UE difficulty

U

u4eake

Spaceman
Hi Guys,

Downloaded Unknow enemy a few days ago and started playing, and wow, nice piece of work I must say.

Some questions though: some of the ingame video (the interlace stuff, eg when jumping to another system (at least I think that's what it is)), plays like in fast forward, skipping pieces along the way. . Already found out that UE doesn't like ATI cards, and I'm playing on a laptop with a X700 ATI card. I set the game to 16 bit direct3D to get started. Is the jerky video a side-effect or can something be done ?

Second question : is there some difficulty setting ? Cause man, I thought privateer gold was hard, but UE is even harder. Been playing a whole afternoon trying to finish the second mission (capture the fralthi) but to no avail. Can't say I'm a noob at wc though, finished wc I, II, III IV and privateer gemini gold. Whichever fighter I choose in the socond mission, I can get to the fralthi mostly, but then I get blown away every single time. I think I was able to survive until all fighters were destroyed 1 time, but then the fralthi's missile turret got me as soon as I approched.

Otherwise, great game. I've been enjoying it all afternoon until I got bored trying the same mission over and over again :-)
 
Glad to hear you're enjoying it. I hope you also check out Standoff after you're finished with UE ;).

u4eake said:
Some questions though: some of the ingame video (the interlace stuff, eg when jumping to another system (at least I think that's what it is)), plays like in fast forward, skipping pieces along the way. . Already found out that UE doesn't like ATI cards, and I'm playing on a laptop with a X700 ATI card. I set the game to 16 bit direct3D to get started. Is the jerky video a side-effect or can something be done ?
Click to expand...
This is a different, unrelated problem - basically, the game has trouble handling hardware accelerated sound. The solution is to run dxdiag, and switch off hardware acceleration for sound (note: this almost certainly will have a negative effect on modern games, so be sure to turn it back on later).

Note that on some machines this doesn't work. In Standoff, we actually have a special patch that allows us to fix this problem without messing around with hardware acceleration, but this patch didn't exist when UE was made. We are planning to eventually release one last version of UE, which will incorporate this patch and a bunch of other things... but it might still be a few months before that happens.

Second question : is there some difficulty setting ? Cause man, I thought privateer gold was hard, but UE is even harder. Been playing a whole afternoon trying to finish the second mission (capture the fralthi) but to no avail. Can't say I'm a noob at wc though, finished wc I, II, III IV and privateer gemini gold. Whichever fighter I choose in the socond mission, I can get to the fralthi mostly, but then I get blown away every single time. I think I was able to survive until all fighters were destroyed 1 time, but then the fralthi's missile turret got me as soon as I approched.
Click to expand...
Well, hey, the fact that you actually found the Fralthi means you're doing better than many others :).

Anyway, yes, there is a difficulty setting - just get into the gameplay options (press escape, select the options menu, then the gameplay options menu, and you'll see the difficulty settings).

Keep in mind, UE was designed intentionally to be hard. I mean, making your game too hard is the most standard mistake of first-time game developers, and that was certainly a part of the issue here - but apart from making mistakes, we were also really trying to make the game harder than Secret Ops. So... you know, it takes a bit of getting used to ;).

(finally, a tip for this particular situation - use your DF missiles or the Epee's stormfire cannon to take out the missile turrets before going after the rest of the turrets; missile turrets are the worst enemy in any mission, because unlike fighters, their supply of missiles is entirely unlimited)
 
Could we borrow your 4dfx card please? I'd sure love to get a sneak peak at UE _2_ as well ;-)
 
I found unknown enemy to be just about as tough to handle as the secret missions
1 package for wing commander one.
 
Thanks for the tips quarto :-)
Didn't succeed the missions yet, but getting closer :-)
Gonna try and complete them on standard difficulty setting (ace)
I might also add that I'm playing with keyboard controls, which doesn't make things easier. It's ok if you can do a head on attack, but for tailing a foe it's plain misery :-)
Finished wc I and II by keyboard though.

I'm enjoying it anyway, so thank for putting this together. I already downed Standoff. It's next on my list as soon as I complete all UE missions (which by the looks of it might be a while :-) )
 
Howdy :-)
After a week of preparations for assisting with an experiment on the ISS, I'm back at playing wc ue in my free time :-)
Got past the difficult missions : going from keyboard to mouse control helped a lot and I guess my reflexes have sharpened a bit :-) Still hard though, but I got most missions done.

The current one (mission 8 or 9) has me blocked again though. Gotta escort an avenger to a jumppoint and it's a peace of cake really, until the thing jumps out. I get this nice cutscene of the avenger jumping out, but then my screen doesn't jump back to cockpit mode. I can watch the battle going on from the outside (far in the distance) and I hear the sounds (also sounds of my controls) but I can see what I'm doing, so after a short while I'm toast. Any tips ?

Also, disabling sound accelleration in dxdiag didn't seem to help the video playing on fast forward. I have it set to "no acceleration" but the video plays as jerky as before. Any more tips on that ? (playing on win xp home, ATI X700 graphics, turion 64 laptop)
 
u4eake said:
The current one (mission 8 or 9) has me blocked again though. Gotta escort an avenger to a jumppoint and it's a peace of cake really, until the thing jumps out. I get this nice cutscene of the avenger jumping out, but then my screen doesn't jump back to cockpit mode. I can watch the battle going on from the outside (far in the distance) and I hear the sounds (also sounds of my controls) but I can see what I'm doing, so after a short while I'm toast. Any tips ?
Click to expand...
I have no idea what causes this bug - it doesn't happen to me :p. However, the solution is fortunately quite simple - just press F1 to return to the cockpit after the Avenger has jumped.
 
sim mission difficult task

UE was difficult compared to other WC games, but I didn't think that any of the standard missions were hard enough to warrant more than 2-3 attempts max. All of them save perhaps "hurricane", but that mission only takes place on the "B" path so is easily avoidable. And finding the Fralthi can be tough before you realize that you have to actually afterburn after it, and that's only because you never had to do that in any other WC mission ever to my knowledge. I'm having trouble with the sim mission that takes place in the nebula, where you have to go after the Murphy-class destroyer. I can get to the destroyer (never with any wingmen though, they eat it quickly) but getting past the fighter cover is impossible. Now while this mission does make a good case for arguing the superiority of human ships it is very hard to beat. And that's with any ship. The mission chooses the Bearcat, but as far as I can tell despite the fact it's supposed to be one of the best ships available for dogfighting, it sucks in every way. Any tips on destroying (or capturing, or whatever im supposed to do) that murphy-class?
 
ok, pressing F1 gets me back in my seat :-)
BTW GREAT missions that I get to fly and great ships too :-) Was especially surprised to find me in one of those kilrathi "flying rocks". Nice mission design. Very nice !
Almost wish I was unemployed so that I could keep playing, cause it seems there are 2 paths : A and B, so I guess I'll have to play UE again when I'm finished to get to the B path (I'm now accomplishing every mission, so I guess that's the A path)
 
In the 2nd mission when you are searching for the frathili, is there a button that can switch nav points?

(I now this does not probably fit here, but I did not want to start a new thread about it.)
 
You mean when you have to descide to go after the dralthi or after the gratha ?
Had to search for that also for a while.
Press ctrl-M to get your nav map. Now you can select a nav destination by right-clicking it. (sometimes you have to try a few times)
 
FleeBalls said:
The mission chooses the Bearcat, but as far as I can tell despite the fact it's supposed to be one of the best ships available for dogfighting, it sucks in every way. Any tips on destroying (or capturing, or whatever im supposed to do) that murphy-class?
Click to expand...
Well, you don't have to fly the ship chosen by us ;). Still, while I don't even remember the last time I played UE, I do believe the Bearcat has some distinct advantages over other ships - it's actually the only ship in UE with the same amount of AB fuel as a Confed fighter in WCP, and that's very useful against BW ships. Not to mention all the missiles it has...

As for flying tips... save as many missiles as you can for the final battle. Then make sure you connect the right missile with the right ship - for example, a single HS missile is enough to kill an Epee, but it's a total waste on an Avenger (which is likely to shoot the missile down, and won't die if it takes the hit) or on a Ferret (best way to handle a Ferret is to taunt it into making a head-on pass, and the simply gun it down). And, of course, try to kill a Scim or two in the first few seconds (this applies to any navpoint, really), because they're the real wingman-killers. DF missiles do this admirably, but it's better to save them for the missile turrets, so instead use a HS or IR combined with some gunfire.
 
Finished UE yesterday, and I gotta say guys, real nice peace of work !!!
I never played prophecy (only got my hands on the demo) and sjew, that final battle is the nicest one I ever fought.
Great action with all the capships, a shitload of wingmen and an ever bigger shitload of bogeys :-)

Still didn't get the movies playing right though, which is a pitty cause the end movie seemed rather nice.
 
Well, we hope to eventually resolve that problem :p. For what it's worth, my very rough plan is to make a final final version of UE some time in the first eight months of 2006. This version would certainly fix the movie problems, and as well as hopefully fixing any outstanding mission bugs and - in an ideal universe - putting the fiction into a Standoff-style in-game viewer.
 
problems starting ue game

I just download unknown enemy and the update patch and having problems trying to start the game. Everytime I try to start it comes up with this

IFF:: IFF open file 'mission\enemy.srs' not found and not optional

Can anyone share some light on to this??
 
It sounds like you installed the game in the wrong place. It has to be installed in the same folder as SO.
 
Death

Yo I'm playing UE but recently I keep on crashing out of the game with a fatal error messgae which says "dinput::fetch2 fell out of loop". I have UE v1.2. can some1 help me.
 
I remember reading about that error in a WCP thread, It has something to do with the joystick.
I use a mouse only (then you can't have that error). It's of course a bit harder.
 
Joystick, jup. You get this error if you disconnect your stick in the midst of the game for example. If you didn't do this then your stick is probably starting to fail. WCP is very sensible here. I had sticks that still worked in almost all other games, but WCP already noticed that they were needing repairs.
 
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