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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Freeform Space announcement

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kingius
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Posted: 26th Nov 2002 21:45
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Play as a competitive trader, fierce bounty hunter, merciless pirate, honourable bodyguard, daring explorer or even run your own taxi service in this exciting, 3D action space game!

There are five Ships to fly, 14 primary weapons to fire, 10 secondary weapons to blast apart your enemies with, and 40 ship upgrades to aid you in your ambition of becoming the galaxy's most legendary star pilot!

Freeform Space is based on the original classic game Elite, and a sequal to the original Freeform, rocket propelling into the next millenium It has been completely reprogrammed and remodelled from the ground up to create a compelling new game engine to drive the action and provide an all new adrenalin-filled experience!

You can download the beta at http://www.spectre-software.com
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 26th Nov 2002 22:28
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NICE!
I love the attention to detail in the game, which shows in many ways: ie- the tech papers on your site

Alex Wanuch
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Kousen Dev Progress >> Currently Working On Editors
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 26th Nov 2002 22:28
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(BTW- dloading demo now)

Alex Wanuch
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Kousen Dev Progress >> Currently Working On Editors
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kingius
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Posted: 26th Nov 2002 23:03
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Thanks! I hope you enjoy taking the Calgorii Merchantile out for a test-flight!

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 26th Nov 2002 23:11
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I did, however, I only got 9 fps with 8 fps average
My specs:

PIII 600Mhz
128MB Ram
NVIDIA TNT2 64MB
WinXP w/ DX8.1
(ouch, I know... getting a new one next year )


It looks nice though!
One thing I noticed: When requesting docking permission, the controller person says "Docking permission accepted"... shouldn't it be "Docking permission Granted"?

Alex Wanuch
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Kousen Dev Progress >> Currently Working On Editors
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TheNVS
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 02:04
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hey kingius , you said you have five ships. any ideas of making more. i am making a game that is almost the same to yours but it is on mars and a little different. i am going to work on it like the game has actually been worked on. i am having hard times creating an engin for ships and weapons(i will get it done, and i will not give up) for making a lot of ships that i want. i am making several engins to make life easyer for me in the future. i wonder if you have a little engin for creating things like ships, ai, and weapons or do you program the ships one by one. oh, and do you use dbp or still use dbv1 to make your new game. just curious and want to know more about you and your cool game. e-mail me if you want. not any gender nessesary but your game and how much you spend on it. remember, just curious.

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 05:05
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...
Just out of sheer boredom, I think it's DBP, judging from the reflections on some models...

Alex Wanuch
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Kousen Dev Progress >> Currently Working On Editors
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kingius
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 12:19
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rapscal, go to the options screen and choose low detail and let me know what happens to your FPS reading. by default I use 1800 polygons per planet, vapour trails on the ships, etc. lowering the detail should improve your frame rate, please let me know the figures as soon as you can!

I suppose you are right about the docking permission, I shall re-record the sample!

I do the ships in 3ds max, and the ships are added one by one. The AI is a finite state machine, its pretty basic but functional at the moment.

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Megaman X
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 13:00
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Just one thing. If there's not air on the space, how can the sound of laser being emited? I think Star Wars has the same problem...lol...

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
-- Rogue
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kingius
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 13:05
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lol - I think that there are a lot of unrealistic things in scifi because you need them for it to feel "right". Odd I know. Other unrealistic things include star effects showing stars streaming past, etc.

Anyway, just so you know, the ships in Freeform Space have a cockpit that relays the simulation of the sound back to the pilot because pilots requested the aural feedback. If you wish to disable this feature, simply turn your speakers off for a more realistic experience, hehe

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Megaman X
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 13:07
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Hahahah, I was just kidding However u gave me back a master answer I loved the snaps. Necrotech seems also very entresting. I'm also doing a space ship like game, but more in 3rd person
I wish u luck, I tell u about the demo when I download it

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
-- Rogue
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kingius
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 16:03
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Thanks for the comments, let me know how well it runs and try out the detail modes (seperate FPS readings for each would be brilliant, along with system specs), and any other comments you have, keep em coming!

BTW Necrotech is a fun RPG, if you like RPGs give it a go!

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Megaman X
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Posted: 27th Nov 2002 19:31
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Very very good stuff In what program have u done it? DBpro? I must confess it looks professional since the installation. My specifications are the following:

Intel Pentium 4 - 2GHZ
256 DDRAM
Geforce4 MX 440.

Running all details modes (Low, Medium and High) + 32 Textures On and Off I got almost the same FPS average. About 40 - 49 FPS. U don't have to worry though. If u have done this demo with DBpro, it still prints the fps very strange for me. Some peoples could get over 200 fps in some demos, but I never went over 50 . But that only in numbers, the demos always run fast and smooth for me (Like urs). When u switch to third person though, the particles engine for the spaceship needs a little treat, I should perhaps make a little less longer

Well, u should be very proud of ur game When u add music and the rest (missions and etc) it will be really cool. Kinda remember me Star Wars Rebel Assault / Wing Commander but less arcade with more freedom in the space.

Any help u need, testing, programming ( this u wont need I guess, hehhe ) u can count on me, I'm very very bored, lol. Oh yeah B4 someone says, we have a ShowCase section in this forum

Good luck my friend, farewell for now

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
-- Rogue
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 03:51
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oops, forgot about the detail level
Anyway, with music off and detail low, I got 10 fps... I think WinXP is causing it because everything is running slow...

Alex Wanuch
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Megaman X
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 04:39
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rapscaLLion

I use winXP also Everything was quite slow in the beginning. I've just came back from Nvidia.com and I've updated all my drivers and everything is running MUCH faster then b4 I have little memory though Take a look about ur drivers maybe?

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
-- Rogue
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kingius
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 12:51
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thanks again for testing, you guys have been great!

although it seems the problem may be with the windows xp setup, i shall do some work on making the flight engine run quicker. I think one way to do this is to make more things configurable, like I could disable the sun effect, make the radar and target computer update less times per second, etc.

BTW, with 10fps, how does it feel to play? does it seem slow, or ok?

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 15:03
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it feels fine to play actually, but it's a bit choppy when your firing on another ship... otherwise it really isn't that bad.

Alex Wanuch
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 15:04
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oh, and I have the newest drivers. I could try it in win98 later today tho.

Alex Wanuch
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kingius
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 20:46
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yep good idea, see if there is any difference. Im glad its not too bad even with low frame rates, although rest assured, its something I will be working on fixing. Probably the easiest way is for me to scale more things back in the low detail mode.

One thing to test, can you destroy the other 3 ships in the system and let me know if your frame rate improves? It would help me determine if most of the slow down is down to the enemy ship code and fx

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 28th Nov 2002 23:07
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ok, I'll test sometime today...

Alex Wanuch
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kingius
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Posted: 29th Nov 2002 11:58
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Ok thanks... if you want a quick way to destroy all three ships simply arm your missiles and missile them to oblivion, hehe

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kingius
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Posted: 30th Nov 2002 11:53
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Did you get around to seeing if it was the enemy ships that ate up your frame rate?

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 30th Nov 2002 18:25
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no, I couldn't run it in Win98 because my USB mouse wasn't recognized. It's the weekend now tho, so I'll find time to do it.

Alex Wanuch
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Megaman X
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Posted: 30th Nov 2002 19:32
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In my config it stays same fps killing the spaceships or not

I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
-- Rogue
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kingius
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Posted: 30th Nov 2002 22:43
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ok thanks for checking... i should have a new beta out in a couple of weeks and the flight engine will be further optimised for low detail modes.

lol @ win 98 and your usb mouse... cant you run it as a basic usb microsoft one? pain to use the keys to navigate those dialog boxes though!

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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 1st Dec 2002 05:35
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can't get it to work...

Alex Wanuch
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kingius
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Posted: 8th Dec 2002 12:43
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ok thanks for trying, much appreciated!

btw i aim to have a new beta up in a couple of weeks, with trading being a main feature!

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Kangaroo2
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Posted: 8th Dec 2002 15:00
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This is cool

A choice of 1st or 3rd person perspective view would be a welcome and quite simple addition. Love the attention to detail on the site. Keep up the good work!

Runs fine on my pc in full detail,
AMD800Mhz, 512MBram, 64MbGF2, WinXP Home

* If the apocalypse comes, email me *
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kingius
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Posted: 9th Dec 2002 14:27
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Thanks for the comments!

Im glad you like the detail Im going into with the site... there is more to come!

Pressing 5 on the non-number pad (the row of numbers across the top, whatever it is called lol) should switch your view to an external view.



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Kangaroo2
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Posted: 10th Dec 2002 18:11
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ahh sorry missed that. Well done!

* If the apocalypse comes, email me *
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kingius
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Posted: 11th Dec 2002 13:25
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Thanks!

If you have any more suggestions, keep em coming. Beta 2 is about a week away!

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