Feeling really good right now, got the FFED3D source code compiling and running! It's quite a bit different than the version that was released though. Planets have far more detail but are extremely buggy and cause my computer to freeze up a bit. I'll play around with it and let you guys know how it goes.
The FFED3D Thread
- Thread starter Steve O B Have
- Start date
The latest stable revision in general release appears to be v1.12b (this is the version I have been using this past couple of months):
http://www.elite-games.ru/conference/viewtopic.php?t=54998
(NOTE: The page is Russian. Use Google Chrome and select 'Translate' when you see the option for it under your URL bar.)
You should also check out this forum (again, in Russian):
http://www.elite-games.ru/conference/viewtopic.php?p=2868600#2868600
Click to 'Reveal the hidden text' and behold the amazing screenshots! Evidently *some* work is still being done on the project (that post was dated 21-Nov-2012). From what I could understand from their broken English, they're experiencing stability issues, and there is some discussion of those issues over the subsequent pages.
Do the planets in your compiled version look like the ones in those screenshots? If so, you're working on their 'work-in-progress'. It could be well worth your while dropping a message into that forum and seeing what the current state of play is.
Not so much from what I've seen, but straight builds of the later revisions are very unstable! I guess with different hi-res textures you could get closer to those planets - remember they've had a year or so to play since the last rev100 that we can grab! The later versions are starting to use bump-mapped textures and per-object shaders so I expect that's what's being used to give so much detail on the space station & ships.
The atmosphere around planets even in the release is much more opaque than the builds I've tried and I think it's even more so in the screen shots so that the earth planets are essentially blue+clouds outside of the atmosphere. The landed pics at 'Hope' aren't far off rev60/65+ I reckon - the building objects are clearly bump-mapped/shaded which I reckon would be implemented by extensions to the models\models.fx file, there maybe some HDR lighting going on there as well.
Anyway I was going to report back that I've been playing around with the code the past couple of days since getting it to compile, and rev's 16,25,36,58 and 60 are all pretty stable. That's not to say they're not without issues however!
It's hard to know what code the release was actually based upon, but I'd guess something similar to rev16 as they merged the Ansio mod in from rev17 onwards and the released FFED3D doesn't contain this - e.g. no start position 4 from title screen.
I don't know much about playing with this mod but one irritating change perhaps is the trading model is linked to system population, so it can take days to sell cargo that the station already has too much of and doesn't want. That might be 'realistic' but maybe not much fun! What opinions do others have of that mod?
Unfortunately a lot of the 'revisions' contain code changes to multiple areas rather than being targetted packages, so there may be a fix/restructure in a later version that's useful but the compiled revision is unplayable. My russian is non-existent so where code has been documented it's no help to me to understand what the aim of a 'fix' was!
rev36 and beyond seem to have a lot of experimentation with alternative methods of terrain generation/rendition, and it becomes important to have the correct "Resources" in the FFE3D folder or it may just crash. The resources for rev36->60 are the same I think but beyond 65 they change quite frequently - but I found later versions pretty much unuseable.
This is odd as the change logs show additions such as 'wingmen' and a console, with fixes for these changes, but in seemingly unplayable revisions. I guess there'll need to be a lot of DIFF'ing to see what's actually being altered and try separate the graphical changes from other fixes/enhancements.
r64/65 is not stable on my main PC, crashing when loading a save visiting the thargons in the Polaris system. It seems to be shader code for variable ship colours as my laptop, which isn't capable of running them is unaffected.
So I've been playing with rev36 & rev60, reactivating the atmosphere (comment the return in function 'DrawAtmosphere' in win\gfx.cpp) and reinstating a copy of the rev19 planet rendering function to retain textured ground & mountains - these are much prettier with the highdef textures. I've kept the later rendition function for water so that the gpu animates it but it is distracting on Earth where some ports are in the sea!
Having the atmosphere when landed causes some nice blue skies rather than the star field, but the downside is the nights are then starless. Maybe there's some way of figuring out how 'dark' it is at your location and then switching atmosphere mode to see stars only at night...
Unfortunately, there does seem to be a bug in all of the revisions where sections of the ground are being culled when at low level, meaning you can see through to the opposite side of the planet! I seem to recall this being an issue in the original F:E2/F:FE?
This doesn't happen though in the released FFED3D, so obviously it's a step backwards. Also there are additional issues in the intro sequence, e.g. the ship flies into the edge of the brown planet and the 'earth' planet isn't behind the spaceship when it is revealed. rev58/60 also only seem to play the videos once, although rev36 always seems to play them - not sure yet what got broken between revisions to cause that.
On the plus side, the windowed mode works much better and the cockpit panel appears in all revisions and you can click the icons correctly...
(albeit the window appears at 100,100 on the desktop - easily changed to 0,0 in the 'VideoInit' function in win\w32video.cpp ~ln544)
just in closing ... one nice random link I spotted on their forum was this: http://en.spaceengine.org/ now there is one sexy engine for planets and the universe - might have to go have a play with that!
The atmosphere around planets even in the release is much more opaque than the builds I've tried and I think it's even more so in the screen shots so that the earth planets are essentially blue+clouds outside of the atmosphere. The landed pics at 'Hope' aren't far off rev60/65+ I reckon - the building objects are clearly bump-mapped/shaded which I reckon would be implemented by extensions to the models\models.fx file, there maybe some HDR lighting going on there as well.
Anyway I was going to report back that I've been playing around with the code the past couple of days since getting it to compile, and rev's 16,25,36,58 and 60 are all pretty stable. That's not to say they're not without issues however!
It's hard to know what code the release was actually based upon, but I'd guess something similar to rev16 as they merged the Ansio mod in from rev17 onwards and the released FFED3D doesn't contain this - e.g. no start position 4 from title screen.
I don't know much about playing with this mod but one irritating change perhaps is the trading model is linked to system population, so it can take days to sell cargo that the station already has too much of and doesn't want. That might be 'realistic' but maybe not much fun! What opinions do others have of that mod?
Unfortunately a lot of the 'revisions' contain code changes to multiple areas rather than being targetted packages, so there may be a fix/restructure in a later version that's useful but the compiled revision is unplayable. My russian is non-existent so where code has been documented it's no help to me to understand what the aim of a 'fix' was!
rev36 and beyond seem to have a lot of experimentation with alternative methods of terrain generation/rendition, and it becomes important to have the correct "Resources" in the FFE3D folder or it may just crash. The resources for rev36->60 are the same I think but beyond 65 they change quite frequently - but I found later versions pretty much unuseable.
This is odd as the change logs show additions such as 'wingmen' and a console, with fixes for these changes, but in seemingly unplayable revisions. I guess there'll need to be a lot of DIFF'ing to see what's actually being altered and try separate the graphical changes from other fixes/enhancements.
r64/65 is not stable on my main PC, crashing when loading a save visiting the thargons in the Polaris system. It seems to be shader code for variable ship colours as my laptop, which isn't capable of running them is unaffected.
So I've been playing with rev36 & rev60, reactivating the atmosphere (comment the return in function 'DrawAtmosphere' in win\gfx.cpp) and reinstating a copy of the rev19 planet rendering function to retain textured ground & mountains - these are much prettier with the highdef textures. I've kept the later rendition function for water so that the gpu animates it but it is distracting on Earth where some ports are in the sea!
Having the atmosphere when landed causes some nice blue skies rather than the star field, but the downside is the nights are then starless. Maybe there's some way of figuring out how 'dark' it is at your location and then switching atmosphere mode to see stars only at night...
Unfortunately, there does seem to be a bug in all of the revisions where sections of the ground are being culled when at low level, meaning you can see through to the opposite side of the planet! I seem to recall this being an issue in the original F:E2/F:FE?
This doesn't happen though in the released FFED3D, so obviously it's a step backwards. Also there are additional issues in the intro sequence, e.g. the ship flies into the edge of the brown planet and the 'earth' planet isn't behind the spaceship when it is revealed. rev58/60 also only seem to play the videos once, although rev36 always seems to play them - not sure yet what got broken between revisions to cause that.
On the plus side, the windowed mode works much better and the cockpit panel appears in all revisions and you can click the icons correctly...
(albeit the window appears at 100,100 on the desktop - easily changed to 0,0 in the 'VideoInit' function in win\w32video.cpp ~ln544)
just in closing ... one nice random link I spotted on their forum was this: http://en.spaceengine.org/ now there is one sexy engine for planets and the universe - might have to go have a play with that!
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Ah ok, maybe I should read that thread with the Google translate toolbar!
After the pictures posted by Urm he adds this comment which suggests that they are from the released FFED3D with an add-on:
"Download the archive FXAATools. Download the file Profile. Extract it to a folder with the build of FFED3D.Nahodim file FXAA_Tool.exe, run on the menu at the bottom click on GAME IMPORT and find raspakovanom profile. There's my settings.
now just load the game. Better through the normal executable, the loader can take off. repetition in 2D menu has glitches and artifacts, but the game does not interfere. Who will remove them and at the same time make the lighting will be even better, just super. Setting us loose, I spent a lot of time to adapt to the game. But we must remember that I am not an expert at all this, maybe someone will turn it all much cooler."
It seems that he's using an additional piece of software to alter how the game is being displayed, as well as updating the textures so that they are higher res. The FXAA software page appears to be here: https://www.assembla.com/spaces/fxaa-pp-inject/wiki
I think that you need to download that and then extract the profile into its folder. Run and 'import' a game, selecting the FFED3D.profile and then point it at the FFED3D folder - but it doesn't want to run anything for me... the window frame pops and then closes...
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Aha! I was just in the process of replying to your last post to suggest exactly that!Ah ok, maybe I should read that thread with the Google translate toolbar!
After the pictures posted by Urm he adds this comment which suggests that they are from the released FFED3D with an add-on:
There's also this download a few pages later:
http://www.elite-games.ru/conference/viewtopic.php?p=2869679#2869679
Could be useful...?
Given all the confusion and problems with it, I wonder whether it may be worth creating a branched version from a stable revision that can be worked on in English.
I've got to say - thanks so much for your participation in this, and for your detailed posts. I'm reluctant to get too involved with the development of this as I just don't have any free time, and C++ is not a language I'm very familiar with. My participation as a programmer would be more of a hindrance to the project than a help, I think.
But I am very interested to see what (if any) development can be made on this project to help make it stable.
If I were to set priorities for the project, I would suggest getting the major gameplay bugs ironed out first (e.g. this missing reconnaissance targets), and then concentrating on upgrading the graphics engine.
Have you been in touch with Ittiz? He was interested in trying to help iron out those bugs.
This is a curious bit of software...
...which seems to just hook up to the game you're running and add some funky graphics effects.
I'm not sure how useful it is, but if your gfx card supports shaders it may be worth playing around with.
I've loaded it up a few times and it does horrible things to the information screens, but I've a feeling this can be overcome by changing a few of the settings.
After looking though all the versions I decided to go with revision 16. Seems stable enough and they hadn't screwed the planets up too much by that revision. Just one issue with the the texture wrapping that was an easy fix. Already made a little progress, like fixing brown dwarfs.
Awesome! And it looks like you got the planet rings texture mapped too - nice one!
Could you let me know which function you modified to implement that? I want to see if it's possible to implement a modified function that would allow us to have multiple textures available for planet surfaces (to allow more variety in the galaxy)...
It would be good to follow up on AndyJ's suggestion of DIFF'ing each file up to the latest revision to see what other fixes can be implemented (e.g. targetting tunnels).
Come to think of it (since we're in that 'area'), brown dwarfs are meant to be hot, and give out low light. What would be involved in making it have a small aura (like the Type 'M' Red Stars), and allowing it to have it's own unique texture file (that would look similar to this)?
Furthering my earlier suggestion of having multiple textures, we could use some of these textures for a wonderfully varied galaxy:
http://freebitmaps.blogspot.co.nz/
Do you know of anywhere we could host the branched version and setup our own bug tracker? I may not be able to program any solutions, but I'd like to be involved somehow, even if it's just throwing in the odd texture here and there.
AndyJ - any thoughts on this?
EDIT: One last thing. Check this out: http://www.jongware.com/galaxy1.html
I don't think it will work reliably with FFED3D. The effects build up over a period of a few seconds. That's fine for exterior shots where everything is moving and changing (i.e. the screen is constantly updating), but the console screens are mainly static, and the software is unable to determine the difference between the two.Steve;66682[IMG said:
If we can get a bugfixed working FFED3D project, it *may* be possible to implement these effects directly within the FFED3D executable using DirectX10, since the source code is freely available at https://www.assembla.com/code/fxaa-pp-inject/subversion/nodes
One last thing - where did you get that neat angular building on the very far left of your 2nd screenshot? Is that one you put together yourself?
I haven't touched the rings. The angle makes it appear that way I guess. I'm not an advanced C++ coder, and with ED a year away I'm not going to put a huge effort into this. Just patch it up so it looks halfway decent. So I think added extra textures for planets isn't going to happen. I can split out what's already there easy. At the moment several planet types use the same textures. I'm also trying to instate some things they added after the revision I'm working on like the fancy loading screen, without the stuff that messed it up like the planet scripting code. I'm going to see if I can put in the pretty water too, but it may use the special scripts that mess everything up.
I do believe that's model number 393 but I'm not the author. Could be either one of the Russian guys or Potsmoke.
I can waffle on about FFE all day, 'cos that's something I can play here and now. No doubt when ED gets released next year I'll have plenty to say
I can compile you an executable without the bug, it has other bugs though, like planets clipping the atmosphere.
Oh My !!!!
I think i fixed the icons
I think i fixed the icons