The FFED3D Thread

[synchromesh]

It seems to me that most of these problems mainly occur on Laptops ?
Dont know if this can be confirmed by telling us whether you are or not...

If this is the case then i would probably put it down to the GFX chip and screen....Now has anyone tried plugging laptop from the vga port to widescreen TV or hires monitor ?

 

[Styggron]

It seems to me that most of these problems mainly occur on Laptops ?
Dont know if this can be confirmed by telling us whether you are or not...

If this is the case then i would probably put it down to the GFX chip and screen....Now has anyone tried plugging laptop from the vga port to widescreen TV or hires monitor ?

It's the graphics card, plugging it into an external screen won't do anything. I tried that as well though, I'll update my first post.

I've seen the problem on desktops as well so it is not only laptops.

 

[nanite2000]

Here's a pic of progress I've made on the icon graphics so far. This is a pic of the Phekda system:

That looks great!

I've been a long time lurker here and this my first post (yo!).

You may not be aware, but another user over at SpaceSimCentral has put together a pack for improved planet textures:

http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3283-ffe-d3d-new-stars-and-planets-textures/

There's no reason you shouldn't have both, and yours looks better at first glance, but you may wish to check his out to save you from doing any needless extra work.

Additionally, I recently released my own pack of hi-def textures for unmodified models, including grass, water and mountains for when landed at earth-like planets:

http://www.mediafire.com/?lhqd4rb2h5fh5ci

Screenshots here: http://s665.beta.photobucket.com/user/nanite2000/library/FFED3D

Feel free to rip any of the textures from there if you find them useful, and/or if you can enhance them further.

Good luck!

 

[nanite2000]

Does anyone know what file format the custom ships are?
Steve O B Have, do you know?

I ask because I have a list of XSP files of ship models that could possibly be used / converted for FFED3D http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=274276 Admittedly they are for X3TC and not FFED3D

I have no idea of how feasible that would be, so don't bite my head off if it is simply not possible.

Please make this happen! I will be immensely thankful if you can do it.

 

[Geraldine]

Does anyone know what file format the custom ships are?
Steve O B Have, do you know?

I ask because I have a list of XSP files of ship models that could possibly be used / converted for FFED3D http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=274276 Admittedly they are for X3TC and not FFED3D

I have no idea of how feasible that would be, so don't bite my head off if it is simply not possible.

The best person I can think of who could answer this question would be potsmoke66. He has done many conversions form FFE3d to Pioneer and knows the model formats well. Might be worth sending him a PM Alien.

 

[Ittiz]

That looks great!

I've been a long time lurker here and this my first post (yo!).

You may not be aware, but another user over at SpaceSimCentral has put together a pack for improved planet textures:

http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3283-ffe-d3d-new-stars-and-planets-textures/

There's no reason you shouldn't have both, and yours looks better at first glance, but you may wish to check his out to save you from doing any needless extra work.

Additionally, I recently released my own pack of hi-def textures for unmodified models, including grass, water and mountains for when landed at earth-like planets:

http://www.mediafire.com/?lhqd4rb2h5fh5ci

Screenshots here: http://s665.beta.photobucket.com/user/nanite2000/library/FFED3D

Feel free to rip any of the textures from there if you find them useful, and/or if you can enhance them further.

Good luck!

Thanks

I noticed her textures. I can't download them anyway. That spacesim central site doesn't seem to work.

As for your textures I found those too and coincidentally already incorporated some of them into the pack as a short cut for the building and grass textures on bases. I couldn't use them together since some of yours overlapped with mine.

There are big hurdles though. The map for brown dwarfs seems to be hard coded to be the same as the map for "Small Barren Sphere of Rock" It's a pain. I think they used it as a place holder and never got rid of it. Seems to me we need change the the source code and recompile to fix it.

 

[Steve]

Additionally, I recently released my own pack of hi-def textures for unmodified models, including grass, water and mountains for when landed at earth-like planets:

These are excellent textures! Thanks

Unfortunately, copying all your textures into my textures folder caused some problems within the game ie. intro sequence not running properly, start position 2 likewise. I noticed the dimensions of some of your textures did not match their equivalents in my install, so I adjusted them accordingly.
This did not cure all the issues though. It may well be that since I run a heavily modded version of FFED3D this in itself causes problems
What I'm doing now is copying the new textures into my install a few at a time and watching to see when the program goes wrong.
Thanks again for making these textures though. Hope you do more...

 

[nanite2000]

These are excellent textures! Thanks

Glad you like them!

Unfortunately, copying all your textures into my textures folder caused some problems within the game ie. intro sequence not running properly, start position 2 likewise.

I was worried there may be problems. It's possible the textures are too big. Each texture is now 1024x1024 pixels (up from from 128x128), so requires *a lot* more graphics memory.

Here's a link to a 512x512 version of the pack: http://www.mediafire.com/?02stb9rxsi8hr2i

And to a 256x256 version: http://www.mediafire.com/?g7b601lis602s64

See if either of those are any better.

I noticed the dimensions of some of your textures did not match their equivalents in my install, so I adjusted them accordingly.

This didn't seem to matter in my tests. Either the original FFE, or FFED3D, automatically resized misshaped textures accordingly. But if you can identify specific textures there the wrong aspect ratio causes problems, let me know and I will update my pack accordingly.

Thanks again for making these textures though. Hope you do more...

Haha! If we can get this pack working reliably, I'm hoping I won't *need* to do any more!

Having said that, if you can spot any textures that still need updating, can you send me a screenshot? I thought I'd got them all.

(NOTE: Some in game models do not have any textures applied at all, so no equivalent texture can be updated).

 

[nanite2000]

As for your textures I found those too and coincidentally already incorporated some of them into the pack as a short cut for the building and grass textures on bases. I couldn't use them together since some of yours overlapped with mine.

That's cool. I'd be interested to see which ones overlapped. If you've got better alternatives, that's great - I can remove them from my pack so they don't overlap. Maybe we an create a combined megapack!

There are big hurdles though. The map for brown dwarfs seems to be hard coded to be the same as the map for "Small Barren Sphere of Rock" It's a pain.

Yea, I noticed that too - annoying! And if you rename/delete text719.png, brown dwarfs don't appear in game at all any more.

The original game frequently re-used textures, and it's why some of my textures look fine on certain objects (like space stations), but rubbish on smaller objects (like buildings).

Seems to me we need change the the source code and recompile to fix it.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the source code?

 

[Ittiz]

That's cool. I'd be interested to see which ones overlapped. If you've got better alternatives, that's great - I can remove them from my pack so they don't overlap. Maybe we an create a combined megapack!


Yea, I noticed that too - annoying! And if you rename/delete text719.png, brown dwarfs don't appear in game at all any more.

The original game frequently re-used textures, and it's why some of my textures look fine on certain objects (like space stations), but rubbish on smaller objects (like buildings).

Does anyone know if it's possible to get hold of the source code?

You can get it here, but I've heard it doesn't work after compilation. I'm going to dig around and see if I can get a working version.

 

[nanite2000]

You can get it here, but I've heard it doesn't work after compilation. I'm going to dig around and see if I can get a working version.

Hmm...I couldn't even get it to compile. I'm using VS2010 and get the following error when I try to build it:

error MSB6006: "cmd.exe" exited with code 3.

I'm not a C++ developer (I'm a C#/ASP.NET web developer) so this isn't my area of expertise. But I checked the SVN logs and the last commit was made by tehnomag69 back in Dec 2011 (which is about right - they stopped work on it after that date). tehnomag69 hangs around SpaceSimCentral discussion forums, so it may be worth giving him a shout.

If you can get a working version, I'd be interested to know the steps you took.

EDIT: Oop! I see you've already posted in the SSC forums!

 

[Styggron]

Just to people that are playing FFED3D without any graphical issues such as icons.....can I ask does it play well ? or is it buggy like FrontierGL ?

 

[gunbladelad]

I had it running on a Desktop PC (using an Nvidia FX500 AGP card...) and it ran well enough once I managed to configure it. For me, however, it was laggy as hell (ancient PC - if you couldn't guess from the AGP graphics card) on anything higher than 800 x 600 on 16 bit display.

Unfortunately that PC died on me on December 23rd, so I'm down to using the basic JJFFE on my stone-age laptop...

 

[Steve]

Just to people that are playing FFED3D without any graphical issues such as icons.....can I ask does it play well ? or is it buggy like FrontierGL ?

The fact is, since I downloaded FFED3D a few years ago, I haven't played any other version of FFE, except for curiosity's sake.
As for bugs? Well, it wouldn't be Frontier if it didn't have bugs!

From memory, the only two bugs specific to FFED3D are...

• Bombing targets don't appear on planets (probably reconnaissance targets as well) if you hyperspace into that system in FFED3D. The solution is to jump into the system in another version (JJFFE,GLFFE) and then pick up at that point in FFED3D.
• Can't delete saved commanders from within the game; only load and save allowed. The solution is to delete Commanders manually via Window$.

Added to those are the traditional FFE bugs, like floating cities, planets that don't rotate, some ship turrets that fire on your own ship etc. As far as I'm concerned though, FFED3D is still the best space game to play while we all wait for Spring 2014 to arrive

 

[Steve]

I was worried there may be problems. It's possible the textures are too big. Each texture is now 1024x1024 pixels (up from from 128x128), so requires *a lot* more graphics memory.

Here's a link to a 512x512 version of the pack: http://www.mediafire.com/?02stb9rxsi8hr2i

And to a 256x256 version: http://www.mediafire.com/?g7b601lis602s64

See if either of those are any better.

Will download now...

This didn't seem to matter in my tests. Either the original FFE, or FFED3D, automatically resized misshaped textures accordingly. But if you can identify specific textures there the wrong aspect ratio causes problems, let me know and I will update my pack accordingly.

if you can spot any textures that still need updating, can you send me a screenshot? I thought I'd got them all.

I will look into all this when I have enough time; hopefully this weekend :smilie:

 

[Ittiz]

Hmm...I couldn't even get it to compile. I'm using VS2010 and get the following error when I try to build it:

error MSB6006: "cmd.exe" exited with code 3.

I'm not a C++ developer (I'm a C#/ASP.NET web developer) so this isn't my area of expertise. But I checked the SVN logs and the last commit was made by tehnomag69 back in Dec 2011 (which is about right - they stopped work on it after that date). tehnomag69 hangs around SpaceSimCentral discussion forums, so it may be worth giving him a shout.

If you can get a working version, I'd be interested to know the steps you took.

EDIT: Oop! I see you've already posted in the SSC forums!

Hmm good to know, I think they were using VS2005. I was thinking of using VS2012, but if VS2010 doesn't work VS2012 probably won't either.

 

[Bikky]

Just to people that are playing FFED3D without any graphical issues such as icons.....can I ask does it play well ? or is it buggy like FrontierGL ?

Never had any bugs in the time I've been playing. Only issue is, if I minimise the game, then type something, that passes through to FFE. So if I'm landed planet side, i might go back in game find my ship in the air and a hoard of vipers shooting me to bits as I've pressed tab to start engines and takeoff, and pressed space which fires.

 

[Styggron]

That's not such a bad issue.

Frontier GL (FE2) has nasty bugs with the autopilot system still. Ahhhh well. I went back to the Amiga version of FE2 and everything is ok again..........well........there is atill the autopilot bug but it does not seem as bad as what it was on FE2 GL

Pity I can't play FE2D3D.

 

[Bikky]

Ahh, autopilot bug, that'll be where the autopilot can't fly properly and will fly you into/past the planet by a couple of AU, or can't dock/land properly.

 

[nanite2000]

Hmm good to know, I think they were using VS2005. I was thinking of using VS2012, but if VS2010 doesn't work VS2012 probably won't either.

The .sln file that comes with FFED3D is a VS2010 version .sln file.

It might just be because I don't have the Direct X SDK (yet).

Let me know if you hear anything from the original developers.