put actual textures... on a object lol.

[tcsoccerman]

ok. so the gfx card is the problem. it's the default one, we've never switched. anyway can you optimize the game so i can play it? plzZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz plz plz plz plz. i really wanna play. Edited August 25, 2007 by tcsoccerman