The Glade 4.0

Download it and play.

People are stalling their engines out in the atmosphere of Yella.

People are trading.

People are flying.

People are fighting.

See you in the verse.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yup. I'm loading it up now. And checking here to find usernames to add to my Contact List. Which seems to be buggy? Not sure what's up.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

So... I hop into a hangar to reconfigure controls and the like. I spawn a Gladius, to see how the new cockpits are looking. When it spawns in, I notice that it kind of gets bounced up in to the air a few feet before settling on its landing gear. "Weird," I think, then set about getting into the thing. As I'm climbing in, I think to myself "What's that muffled crackling noise?" Then, as my eyeline swings down to get into the seat, I see the dash is on fire, as I settle in and the canopy closes above me. "Oh god," I think, "why is it burning!? No, get out, you fool!"

Hilarious.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I think I'll take time Sunday to do more exploring the new stuff. Anybody else plan to be around?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Had some quality ("quality"?) time in 3.0 PTU yesterday. Had many misadventures as learning experiences, some of which could probably have been extended into adventures, except crashes. Which is fine -- I got what it said on the tin, pretty much. I wasn't crashing every 10 minutes or anything, and honestly, most of the hangs were while loading.

I'll list some things I discovered:
The hoverbikes are, um, a little twitchy. I figured I wouldn't need to map analog (joystick) ground vehicle controls, that I could mouse and keyboard it just fine. While I was looking back up from the controls to turn the bike on, I somehow set myself into a slow roll that I couldn't seem to stabilize. I figured maybe having some forward momentum would help, so I throttled up and completely underestimated the speed these things are capable of. I slammed my head into a rock and exploded the bike.

Ship thieves are still around. You can lock your doors while in a ship, but if that feature extends to when you're outside the ship, I haven't figured out how. I probably spawned a dozen ships at the space station, though, and only one of them was stolen out from under me. But the one that was went right away... like, it had already lifted off before I figured out which direction its platform was in.

When you take missions, your waypoints don't get added to your starmap, and it seems like you can't have a tracked mission objective and a destination quantum travel waypoint at the same time. I took one where I was supposed to recover some cargo from a derelict Freelancer, and the mission didn't tell me where it was. It gave me a waypoint, but the waypoint wasn't a valid quantum travel destination. So I had to point myself at it, open up my mobiGlas, go to my mission log, untrack the mission, go to the starmap and look around for an object at a similar range in the right direction (remember you can zoom WAY out -- Crusader has, I think, 4 moons, but one of them is in a much more distant orbit and there are two other planets in the system, too), select that as your QT destination, travel to it, and then re-track your mission to get the waypoint and maybe repeat the process.

Planets have a system of a handful of satellites that can be used for micro-quantum travel navigation. Use them; actually going planetside is still going to take a while because you can find yourself unable to get closer than 2-300 km, but there's no reason to go 6-900 km on afterburner.

When you enter atmosphere, your HUD will start to show you the maximum safe velocity, and that velocity will shrink the lower in altitude you get as the atmosphere gets denser. This will affect your travel speed as the crow flies, so it can be to your benefit to climb significantly to make bigger trips around the planet.

I managed to accidentally increase my wanted level at one point. No clue how I did it. I was lifting off from the space station in a Cutlass Black and was warned that I had just increased my wanted level. There's an icon in the upper right that shows up, with a silhouette of a bust and a crosshairs, and a quarter of it lit up red. I imagine there are 4 tiers of wantedness because of that. I'm not sure if lifting off in a Cutlass was my sin, or maybe I collided with another ship in the process (I did kind of yank the strafe up lever hard) in the armistice zone, or maybe it was just a bug. No clue. It was gone when I relogged, though.

There are a bunch of categories of procedurally generated missions you can access through your mobiGlas now. Investigation, Delivery (or was it Cargo? I don't remember the name), Salvage, Bounty, Escort... etc. I think my next couple hours online will be spent seeing how challenging escort missions are. I have no clue what kind of opposition to expect.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I downloaded but didn't get to play yet. Not likely tonight either. Maybe tomorrow or weds. Dentist after work Thurs, date Friday, party Sat so....

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I'll keep an eye out tomorrow or Weds, then.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I suppose I should update my client and check this out again. Sounds like they're getting closer to the real game.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes and no. But you should absolutely update your client. The good news is, this is probably the second-to-last time you'll have to download the whole thing. I've patched twice, now, I think, on the differential patcher and it absolutely works as advertised.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Thanks for the heads up. I hope to jump on for a bit this weekend.

Error 10002 when I try to get in. Oh well. I'm exhausted already and its not even 8.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Soooooo 8km X 8km....

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Time to fire it up again. I’ll look to get online over the next few days to relearn how to fly. Any word on multi player ships? Can you stay inside them yet?

I took a Constellation Aquila out for a spin, first thing I did. Didn't fall out of it, though I was in the pilot seat so maybe walking around in-flight would've been different.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Bleh! Second download of 30GB files. Apparently i needed a new patcher to access PTU...

I've never been on a Constellation.

Well my patcher didn't update so I had to install the delta patcher from the very hard to find independent link.

So hopefully no more errors.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I've been seeing some pretty severe lag spikes (which, because of the state of the netcode, cause the entire game to freeze until they pass, so it looks like a massive single instances of FPS stuttering) since Friday. They ususally show up 15-20 minutes into a play session for me, which is unfortunately right around when I usually hit combat or a mission objective due to the pacing of accepting missions and navigating to objectives.

As such, I'm going to be looking out for a new patch to drop this week, and then trying to get on and play/test some more afterwards. I'll be shooting for 9-10pm Weds or Thurs night, I think, or maybe as early as 7 on Friday. I'd be stoked to try to do something group-ish if others are available.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I have loaded up the PTU but my frame rate is fairly crappy and i also see freezes happening very frequently. I have also completely forgotten how to fly. I need to spend some time learning the joystick controls for take off and landing vertically with small adjustments...

Yeah, no kidding. I've become super-appreciative of my extravagant throttle's analog axis availability; having strafe up/down on an analog input is so helpful here. (And if you're on the fence about getting a full-sized throttle, having it is night and day vs. the thumb-slider on the base of my joystick when it comes to flying in formation or maintaining a tight range while tailing an enemy in dogfights)

Even with the benefit of an analog lift-off, there's something causing a dodgy experience going on. I haven't taken the time to narrow down whether the sudden, unexpected roll when I lift off the deck comes from weird landing pad physics glitches or from the game continuing to try to interpret my mouse as a V-Joy after I use inner thoughts to flip the ship to flight-ready or turn the engine on manually, but something's going on.

Finally, it sounds like your freezes might be the spike lag I was talking about. It lingers long enough that I was wondering, on the first few occasions, whether the game froze on me, and was seconds away from hitting the task manager to kill the game...

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

There has been an update since i was last in but I haven't had time to see if it helps with the freezes. I did work out vertical lift off (strafe) keys so shouldn't have to drive off the pad forwards now. =)

Still working out WTF the T16000M joystick does with available buttons. The hat seems to strafe forwards / back and side to side rather than toggle targets as the map seemed to indicate. Various base buttons do random **** like boost, afterburner, toggle countermeasures.... ugh!

I can only recommend taking some time to think through useful/necessary binds, where they'd be most convenient in your setup, and then slogging through the advanced keybind menus to make it so.

Strafing isn't awful to have on your hat, but strafe forward/back are the least important of your strafes, and having targeting handy is a must. I might consider binding 2 out of the 3 following to hat forward/back: target nearest hostile, target reticle, and cycle hostile targets forward. Then perhaps leave the strafe left/right on the hat? Or ditch it and cram all three, plus cycle friendlies, onto the hat.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yesterday's patch claims to have fixed CPU spikes. So when's good to play?

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm going to try to set aside some time Friday to play say around 7 Eastern?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

7 Eastern, sure thing.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That's a little early for me on the west coast but I might be able to drop in later on. Need to work out 3.0 contacts list and how to join up with friends...