Battleships Forever Info | 0.90d released 14 Apr

Post by **th15** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:35 pm

I didn't change anything with the ship importing. The indicator is just there to show you that the game hasn't locked up because the larger ships do take time to load.

As for the Hestia variants, those just have randomized weapon sets. There's actually more possibilities than just that. Older versions of the game just had two sets of randomized Hestias fighting each other.

Hades · Post by **Hades** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:34 pm

Th15, the game takes twice as long as before.

Captain Trek · Post by **Captain Trek** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:10 pm

I'm afraid he's right, TH...

As a test, I'll use a destroyer design I came up with a while back. Here's a picture of it...

In the sandbox of version 0.77, with one folder and three internet windows open, one of which was in the process of loading a You Tube video, this ship would take around one second to load and there would be a fleeting, but noticable pause as it did... After that, if I loaded up another one, it would appear instantly, as the offical ships do when you spawn them... This would reset for either each time I opened the sandbox, or each time I opened the game. I'm not sure which...

In the sandbox of version 0.78, however, under the same conditions, the ship took around (I used my watch to time this) six seconds and then loaded instantly after that. Sometimes it takes even longer...

If it takes the game at least six times longer to load a destroyer that's a similar size and only has a few more systems than an offical destroyer, I'd hate to think what's happening to those poor saps who are trying to load up the latest uber ships from the custom ships forum... *shudders at the tought*

Hades · Post by **Hades** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:57 pm

Yea I tryed to load Levy in the Sandbox, and it took 4-5 minutes...

Game_boy · Post by **Game_boy** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:20 am

Redrawing the screen and drawing text in Game Maker during a loop can slow down the game a lot, especially the extra calculations for things like percentage done, how much has been loaded, etc.

I'd suggest taking out the "LOADING" message, maybe just show a message box beforehand if it is a very large ship with the average loading times for ships around Patrol Craft, Destroyer and Battleship size?

Post by **Arcalane** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:39 am

I'd have to agree. It doesn't even seem to show anything useful, just a load of overlayed 8s or something (for me at least), so you can't even tell how much it's loaded.

Bluhman · Post by **Bluhman** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:52 am

Verdict - Please get rid of the loading screen. It slows down ship loading incredibly, and probably could even lock up the game itself. If a person really wanted to check if their game is locked up, they'd hit Alt Ctrl Del and check wether BSF were responding or not.

Post by **th15** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 2:46 am

Mmm alright I'll take it out.

Post by **th15** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:51 pm

Ahhh, GUI for the sandbox ship import interface is finally done:

Post by **Arcalane** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 4:40 pm

Very nice. I assume + is import and [_] is clone.

Captain Trek · Post by **Captain Trek** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 7:58 pm

Looking good TH.

Da_Higg · Post by **Da_Higg** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 8:21 pm

If my college PCs showed pictures I'd congratulate you

Edit:
Cool (home now)

RRoan · Post by **RRoan** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 2:37 am

Will you still be able to use the buttons on the keyboard to do it?

Post by **th15** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:14 am

Yeap, I didn't actually take out any of the existing code, additionally the buttons show a small description text (in the same way as any of the other hud buttons) with their shortcut key so it's a lot smoother this way.

Post by **th15** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 10:31 pm

New version released!
Get it here: http://www.wyrdysm.com/games.php

I think a lot of you are going to be pleasantly surprised with this version.
Major new features:
-Waypointing! You can now queue up orders by holding the shift key down when issuing an order
-GUI for Sandbox mode. No more hunting for the right key combination to spawn ships, everything is now displayed in a neat little set of buttons at the bottom right of the screen.
-Missile turret! Launch guided missiles at your enemy!
-Thruster module. When destroyed, the ship loses some of its thrust. Now you can make ships that have their engines represented.
-Fixed a bunch of silly bugs in the missions and engine
-Optimized the turret code. You should experience better performance in-game

Note: The way the Missile works in the shipmaker is a little odd. The turning speed of the missile launched is determined by the second decimal of the missile turret's assigned turnspeed. This means that a missile turret with a turnspeed of 0.73 (default) rotates at that speed but the missile itself turns at a rate of 3 degrees.

Note2: The thruster is also unique. The amount of thrust deducted from the ship when destroyed is determined by the total energy set for the thruster. If the energy for the thruster is set to 0.02 (default) it will deduct 0.02 from the ship's thrust value when destroyed.