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Messages - MrGadget

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PlaneShift News and Rules / Re: Lets make PlaneShift Unreal

« on: July 10, 2015, 05:06:38 pm »

Quote from: jirore on July 10, 2015, 04:22:51 pm

There seems to be a misunderstanding here, FREE software does not mean that the source is available, or the program is gratis (free as in beer), but that it is free as in freedom. Software is free if it has the 4 freedoms:
You can run it any way you want
You can study the sourcecode
You can redistribute it
You can redistribute modified copies

Then I don't think PS is now or was ever "free as in freedom". I doubt Talad or AB would ever permit resale for profit, and to the best of my recollection, only the distributed binaries are allowed to connect to the PS game servers by policy, breaking your first rule. Other than a short-ish span of time years ago when the Linux binaries were bugged during which players were allowed to use built-from-source clients, I think that's been true since they started rolling out binaries. Of all the people to ever come in contact with PS, only a tiny fraction have contributed a thing to PS or CS, so for them, this was always free beer.

PlaneShift News and Rules / Re: Lets make PlaneShift Unreal

« on: July 10, 2015, 07:29:57 am »

Quote from: CheatCat on July 10, 2015, 02:37:42 am

I do not talk about what tools the developers use, proprietary or open source. The problem is that UE in not just a tool, it is an engine. It would be the core of this game. This forces every user who want to play this game to use (more) proprietary software.

You do understand that a player doesn't need to install the UE4 development software to just play the game, right? There will still be distributed executable downloads for all platforms and that's all that's needed...nothing external required like a flash player or some such. Building a client from PS's source would still require the UE4 software, true, but users aren't forced down that path to play.

Quote from: CheatCat on July 10, 2015, 02:37:42 am

Maybe I was the first one who started this discussion, but things moved on from there. I can accept the fact PlaneShift will use UE, but it does not mean I would like it. I think it is always good to reflect your options before jumping on the mainstream train. Is an engine that does not respect freedom really worth it? Perhaps, for the sake of the community.

I'm not sure what you mean by "does not respect freedom" since the source is available on GitHub and reconstructing PS with UE4 won't cost the PS team a dime (at least not to Epic). Turns out that making and continuing to improve and innovate on a rendering engine and set of tools of this quality takes tremendous time, talent, and treasure. Epic invested millions in their people to do that, so there has to be a return somewhere. It would seem Crystal Space's current state after so many years makes it rather evident that a comparable product doesn't happen with casual volunteer effort. For someone to repackage UE4 under another name and sell it with no compensation due back to Epic would be financially devastating to Epic and all the people who depend on those jobs to feed, house, and clothe their families. Absent legal protections, the source would never come out, and absent the investment, Indie engines like UE4 don't exist.

PlaneShift News and Rules / Re: Lets make PlaneShift Unreal

« on: July 09, 2015, 09:49:50 pm »

@Roled...silly elf...go back to your market! You've got a year or two worth of lead before there's a playable game on the UE4 engine. This port will take a while. Deal with hardware requirements then

@All...as Talad alluded to, switching to unreal opens the door to thousands of game devs through their massive community. Same is true for other popular Indie engines. CS never had that. Try to separate in your heads the OS aspect of the engine, which is just a tool, and the OS aspect of PS's code that is the underlying game logic that drives the game play. PS team uses spreadsheets, but that doesn't mean Excel must be FOS. Is Maya or 3DS Max FOS? No, but they've been used to make a lot of the art. There's no promise in PS or any FOS project to never touch a non-FOS tool in content creation. Get over it, please?

PlaneShift News and Rules / Re: PlaneShift 0.6.3 released!

« on: December 24, 2014, 07:23:51 pm »

http://www.planeshift.it/article/2014/Version%200.6.3

Numerous typos...please fix.

PlaneShift Mods / Re: MinimaTuux update

« on: April 07, 2014, 09:45:23 am »

Perhaps a new thread for 6.1 in http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?board=45.0 would be helpful.

PlaneShift Mods / Re: MinimaTuux update

« on: April 07, 2014, 04:35:44 am »

Seems the Shortcut panel got large icons with the 6.1 release...help?

Wish list / Re: Stepped Install

« on: November 25, 2013, 01:01:49 pm »

1) For new players, the time to get started in the game would be vastly shorter. If a "slow connection" is 1mb / sec (that's megabits, not megabytes), we're now talking 995 * 8 = 7960 seconds = 132 minutes = 2 hours 12 minutes. That's a long time with nothing to retain the "customers" attention. How many get bored, move on to something else, and decide the download is lagging them with that other activity and cancel half-way through? That's bandwidth wasted for both the player and the hoster of PS downloads.

2) Tutorial Map is small, fairly light, low net traffic because the player is there alone (mostly). When this idea was proposed 5 years ago, each player in Tutorial was instanced so they were always alone, so no other player movement net traffic would be present. The NPC's don't move either (idle wiggles don't count). A background process shouldn't create noticeable lag.

3) I'd imagine that a fair percentage of people that download the game never get past the tutorial, perhaps for technical reasons, perhaps PS isn't their cup of tea. Why waste bandwidth on a player whose computer isn't strong enough to play the game? Better to find out with a small download in ~15 minutes I'd say. Perhaps not mentioned above, but internal discussion considered 3 parts, the first being a teeny tiny diagnostic app to evaluate the players computer in a matter of seconds for meeting the minimum system requirements, so failing that check would at least prompt the player whether they want to continue anyway with the small client install.

Anyway, I stumbled onto my own thread and found it amusing that the download is 500% larger and still this idea has received no traction.

Development Deliberation / Graphics Settings Explained

« on: November 23, 2013, 07:11:10 pm »

Could someone clearly and in lay terms explain the various graphics settings in the launcher, and identify where and what in-game one might observe visual differences for them?

Wish list / Re: Stepped Install

« on: November 23, 2013, 03:11:30 pm »

So now it's up to 995MB. Just sayin'.

Development Deliberation / Re: Building .6

« on: November 23, 2013, 02:54:05 pm »

My god man we're like bad pennies around here. Nice to see you.

Technical Help: IN GAME bugs (after loading world) / Re: Group invitation window logic incorrect

« on: November 22, 2013, 02:42:03 pm »

Please see bug # 6224 at http://hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=6224

In the comments, a more recent version of the skin was posted by Tuux, and fixes several issues, including trade and group invite acceptance.

Technical Help: Problems BEFORE entering the game / Re: Repeated crashes on startup.

« on: October 01, 2012, 01:08:06 pm »

Crashing after login screen...expecting to get screen to select character.
Tried adding "Video.OpenGL.UseExtension.GL_ARB_shader_objects = false" to planeshift.cfg
Tried lowering all settings in Graphics section
Tried clearing cache a few times

This Netbook may be too weak to play well, but if I can get in at all that'd be nice.

Win7 32-bit
Asus Netbook 1015PEM
CPU: Intel Atom N550 1.5GHz
Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics: Intel GMA 3150 / 200 MHz / DirectX 9c, Shader 3.0 / OpenGL 1.5 / Latest Drivers from 10/24/2010

Planeshift.cfg:
PlaneShift.Graphics.Preset = Custom
Video.ScreenDepth = 32
Video.OpenGL.MultiSamples = 2
Video.OpenGL.TextureFilterAnisotropy = 2
Video.OpenGL.TextureLODBias = 0
Video.OpenGL.TextureDownsample = 4
PlaneShift.Graphics.EnableGrass = false
PlaneShift.Weather.Enabled = false
Video.OpenGL.UseExtension.GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object = false
Video.OpenGL.UseExtension.GL_ARB_shader_objects = false
PlaneShift.Graphics.Particles = Medium
PlaneShift.Graphics.Shaders = Lowest
Engine.RenderManager.Default = crystalspace.rendermanager.unshadowed
Planeshift.Loading.Cache = false
PlaneShift.Loading.BackgroundWorldLoading = false
ThreadManager.AlwaysRunNow = true
Video.AspectRatio = 4:3
Video.ScreenWidth = 1024
Video.ScreenHeight = 768
Video.FullScreen = false
System.PlugIns.iSndSysRenderer = crystalspace.sndsys.renderer.software
System.Plugins.iSoundManager = crystalspace.planeshift.sound.soundmngr
PlaneShift.GUI.Language = english
PlaneShift.GUI.Skin.Selected = elves.zip
PlaneShift.Connection.RememberServer = 0
... [login stuff removed] ...
RenderManager.Unshadowed.Layers = /data/renderlayers/lighting_basic.xml
Video.ShaderManager.Tags.per_pixel_lighting.Presence = forbidden

Crash Report:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH
Application Name:   psclient.exe
Application Version:   0.5.9.1
Application Timestamp:   4fb6d07e
Fault Module Name:   ig4icd32.dll
Fault Module Version:   8.14.10.2230
Fault Module Timestamp:   4cc50139
Exception Code:   c0000005
Exception Offset:   00035c8d
OS Version:   6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID:   1033
Additional Information 1:   0a9e
Additional Information 2:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3:   0a9e
Additional Information 4:   0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Wish list / Re: Stepped Install

« on: August 30, 2008, 11:50:30 am »

We trimmed it to 80MB. Details to follow...stay tuned $\\o//$

MrG

Wish list / Re: Stepped Install

« on: August 29, 2008, 08:39:23 pm »

This has so little to do with the client itself. This is about distro packaging. There would not be "download 2 clients" and for low-speed connections they would benefit the most, since a small starter package would get them going so much quicker than the full 300+MB download we have today.

We have psupdater with CheckIntegrity - use that initially for the 2nd part...dress it up later.

That which is needed to create a character and run the tutorial is a small fraction of the total download package. All I'm suggesting is a split of the contents of the package into two parts. Go have a look at products like InstallShield...they make building stepped installers pretty easy, and they can do evaluations on the target machine for sufficient specs and prerequisites too, which might actually save the player from downloading parts he doesn't need.

C'mon Caarrie - this is wishlist - no one is calling for anyone to make this happen today, or tomorrow, or this year. Wishlist is full of things that may be a year or more away but still have merit for discussion. You slammed my feature request shut within 15 minutes of my posting it in BT without letting anyone even look at it. Here at least it might live a little longer.

MrG

Wish list / Stepped Install

« on: August 29, 2008, 06:40:55 pm »

Iâ€™d like to propose a stepped install plan to get new players started with the game more quickly.

From the full install, extract the barest minimum files and assets needed to get the game up with the Login Screen and Character Generator and Tutorial. By this I mean just that map, the dagger weapon, the air glyph, the iron ore art, the races plus the rat, one client skin (instead of 3) plus the client base, a subset of files from the data folder and the client core DLL files. I may have missed a bit in that list but you get the idea.

Distribute to the mirrors this package as the smallest download you can make, and distribute the rest in a 2nd package also to the mirrors.

The concept is to let a player get the small package first, install and run it. When it runs, it gives them something to do in getting their account logged in for the first time, creating a character, and playing their way through the Tutorial. While all this is going on, a separate spawned process with a progress bar is running minimized that is downloading and unpacking the 2nd package.

By the time a new player gets through Character Gen and Tutorial, most of the rest might be downloaded. At this point the progress screen would be brought forward so they can see how much is left (if any) and as soon as it finishes they can reload the client into the full game.

Obviously this means reworking the end of the last Tutorial quest a bit to just update the server with their new load POS and (magic happens here) determine state of 2nd package and go from there.

Not entirely thunk through, but you get the idea.

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