Multiverse Mod

[Campeador]

Baron, I was scratching my head on that one, but at the second try I was able to recreate the bug. You are the first person to report this occurrence, which normally does not happen.
This is what happens:
1. From the Epsilon system you are told to return to Eternus.
2. Before reaching Eternus an event happens in Octopus.
3. In Octopus you are to help one of the ships from Earth (a Hood BC) that is being attack by an unknown ship.
4. There are actually two events in progress: Help the Hood cruiser and destroy the enemy ship.

Now the bug problem:
The ships on the event are to appear kind of late, 5 to 7 ticks into the mission (due to radar interference). They will show up by the "Tentacle" planet next to the Octopus warp point.
The error occurs when the enemy ships materializes, either it hit the planet or another ship. If this happens somehow the game does not register what just happen even thought it should declare the mission a fail or completed.
Even more, since two things could happen, either the Hood destroys the enemy ship or the enemy ship destroys the Hood. Either way the third event will start when either one of the ships is destroyed. But just in case there was also a timer on the mission in the case that the Hood and company can hold the enemy long enough, and declared the mission completed.
Therefore by the enemy ship being destroyed due to collision the AI does not compute the mission properly between its own parameters, and then due to the timer it creates a second error. I do not know why it does that. If the ship is destroyed it should simply declared either success or failure instead of an error. I have checked and recheck and the only conclusion I come up with is that it happens too soon before the AI is able to time the event or something like that.

The fix: once again by the laws of provability all you have to do is redo the scenario which is activated the instant you enter Octopus. The enemy ship should not hit the planet or any other ship; instead they should start fighting each other as they encounter. So if you saved the game just before entering Octopus you are ok.

On my part on the next update I will have the enemy ship materialize by the Warp Point instead than around the planet. This should minimize the collision occurrence.
Still I am not sure if it was my bug, since the AI of the game should have stop the mission timer and declared the mission completed or failed without creating an error. Either way is a learning experience that I will try to remember as I continue with the series.

ps: If this is not exactly what happens then let me know.

[Campeador]

Ah yes the second part of your post. I have played the game in four computers. My laptop (HP Pavilion zv6000 2G ram, AMD Athlon 64, 2000Mz) tends to overheat and freezes from time to time on this game only (well it is the only game I have played in the last 3 years). Other than that nothing, no slow down or anything, just that the fans are at full blast and eventually overheats... annoying. It's ram was 512, I increased to 2G, still behaves the same.
My regular desktop pc, another Athlon xp 2167mz 1G of ram. It runs fine until recently. It started to have very erratic video problems especially during this game until it died. I think that is the motherboard so I just order a replacement one for $35. I hope that this fix it.
My brother’s pc, a Pentium 4 3000Mz, 1G of ram. On his there are some slow downs and the mouse gets erratic... This cannot be the game? Maybe he has conflicting software or maybe he needs drivers since his pc behaves worst than some of the other slower pc's...
On the four pc another Pentium 4 3000Mz 1G of ram it runs fine. All this four pc's are average pc and they were my ruler as how many ships to put on the screen.

I can tolerate some slow downs but so far nothing that have prevented me from enjoying the game. But yes if I would have experience the problems you have I would have put less ships on the screen. I do not know why so many other games far more complex like Homeworld for example runs so fine with no problems... To think that I would have liked to have more ships instead of less...

I could decrease the graphics by speeding up the weapons effects, or having fewer ships, or decreasing something, but that will be unfair for the people that the game runs fine.
At least you know the work around to make it work. You can also play the game at 16 colors instead of 32 colors. Now that I think about it there is the setup were the "Sight distance", "Stellar Detail" and "Background Detail" can be set to medium or low (by the way on the 4 computers I mention before all was set to high).

If more players are having this problem please let me know.

[Q]

I finished campaign 2 without any problems and for me it is just excellent. I like the huge battles and my PC (Athlon 64 3400+ 512 MB RAM, NIVIDIA GeForce FX 5500) had no problems with it.
Your campaign shows what possibilities Starfury has.
Just one question concerning the music: where should I place the folder exactly and under which name?
If I place it in the campaign folder under the name "music" I don't hear your specific music, just the Starfury standard one.

[rstaats10]

I have finished campaign 2 as well with no problems except for when all the fighters battle it slows down a little. It would probably speed up if I set to low detail, etc. However I like to keep my display setting set to high since I like the look better than when set to low and have my video card set to high quality. I was playing on my desktop Pentium 4 2.8oC GHz 2GB Ram Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS.

Q said:
Just one question concerning the music: where should I place the folder exactly and under which name?
If I place it in the campaign folder under the name "music" I don't hear your specific music, just the Starfury standard one.

Place the contents of the multiverse music folder in the main SF music folder. That is the only way to get the music into the mod.

[Campeador]

Yes, the music content goes into the main SF Music files. Multiverse Music 1, 2, and eventually 3 also goes inside the main music file just keep adding to the main SF music file.

Do not forget to the same with sound. Take the contents and place them inside the main SF sound file.

[rstaats10]

The music content has to go into the main SF Music file, but the sounds would be ok in the mod campaign sound file. It doesn't have to be in the main SF sound file.

[Baron Munchausen]

Campeador said:
Ah yes the second part of your post. I have played the game in four computers. My laptop (HP Pavilion zv6000 2G ram, AMD Athlon 64, 2000Mz) tends to overheat and freezes from time to time on this game only (well it is the only game I have played in the last 3 years). Other than that nothing, no slow down or anything, just that the fans are at full blast and eventually overheats... annoying. It's ram was 512, I increased to 2G, still behaves the same.
My regular desktop pc, another Athlon xp 2167mz 1G of ram. It runs fine until recently. It started to have very erratic video problems especially during this game until it died. I think that is the motherboard so I just order a replacement one for $35. I hope that this fix it.
My brother’s pc, a Pentium 4 3000Mz, 1G of ram. On his there are some slow downs and the mouse gets erratic... This cannot be the game? Maybe he has conflicting software or maybe he needs drivers since his pc behaves worst than some of the other slower pc's...
On the four pc another Pentium 4 3000Mz 1G of ram it runs fine. All this four pc's are average pc and they were my ruler as how many ships to put on the screen.

I can tolerate some slow downs but so far nothing that have prevented me from enjoying the game. But yes if I would have experience the problems you have I would have put less ships on the screen. I do not know why so many other games far more complex like Homeworld for example runs so fine with no problems... To think that I would have liked to have more ships instead of less...

I could decrease the graphics by speeding up the weapons effects, or having fewer ships, or decreasing something, but that will be unfair for the people that the game runs fine.
At least you know the work around to make it work. You can also play the game at 16 colors instead of 32 colors. Now that I think about it there is the setup were the "Sight distance", "Stellar Detail" and "Background Detail" can be set to medium or low (by the way on the 4 computers I mention before all was set to high).

If more players are having this problem please let me know.

I guess I am suffering from my choice of video hardware. I was never very interested in ATI and nVidia cards because Matrox always wins the image quality comparisons on the review sites. They have decent 3D as far as quality, but the performance of Matrox 3D is always a generation or two behind the contemporary ATI and nVidia stuff. Since most people seem to buy ATI or nVidia these days, their cards are probably picking up much more of the actual graphical rendering work than mine. Between having 'only' a 1.2 Ghz CPU and 'only' a 32MB Matrox video card, I guess there is just too much for my old system to handle. When I get a newer system (soon, I hope) I'll get much closer to the common specs of the 'average' PC... for now. And in another 5 years I'll be way behind the times again.

[Campeador]

Ha, yes the pirates chasing Harlock... It was no challenge at all until I decided to give the pirates stealth armor on the last minute... That single detail transformed a mediocre group into a fearsome one!

Thanks for the info rstaats10, I stand corrected about the sounds file. I still do not get why we have to transfer the music while not the sound nor any other file, from any particular mod. It would have been really nice if no transfer was needed, but who can argue with the game gods?

About the video hardware, I am very aware that I am pushing things on this mods with the amount of ships, but the problems with the graphics seems to be the mostly fighters, and some fighters more than others (especially the ones from Epsilon system). This game by now is old, and I remember running the original game on an 800Mz with a video card holding 32Mb, barely the minimum requirements for the game. But it ran! (Writing this post just now I realized that I did surpass the original game requirements, my bad!)

On my mods one of the problems is my lack of knowledge on the graphic department. I am sure that there are artist out there that can make all my models with half the polygons I used or even less. A feat that would have fix most of the slow downs. By the way that is why most of the systems were battles take place have very little space objects.
I will still try to remember those with slower systems on the next campaigns 'if' possible.

[rstaats10]

I really like playing your mods and you do a really good job making your ships. (Hard to make them in my opinion) I have made about 6 ships. However most I have to use from other mods. One tool I have used is Polygon Cruncher. Works well to reduce polys. You can get a free 1 week trial, which is what I did. It's a plug in to Lightwave (and 3DS max I believe). I got a free 30 day trial to Lightwave then added the Polygon Crucher as an Plug In and away I went. I took some really high Poly ships down over 70% and they are playable in SF.

[Baron Munchausen]

Just an extra thought: when you do any 'optimizing' of ship models, how about adding a few more for some of the empires/races to flesh out the selection? If we had a couple more Fed ships it would then be possible for someone who doesn't have ship modeling skills make a nice Trek campaign using material from your mod.

A decent 'destroyer' class vessel like the Saladin/Hermes single nacelle design, and a 'heavy' class like the Nebula or Galaxy would make the Federation ships complete enough to use in a full campaign of some sort. The Miranda (USS Reliant from Wrath of Khan) would be very cool to have, as well. And maybe the Akira class. Various science vessels could wait for a full-scale dedicated Federation mod. Oh, a Fed-style starbase is also needed.

The Klingons need at least one 'heavy' ship. The K'Vort might be a good choice. And a unique starbase design for them, also. And I see you've got one Romulan model even though they don't appear in this campaign. The original Romulan 'Warbird' would be really, really cool to have and then of course a unique Romulan starbase. Hmm. Seven or eight models. Got any helpers with all of this?

The Millenium Falcon as a Rebel freighter would be very nice. The Imperial Super Star Destroyer is out of bounds, though. It'd take up half a system all by itself!