Release Pandora elite - Beta

[hideki]

Saving mid-flight is a bad idea, but what about a "quick-save"? Similar to what games like Fire Emblem on the GBA has - You cannot properly save mid-battle, but you can do a "continue later"-save, that allows you to quickly save the state of the game and turn off the unit, and then resume later (and as soon as a game is resumed, the associated save file is deleted). That might be useful.

That's just the same thing, no version of Elite has allowed saving mid-flight, the save format is not amenable to that either, saving within combat would be an additional headache, part of the difficulty of the game is being able to save only when docked, really, that's not going to change as it'd allow save scumming (cheating, nethack term)


Being worked on atm though:


Adding station ECMs, legal penalties for attacking station itself


Adding legal penalties for attacking non-hostile ships


Fixing alert status (intended: Yellow, ship of unknown hostility present, Red: Hostile ship attacking)


Fix number of missiles ships/thargoids launch, had a thargoid launch 7 thargons at me the other day, certain it should be <=4


Improve docking computer AI


Prevent ships leaving station if you're right on top of it docking or having just left


Changing load/save screen to a console style 8 slot screen. This will also get rid of pointer and the allegro file selector


Fixing appearance of distant objects so they appear as a 'fat dot' as on other versions if too far away


Tribbles!


Missing missions, currently only the first two are implemented.


Planned soon: (These options will likely be set by a toggle or in another version)


Scanner layout 'improvements' although those might wait for a seperate version


Autopilot outside station range (Purchasable equipment) (point ship at planet/sun, turn on etc.), what classical tune?


Enhanced scanner (Purchasable equipment), can show ship type/hostility on screen


Archimedes style intelligent ships, however this is non-trivial


Archimedes style additional ships and other missing ships (Dredgers/Generation ships)

 

[ZXDunny]

Fix number of missiles ships/thargoids launch, had a thargoid launch 7 thargons at me the other day, certain it should be <=4

Vote here to leave that one as-is, or modify it so that anyone >= Dangerous rating gets the thargons ramped up

Autopilot outside station range (Purchasable equipment) (point ship at planet/sun, turn on etc.), what classical tune?

Ride of the Valkyries!


D.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Dredgers/Generation ships

When the original model B elite was the only version available me and my mate played it into the late hours. We were convinced that space dredgers and generation ships might actually exist in the game somewhere. Looking back now I appreciate how much Bell and Braben squeezed into just a few Kilobytes - it's pretty unbelievable when you think about it (I installed Visual Studio at work last week - 8GB worth!?). There was simply no room for anything else - can you imagine a game these days where literally every byte of memory was used up?

 

[TitanUranus]

What about C64 style Trumbles (like star trek tribbles)? Can we have them added please - pretty please - pretty please with a cherry on top?

 

[ibisum]

hideki: understood! But, please check out PandOricutron and 1337 when you get a chance .. it is also a brand new re-implementation of the Elite gamestyle, and you might see some things in there that inspire you for your version of the implementation too .. btw, 1337 plays very well in the PandOricutron Oric emulator ..

 

[Sugarfix]

Saving mid-flight is a bad idea, but what about a "quick-save"? Similar to what games like Fire Emblem on the GBA has - You cannot properly save mid-battle, but you can do a "continue later"-save, that allows you to quickly save the state of the game and turn off the unit, and then resume later (and as soon as a game is resumed, the associated save file is deleted). That might be useful.

That's just the same thing, no version of Elite has allowed saving mid-flight, the save format is not amenable to that either, saving within combat would be an additional headache, part of the difficulty of the game is being able to save only when docked, really, that's not going to change as it'd allow save scumming (cheating, nethack term)

Surely in the scenario described originally, can't you just pause the game and put the Pandora in standby?

 

[hideki]

Surely in the scenario described originally, can't you just pause the game and put the Pandora in standby?

Yup, that'd work fine

 

[Sugarfix]

Surely in the scenario described originally, can't you just pause the game and put the Pandora in standby?

Yup, that'd work fine

Yeah, I've just tried it and it works fine. Assuming your battery holds out until you're able to plug it in.

 

[hideki]

Just run into another minor problem...


While adding the wagner.ogg as a sample it decided it'd be really cool to only load part of it and badly distort what it'd loaded so I'm now stuck until I get an answer to my question on the liballegro forums.


Hopefully someone will be able to tell me how to stream OGGs while playing rather than loading and decompressing the whole thing as for whatever reason they didn't bother to document the ogg support in the manual... (this will also eliminate almost the whole of the loading pause and allow the use of good quality oggs rather than the 48kbit mono travesty I'm forced to use atm to keep the loading time below 8 years)


Should anyone reading this know how to do it however I'm all ears (eyes?)


Edit:


Never mind, all sorted now, just working in the direction of a release soon...

 

[hideki]

Beta 1.1.0.4 released


Changes:


Fixed hyperspace messages to use new more readable text


Added Velocity locked limitation for Torus Jump (must be max speed as C64)


Corrected two swapped keys on help page (Space & / for speed, Oops...)


Changed main display panel to a more logical layout


Changed music playback for higher quality and no loading delay


See top image in OP for current look, download link there is valid for new one.

 

[Sugarfix]

I assume it's to do with the music that the PND has swollen from 2mb to 10mb?

 

[Sugarfix]

It doesn't seem to want to run for me. I downloaded it twice just in case there was an issue, but both files were the same size. I also deleted the pandelite directory from appdata just in case (I didn't have anything worth keeping anyway) but still no joy.


I've also tried it on a second SD Card, still the same.


The SD access light flashes a few times but nothing ever happens. (it did create a new directory into appdata with jameson.nkc in it)


The contents of pndrun_pandelite.out is as follows:

=======================================================================================

PND             : /media/PANDY0/pandora/menu/pandelite.pnd

PND_FSTYPE      : Squashfs

APPDATADIR      : /media/PANDY0/pandora/appdata/pandelite

APPDD_FSTYPE    : vfat

PND_CPUSPEED    : <unset>

EXENAME         : ./runme.sh

ARGUMENTS       : <unset>

=======================================================================================

[ START ]--- Mount the PND ----------

Mounting : mount -t squashfs "/dev/loop0" "/mnt/utmp/pandelite"

Mounting the Union FS : mount -t aufs -o exec,noplink,dirs="/media/PANDY0/pandora/appdata/pandelite=rw+nolwh":"/mnt/pnd/pandelite=rr" none "/mnt/utmp/pandelite"

[SUCCESS]--- Mount the PND ----------

[ START ]--- Starting the application (./runme.sh ) ----------

./newkind.exe: error while loading shared libraries: liballeg.so.4.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[ FAILED]--- Starting the application (./runme.sh ) ----------

[ START ]--- uMount the PND ----------

[ START ]--- Waiting the Union to be available ----------

[SUCCESS]--- Waiting the Union to be available ----------

rmdir: failed to remove `/mnt/utmp/pandelite': Device or resource busy

[ START ]--- Waiting the PND mount dir to be free ----------

[SUCCESS]--- Waiting the PND mount dir to be free ----------

cleanup done

[SUCCESS]--- uMount the PND ----------

=======================================================================================

Return code is : 4

 

[hideki]

Ah right, I've screwed up the libraries, there were three copies of the same one, removed the two I thought weren't being used, seems I might have been wrong -.o


Rather removed all three rather than the two I intended, oops..., recreating now, will edit when uploaded


The large size is due to Blue Danube being replaced with a proper orchestral version rather than a converted MIDI and Ride of the valkyries being added for the parade of ships screen and the as yet incomplete autopilot (also orchestral version)


Edit:


Fixed one uploaded now, weighing in at hair over 11MB, apologies for that slight error

 

[snurty]

Excellent news another update - thanks once again.


Well I have been trading to get a decent set up of lasers, docking computer, energy unit. Now off to do some fighting.

 

[ZXDunny]

Excellent news another update - thanks once again.


Well I have been trading to get a decent set up of lasers, docking computer, energy unit. Now off to do some fighting.

Been trading Liquors+Wines from Ra to Relaes, and computers back again - made 10,000 credits in short order and now have quite a nice selection of offensive weaponry. Just jumped into an Anarchy state and got my arse kicked ;-)


D.

 

[hideki]

Excellent news another update - thanks once again.


Well I have been trading to get a decent set up of lasers, docking computer, energy unit. Now off to do some fighting.

Been trading Liquors+Wines from Ra to Relaes, and computers back again - made 10,000 credits in short order and now have quite a nice selection of offensive weaponry. Just jumped into an Anarchy state and got my arse kicked ;-)


D.

Got missiled to death at Isinor earlier, that's a bloody confederacy, actually got the three attacking me but was a fraction too slow on the E key

 

[Blue Protoman]

I should jump on this bandwagon when I get my Pandora back.

 

[snurty]

Well continuing to play and now up to competent, 50,000 XP, 40,000 credits and have bought everything. Also started the 1st mission but a bit stuck after changing galaxy - anyone know what I do to finish it? When young I had the BBC tape version so no missions in that version.


Also I think this version calculates the rating on the number of kills as per the BBC one. Is it worth showing number of kills to date somewhere?

 

[hideki]

Well continuing to play and now up to competent, 50,000 XP, 40,000 credits and have bought everything. Also started the 1st mission but a bit stuck after changing galaxy - anyone know what I do to finish it? When young I had the BBC tape version so no missions in that version.


Also I think this version calculates the rating on the number of kills as per the BBC one. Is it worth showing number of kills to date somewhere?

Hi


XP is actually just kills*128 :>


Didn't think todays gamers would think much to an XP incrementing by one each time.


As for the mission, you need to head back to whatever planet you arrived in the galaxy at, the ship will be somewhere within hyperspace range of it.


There will be no updates for a few weeks as my Pandora has to go back for repair (see note on OP)

 

[jdh2550]

Hideki,


Awesome! Many thanks - I discovered this last Thursday (on pandorapress.net). The best damn game ever! And I really love playing it on the panda - more so than on the PC (I played Pinder's TNK for a while). You've done a great job in keeping it "true to it's roots" while offering some cool touchscreen enhancements.


A couple of questions:


1) Did you get your panda back yet? I'm looking forward to whatever you do next!


2) Do you have any interest in allowing access to your source code? I hacked around with TNK for a while - my goal was to create AI and NPCs and eventually a form of multi-player. Yeah, I know the arguments against this - and I do love that you've made a faithful version. However, I also love to tinker. I've no illusions of "competing" with you - this would just be a fun code project for me to play with (I'm a 20 year veteran to programming but I don't have the dedication or time to start from scratch). I'm also not looking for ongoing support - a copy of the source code and build project would be great. If not, then, well no problem - but I hope you'll consider it.


Anyway - I just wanted to add my thanks and give you kudos for both continuing and advancing the Elite tradition...


I've only just got to level 4 (Average) - a long way to go yet! But at last I have a docking computer (+ large cargo, ecm & fuel scoops). Saving up for an extra energy unit...