DX9 support for TRO, PLEASE!

[Fulmen]

Been listening to Spock or something? lol

BZE is just fine.

Yes, that's the nonsense that he told me before I made that post, but if you read my later post you can see that I corrected myself.

Also a few weeks ago Dx told me that he's pretty much done with BZE (i.e. it's finished, not "discontinued). Unfortunately RC4 might be the last RC.

[HitchcockGreen]

Not necessarily, but the development won't be as frequent as it has been.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Also a few weeks ago Dx told me that he's pretty much done with BZE (i.e. it's finished, not "discontinued). Unfortunately RC4 might be the last RC.

What I find amusing is when people act like BZE is somehow 'abandoned' because further work may not continue. . . when BZE has an insane amount of improvements, fixed bugs and additional enhancements FAR beyond BZ1.4.

If anything BZ1.4 is the version that has languished for over a decade as an easily hacked and obviously crippled version, yet several people will still play it out of sheer stubbornness. While a few others play it BECAUSE it is so easily exploited. Some may argue BZ1.5 is BZ1.4's 'savior', but 1.5 has clearly shown itself over the past 18 months and 40+ builds to be an exercise in never-ending code tweaking and digital navel gazing. . .ad nauseam.

No. . .if there's any version of BZ that has attempted to provide the BZ community a new hardware and OS functional and bug fixed version of the game for people who actually want to PLAY it, it's far and away BZE.

[Ultraken]

Some may argue BZ1.5 is BZ1.4's 'savior', but 1.5 has clearly shown itself over the past 18 months and 40+ builds to be an exercise in never-ending code tweaking and digital navel gazing. . .ad nauseam.

The problem is that I'm down to the hard-to-find or hard-to-fix bugs so there's going to be some regressions at times.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Well from the layman's point of view, mine. . .the disparity between BZ1.5 and BZE1.3RC4 is colossal.

BZE has had about 5 or 6 releases, a short time (~3 months) as 3 or 4 unstable builds while transitioning to Dx9. It has endured the mindbogglingly, never ending active campaign pooing-pooing by the "flock", i.e. coming to the different forums and BZE's lobby and making disparagingly lobby names, telling players it's hacked and should return to the EASILY hacked BZ1.4. Writing acti and atari and anyone who would listen it was violating EULA, etc. After all this it has had a functional and active game that has been played for years. It now has a Dx9 version that installs and plays effortlessly on win7, with tons of enhancements, most bug fixes, added ships and maps. All done by one guy, arguably with the added help of a couple others. . .all two or three of these guys working without inside knowledge of actually having worked on the original game.

BZ1.5 in contrast has had support of those same malcontents in the community, has a developer that has inside knowledge of original code, but has chosen to pump out endless builds (40+). Had full support of the now defunct BZU and the 'other' forum, when BZE was practically forbidden to be mentioned at BZU and entirely banned from the other, both could be played without the CD, AND BZ1.5 allowed SP to be accessed. For goodness sake, BZ1.5 is the stock game and nothing more. . . and is STILL flopping like a fish out of water.

I suppose I should rationalize BZ1.5 existence in one respect. To my knowledge there has never been an active campaign by you promising to "bring back" a playable version for the community. I was also an ardent fan of the vague esoteric promise for oh, the first 15 builds. But since never-ending tweaking and fixing is obviously the case, it should have been made clear 18 months ago.

IMHO what should have been done was get 1.5 'playable', call it done, then move to 1.6 for the endless tweaking minutiae.

In the sense of wanting a 100% perfect game, I certainly commend you, but please, don't mislead through silence of an ultimate finished release, and that it's nothing more than an endless experiment for perfection.

[Ultraken]

Why the hostility?

BZ 1.5 and BZE 1.3 are--to an extent--"sister projects" in that Dx and Tug have full access to 1.5's source repository. They have submitted a number of changes over the past year and a half (though fewer recently), and from the outset they've been welcome to include whatever code they want into BZE (to the great annoyance of Spock and Sporkinator, by the way). I don't know whether or how much they've taken up on that offer, but it's there nonetheless.

BZE had a years-long head-start, too.

[HitchcockGreen]

BZ 1.5 and BZE 1.3 are--to an extent--"sister projects")

Ouch. Don't let Spock or Spork hear you say that.

I think that saying BFT is being hostile is simplifying the issue though. I think it's mostly frustration. We have been supporting BZE as a viable alternative to BZ for a number of years, and all along the way Spock et al went to any and all lengths to harass and push players away. Not to BZ 1.4, but bullied them right out of playing the game altogether.

Most of us don't care if people play either 1.4 or BZE. That's up to them, but driving out people who would play either and remain part of the community seems senselessly self-destructive.

Also take into account that no one at BZC can see what is being said about 1.5 on bz1.org (well, most can't anyway...I'm sure there are a couple of exceptions) as we are all banned (for nothing) or have just had enough of it that we wouldn't want to bother signing up over there. We don't know what's being tested, don't know what issues others have found, etc etc.

On top of that, we know that they copy and paste anything we write on BZC in regards to 1.5 and tear it apart or whatever it is they do.

That's kind of a major turn off to contributing to seeking out bugs and helping. On the other hand we have BZE we can play that, as BFT pointed out, does so very well. But anyone who ever decides to play it must then prepare themselves to be annoyed, insulted, and/or driven off by Spock and crew.

At the end of the day I wouldn't care if they wanted 1.5 all to themselves if they'd just grow up and leave us the **** alone.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Perceiving my post as 'hostile' reveals much, since I clearly state I comment you for attempting perfection.

To achieve a bug free game in every aspect is awesome, it's just not helping to continue the game as an online game with player participation. If you finally arrive at a build you are pleased with at some distant date, I'm sure you, and the couple people left to actually experience it, will be appreciative.

Unless of course, you have a secret promotional campaign you are keeping under wraps.

[Ultraken]

Ouch. Don't let Spock or Spork hear you say that.

I pretty much told them my stance on it early on. There's plenty of room in the world for BZ 1.5 and BZE.

I think that saying BFT is being hostile is simplifying the issue though. I think it's mostly frustration. We have been supporting BZE as a viable alternative to BZ for a number of years, and all along the way Spock et al went to any and all lengths to harass and push players away. Not to BZ 1.4, but bullied them right out of playing the game altogether.

That's why I've been trying to post everything in more than one place. I didn't get nearly as much active response at BZU, BZC, or here but the feedback I get is still helpful.

Most of us don't care if people play either 1.4 or BZE. That's up to them, but driving out people who would play either and remain part of the community seems senselessly self-destructive.

True.

Also take into account that no one at BZC can see what is being said about 1.5 on bz1.org (well, most can't anyway...I'm sure there are a couple of exceptions) as we are all banned (for nothing) or have just had enough of it that we wouldn't want to bother signing up over there. We don't know what's being tested, don't know what issues others have found, etc etc.

That part bothers me a lot but I don't have control over how Spock and friends run their forum.

On top of that, we know that they copy and paste anything we write on BZC in regards to 1.5 and tear it apart or whatever it is they do.

They may well do that, though I don't see it very often since I only read the patch forum.

That's kind of a major turn off to contributing to seeking out bugs and helping. On the other hand we have BZE we can play that, as BFT pointed out, does so very well. But anyone who ever decides to play it must then prepare themselves to be annoyed, insulted, and/or driven off by Spock and crew.

True, though they don't seem to post much here or at BZC that I've seen. Sporkinator was here for a while early on, and more recently DarkVim left a bunch of hostile messages before getting banned.

At the end of the day I wouldn't care if they wanted 1.5 all to themselves if they'd just grow up and leave us the **** alone.

They can want 1.5 to themselves but I'm releasing it for everyone.

[Ultraken]

Perceiving my post as 'hostile' reveals much, since I clearly state I comment you for attempting perfection.

True, you did say that. It's just that I got the impression (possibly wrong) that you were disparaging my efforts compared to BZE. (A lot of it may have been an "it's not what you say but how you say it.")

To achieve a bug free game in every aspect is awesome, it's just not helping to continue the game as an online game with player participation. If you finally arrive at a build you are pleased with at some distant date, I'm sure you, and the couple people left to actually experience it, will be appreciative.

I don't want it to be too distant since I want to get this thing done so I can move onto other things.

Unless of course, you have a secret promotional campaign you are keeping under wraps.

I haven't planned that far ahead.

It's getting closer and closer to being done, though. The big things now are fixing cheats, cleaning up regressions, nailing down some nagging crashes, and deploying patched assets.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

To achieve a bug free game in every aspect is awesome, it's just not helping to continue the game as an online game with player participation. If you finally arrive at a build you are pleased with at some distant date, I'm sure you, and the couple people left to actually experience it, will be appreciative.

I don't want it to be too distant since I want to get this thing done so I can move onto other things.

That's good to hear.

[Ultraken]

I was hoping to be done before the one-year mark, but that obviously didn't happen.

[HitchcockGreen]

I know over on our side it has been said (many times) that 1.5 should have been some of the basic fixes. 1.6 could have been dx9 and/plus other fixes/enhancements.

BZE already has a lot of anti-cheat measures, but I'd assume that anything mirroring BZE's code would bring on the wrath of spock.

[Ultraken]

The original plan for 1.5 was just the D3D9 conversion (to fix the hardware-rendering crash in Windows 7) but that fell by the wayside very quickly...

Spock and Sporkinator's have a general distrust of anything involving BZE or BZ2 but their biggest objections were to the gameplay changes those introduced. Dx and Tug did bring over a number of anti-cheat measures from BZE, and those seem to help quite a bit. I've added a few more measures as well, though there are still some relatively-easy cheats that I need to guard against. (Editing or deleting the netmis.txt file is the most serious one.)

I'd like to compare BZ 1.5's source code with that of BZE 1.3 but I don't have access to the latter (that I know of).

[HitchcockGreen]

Spock and Sporkinator's have a general distrust of anything involving BZE or BZ2 but their biggest objections were to the gameplay changes those introduced.

Distrust or lack of control?

However it does seem that they have a number of their own gameplay changes they want introduced....or that the board decides on or however it works over there.