Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: Faction theme music

« on: February 07, 2018, 10:49:34 am »

If you have the Alliance soundtrack, they're labeled as the faction themes (Arashi League Theme etc.)  The versions used on the faction selection screen are cut up slightly so they loop nicely, though.

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General Discussion / Re: When Guns of icarus is going to have a BR or CH server?

« on: January 25, 2018, 05:21:12 pm »

This is something we looked into at one point, but at last report the hosting provider we use doesn't actually have any datacenter in South America.

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Website and Forum Issues / Re: Website & Forum Recovery 2018

« on: January 10, 2018, 04:08:45 pm »

Hooray, I found a copy of those pesky class icons.  This forum looks slightly less busted now.

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Website and Forum Issues / Website & Forum Recovery 2018

« on: January 02, 2018, 03:05:02 pm »

Over the holidays, we had some server hardware issues that resulted in a large number of the static files (images and such) used by the gunsoficarus.com website and this forum being lost.

As of this writing, I believe I've restored all the basic functionality of the forum.  However, any images/avatars you uploaded directly to the forum (as opposed to linking on another hosting service) are most likely lost forever.

If you experience any other lingering issues or inconsistencies, please let me know here.

5

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Night Map Discussions:

« on: January 26, 2017, 02:35:43 pm »

I don't have a handy article, unfortunately.  I've heard our ambient technique called "tricolor" before, if that helps find any resources.  Also as of Unity 5 it's one of the built in options (we don't use the built in implementation because ours predates it and I haven't had time to unify the two properly, but it's the same kind of thing.)

It's not "balance" in the traditional sense so much as keeping the game, in all forms, still playable at reasonable framerates and as a good experience on our minimum required hardware.  If a night map were only playable on higher settings (because there wasn't enough light to navigate by when "optional" lights were deactivated, say) that would hardly be fair to a great many of our players.  Likewise always forcing those lights on would likely drastically reduced framerate on weaker machines, so that's not a great option either.

Under forward rendering, the cost of any per-pixel light is related to the number and screen-space size of the objects it illuminates.  If we were using some stripe of deferred rendering additional lights might be cheaper, but that has its own complexities and trade-offs.

6

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Night Map Discussions:

« on: January 26, 2017, 11:08:04 am »

I also know something about computer graphics and lighting, in particular in this game, since I build all our customized stuff.

1) Ambient light is not necessarily a solid color (it just refers to light that is "sourceless" and generally not dependent on a surface's position and/or orientation); ours is actually a three-component gradient (sky/horizon/ground).

2) What that person probably meant is that we can't depend on extra dynamic lights (which would include ship headlights) for visibility on a map like this, because those may be turned off based on a combination of the Light Quality setting and distance/importance.

The only lights we support on all quality settings are the ambient gradient mentioned above and a single directional light (the "sun".)  This is a deliberate tradeoff to allow accessibility on a wide range of hardware that we chose for the game in general, and have to design this map around.

7

News and Announcements / Re: Short Server Maintenance Now for an Hour

« on: January 06, 2017, 11:37:47 am »

King of Flayed Hills spawns should be fixed now.

Fixes for both the scoreboard and spot-status bugs are in the pipe, they're planned for release as part of a minor patch beginning of next week.

8

Q&A / Re: Can you have the game always run in Dx11?

« on: September 26, 2016, 03:41:33 pm »

Adding that option (without quotes) to the launch options in Steam should cause the first/default entry in the launch menu to launch you in DX11 mode.  At least, it does for me.

If you're unsure what mode you're in, check your client log (output_log.txt).  You should see one of the following in the first couple of lines:

Forcing GfxDevice: Direct3D 11

Forcing GfxDevice: Direct3D 9

...followed later by some more detailed hardware information like so:

Direct3D:
    Version:  Direct3D 9.0c [aticfx32.dll 8.17.10.1452]
    Renderer: AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
    Vendor:   ATI
    VRAM:     2027 MB (via DXGI)
    Caps:     Shader=30 DepthRT=1 NativeDepth=1 NativeShadow=1 DF16=1 INTZ=1 NULL=1 RESZ=1 SlowINTZ=1

If both references to Direct3D say 11 rather than 9, you're in DX11 mode.

Note that if for some reason Unity doesn't detect your system as supporting DX11, it will fall back on DX9 regardless of what you specify.  (If anything, I've seen it give false positives rather than false negatives; there are a few reported cards/drivers that "support" DX11 and then crash immediately because they don't actually.)

9

Q&A / Re: Can you have the game always run in Dx11?

« on: September 23, 2016, 02:56:17 pm »

Add "-force-d3d11" to your launch options.

10

Release Notes / Re: Version 1.4.8 Release Notes

« on: September 20, 2016, 10:01:30 am »

The lochnagar mechanics were described strangely in the initial release notes, probably something I should have caught.

A better way to put it might be "per-shot self damage is capped to a maximum." 

11

General Discussion / Re: Welcome to The Gun Range, the Premier 2D Weapons Range/Arc Visualizer!

« on: August 12, 2016, 11:36:54 am »

Color theory moment.

There are several sets of primary colors, depending on how colors mix in the medium you're looking at.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_mixing

Screens use additive color mixing, in which the primary colors are red/green/blue and if you mix them all together you get white.

Physical dyes (paints, markers, printers, etc) use subtractive mixing, in which the primary colors are (usually) red/blue/yellow and if you mix them all together you get black.

That's why your red/blue/yellow overlays aren't mixing as expected: you're not actually mixing primary colors.  You may be able to adjust the blend mode (the dropdown where it says "Mode: Normal") to get something closer to your original intention, or use red/blue/green as your primary trio.

12

Release Notes / Re: Open Alpha Week Hotfix #1

« on: August 04, 2016, 10:02:54 am »

We deployed a small server patch last night:
- Improved boss pathing in certain problematic spots on Oblivion Approach and Voyager's Cove
- Fixed a bug with Tar Barrel that could cause it to deal more damage than intended

13

Release Notes / Re: Version 1.4.6 Release Notes

« on: May 23, 2016, 11:47:14 am »

Additionally, I think there are some unintentional fall physics changes... would be nice if that was addressed. Ships tend to fall really fast now.

This was a misconfiguration, and should be fixed now.  The peril of unreleased features.

14

Release Notes / Re: Version 1.4.5 Hotfix 2

« on: March 08, 2016, 10:44:56 am »

Minotaur damage has been fixed as of about a minute ago.  (90 is the correct value, it was erroneously at 75)

15

The Gallery / Re: A poor lost AI

« on: March 08, 2016, 10:41:45 am »

Shadows are dynamic on ships, static on terrain/buildings/etc.