The FFED3D Thread

AndyJ

AndyJ
Well I only funded to the founder level so won't be playing E: D until it hits Beta - so I should have time to finish up what I want to do before I'm distracted with it! And whilst I know it means FFE will soon be superceded, hopefully I can leave it in a playable state for the long term.

Had an interesting question from the Russian forum, did I know why the Imperial Courier/Trader had the same engine flare as all of the other ships because it made them feel less 'special' to own compared to Frontier. Must admit I'd forgotten that they'd had dark blue, long engine streaks, and looking at the data it does seems that this must be an FFE bug. There is a model 216 to draw the different flare, but the courier engine (model 215) doesn't make use of it. :rolleyes:

So I've added a special case to the engine flare code to draw it myself, based off the colours & the blue->white circles in the data, and this is the result:
screen-131214-221957.png

[edited to fix postimg.org img link to postimg.cc]
 
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AndyJ

AndyJ
Sorry that I didn't quite have time to finish up in time for Christmas, but just as the year ends - v1.07 has been released over at SpaceSimCentral and Elite-Games.ru

2013-12-31 - Version 1.07:
+ Distant suns and planets are now drawn from very a small size and scale smoothly as you approach/zoom in to them.
This solves the 'pop up' issue and their replacement point-sprite is only drawn once they reach a distance where
a dot needs to be drawn, so that they don't entirely disappear from screen/planetary map.
+ Reintroduced the unique engine flares of Imperial Courier and Traders that were used in Frontier but had not been
ported to FFE correctly. (They exist in the data but the imperial engine pod didn't reference them!)
FFE purists can disable this enhancement via the config file, by setting frontierImperialEngines=0 if they wish!
+ Centering the Sector view now resets the hyperspace range, and updates the system data screens and target
system's planetary view to show the current system. (This was broken in all versions of FFE)
+ Removed the black lines that appeared above the video during playback, and above or to the side of the rotating
ship in the equipment views or shipyard.
+ Sector map stars, distant objects and light sprites scale correctly.
+ Dual coloured lights on space station and base towers display properly.
+ New shipdata patch to correct the rear view of the Thargon warhip which was part-obscured by the lower hull.
+ Config file options to export shipdata values for FFE/Aniso.
+ Cones were still being drawn when there was a replacement model for the imperial courier engine.
+ Target icons were offset and shouldn't have been affected by main game font size setting.
+ Bug fix: The CheatMode FFE hack to suppress generation of radioactives wasn't incrementing available cargo space!
+ New config options to define custom textures for inhabitable planet terrains and for individual suns.
Set useCustomTextures=1 to enable, along with the filename holding the texture configuration.
+ New Command line option to specify an alternative config file to use: -config filename.cfg
+ Added support for the alternate Frontier BBS face videos created by Commander Frantic.
set AlternativeFrontierVideos=1 to use, Only the first frame is drawn and then left on screen.
It is best to set transparentCommVideos=0 when using them, but I have left this switchable in-case anyone wants
to improve them in the future with solid black areas. (Top-left pixel defines the transparency colour)
- Removed RedBase, GreenBase and BlueBase .cfg settings. They only related to JJFFE and serve no purpose now.


Happy New Year all! :D
 

Steve

Steve
Well, X Rebirth doesn't look too good and Elite Dangerous is due for a commercial release sometime in 2014 so I think I'll be playing FFED3D for quite some time yet :)
 

Steve

Steve
If you mean mean blasted to pieces a split second after your attack alarm goes off, then yes; it's just as difficult.

The golden rule here - and indeed all the Frontier games - is to stick to the safe systems until you can afford a well-protected ship.

Oh, and save often! :D
 

Captain Lee

Captain Lee
Steve said:
If you mean mean blasted to pieces a split second after your attack alarm goes off, then yes; it's just as difficult.
Click to expand...

Curses!

The golden rule here - and indeed all the Frontier games - is to stick to the safe systems until you can afford a well-protected ship.
Click to expand...

I've had a Cobra MkIII with 3 shield gens and armed to the teeth but still got pasted; those pirates have very snazzy ships. I may have to go full Panther Clipper!

Oh, and save often! :D
Click to expand...

Double curses! If I die I start again. Ironman rules; they're a !
 

nicomak

nicomak
Captain Lee said:
I've had a Cobra MkIII with 3 shield gens and armed to the teeth but still got pasted; those pirates have very snazzy ships. I may have to go full Panther Clipper!
Click to expand...

i just had a little adventure in FE2 with a sidewinder ;)

910137DOSBox20140121184016523.jpg


i went to Ayurso(4;0) to sell some luxury goods from Sol, a pirate destroyed my hyperdrive, and even though i could land and sell the goods, i couldnt keep the ship. there was no good hyperdrive in the shipyard at all.
i could have bought a better ship than a sidewinder, 3 millions credits ;)
but i wanted the sidewinder, i think i never used it before in frontier(i could also have found it in a better place...) and i wanted to bring it back to Sol, i only gave myself a 1MW pulse laser i think, maybe a 5MW pulse, not sure. no autopilot, as much fuel as i could carry, to make as little stop as possible, a class 1 standard drive, 6LY in range, well if'd find a military drive class 2 on the way it would have been easy but of course each time i landed, there were none... i tried to reach federal space, first with a direct route, but stars were just too far away at one point and i had to turn back, then i went a bit north and failed again, got to try south, and i reached the empire, i eventually found a class 2 military drive and with to 2 jumps, back to sol with a smile on the face, and some schratch to the painting ;)

606703Sanstitre.png

first route : ended at HD 36395(2;0) & turned back.
second route : ended at Ethwaze(2;2)& turned back.
third route : to tiacan(3;-4), behoqu(2;-4) to fawaol and Akandso

i think it's in Akandso, north of the empire, a federal system(i went as far as Behoqu then back north). that's where i bought the military class 2 if i remember correctly.
260958DOSBox20140121192300280.jpg


then wolf 359, and finally home ;)
391124DOSBox20140121193012079.jpg


it wouldnt have been that fun with a bigger ship ;)
i did die&load a few times however(there's no way i'd lost the 3million credits!), mostly due to the fact that when i was attacked i had to make evasive maneuver without knowing where the threat came from... yeah no scanner as well ;).
 

AndyJ

AndyJ
It's a while since I took a look at it but I think the Elite-Forever pack contains the original FFED3D beta .exe as well as my FFED3DAJ .exe builds. I can't remember which .exe the launcher runs, and you may need to run the AJ .exe files yourself. Be aware that the original FFED3D uses ffewin.cfg to configure it (and has a settings program) but FFED3DAJ uses ffed3daj.cfg due to all of its additional settings - you'll need to edit that 'by hand' e.g. with notepad.

Also unless this pack has been updated recently, then the FFED3DAJ .exe files were from the very first release and are probably approaching a year old now... there's been a LOT of fixes & enhancements since then - so please do grab the latest v1.07 builds of those!
Some of the models and textures in that E-F pack also seem to be older than in the final FFED3D beta 1.12++ pack or Ittiz's pack. Not a big deal but I seem to remember answering a bug report somewhere, that there was one ship model that had fixed landing gear and wasn't animated.

If you don't mind unpacking things manually then you might be best to start with either the full beta or ittiz packs as a starting point instead, as per the bug-fixing thread. The latter has all models enabled and the infamous videos.
Also note that if you do grab the archives from SSC they are in .7z (7zip) format, so make sure you have a current version of that installed. People using older versions have had issues unpacking & thought the files were corrupt - I found the same initially as WinRAR defaulted to try and unpack them and failed. (This is why I stick to plain old .zip files for the patch!)

I keep a SSC page here updated each new build as well as a thread over at the Russian Elite-Games forum here.
Both sites do require user registration to download, but they are free to join.

Note that the FFED3DAJ patch is split into 3 zips - 2 are mandatory, containing the patch .exe's and in the other a set of core textures. The 3rd zip is optional and contains some examples of multiple-textures on ships as well as a custom shader that colorizes the cargo canisters for variety. They're split like this to save bandwidth, as often only the 2MB patch .exe zip gets updated between builds.

As a x64 bit user, if you have 4GB+ then you should be able to pre-load all of the models & textures at once into FFED3DAJ, by default it'll load them on-demand to reduce memory requirements for 32bit users. (set modelPreload=99 in the ffed3daj.cfg file)
There's a readme in the patch .exe's zip file that hopefully explains a lot of the settings, also a lot has been discussed throughout the bugfix thread - so it's worth a read - just don't be put off by the opening page or two of screenshots that largely related to texture issues and an incorrectly applied patch! :D

Oh, I should just add that there was a late setting missing from the current .cfg to increase the draw distance of small planets such as Mercury. Add the following line into ffed3daj.cfg after the planet cut-off setting:
cutOffDistance_SmallPlanet=28
Adding this will stop them from 'popping' into view. If frame rates suffer, decrease the value down towards the default of 25.
 

AndyJ

AndyJ
Yes I've been taking a much needed break! (and trading up to an Asp in Dangerous!)
7 months or so for v1.10 was pretty draining... chuffed with where it got to but will leave reshaping planets to the good folk of Magrathea in future!
There is a new build in progress, and just picking it up again - it's more of a 'thanks' build now, as almost all things that I want to address have been...
There'll be a new 'HellMod' .exe which is a mod created by the Russian forum and I was asked if I could add support for it. It's sort of an Anisotropic derivative but it also adds inhabited systems across the whole galaxy.
I've also been able to hook into the journal story display routines and can now replace them with translations from a directory specified in the .cfg file. The translations will preserve details such as the ship/player names etc and can insert translated literal texts for variables "he","she","gems","weapons" etc... The rendition will also rearrange itself depending upon screen-width and font, so even using the base 'English' translation files can benefit from an improved layout. (still requires missions.dat from the full game to work)
At some point I hope to add translations for general game texts, but possibly in the next build.
There's a few ship view/turret fixes too, and well... I'm saving the best for last Steve :p
Military missions now remember their list position when you read and accept/cancel out of them - no jumping back to the top of the list now!

Feel free to annoy me with a PM anyway - I imagine that you must be a few thousand light-years into the darkest space of Elite: Dangerous by now, will be cool to hear where you're at!
 
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Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Awesome to hear you will still be doing some new things on this AndyJ :D

Depending on how the Planetary Landings and other expansions turn out for ED, your mod and FFED3D will probably always have a place on my Harddrive, it is still 100% 'Elite fan' relevant. Infact i've been playing more AndyJ mod (an older version, not been keeping up with my updates!) recently than i have ED (i'm not wanting to 'burn myself out' on the game until it has more of the features i wanted from an Elite game).
 
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