Bug Boarding Issues

[Armada]

While testing the latest Builds recently, getting into a few battles (latest was my Aurora vs a Spanish Rossiya ) and boarding enemy ships, two things struck me about boarding:

1) When I reach the cabin, there's often smoke particle effects coming through the floor. This tends to cause lag when passing the camera through it. Any ideas why this happens, or how to stop it?

2) After the boarding, some very hectic fighting sound effects play during the transfer screen; wouldn't it be better to have those sound effects play during the actual boarding fights? Surely it would help to give the player a feeling of being part of a noisy and intense struggle, don't you think?

 

[Hylie Pistof]

1) Been there forever along with rain, sails, ropes, and sometimes masts.

2) Sure. It is not appropriate to have those sounds going on after all the fighting is done.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

2) What I'm understanding from the code is that it SHOULD be playing DURING the boarding. Doesn't though.

 

[Armada]

That's annoying. All we DO hear right now is the bog-standard 'danger' music and the occasional "I will hang you from your own entrails! [etc.]".
Maybe disabling either of the above would help? Or at least finding out why the proper sound effects play after the boarding?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Maybe someone else could look into that? At the moment I'm trying to sort out some of our game-breakers.
In this case, the "size" of the Treasure Quest locators. That is... thoroughly annoying.

 

[Armada]

Maybe someone else could look into that?

Maybe if you could tell me where to look...?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Search the PROGRAM folder for "abordagesound" . One related instance I know is PROGRAM\INTERFACE\ransack_main.c .
Also PROGRAM\Loc_ai\LAi_boarding.c and PROGRAM\SEA_AI\AIAbordage.c. .

 

[Armada]

Thanks. I'll see if I can figure anything out.

 

[Armada]

OK, here's what I know so far:
- LAi_boarding.c seems to define what the abordagesound is, in two instances.

- Ransack_main.c and AIAbordage.c both check to see if the main character has the abordagesound attribute, and then delete said attibute.
The former also tries to play music_spokplavanie instead of abordagesound.

- This code in PROGRAM\sound\sound.c defines what music plays when the 'alarm' is on (enemies nearby), with a special case for boarding...

    if (alarmed != 0)
    { //alarm on!
// KK -->
        if (!bAbordageStarted)
            SetMusic("music_bitva");
        else
            SetSchemeForAbordage();
    }

... but further down the page, SetSchemeForAbordage is bypassed...

// LDH no longer used, music set in SetSchemeForLocation() - 10Apr09
void SetSchemeForAbordage()
{
    return;        // bypass the function
    ResetSoundScheme();
    SetMusic("music_abordage"); // KK
    ResumeAllSounds();
}

... and in SetSchemeForLocation, this case applies to a ship's deck:

        case "deck":
            SetSoundScheme("deck");
            SetMusicAlarm("music_abordage");        // LDH was "music_gorod" - 10Apr09
            break;

What happens in the game is music_bitva plays during the boarding fights, and music_abordage plays when all enemies are dead, before progressing to the next deck.
But if in the 'alarm' code, for test purposes, I replace SetSchemeForAbordage with SetMusic("music_abordage"), it still plays music_bitva during the fights.
And if I replace it with this, which is what abordagesound should be...

PlayStereoSoundLooped("OBJECTS\ABORDAGE\abordage2.wav");

... the abordage2.wav sound plays constantly both during and after the fighting, which is no good. I can't tell if music_bitva is still playing in the background, though.

What I still don't understand:
- When and how does the game say "play the abordagesound" or "give abordagesound attribute to main char"?
- Why does the abordagesound play during the ransack screen, when apparently the attribute has been deleted?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

If you remind me in a few days, maybe I can look into it. These Treasure Quests are taking a lot of effort.

 

[Armada]

Will do. I'll keep trying different things with the code in the meantime.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

1) When I reach the cabin, there's often smoke particle effects coming through the floor. This tends to cause lag when passing the camera through it. Any ideas why this happens, or how to stop it?

I think there is all sorts of stuff sticking around from the sea scene. Probably would take a lot of time and effort to figure out why though; I'm not familiar with that code at all yet.

2) After the boarding, some very hectic fighting sound effects play during the transfer screen; wouldn't it be better to have those sound effects play during the actual boarding fights? Surely it would help to give the player a feeling of being part of a noisy and intense struggle, don't you think?

Having a look now. Too bad boardings aren't something that I can quickly test out.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Is attached more to your liking? Extract to PROGRAM\Loc_ai . Let me know how that goes.

BTW: Has anyone been able to take enemy captains as prisoners recently? I just got into the "surrendered" dialog of a random ship at the beginning of the game
(with all skills maxed out because I was cheating for test-purposes) and I never got to see the "take prisoner" option.
Bit of a shame; I LIKE doing that.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I just took a surrendered captain as prisoner and ended up hiring him as an officer. Is that what you mean?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Did you hire him as officer in your CARGO HOLD or when you FIRST met him?
This random captain I found now refuses to let me capture him.

BTW: Seems like that boarding sound now only works on the first boarding deck. More experimenting required...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

HA! Now it works on ALL locations. And NOT during the interface anymore. That's what we wanted, no?

I also found out why I couldn't take those captains prisoner. Turns out you can't do that with Coast Raiders, eg. ships generated around an island instead of randomly at sea.
So that is fixed now too with the attached dialog file. Extract to PROGRAM\DIALOGS .

 

[tommy61157]

Will these features be in Beta 2.5?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Of course. They aren't yet, but they will be.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Did you hire him as officer in your CARGO HOLD or when you FIRST met him?
This random captain I found now refuses to let me capture him.

BTW: Seems like that boarding sound now only works on the first boarding deck. More experimenting required...

Yes. I hired him on deck, then got sunk in a storm. So restarted and first sent him to the brig and then later hired him.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Thanks for confirming. That matches with my observations: It works, just not for Coastraiders until now.