First off, I want to say to everyone involved in this project; Thank you! To have Privateer not only running again, but enhanced, is a wonderful gift that has made my day, even if I did have to download it twice on a 28.8.
That said, I am a bugtester, and I cannot help but notice bugs, and be filled with a burning desire to report them.
The following report may not be as specific as I'd like, but I WAS trying to enjoy the game more than take notes.
These are the result of my initial two play sessions. I am on WindowsXP at 1024x768 resolution with 640MB of RAM (actually 768) and everything turned as high as it goes.
Text Errors/Bugs:
The lines of description of several items and ships pertaining to performance characteristics, turning rates notably, tend to go off the side of the screen at 1024x768.
Any mention of a Talon class fighter tends to be followed by the suffix "blank". Seems like this is sub-class data not meant to be printed.
Cargo mission descriptions on the mission computer seem to omit the destination base, only specifiying the system.
On Patrol Missions, mining and refinery bases are not identified by name, but simply as "Merchant's Mining Base". In systems like Troy this is annoying.
The unique locations have both a name and a class, which is in some cases identical. This is especially noticeable with New Constantinople, which wraps around the text display due to the length of repeating it.
Names are interpreted differently by different parts of the game. Most text treats the underscore character as a space, but certain displays, particularly the mission screen, show them as underscores. The cockpit MFD strips them out completely and just runs the words together. Notably however, the MFD does not strip single quotes, while all other displays do, thus "Hind's Variable N" becomes "HindsVariableN" in most displays, but "Hinds Variable N" in the mission log.
"Detroit" is not capitalized on most displays.
Many of the alpha-numeric systems only have the first letter capitalized; I think they are all supposed to be. (Original used an all-caps font as I recall.)
On the comm MFD, you have nothing to say to several worlds. Dialogue to planets and bases appears to be based on faction as if they were spacecraft, rather than the base-specific dialogue from the original.
The text dialogue at the Mercenaries' Guild when you cannot afford the signing fee does not come anywhere close to what the actor says. Niether does the text if you can. The same goes for the Merchants' Guild. I think the text is from the disk version rather than the CD version.
The singular and plural of "Cat" appear to be crossed in the text generator. It will say things like "A large kilrathi strike force enguaged a squadron of bounty hunters in Surtur. The cat gave the hunters a serious fight..." and then generate missions like "Shoot a Cats". Some other singular/plural sets seem questionable in certain dialogues as well.
The manual is inaccurate on a few things. Most notably, ECMs do not drain power and cannot be turned off, and attempting to change sound or music volume (the music defaults too loud compared to the sound effects) does nothing. (The latter may be an issue with the Windows source.)
Graphical errors/tweaks:
The animation speed of almost all objects in interior scenes seems slower than it should be. It may very well be absolutely all, but I haven't been to every type of base yet. The animations look stuttered as a result. While the current speed resembles what I used to get on my 386, I once got the game running on a P1, and the interior animations were noticeably faster, resulting in a much smoother appearance.
When my radar system was damaged, everthing EXCEPT my radar display went static. (That is, my shield and hull readouts, my fuel gauge, etc.) This persisted for the rest of that session, even after repairing the radar.
The ship dealer doesn't animate. I sort of miss that.
New Constantinople spins. All of the interior artwork supports this, but the exterior model is stationary. I realize it was like that in the original, but that was due to technology limitations. (It's also worth noting that, assuming NC spins to generate artificial gravity, the internal gravity is at right angles to what it should be. Considering the existance of inertial compensators, which are obviously in effect on NC and in all starcraft, there really is no reason to spin the station at all. I guess OSI just thought it looked cool at the time.)
Same as above, but applied to the refinery station.
The model for the jump node is utterly motionless, while the orignials were in a state of flux. There appear to exist a set of animated textures for the jumpnode in the game data, but they are not used.
The jump animation needs to move towards the ship a little slower than it does when flying a Tarsus. (Or simply stop before reaching the center of the ship) It covers the screen completely at a good point in the system transition, but it slips passed the viewpoint about a half-second before the transition is complete, allowing the abrupt cut from one system to another to be viewed. Seems fine in a Centurion, haven't flown the other ships.
Explosions do not appear consistantly when a craft is destroyed. The burst explosion also rarely plays all of its frames even when it does appear. The very first craft destroyed in a session appears to explode properly, but every subsequent craft gets worse until the explosion barely plays at all.
I don't see any specular highlights on craft even though they should be enabled according to my settings. The craft are reflective, and look nice in "busy" systems, but do not display any specular gleam effects.
Your craft is off kilter on the New Detroit landing pad. Looks like it's tipped too far to the right. The same is true on Oxford, only tipped the opposite way.
On the nav computer, the icons for bases and jump points are excessively large and clutter the display.
Getting more nit-picky here, but the craft do not have landing gear for their appearances in the various interior scenes. Not saying that the model geometry needs to be altered, but perhaps mark attatchment points for a generic landing gear model? A low priority, non-concern for sure, but it would be a nice touch at some point.
Does something about VegaStrike prevent displaying hull damage for all four facings? It might be important to know in some cases, such as attacking capitol ships.
The mass driver round should probably be a bitmap sprite, not the white glowing thingy that it is. In fact, the original MD sprite from Privateer would suit it just fine.
Sound errors/tweaks:
Sometimes the afterburner sound does not play.
Sometimes enemy dialogue will not play. (Referring to existing Privateer dialogue, not new material)
Dead enemies continue speaking. Cutting Retros off in the middle of a sermon used to be fun.
Missiles use the ship explosion SFX rather than the missile explosion SFX.
The jump sequence is completely silent. This is at odds with Privateer and WC3, 4 and 5.
The landing and jump musics are completely absent. The landing music should trigger about 6,000 clicks out from a planet/base according to the original.
Design bugs/tweaks:
I took on a mission to ferry construction out to a base. I also perchased all of the remaining constuction on the planet, which was added to my mission cargo rather than remaining seperate from it. After completing the mission, only the three actual mission cargo units were removed from my ship, but I was payed many times more than the mission should have been worth. (Mission was for about 10,000 I think, and I got paid over 100,000)
Killing a mere 17 pirates made me best friends with everyone except the Retros. Why did the Kilrathi care? Also, even with 100 reputation, the Militia still gave me neutral dialogues ("Stick to established lanes for your own good." and such) rather than the friendlier dialogues. Overall though, I would say that this was entirely too fast. Getting into the universe's good graces should be harder than that.
Collision damage seems drastically reduced. My shields can take full speed hits from an asteroid (used to be instant death if you were going more than about 400KPS) and Talons just seem to bounce off rather than splatter like they used to.
I can turn my turret 180 into my own hull and fire. There should be some restraints on their movement.
Contraband searches take forever. I got a request to maintain speed and course, so I waited a good thirty seconds, never got the all clear, so I autoed out to a jump node and just as I was about to enter, the militia comes on with "No contraband detected. You may proceed." Although the check was a little too quick in the original, this seems too long. Also, shouldn't they have interpreted my heading for the node as a criminal action? The manual implied that they would.
It seems to be impossible to sustain any serious ship damage. Part of the balance of the original was the cost of those damn maneouvrering jets, or the possiblity of weapon malfunction. It certainly made the repair droid a more valuable add-on. Addendum: I managed to get trashed badly enough to lose a weapon, in addition to the repair droid, which was a nice touch. Still kind of miss taking damage to the jets though.
The first tier radars have lockon capability, rendering the second tier completely useless.
The Mercenaries' Guild rarely offers missions more lucrative than the mission computer. This is probably due to the mission computer offering signifigantly more than six missions at a time, while the MG still only offers four.
If you attempt to take a trade mission without sufficient cargo space, it dissapears completely from the list with no feedback as to why.
I miss the in-character menues for the commodity exchange, mission computer, and ship dealer. The new menu design is great, but is there any way to make each unique like the guilds instead of one generic menu design?
I really miss the takeoff and landing sequences. Is there any way to script these back in?
Does VegaStrike simply disallow the concept of specific projectile launchers? I miss being able to mount two guns and a tractor beam on the Tarsus. (Without paying an arm and a leg)
The ship dealer still says that you can use your old ship for trade in, but that is no longer the case, correct?
The price of the Orion is now 125,000 credits, but the ship dealer still says it costs 75,000.
Draymans have no turrets. While I cannot remember any on the NPC draymans in the original, according to the prologue, they do infact mount a number of turrets. The number seems to be at least three, (Johansen, Hank and the Privateer were manning turrets) but given the size of the ship compared to a Galaxy, it should probably be closer to five or six. As is, their cargo space is impressive, though perhaps a little overkill for cargo use. As a carrier or ship stealer, they are interesting, but totally reliant on fighter support. Given their near-nil turning capibilities, I don't see how a drayman could hit anything short of another drayman without a turret. That said, the ship in the prologue has vastly superior handling to a stock drayman, and possibly isn't one at all. (Though if it isn't, I want to buy a Scarab-class, not a dinky drayman.
)
Afterburners seem to continue to fire even after you run out of energy, rather than sputtering as they did in the original. This allows you to run heavy shields at full power without losing afterburner capability. Getting to that perfect point of balancing the generator recharge rate with the afterburner consumption was part of the game.
That said, I am a bugtester, and I cannot help but notice bugs, and be filled with a burning desire to report them.
The following report may not be as specific as I'd like, but I WAS trying to enjoy the game more than take notes.These are the result of my initial two play sessions. I am on WindowsXP at 1024x768 resolution with 640MB of RAM (actually 768) and everything turned as high as it goes.
Text Errors/Bugs:
The lines of description of several items and ships pertaining to performance characteristics, turning rates notably, tend to go off the side of the screen at 1024x768.
Any mention of a Talon class fighter tends to be followed by the suffix "blank". Seems like this is sub-class data not meant to be printed.
Cargo mission descriptions on the mission computer seem to omit the destination base, only specifiying the system.
On Patrol Missions, mining and refinery bases are not identified by name, but simply as "Merchant's Mining Base". In systems like Troy this is annoying.
The unique locations have both a name and a class, which is in some cases identical. This is especially noticeable with New Constantinople, which wraps around the text display due to the length of repeating it.
Names are interpreted differently by different parts of the game. Most text treats the underscore character as a space, but certain displays, particularly the mission screen, show them as underscores. The cockpit MFD strips them out completely and just runs the words together. Notably however, the MFD does not strip single quotes, while all other displays do, thus "Hind's Variable N" becomes "HindsVariableN" in most displays, but "Hinds Variable N" in the mission log.
"Detroit" is not capitalized on most displays.
Many of the alpha-numeric systems only have the first letter capitalized; I think they are all supposed to be. (Original used an all-caps font as I recall.)
On the comm MFD, you have nothing to say to several worlds. Dialogue to planets and bases appears to be based on faction as if they were spacecraft, rather than the base-specific dialogue from the original.
The text dialogue at the Mercenaries' Guild when you cannot afford the signing fee does not come anywhere close to what the actor says. Niether does the text if you can. The same goes for the Merchants' Guild. I think the text is from the disk version rather than the CD version.
The singular and plural of "Cat" appear to be crossed in the text generator. It will say things like "A large kilrathi strike force enguaged a squadron of bounty hunters in Surtur. The cat gave the hunters a serious fight..." and then generate missions like "Shoot a Cats". Some other singular/plural sets seem questionable in certain dialogues as well.
The manual is inaccurate on a few things. Most notably, ECMs do not drain power and cannot be turned off, and attempting to change sound or music volume (the music defaults too loud compared to the sound effects) does nothing. (The latter may be an issue with the Windows source.)
Graphical errors/tweaks:
The animation speed of almost all objects in interior scenes seems slower than it should be. It may very well be absolutely all, but I haven't been to every type of base yet. The animations look stuttered as a result. While the current speed resembles what I used to get on my 386, I once got the game running on a P1, and the interior animations were noticeably faster, resulting in a much smoother appearance.
When my radar system was damaged, everthing EXCEPT my radar display went static. (That is, my shield and hull readouts, my fuel gauge, etc.) This persisted for the rest of that session, even after repairing the radar.
The ship dealer doesn't animate. I sort of miss that.
New Constantinople spins. All of the interior artwork supports this, but the exterior model is stationary. I realize it was like that in the original, but that was due to technology limitations. (It's also worth noting that, assuming NC spins to generate artificial gravity, the internal gravity is at right angles to what it should be. Considering the existance of inertial compensators, which are obviously in effect on NC and in all starcraft, there really is no reason to spin the station at all. I guess OSI just thought it looked cool at the time.)
Same as above, but applied to the refinery station.
The model for the jump node is utterly motionless, while the orignials were in a state of flux. There appear to exist a set of animated textures for the jumpnode in the game data, but they are not used.
The jump animation needs to move towards the ship a little slower than it does when flying a Tarsus. (Or simply stop before reaching the center of the ship) It covers the screen completely at a good point in the system transition, but it slips passed the viewpoint about a half-second before the transition is complete, allowing the abrupt cut from one system to another to be viewed. Seems fine in a Centurion, haven't flown the other ships.
Explosions do not appear consistantly when a craft is destroyed. The burst explosion also rarely plays all of its frames even when it does appear. The very first craft destroyed in a session appears to explode properly, but every subsequent craft gets worse until the explosion barely plays at all.
I don't see any specular highlights on craft even though they should be enabled according to my settings. The craft are reflective, and look nice in "busy" systems, but do not display any specular gleam effects.
Your craft is off kilter on the New Detroit landing pad. Looks like it's tipped too far to the right. The same is true on Oxford, only tipped the opposite way.
On the nav computer, the icons for bases and jump points are excessively large and clutter the display.
Getting more nit-picky here, but the craft do not have landing gear for their appearances in the various interior scenes. Not saying that the model geometry needs to be altered, but perhaps mark attatchment points for a generic landing gear model? A low priority, non-concern for sure, but it would be a nice touch at some point.
Does something about VegaStrike prevent displaying hull damage for all four facings? It might be important to know in some cases, such as attacking capitol ships.
The mass driver round should probably be a bitmap sprite, not the white glowing thingy that it is. In fact, the original MD sprite from Privateer would suit it just fine.
Sound errors/tweaks:
Sometimes the afterburner sound does not play.
Sometimes enemy dialogue will not play. (Referring to existing Privateer dialogue, not new material)
Dead enemies continue speaking. Cutting Retros off in the middle of a sermon used to be fun.
Missiles use the ship explosion SFX rather than the missile explosion SFX.
The jump sequence is completely silent. This is at odds with Privateer and WC3, 4 and 5.
The landing and jump musics are completely absent. The landing music should trigger about 6,000 clicks out from a planet/base according to the original.
Design bugs/tweaks:
I took on a mission to ferry construction out to a base. I also perchased all of the remaining constuction on the planet, which was added to my mission cargo rather than remaining seperate from it. After completing the mission, only the three actual mission cargo units were removed from my ship, but I was payed many times more than the mission should have been worth. (Mission was for about 10,000 I think, and I got paid over 100,000)
Killing a mere 17 pirates made me best friends with everyone except the Retros. Why did the Kilrathi care?
Also, even with 100 reputation, the Militia still gave me neutral dialogues ("Stick to established lanes for your own good." and such) rather than the friendlier dialogues. Overall though, I would say that this was entirely too fast. Getting into the universe's good graces should be harder than that.Collision damage seems drastically reduced. My shields can take full speed hits from an asteroid (used to be instant death if you were going more than about 400KPS) and Talons just seem to bounce off rather than splatter like they used to.
I can turn my turret 180 into my own hull and fire. There should be some restraints on their movement.
Contraband searches take forever. I got a request to maintain speed and course, so I waited a good thirty seconds, never got the all clear, so I autoed out to a jump node and just as I was about to enter, the militia comes on with "No contraband detected. You may proceed." Although the check was a little too quick in the original, this seems too long. Also, shouldn't they have interpreted my heading for the node as a criminal action? The manual implied that they would.
It seems to be impossible to sustain any serious ship damage. Part of the balance of the original was the cost of those damn maneouvrering jets, or the possiblity of weapon malfunction. It certainly made the repair droid a more valuable add-on. Addendum: I managed to get trashed badly enough to lose a weapon, in addition to the repair droid, which was a nice touch. Still kind of miss taking damage to the jets though.
The first tier radars have lockon capability, rendering the second tier completely useless.
The Mercenaries' Guild rarely offers missions more lucrative than the mission computer. This is probably due to the mission computer offering signifigantly more than six missions at a time, while the MG still only offers four.
If you attempt to take a trade mission without sufficient cargo space, it dissapears completely from the list with no feedback as to why.
I miss the in-character menues for the commodity exchange, mission computer, and ship dealer. The new menu design is great, but is there any way to make each unique like the guilds instead of one generic menu design?
I really miss the takeoff and landing sequences. Is there any way to script these back in?
Does VegaStrike simply disallow the concept of specific projectile launchers? I miss being able to mount two guns and a tractor beam on the Tarsus. (Without paying an arm and a leg)
The ship dealer still says that you can use your old ship for trade in, but that is no longer the case, correct?
The price of the Orion is now 125,000 credits, but the ship dealer still says it costs 75,000.
Draymans have no turrets. While I cannot remember any on the NPC draymans in the original, according to the prologue, they do infact mount a number of turrets. The number seems to be at least three, (Johansen, Hank and the Privateer were manning turrets) but given the size of the ship compared to a Galaxy, it should probably be closer to five or six. As is, their cargo space is impressive, though perhaps a little overkill for cargo use. As a carrier or ship stealer, they are interesting, but totally reliant on fighter support. Given their near-nil turning capibilities, I don't see how a drayman could hit anything short of another drayman without a turret. That said, the ship in the prologue has vastly superior handling to a stock drayman, and possibly isn't one at all. (Though if it isn't, I want to buy a Scarab-class, not a dinky drayman.
)Afterburners seem to continue to fire even after you run out of energy, rather than sputtering as they did in the original. This allows you to run heavy shields at full power without losing afterburner capability. Getting to that perfect point of balancing the generator recharge rate with the afterburner consumption was part of the game.
