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Spring:1944 dev and testing

Posted: 23 Dec 2006, 20:33
by Nemo
Edit November 1st, 2007:

We're in the process of putting together a new release and it's excellent. Stay tuned!

The old public alpha may still be found on UF, but given how different it is from the current state of the game, we're no longer advertising it here or requesting any bug reports from it.

Posted: 23 Dec 2006, 21:47
by KDR_11k
I've played it online for one match, in case you take bug reports I'd like to mention that allied riflemen (M1 and HMG, I think are the ones I tested) don't shoot at axis engineers. Had to walk up to them and plant an AP mine with an engi to kill them...

Posted: 23 Dec 2006, 21:49
by MadRat
Merry Christmas! We love ya, Nemo.

edit: holy crap you've added alot of detail since the old ta demo!

Posted: 23 Dec 2006, 21:51
by Nemo
Thank you, something was borked with their category.

In other news, I'll make a NTai profile for this soon, so all you people who don't like playing against humans will have something to play against.

Posted: 23 Dec 2006, 22:39
by Neddie
Somebody leaked it? Well... it does kick arse.

Posted: 23 Dec 2006, 23:56
by Guessmyname
Did jj or JJ45 leak it? I saw him put up the download links in the Lobby and try to advertise it.

Posted: 24 Dec 2006, 00:07
by Nemo
Yeah. It wasn't really his fault though - I did name it rather confusingly, and never explicitly said that it wasn't ready.

He might be helping us out with skins in the near future.

Posted: 24 Dec 2006, 01:01
by FLOZi
heh. Well, best get to work on the next patch, rawr! :-)

Posted: 24 Dec 2006, 16:43
by MadRat
Hopefully this is helpful. The modinfo file is broken I think. In the alpha .1, the modinfo calls dependencies of:

NumDependencies=2;
Depend0=tacontent_v2.sdz;
Depend1=tatextures.sdz;

In the patch .1b2 it calls for a single one:

NumDependencies=1;
Depend0=1944publicalpha_v0.1.sd7;

This makes the GI's look like mashes of bad texturing. I could of sworn they were fine out of the factory then went bad as I scrolled around. Could be its textures have a bug or maybe someone scaled up the size of the model without retuxturing the unit? I also noticed the german obs. infantry guy changed to bad textures after recieving some damage and his legs ceased to animate. He looks like a ghost floating on the surface of the planet as he scoots about now. :)

Also, the infantry units run right up the sides of high cliffs. Did your movement classes not get setup to what you wanted?

Update: The basic infantry from both sides (kar, gi) have a bug where they are messed up textures until they start battling. Then as soon as they posture for shooting they look fine. Some units have excellent clothing, like the heckenshutze guys, yet they have no skin or anything else textured. Strange.

Posted: 24 Dec 2006, 17:03
by FLOZi
MadRat wrote:Hopefully this is helpful. The modinfo file is broken I think. In the alpha .1, the modinfo calls dependencies of:

NumDependencies=2;
Depend0=tacontent_v2.sdz;
Depend1=tatextures.sdz;

In the patch .1b2 it calls for a single one:

NumDependencies=1;
Depend0=1944publicalpha_v0.1.sd7;

This makes the GI's look like mashes of bad texturing. Either its missing the textures altogether or someone scaled up the size of the model without retuxturing the unit. I also noticed the german obs. infantry guy changed to bad textures after recieving some damage and his legs ceased to animate. He looks like a ghost floating on the surface of the planet as he scoots about now. :)

Also, the infantry units run right up the sides of high cliffs. Did your movement classes not get setup to what you wanted?
The dependancies are fine - the textures look screwed when units are cloaked - this is a (very annoying) Spring engine bug and there is nothing we can do about it. :(

Guess we'll look into movement classes.

Posted: 24 Dec 2006, 17:16
by MadRat
The anti-tank mines are awfully strong. One happened to be sitting in front of a building the infantry were shooting at and it absorbed all of the hits. One panzerfaust guy took out the whole group of like ten gi's as they fired away. Strange how a panzerfaust is so effective like that yet another anti-tank mine blew up next to them and did no damage at all. I'd think it would of been the other way around. AT mines should be easy to destroy yet do massive damage to unskinned people and equipment, whereas the panzerfaust would wreak havoc on armor and virtually nothing to nonarmor.

The flak36/38 chew up planes pretty fast. But if the bomber has defensive guns, not sure if it was a-20's or b-25's that did, the flak guns themselves get chewed up and spit out. I'm not so sure the defensive machine guns were meant to strafe with god-like accuracy like that... at least probably not on ground targets. :)

Update: Holy crap!!! The fw-190 and p-51 dogfights are so f$&&*ing beautiful. You went all out on the damage and kill animations. Beautiful freaking work.

Posted: 24 Dec 2006, 18:54
by Nemo
Glad you like the aircraft. Spiked did a LOT of work with the aircraft a little while ago, and it shows.

As for the bugs, thank you, this is VERY helpful. You are correct the bomber's turret guns should not be shooting at anything on the ground. I thought I set them to only target planes, but apparently not.

Anti tank mines are more or less invulnerable to weapons fire, and they shouldn't be blocking anything, since they have such a small hitsphere. However, yes, they do need some tweaking in how they work. Their explosion is currently smaller than the anti-personnelle mine, which is strange, and will be fixed. That said, they are only triggered by vehicles - while an AT mine explosion WILL kill infantry, they can't set them off - only vehicles can.

Panzerfausts were actually quite effective against unarmored targets, including infantry - the projectile they fired was essentially a giant grenade. However, you're right, the riflemen should be shooting their rifles at infantry, not at buildings that they can't damage with small arms fire.

In the next patch I'll change infantry so that they only fire they rifles and SMGs and whatnot at other infantry or artillery, and occasionally unarmored stuff like jeeps/halftracks. That should help a bit.

I'm glad to hear that the flak 38 is working as it should - most of the other AA stuff is a little too weak right now due to the height that the planes fly at (they just need some range boosting).

Thanks a ton for the bug reports, keep em coming! The more I get, the faster the new patch will arrive, and the better it will be ;)

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 18:52
by Lemm1w1nkz
I just wanted to point something historically in accurate about the b-25c.

The b-25c model was a bomber variant and had lots of guns removed, for instance there was no tail or ball gun on the b-25c model. This was to remove weight for bombs. The b-25c did however have a bomb sight. The plane in game appears to be a cross between a b-25h and a b-25c. The b-25h was a ground attack version with 12 forward facing .50s (fired by the pilot) along with a 75mm tank cannon. It had no bomb sight, and carried less bombs. But it did have a tail and ball gunner, and wider waist gun windows (the b-25c had almost just a slit with a gun poking out for the waist guns)

But in game you can hardly notice it. Just wanted to point it out :D

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 20:18
by FLOZi
Source?

My sources (poor as they are) seem to suggest that the ventral and dorsal turrets were added on the B-25B and remained intact on the C and D models.

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 20:26
by Felix the Cat
Yeah, please source your comments.

All of us on the team are WW2 buffs and know quite a bit about the war and its equipment. Because of this, unsourced comments are likely to be ignored... heck, even within the team we generally give each other sources if we are contending something.

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 20:30
by SpikedHelmet
What the hell are you talking about? B-25C was simply a B-25B with internal changes to the powerplants and electrical systems. No guns were removed, unless you're talking about a very specific and small production block and/or lend-lease planes.
Strange how a panzerfaust is so effective like that yet another anti-tank mine blew up next to them and did no damage at all.
The panzerfaust was a giant bomb attached to the end of a stick, able to bring down a small house. Anti-tank mines were designed simply to explode upwards, though yes they should kill things.
Spiked did a LOT of work with the aircraft a little while ago, and it shows.
What? I did? You mean like a year ago?
Yeah. It wasn't really his fault though - I did name it rather confusingly, and never explicitly said that it wasn't ready.
He must be skinned alive and hung by the raw flesh of his balls.

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 22:45
by Nemo
From a quick glance on wikipedia (of course not a great source, but better than nothing, will confirm soon):
B-25B├óÔé¼ÔÇØTail gunner eliminated; dorsal and ventral turrets added, each with a pair of .50-calibre machine guns. The ventral turret was retractable, but the increased drag still reduced the cruise speed by 30 mph (48 km/h). 23 were delivered to the RAF as the Mitchell Mk I.(Number made: 120)

B-25C├óÔé¼ÔÇØ Improved version of the B-25B: upgraded from Wright R-2600-9 radials to R-2600-13 radials; deicing and anti-icing equipment was added; the navigator received a sighting blister; and nose armament was increased to two .50-calibre machine guns, one fixed and one flexible. The B-25C model was the first mass produced B-25 version; it was also used in the United Kingdom as the Mitchell II, and in Canada, China, The Netherlands, and Russia. First mass-produced B-25. (Number made: 1,625)
Looks like the B-25c had the turrets to me. Anyways, for everyone else...post more bug reports, or even just say something you'd like to see changed/improved.
Besides adding the brits and soviets - we're still working on that :P

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 23:14
by KDR_11k
Loading three Panzerfaust soldiers into an Opel made it tow the third. I know WW2 was rough but that seems overly cruel to me...

Some vehicles (only one I remember specifically was the Axis engineering veh) have build times so short that one nanobot would cost like 50k metal to spawn so they don't get built by the factory and you have to send engineers on them instead. Intentional?

A Panzerschreck trooper caused an "unknown piece for emit-sfx" error and spawned his rocket inside the terrain which caused him to asplode like a firecracker.

Building a Panther caused a missing texture error.

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 23:26
by Nemo
Most likely the two veh cons which got skipped over somehow when I was scaling up all the buildtimes.

Will check panzerschrek and panther, as well as opel script.

Thanks again KDR, this is a huge help.

Posted: 25 Dec 2006, 23:34
by FLOZi
Have you even put the new opel script in yet, Nemo? I imagine KDR is using the old version - where all troops will be 'towed'