Mission 2 discussion

[Eddy-B]

And there it is:  Mission 2 - gone into beta, or rather... almost.
I fixed all major bugs, and am now testing the playability of mission 2. This means it'll start beta-testing by tomorrow.  It turned out to be an exciting mission { or so i think } for just a simple objective: get the hell out!

Although im still looking for someone to bring the briefings to life with some nice graphics, i can say this campaign will be awe...some! Talking about graphics: anyone can submit a logo for Outpost : Renegades, just send it to renegades@eddy-b.com (accepted are: bitmap, jpeg or gif), and i will put them all up on a poll right here!

I'll be posting a sample movie again on the beta-host when we got one.

[Eddy-B]

hmmm... maybe not.. lol
My base building were all at 100% - then 1 single meteor struck:

I didn't know a meteor could do THIS much damage! (X marks the inpact point - it used to be a SF)...  BUG: i didn't fail the mission.. lol

[Eddy-B]

Well, i kept updating my source code, becoz of some nasty bugs that needed to be killed. And, i believe they are at the moment..  but that's for you beta-testers to figure out  

Don't complain about things that ARE correct, but just inconvenient - it's safe to assume they were intended that way. This mission will be a bit harder than mission 1, and will take longer to finish -even in easy- i've also updated mision 1, and am planning a couple more updates later this weekend, so keep checking the beta-site for new versions.

As for compatibility, missions wich were saved using an older version, will not be playable anymore. This is not because of my lousy programming, but becoz of the way op2 stores its saved games: it checks the mission DLL - if it's not the same as when the game was saved, it won't load, and give you an "error reading script - game set was not loaded" error. Sorry!
[EDIT] ..as it turns out, also games saved at victory-point will not load with newer DLL-versions

With mission 2, just stick to the objective: defend the base, and wait for the pickup team. I hope it's worth it, and won't crash like it did b4  :angry: just when you're about to win!

Happy testing!

[Leviathan]

the mission 2 testing has been great
every1 is in for a treat,, but its not as easy as the original campaings for sure

[Eddy-B]

but its not as easy as the original campaings for sure

as they were meant to be !        ..did u finish ?

[PlayingOutpost0-24]

where to evacuate?  :blink:

i didnt reach that point yet tho. damn overheats  <_<  

[Eddy-B]

why don't you try what i've told you: put a desk-fan next to your (opened) cpu casing... it helps, trust me!  i got an Athlon 1800+ with the same problem: when encoding a video (TMPGEnc) or transcoding mp2's 44->48kHz for example... it overheat in less than 2 mins.. With a desk fan at full power, i can usually finish encoding

Oh, mission 1 has been updated: hard level was cancelled; what used to be medium is now called "hard".  Easy has been patched up to be a bit more exciting, since it was just TOO easy, and normal level is now somewhere inbetween.  This same process will take place with mission 2: a couple of good op2 players will test it, and see if the difficulty settings are 'correct'

Happy testing!

[EDIT] PS: Evacuation point will become visible when the plymouth pickup team arrives

[Eddy-B]

After lots of testing, debugging, testing, debugging again, cussing, drinking a lot of coffee..., after 5 days i finally discovered there was a problem with the map(s). Today i've started working on a program that can patch existing maps with these bugs in them.

FYI:  all maps created with existing versions of the editor(s) could have these problems (op2 could freeze on any map larger than 128x128), but they may show no problems at all. IF you have been experiencing crashes or op2 froze up without a really identifiable cause: this might be it!

Patch program can be downloaded here. It should run fine on any Pentium machine. It is a DOS (console) executable, taking only 1 paramater: the map file. it will tell you if the file needed to be patched or not. Copying, reposting or re-hosting of patchmap.exe is allowed, as long it is not modified.
A new patch will be released soon to solve another problem with the current map editor(s).

[Leviathan]

ooo sweet
ive had a map b4 which froze op2

[BlackBox]

The OP2Mapper package is now officially updated with the two needed patches. (Freezing map patch, and non existant row patch).

If you have Version 1.84 or higher it should automatically ask you to update.

To manually update, go to http://www.outpostuniverse.net/files/op2mapper.exe .

(Note: When saving a map a DOS box may come up then disappear quickly. This is no cause for concern, it is simply the editor applying the needed patches to the map file).

This is probably the last update before Version 2.

Good luck!

[PlayingOutpost0-24]

why don't you try what i've told you: put a desk-fan next to your (opened) cpu casing... it helps, trust me! i got an Athlon 1800+ with the same problem: when encoding a video (TMPGEnc) or transcoding mp2's 44->48kHz for example... it overheat in less than 2 mins.. With a desk fan at full power, i can usually finish encoding

i got a new CPU fan now i run at 39 °C LoL

[Eddy-B]

now i run at 39 °C

.. thats good news!

As for Renegades, fella's..   i've finally managed to finish (eg. win) mission 2 on medium level even, without it crashing on me.  Well it did, but i fixed those little bugs, and should run smoothly now.
I've also updated mission 1, because the saved mission datafile has changed, wich in turn means you cannot play any saved renegades levels; you're gonna have to start all over again. It's a good thing this is only mission 2, and not mission 10!

[Eddy-B]

It's been a while since beta testing for mission 2 ended, but yet i still found a serious bug in the source. When i recompiled ALL missions (coz i made some modifications/additions that needed to be included in older missions as well) i found that the loading of mission-data had a bug in it. This doesn't effect mission 1, as it does not load any mission data, but mission 2 does!

The search-and-replace functionality of MicroSoft isn't bugfree. As a result i have altered occurences of the word "unit" that should not have been altered.  It created some nasty side-effects, eventually crashing the game. I believe i have updated (manually) all occurences, back to what they should've been. I'll be testing them later on. Also, the mission data files (*.mis) are to be updated to include some more information. This also means that saved mission files are rendered useless upon (new beta-) release of the those older missions. I will NOT be writing a converter tool, since the old mission-files are beta-related, so you'll just have to play those missions again, i guess

NOTE: Mission 2 & 3 need a correct mission-file to work. Mission 4 runs without such a file.