Couple of gameplay questions, one bug.

[Atmosphere]

Gameplay questions:

I found (through sheer luck) a couple of artifacts not terribly far from home, an escape pod and a database. Neither has any apparent "value." I cannot do anything with them and the sell value is zero. Are they supposed to have value, or are these quest items for a quest I have not started?

Second - do encounters scale with your ship? I am on the Tafel mission, trudged up there, and promptly got stomped by a lone Tafel ship. After spending some time upgrading my ship's gear, all I can find now are large fleets of Tafel (there had to be at least fifteen ships, I did not stop to count before hitting the hyperspace button) and pirate groups of four ships. Might just be random bad luck, but I have not found a one-ship encounter since (Class 4 engines, Class 4 armor, Class 3 shield, Class 2 laser/missiles). I did enjoy the "oh, s%&t!" moment when I was surrounded by a mass of enemy warships.

Bug:

The program has been crashing upon entering orbit of a planet. Upon installation I can get a perfectly normal play session. After exiting the program and restarting, gameplay will proceed normally until I attempt to enter orbit of any planet. A reinstallation cures the problem for the next execution of the game. As the reinstall is fast and does not overwrite my savegames, this is merely an inconvenience, but certainly should not be happening.

Compliment:

The opening theme music is fantastic. I heard it start and thought, "Did I just hear...I *did!*" Nice work all around, the game really does feel like Starflight.

[Pbartender]

Bug:

The program has been crashing upon entering orbit of a planet. Upon installation I can get a perfectly normal play session. After exiting the program and restarting, gameplay will proceed normally until I attempt to enter orbit of any planet. A reinstallation cures the problem for the next execution of the game. As the reinstall is fast and does not overwrite my savegames, this is merely an inconvenience, but certainly should not be happening.

I've been having the same problem, but hadn't realized that re-installing didn't overwrite save games. I might have to dive back into the game. I was really enjoying it until I could no longer orbit planets.

[Steve]

The game crashing upon orbiting planets is an issue that I have not heard before in this project, and the planetary modules have not been significantly modified in years. We have had other issues with the OpenGL libraries that this project is built on that only affected certain users with orbiting planet on the main menu that could not be fixed within the code. Hopefully this bug is unrelated.

On the theory that this is a new bug introduced by packaging the game within an installer, could you try the previous beta? The only other significant changes between the last beta and the release are plot modifications and minor takes to the flux system.

Beta #5
http://www.starflt.com/TLC-betas/tlcbeta5r2.zip

If this is an OpenGL issue, could you try updating your video drivers to their latest version and post what model of video card you are using? Since overwhelming majority of games use DirectX only, OpenGL support has faltered in the last number of years.

p.s. Saved games are 100% compatible between Beta #5 and Release 1. There are some plot differences so I would recommend avoiding completing quests if you copy your save games back and forth.

[Steve]

Other questions:

1. Artifacts may be "holo-recorded" an unlimited number of times because they are not removed from the planet's surface. To prevent them from being sold to starport again & again for profit, their value was set to 0. Because inventory is limited and there are literally several hundred unique items in the game, the size of these artifacts were set to 0 as well. The plot also attempts to "clean up" your inventory as much as possible when you no longer need an artifact.

2. Encounter size is randomized within a given range that varies based on race, but the first few encounters are set to be very small.

3. The strength of an actual alien ships does scale depending upon your ships statistics. Some of the races have greater variation of ship statistics, and ships may also have randomized statistics and may strengthen later in the game as well.

I've noticed that most of these adjustments are not that noticeable with huge fleets so I might exaggerate these changes in a later version or simply decrease the fleet sizes.

[Pbartender]

On the theory that this is a new bug introduced by packaging the game within an installer, could you try the previous beta? The only other significant changes between the last beta and the release are plot modifications and minor takes to the flux system.

Beta #5
http://www.starflt.com/TLC-betas/tlcbeta5r2.zip

If this is an OpenGL issue, could you try updating your video drivers to their latest version and post what model of video card you are using? Since overwhelming majority of games use DirectX only, OpenGL support has faltered in the last number of years.

I haven't had a chance to try either these yet, but here's something else I noticed that might give you a clue...

The last time I encountered this crash, I had a brief glimpse at a error message dialogue box that complained something about a file located in a long directory path that began with "f:\". The tricky part is that "F:\" is one of the "removable drive" card slots on my computer, and there wasn't anything plugged into any of them.

The next time it happens, I'll try to get the full file path that it's looking for.

[Steve]

I finally was able to duplicate this bug. Started a new topic thread: http://beta.starflt.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=194