Daywolf

[quote name='Mouse' timestamp='1327181278' post='51937'] As has been said, the engine is outdated and improving the graphics with the current engine will just further tax it. [/quote]imo it's not about aesthetics, eye candy improvements would be nice, but it's about a lot of other issues. Some graphical improvements that have been done, which have already been discussed, should actually improve performance with this client. More profound performance tweaks could probably be done if client code were available, which it is not and probably never will be. The rendering engine conundrum.

First, thanks for fixing the topic. [quote name='Mimir' timestamp='1327165823' post='51927']Personally I would prefer to see the server code up and running before any resources were spent on the client, but again that could be just me. [/quote]My same personal preference. Like I said, it's probably more about five or even ten years down the line that we might start having problems with evolving OS's which is the only timeframe I mentioned, not client project start date. Of course it would take time to develop even with modifying a client that already has much of the work done for a 3D space environment, still I see this as low priority for the time being since the server is even still in a pre-alpha state. Stability and usability is job one, be it for the server now, and later for the client beyond just a desire but probably under necessity at some point, my speculation. It’s a given that technology will continue to move forward, and maybe we will see EnB take advantage of such platforms in the future.

3Ghz P4 Desktop with an AGP Nvidia card and rendering problems?? I don't spend much time in Progen stations, but I've never had any fps problems in any that I've been to, including exploring most I've been to (Radeon X series card w/512MB DRAM, slower 64Bit CPU, stable system). I don't think it's a hardware problem. Celeron laptop is grindy I'm sure, I used to have one just like that... stupid gateway lol. The laptop answer I was expecting, not sure about the desktop. Settings, drivers etc. Maybe I’ll need to visit more Progen statio:):) Odd, forums are acting up, last two posts all the body of the messages are in the "Profession:" columns. Oh as for new hardware, unless you were a laptop diehard, I was just going to suggest a videocard if you needed it, older ones are dirt cheep, but I don't think you need one.

[quote name='Mouse' timestamp='1327095769' post='51864'] I've actually been tempted to start making a whole new client. I have a fully licensed engine which is highly optimized for doing so. [/quote] You might need a lot more things actually. If it’s a licensed engine, it’s quite probable there are license restrictions which for the most part wont let you mod an existing game and linking them together. Game engine developers are pretty strict in most cases, not willing to have their wares being linked with anything that even hints on infringements to intellectual property rights even if the final product is given away for free. It’s a reputation thing. So you will usually find heavy modders turning to open source with more laxed licensing. Additionally, to such a degree of work involved in this type of modification, you will probably need more than one to help. You will probably need a carpenter too …one that is good at carving square blocks into round blocks so they will fit into the round holes lol such as modding. Actually, it is probably more expedient to replace all the content assets, basically building a whole new client side system though with the EnB theme in this case, and open source would probably be the most appealing approach for any involved. My 2¢ anyway. Yeah like what you edited in (again), basically that. And that is the big job.

heh yeah, I wish my NVIDIA CP would pass all that eye candy settings to the client, especially antialiesing. My desktop is definitely old, well at least drive access and CPU a bit dated (GPU and DRAM is always my endeavor), yet EnB is hardly even a minimal stress at best quality settings. I think I was on the Voodoo card (4or5) when EnB released, was a fragging great Quake rig in the day (which I still play lol). You would probably need to mention your specs someplace, because even old systems (desktop) shouldn’t shudder at the best settings beyond super high resolution settings which require huge monitors anyway. That's pretty much it though, shootout between NVIDIA and ATI, though either one even five years old should max your performance ...provided you are not trying to shove it into a commodore 64 heh. But yes, newer assets don't always mean greater system requirements. Development usually has more to do with pushing the limits, but the technology is always refined to give greater performance even at very low poly count with models or even my fav texture format DDS (DirectDraw Surface) which saves on DRAM (the only format that retains compression in memory).

I think it’s more about the antiquated engine itself rather than the models and textures. If Westwood/EA had opened the source code (e.g. like Ryzom did) before ending the project, the engine could have been updated with new performance tweaks over the years, modernized. The texturing format updates here should have increased performance on most systems, but there is only so much that can be done without the ability to recode the rendering engine. Honestly, when these projects get dumped, they really should release some or all of the source code, SDK’s or whatever. I’ve always felt ripped off by EA since they canceled EnB and just left all us retail box owners with nothing. I know that there are most likely some licensing issues (as with 3rd party vendors) so that they cant release everything, but they should have release something, enough to work with, even if it took an additional purchase for the SDK or what have you. I still feel rotten about EA, enough to pass their games by on the shelf in *most cases, to this day. I agree though, I mean on anything that would burden this engine even more, in it‘s present state, changes that would slow down rendering speeds or even complicate it beyond the engines actual ability …which is quite limited. Ideally, what should be done, or would be the absolute best direction to go is as Tienbau said recently with using something like Freespace 2. I would take that as not a replacement to the current game client but as an alternative (e.g. as UO did with multiple clients). That would dramatically decrease performance problems, not just now but thinking five or ten years down the road as OS’s move along and become not so friendly with old emulation. Hah, think DOS, how fun is that to try to get working on a modern system? Not a pretty site, indeed. Heck, I don’t even think I could install my box set of Visual Basic for 3.11 on my current system, well, not something easily done, anyway. Of course that’s years of work, introducing Freespace 2, and it wont be about eye candy so much as about stability, performance and usability. Not to mention ease of use for content expansion, so much easier. You get low FPS as it is now? If you are not on a laptop, it’s best to find an new GPU and something that doesn’t leech using shared memory, cram it in. If you have a desktop, you don’t have much of an excuse, but I totally understand the laptop thing, and know how there is not much that can be done in that case beyond some system tweaks or altogether replacement. I don’t know how the new ASUS ~$350 laptops do, but I’d probably be contemplating some change in the near future if I currently had performance issues with an antiquated game engine. Oh I do though, but on my laptop that I don’t use for games, just for writing and scripting etc. and even that has pretty much gone beyond it’s intended lifespan. My current desktop I’ll probably just convert it to a Linux media server soon enough, though it runs EnB very well, it’s becoming even a bit too antiquated just for the interwebs, well slightly.

[quote name='Drained' timestamp='1327014385' post='51817'] Somebody's account get hacked? ^ [/quote]or deleted ...hehe I'm waiting for a good 3D headset, myself (audio/visual). Sorry, I have no spam links for ya. Server up!!

[quote name='Tienbau' timestamp='1326951227' post='51786'] Also, if we were to write a client, it'd be using a much more modern engine like maybe the Freespace 2 one. [/quote]Would get my vote. Babylon Project is a great-great example of the engine. Work involved, though less frustration in the long run imo.

[quote name='Darkdronen' timestamp='1326863209' post='51728'] Hi, i was just wondering if any of the devs know about the server crashes and the bugs that come with it. [/quote]it's uh um pre-alpha We are basically testers and of things not even published yet. Polished is probably 3-5 years away. You gunna wait that long? Heck, some games never get rid of bugs, the devs dance around the issues and expand the game to resemble other games (like resemble the SIMS for instance *cough*) and horribly neglect things like faction wars (with once actual pvp) and hold conferences where they have round table discussions that they don't even show up for! Other games... hehe My guess they know. I could be wrong though

daaaaang ...someone better put that hamster back in the server, it's getting fat. Ahh weekday afternoon, they must have jobs :/ bleh oh well, get some work done myself, postpone saving the universe until this evening

someone forgot the feed 'em, he's off scavenging the fridge for lettuce. [img]http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n159/l33tace/various/habicase.jpg[/img] ah well, no gm's/dev's/admins around, guess play some naev now and save the universe some more later after he gets back from his snack.

He's dead, Jim.

[quote name='rockrat' timestamp='1326730868' post='51589'] I agree. That is the point, and always has been throughout the history of gaming. Easter eggs aren't supposed to be just left right in front of your door so you see them all right as you start your adventure.[/quote]Well yeah, if ya like having it always handed to ya, play wow. hehe. Sure, make it a challenge, but of course the point is the emu in relation to westwood or the original state of EnB. There are no game network sites with huge EnB EMU sections, as in most cases EMU's are shunned in those places. The EMU lives out of sight, hidden in the underground world, not easily found unless you know what you are looking for, but it lives on. So I say make it hard to find, a challenge, to make it reflect the state of the work done by westwood, and in the current state still alive, but not easily found. Seems appropriate to me at least, not a concept hard to grasp. But yes, in the end it just comes down to the challenge, because challenge is more fun than castles, fireworks and mickymouse ears.

[quote name='Hatu' timestamp='1326702240' post='51582'] I don't see the point in this. [/quote]well I'm not rewording it. You don't understand the point I'm making in that paragraph? It fits perfectly, and I'm not going to be drawn into an arguement over it.

[quote name='rockrat' timestamp='1326650544' post='51540'] Is it still down even now? Sorry, I just joined yesterday and I haven't played E&B since 2003 when they shut it down. I'm getting a "Cannot connect to the global server" message and I want to make sure it's the server and not a user error on my end. [/quote]Install guide: [url="https://enb-emulator.com/index.php?/topic/714-install-enb-from-scratch-instructions-rev-7222010/"]here[/url] Wipe the coffee rings off the install disk, read the guide, and make sure to install all the patches you see in the DL section. Best place to start.

[quote name='Orga2' timestamp='1326259366' post='51311'] i have it windowed because my vid driver don't like full screen atm and ctd the second i launch the client, [/quote]Nvidia? Gotta luv those Geforce drivers

hmm? odd because I use window mode and print screen works fine for me, did yesterday at least when I captured for the avatar. An alt may be to intall something like fraps? Well there are 10000 other screen capture programs that don't cost cash like fraps does, and even some image editors like I think paintshop pro does (though that costs too heh). But there are a lot of free image capture programs you could probably find pretty easily that might work for you, and work better than any game capture or print screen + paste option.

If I could just set the [b]down[/b] sound in as "D'oh!" and the [b]up[/b] sound as "Rise, my apprentice" I'd be one happy... er Jenquai Defender. No need to see a screen message in that case ...though mine doesn't seem to make any sounds at all *shrugs*. Sound on/off work?

This is a large job, is therrre an external skin/theme editor? The only one I found for IPB is restricted to licensed owners only. Like I have theme editors for wordpress, facebook, SMF among other systems, but I’ve never seen one for IPB not to mention I don’t have the forum software to work with it. This isn’t a commitment post, it’s a big job, but I don’t see any editing tools to look over to gage the workload, unless you know of some. The main difficulty seems to be getting the side gizmos working correctly with the theme build etc. I guess that’s the downside with using pay-to-use forum software. Not that that’s bad, I like one well enough to use on a project site, but it’s a pain when less people know how to work with it since it’s restricted and all hush-hush unless you licensed it and worked with it for a time. Tempting though…

[quote name='StarbuckJD' timestamp='1325382235' post='50730'] I get log-in problems too, it comes and goes. Like everyday around 3pm pst it's just on the fritz (other games/sites work fine). If I do manage to make it in around that time, I'll d-con at most every gate. Often in the later evening, it'll run flawless. But the login or proxy server is just irritating, a lot of non-connect messages between the launcher or the client. I haven't tried a trace rout yet, something I'll remind myself to do next time. [/quote]Oh just to note, since the last patch, this has significantly improved. Still slightly glitchy at times but overall connectivity has been improved.

How about rig it up like old nick and hide it in a number of zones. Let it linger a day and then appear randomly in another zone on it's list. It got caught in some folding temporal causality loop vortex ...with candy!!!

[quote name='Orga2' timestamp='1325965902' post='51126'] But I would really or we should really like to know how much it cost just to have skins on this forum site. I really thought it was just a small web page background image that shouldn't cost anything but i could be wrong? [/quote]Yeah I didn't see it either, I thought they were done here, seemed very simple layout/work. Maybe IPBoard is overly complicated? I mean compared to working on themes for like Wordpress or SMF. I've never messed with IPB before so not sure, but posts in this forum seem to make it out as overly complicated to work with in various aspects (Edit: like what Kyp just said).

[quote name='tg626' timestamp='1325963138' post='51111'] There are conditions where the server will be down, but the net-7 and desktop notifiers show they are online. [/quote]Yeah, I usually rin EnB nitifier when after it's cifirmed diwn and am waiting for it ti rise again frim the dead. Beats reinstalling Tada-O!

[quote name='Lot' timestamp='1325964102' post='51115'] In that case, why bother at all with additional skins. [/quote]Needs like a theme based on the old starcraft theme imo, though with EnB ships incoming from the planet. Just need to make it a point to uninstall or hide themes at each update until they can be updated.

So will it end with it all collapsing into a huge ball of consuming fire, or will it forever keep on expanding until there is nothing but drifting ice and looming blackness? Well I don't know, but the server sure is gettin cold on this fine Saturday morning/afternoon! heh