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Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:06 am
by machf
No, nothing at all, for both questions.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:24 am
by Lee Arbuco
Lee Arbuco wrote:
Quick question, are the disabled dinosaur activites re-enabled again?
No. If I can get some more specific information on what those are then maybe it can be addressed.
I forgot to ask an important question. Are these activities that are already enabled/available through ATX or some other patch, so they're required by some user levels? If not, then it has a very low priority.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 11:54 am
by hppav
Draconisaurus wrote: Hmmm how is anti-aliasing turned on? I couldn't find it...
In the trespasser.ini that's in the exe location, you need to remove the ";" before the graphics update values, they are commented out by default. For my screenshots I just activated the ones there, I haven't looked to see if there were other lines that could be added (too distracted by how well it looks already :o ).

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:48 pm
by tatu
Lee Arbuco wrote:
Lee Arbuco wrote:
Quick question, are the disabled dinosaur activites re-enabled again?
No. If I can get some more specific information on what those are then maybe it can be addressed.
I forgot to ask an important question. Are these activities that are already enabled/available through ATX or some other patch, so they're required by some user levels? If not, then it has a very low priority.
I think they are behaviours in the source which the cut out in the final. They are probably just commended out and should be really easy to active again. (Important to make the dinosaurs behave more realistic).

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 8:02 pm
by Mickey
tatu wrote:
I think they are behaviours in the source which the cut out in the final. They are probably just commended out and should be really easy to active again. (Important to make the dinosaurs behave more realistic).
Most of them are present in the Official "editor" GuiApp if I'm not wrong.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 8:20 pm
by machf
tatu wrote:
Lee Arbuco wrote: I forgot to ask an important question. Are these activities that are already enabled/available through ATX or some other patch, so they're required by some user levels? If not, then it has a very low priority.
I think they are behaviours in the source which the cut out in the final. They are probably just commended out and should be really easy to active again. (Important to make the dinosaurs behave more realistic).
Indeed, all you need is to un-comment them. They were left out at the last minute as were several other things in Trespasser. I sent you (Lee) a PM listing them...
Mickey wrote: Most of them are present in the Official "editor" GuiApp if I'm not wrong.
Yep, that's where I first got a clue from, then later I looked for them in the source (when we got access to it). In my Pens level I tried re-enabling some of them just to see if they were still in the executable... they weren't, but fortunately they're still in the code.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 1:40 am
by Lee Arbuco
Things are usually left out for a reason. It's not some developer sitting there like Mr. Burns, rubbing hands and sadistically thinking "What can I remove to make the game experience worse for everyone? mwahaha". Enabling something that was left out has to be done with care and thorough testing, in order to not introduce new problems. So I hope you understand that it has very low priority at the moment.

I'm currently only looking at reported problems and missing functionality that has been readily available through the game exe, that user levels rely on. Things, within reason, that are required to be able to play as many user made levels as possible.

After that is done I would be more open to digging out fossils from the code.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 5:46 am
by tatu
Those have already been enable one time when the source was leaked, without problems, however, it was never released for some the public for some reason, so they do work.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:12 am
by machf
tatu wrote:Those have already been enable one time when the source was leaked, without problems, however, it was never released for some the public for some reason, so they do work.
Incompatibility with ATX, most likely. And the fact that the source corresponded to the unpatched retail (116) rather than the newer versions (117). Maybe it could be uploaded to have some fun (no guarantees)... if whoever compiled it back then agrees.
Lee Arbuco wrote:Things are usually left out for a reason. It's not some developer sitting there like Mr. Burns, rubbing hands and sadistically thinking "What can I remove to make the game experience worse for everyone? mwahaha".
It's more like "What can I remove to make the game experience affordable with the hardware available in 1998?". Most of what was disabled/removed/chopped down was because computers back then weren't able to perform it at a reasonable rate... and a few bits more because they didn't have time to finish them anymore.

In the particular case of dinosaur activities, they disabled some of them and set the rest to the max in the dinosaur scripts because they couldn't balance them adequately, and were likely running out of time... which dumbed down dinosaur AI *a lot*.
ATX tried to creatively emulate some of those behaviors, like jumping, by adding new ActionTypes.
I don't remember whether the Beta had some of them still enabled or not.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:34 am
by Hilwo
Wow, this looks very interesting - great work! 8)
machf wrote:ATX tried to creatively emulate some of those behaviors, like jumping, by adding new ActionTypes.
I don't remember whether the Beta had some of them still enabled or not.
I specifically remember some of the Raptors in Burroughs not instantly attacking but just approaching and sniffing you. Not sure if that's what you mean, though?

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 11:33 am
by Lee Arbuco
Yes, it could've been for performance reasons too. But the fact remains that there currently is not enough knowledge to know for a fact what the repercussions are, because it has not been tested enough (only in a private build). It can very well also have balancing issues, bugs etc.. Again, I can fully understand the desire to enable things, I have that too, but the first priority is to make current things work as they should. Then new things can be added/enabled.

And on that subject, Slugger's DX9 crash should be fixed now and there's a chance that it also caused the loading screen hanging for you machf, but I'm going to look a bit more at that before I make an EXE available that you both can test.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:06 am
by machf
Hilwo wrote: I specifically remember some of the Raptors in Burroughs not instantly attacking but just approaching and sniffing you. Not sure if that's what you mean, though?
Maybe. Anything different from the behavior in the retail could be...
Lee Arbuco wrote:Yes, it could've been for performance reasons too.
Oh, there's an interview with the developers where they mention the reasons for that, specifically. If you have ever read Isaac Asimov's short story "Runaround", it can give you an idea of what they described: dinosaurs would basically run in circles because the "weights" for different activities kept them switching back and forth between states. So they disabled several of the activities, and in most dinosaurs just scripted the "weights" to the max so that they would be hungry and/or angry and immediately react upon those emotions (and others had "fear" set to the max so that they would get scared and run away at the first sign of danger). Good scripting (by level designers) can take care of that, at least IMO.
But the fact remains that there currently is not enough knowledge to know for a fact what the repercussions are, because it has not been tested enough (only in a private build). It can very well also have balancing issues, bugs etc.. Again, I can fully understand the desire to enable things, I have that too, but the first priority is to make current things work as they should. Then new things can be added/enabled.

And on that subject, Slugger's DX9 crash should be fixed now and there's a chance that it also caused the loading screen hanging for you machf, but I'm going to look a bit more at that before I make an EXE available that you both can test.
Great, let us know how it's going. I haven't had time to test it on a different computer yet, BTW, as my PC died a few weeks ago and I'm still attempting to revive it (I thought it was working again, but it died again and this time the OS files in the HDD were damaged, I got another motherboard but I'll install it tomorrow in the morning, now it's already too late to be working on that), and on the other laptop I don't have Trespasser installed, only the demo IIRC...

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:16 am
by Lee Arbuco
I've attached the updated test exe. If you (machf) and Slugger could give it a shot and let me know if it fixed the problems, that would be great. Slugger's crash should be fixed, I'm not sure if that also caused it hanging on the loading screen or not.

For anyone else I'd suggest waiting. I'll update the real downloads with a new build once I know that the fix worked.

It's in 7zip format (because that was the only format that made it under the 800 KB attachment limit). Let me know if you can't extract that format and I'll have to solve it in some other way.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:52 am
by Slugger
Lee,

Thanks for the fix. I will check it out tonight.

Additionally, when the source code was first available I went digging through the code an reactivated most of the deactivated piece (i.e. those that were simply commented out). I believe my EXE's are the ones tatu is referring too, in that they were never release "publicly" like you've one in this thread. I know machf has sent you a list of addresses but you're also welcome to my notes to see what I re-enabled. Everything, for the most part, ran like a charm, an it was as machf state: the devs got desperate and crunched for time so a lot of stuff was simply cut out to try to ship a playable game, not that it was necessarily broken in some way.

Re: A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 1:03 am
by machf
Slugger wrote: Additionally, when the source code was first available I went digging through the code an reactivated most of the deactivated piece (i.e. those that were simply commented out). I believe my EXE's are the ones tatu is referring too, in that they were never release "publicly" like you've one in this thread.
Hey, Slugger, what do you say if we upload your test build for people to see what it looked like? It's also the one I was referring to...
Lee Arbuco wrote:I've attached the updated test exe. If you (machf) and Slugger could give it a shot and let me know if it fixed the problems, that would be great. Slugger's crash should be fixed, I'm not sure if that also caused it hanging on the loading screen or not.
Thanks, I'll take a look at it in a little while... (going to do the dishes right now)

EDIT: nope, still the same for me...