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Questions, Flames, Gripes?
Howdy All-
Well, here I am. Let me have it. Ask or complain about anything, and I'll do my best to answer it. I suggest, however, that you start new threads for each topic, to avoid confusion. In the meantime, I'll just sit here and listen to the crickets :). |
I've been warned that "End Battle" is only to be used for engaging irrelevant targets like cargo ships, but every now and then i've had the terrible experience of a huge Enemy Fleet suddenly appearing in the middle of an End Battle map. This leaves my forces largely doomed, since the AI seems to piss itself the moment an enemy with serious capability shows up.
So has their been any mention of a "resume command of the fleet" button in End Battle? Would it be hard? The assets seem to be present still, a re-load screen wouldn't be too bothersome. It would be a small price to pay for getting control of a disaster in the making. |
Hi there! Tried to install. Works fine until the first time I start the game.
"Purchase? Activate? Evaluate" Evaluate. "An update was found." Permission requests from Zone Alarm, all very normal, a short download window, Jutland reloads. "Purchase? Activate? Evaluate" Evaluate. Up pops the download window (no message about finding an update from now on) and downloads the same file again. Back to the beginning and around in circles ad nauseum. I quit the program, actually had to terminate it with Process Explorer. Restarted. Ran and locked up. I'm about to try for the third time. My computer doesn't have problems with games. I'm going to keep trying, but this isn't a good start. Well, I got a little further. Nice music. Locked up in the startup screen....:damn: No panic. Try again.... I'm not having fun yet. Now I'm having fun....a little. Does the 10 minute time limit go away when I enter the activation code? It's hard to evaluate a game where you can't fight. What I see is pretty impressive so far but getting it running is a chore that it shouldn't be. Question: It appears that your copy protection is that the game calls home and checks to see if it is authorized? Why in the world don't other game companies take notice of how logical that is and how much sense that makes? Assuming that SecuROM or worse never raises it's ugly head, BRAVO!!!!! You are a game company worthy of support. |
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So for the time being, best advice is to not use that button at all. Just jack the time acceleration up to 20x and let the battle end that way. It won't take but but a little longer that way, and you retain control should anything unexpected happen. |
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Are you, by chance, running Vista? If so, you have to run the game as administrator, and you also need to install it with User Account Controls turned off (I have UAC turned off all the time because I don't share my computer anyway). Not doing those things can lead to problems like this. Vista doesn't think you should be changing executables and such, so the downloads don't take. As a result, the game sees it still needs the patch and tries to download it again. If those things don't work, please send in a bug report. In your Start\All Programs\Storm Eagle Studios\Jutland folder, there's a link to our bug report server. Go there and fill in the form. You can also attach files. In your case, look in your main Jutland folder (defaults to c:\Program Files\Storm Eagle Studios\Jutland) for game_log.txt and diagnostic_log.txt, and update_log.txt if there is one. Zip these together and attach them to the bug report. Sorry I can't be of more immediate help. |
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My interest in Jutland comes from having played (OK, attempted to play:rotfl:) Avalon Hill's boardless Jutland game in the early 1970's. Then I was thinking, "Someday all this tedium will be in the hands of a computer, leaving us with the fun and learning." Looks like the day is here! By the way, confirmed your anti-piracy features show actual imagination and effectiveness without undue hampering of your actual customer, as opposed to the insufferable SecuROM snake oil, which costs game companies plenty, does nothing to eliminate piracy and makes customers' lives miserable, especially if they have several games installed on their computers. For the benefit of other visitors to this thread I'll quote your Piracy section: Quote:
I plugged my activation number into the evaluation copy and got my 10 minutes. That's nowhere near long enough to evaluate the simulation. A half hour would be minimum to actually get some fighting going and control some action, instead of just maneuvering a couple of ships. We're still at the tender mercies of the reviewers. It successfully proves whether the game will run on the user's machine, though. I'm running without problems now. My problems were arising from Zone Alarm, popping up a permission window. The game does not let the permission request window come to the foreground. So it sits behind the game waiting for input that you cannot give. The game stalls, waiting for permission to send data on the Internet. It's a Redmond standoff! You cannot alt-tab to the desktop to use the permission window, as Jutland hogs the foreground and won't yield. If you shut down Jutland the permission window closes and you've never seen it. You need to find a way to permit firewall permission windows to take the foreground so they can be granted permission. Otherwise a significant proportion of users will find it too complicated to get their firewalls to give the permissions the game needs. Alternately, you could have a script that users can use which would automatically configure their firewalls. My router was no problem, but for those with routers that are a problem, no such solution would work. You might put a reference to PortForward.com in your FAQ section. You will have a PM in a bit.:up: |
Do you guys ever intend to do a naval sim with direct ship control? Jutland with aspects of a naval FPS per se? I've been waiting for another Task Force 1942/Destroyer Command for years. Directors and primaries and flooding compartments oh my.
I understand that the logic for Jutland was "having an impact on huge events" and while that's certainly the case, sometimes I want to just watch these huge battles happen from Joe Crew's seat. Sometimes I just want to see first hand what mere survival of these battles would be like. Some others complained "well then you'd have to take orders all the time" frankly that doesn't bother me. I just want a more personal experience with a specific ship instead of a whole fleet. |
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For furture reference, here's what I did for Jutland, so I'm better at answering stuff in these areas:
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We really did try to make it as benign as possible and IMHO largely succeeded. It's a homebrew thing, made by Norm, so avoids most of the issues caused by the ones most folks are familiar with. However, the problems caused by the DRMs of others have left such a bad taste that many folks absolutely hate the whole idea. Thus, without even giving our product a try, they just rant and scream about the DRM. It's funny, to me, how many DRMs people encounter every day, which cause way more problems. Your cell phone, probably various parts of your computer, your cable or satellite TV system, all use DRMs. Many of them are quite unfriendly towards users, too, such as that on your cell phone. But the only ones people rant about are those on computer games. :hmm: Quote:
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Who the heck are you? :-?
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It would be very hard, if not impossible, to introduce FPS elements into Jutland. It's not a matter of fleet size, which of course can easily be made as small as possible. It has to do with the AI and game balance, both of which would have to function very differently than they do now. In our games, you're the top brass, so your main function is maneuvering huge fleets in a well-choreographed manner. Your impact on gunnery is indirect--you put your ships into advantageous positions for numbers, guns bearing, and with regard to the sun, wind direction, etc., and you designate targets. But actually aiming and firing the guns is done by the AI. Both sides, whether human or AI, use the same AI routines for shooting, so are equally accurate (apart from situational variables, ship-specific fire control differences, etc.). In an FPS-type game like TF1942, however, the player's high level command role is very limited and he spends the bulk of his time aiming guns. The game forces the player to do this, because when he's not aiming his guns himself, his AI gunners are rather worse shots than the enemy AI gunners. Thus, to win, the player must jump to the critical point of the battle, man the most important weapons, and take out the most threatening enemy. Repeat for the next critical point in the battle, with a quick glance at the map in between to give some simple order to his rather small fleet. Both types of games are quite fun on their own merits. However, they don't mesh well. In the FPS games, fleet size is limited not only by the limited time the player has to command it, but also by the rate at which the AI gunners can destroy the player's ships without the player intervening. The bigger the fleets involved on both sides, the more losses the player is going to take elsewhere while he's focused on 1 duel, meaning that the odds rapidly get overwhelming against him. |
I wouldn't expect you to introduce FPS elements right into the DG engine or game design as it is. It hasn't been designed for that. I'm referring to a future game built from the ground up to be an FPS/RTS hybrid. TF1942 maybe isn't a good example to use because while it was a good game it was also hilariously broken in plenty of areas.
Jutland's gunnery AI is waaaay better than anything that's come before it. The other naval sims i've played of the last few years have Pirates of the Carribean (AKA Sea Dogs 2), Battlestations Midway, and Silent Hunter. All of them did indeed suffer from the -> AI Gunnery = Ass; problem. But Jutland is the first real naval sim i've come accross without serious AI balancing issues in gunnery. Would their be a major difference in now just allowing the player to take control of one ship in the line? Quote:
I'm saying i've got the fleet setup in the manner I want it, but instead of hitting the "time compression" key, how about a button that makes me commander of a ship? A simplistic AI will control the fleet while you aren't, and you can leave it with basic incentives like "Attack Cautiously/Chaaaarge rarrarar." Simply hitting "resume fleet command" would bring you back to the sky. Ideally, this would be Jutland's gameplay covering for the weaknesses of a naval FPS and vice versa. Quote:
It's not a naval sim, but B-17 The Mighty Eigth was wildly successful at being an FPS/RTS hybrid. |
ok, i'll gripe :D
camera control is pretty bad. might be a deal-breaker as the game relies a lot on being able to move about the map efficiently. i'll see if i can get any more comfortable with it and will try some of the other camera-control options the game offers. saving grace might be the ability to fight from the 2D map. otherwise, seems like a very impressive game. |
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It's never bothered me. Different from what I was used to from other games, but it works well once you get used to it. I use the options where the mouse rotates the view fast, with no delay, when moved to the screen edge. But mostly I move the camera with the numpad or by jumping around doing right-clicks on the 2D map. |
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You have to let it by pass the firewalls. YOu might also try running teh game in the Windowed mode. Change the display settings until the windowed mode shows up. There are two scenarios in the game , The Duel, and Red Sky in the Morning. These can be played over and over. THey will run to completion. The others are just enough to let you see the visuals. The main Jutland 1548 will let you run for 20 min. BTW, you can keep reloading and playing the 10 & 20 min scenarios! You have some excellent suggestions about the scripting. Do you know of any existing scripts that do this? Thanks, Jim Rose |
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YOu are just seeing the Default set of controls. Hit the F1 Key and it will show you all the key controls in the game. |
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