A new Trespasser patch/update (Trespasser CE)

[Draconisaurus]

And as long as you're not running Trespasser on an old shoe, most of these functions should work fine.

...
Maybe SOME of us DO run Trespasser on an old shoe!!!!!! ~!!

[TheIdiot]

Hmmm... I think the enhanced spitter requires ATX because it uses a new ActionType which I don't think has been implemented in CE.

I can confirm that. The spitter doesn't work in CE yet, but it doesn't ruin the level or anything. The spitter just won't open its frill or spit.

ok thanks for some much needed info.....well i just wanted all the best improvements i could get that are available, it seems like this game probably has a lot to gain from the community. Based on what I've gathered, buggy and broken somewhat but way ahead of its time and interesting.

Pretty much. Though there's nothing game breaking I've ever found, there are plenty or strange glitches. If you want something REALLY bad, try out "Big Rigs Over the Road Racing" or "Ride to Hell: Retribution".

And as long as you're not running Trespasser on an old shoe, most of these functions should work fine.

...
Maybe SOME of us DO run Trespasser on an old shoe!!!!!! ~!!

Well crap. Can't help you there then. You could at least upgrade to like a boot or something!

[Draconisaurus]

And as long as you're not running Trespasser on an old shoe, most of these functions should work fine.

...
Maybe SOME of us DO run Trespasser on an old shoe!!!!!! ~!!

Well crap. Can't help you there then. You could at least upgrade to like a boot or something!

Haha, well perhaps a moccasin...

[Radeux]

My Voodoo 5 doesn't deserve to be shelved and I can't imagine playing an Aureal compatible game with out running a Vortex. If I use this patch will GLIDE and A3D still function properly?

[mleise]

Glide was never supported by Trespasser. If you used hardware acceleration you were running the game in Direct3D mode. This patch replaces the original Direct3D interface with Direct3D 9, but the Voodoo 5 only supports Direct3D 7. Please shelve your last of the Mohicans, keep it in good memory and move on. I did own an Aureal Vortex 2, remembering how realistically sounds echoed off walls in Half-Life and how DOS games' MIDI music sounded with the wave-table upload. Or the Radeon 8500 which was the only chip with HW tessellation years before geometry shaders or HD models.

[Radeux]

So I went ahead and updated but what is the newest version of the CE and what .ini settings will get me full on maximum render distance and quality?

[tatu]

So I went ahead and updated but what is the newest version of the CE and what .ini settings will get me full on maximum render distance and quality?

There should be a .ini file in one of the folders of CE named something like dx9-high.ini or something. Rename that to trespasser.ini and place in your Trespasser folder and it should use working settings that have been tested.

[Slugger]

Has anyone heard anything from Lee recently?

[TheIdiot]

Has anyone heard anything from Lee recently?

Last I heard from him was a PM back in October, I think, but just regarding something I'd sent a while before that...so not really.

[Slugger]

Too bad. It's a shame he didn't share his source, so someone could continue to improve and build upon his work... :/

[tatu]

According to his profile, his last visit was 1 year ago, march 11, 2015.

[mleise]

Where did he come from, where did he go? His name is only associated to this forum if you ask major search engines. No other traces in astronomy or programming forums. He just suddenly pops up to present a DirectX 9 patch to Trespasser and does not share the source code?

Two things are remarkable. First, he does not seem to be the typical enthusiast who looks for some computer game history and joins TresCom to talk about it, then makes changes to the source code and publishes them in true hacker manner. His affiliation with Trespasser seems to come from another origin. Second, he put over-proportional effort into rendering astronomical star databases but didn't talk about this much, giving me the impression that he is either into astronomy or used Trespasser to try something out that he needed done anyways.

1. Who would be hesitant to share DreamWorks/EA copyrighted material ?
Someone with good standing in the industry. Adding refractions and shader based bump-mapping on top of the existing "curved bump-maps" was not an easy job.

2. Who would put effort into rendering scientific star databases ?
It could be anyone from a hobby astronomer to a student of astrophysics.

3. Who would be knowledgeable about Trespasser's Direct3D code ?
Someone who put a lot of spare time into understanding how it works or possibly even one of Trespasser's core developers.


So I took a look around in the leaked source files asking who did the bulk work on the D3D renderer? "Speter" is mentioned in the change logs. Other developers seemed to just have done quick hacks to make the code work after higher level changes. From looking at the credits, I'd map that handle to J. Scott Peter. He studied physics at the University of California, and did use at least one other "real name", Jasper Teal, as his Google+ account reveals. Thats for number 3 and could explain the affiliation with the project outside of community forums.

He is still working on video games, currently for CryTech since 2005, a company known for pushing the limits in realtime rendering. This supports number 1.

Now for number 2, when you look up star rendering technology in CryEngine, you find this Wiki page: http://docs.cryengine.com/display/SDKDO ... s+DAT+File
It talks about the exact same "stars.dat" file Lee Arbuco implemented casually in Trespasser CE. The Wiki page was last edited by "Scott Fitzgerald" a dead American writer that happens to share the same first name with Mr. Peter. It is not be far fetched to think that a developer uses a side project to try some ideas before discussing them with the team, supporting them with screen shots and a time estimate.

That's one too many coincidences for me.

[Yuhwryu123]

Hey, I'm new here. I'm having a bit of difficulty with running CE - Vanilla & ATX trespasser run perfectly fine, but CE just tanks sometimes. It seems to happen when I pick up a gun, when I look at a raptor's feet touching the ground and other random occasions.

[TheIdiot]

Hey, I'm new here. I'm having a bit of difficulty with running CE - Vanilla & ATX trespasser run perfectly fine, but CE just tanks sometimes. It seems to happen when I pick up a gun, when I look at a raptor's feet touching the ground and other random occasions.

Sounds like something related to particles to me. Do you notice little dirt particles flying in the air when you do said actions? I can't say what this problem would be - perhaps there is a function in CE to disable particles and see if that does it?

[Yuhwryu123]

Hey, I'm new here. I'm having a bit of difficulty with running CE - Vanilla & ATX trespasser run perfectly fine, but CE just tanks sometimes. It seems to happen when I pick up a gun, when I look at a raptor's feet touching the ground and other random occasions.

Sounds like something related to particles to me. Do you notice little dirt particles flying in the air when you do said actions? I can't say what this problem would be - perhaps there is a function in CE to disable particles and see if that does it?

That doesn't seem all that likely - Whenever Anne's hand is touching a gun on the screen, it lags, and that doesn't generate any particles. If i just peek a gun from the bottom of the screen, it's fine, but if I pull it up high enough to show a glimpse of her hand, the game craps out... It's weird, a gun and Anne's arm on the screen is fine, but when I pick it up, suddenly it's unplayable. What an oddity. Raptor's feet, as mentioned, also do this. Not the rest of the raptor, just the feet. (I have a HD7850 and an FX-6300, BTW, if that somehow helps.)