[Bryan See]

SHATTERED STARS: A DEEPNESS WITHIN
TEASER DEMO
OFFICIAL RELEASE THREAD

The following has been classified level Omega.

The Shattered Stars team is I am pleased to announce that, the teaser demo of Shattered Stars, A Deepness Within, is now available on Knossos.

Requirements:
A December 9, 2018 nightly build or later.

NOTE: Knossos can be configured to download recent nightlies by setting "preferred engine stability" in the Knossos tab of the settings menu to "nightlies." Update your SCP "mod" in Knossos to download the latest nightly build, then select it as you would any other build.

Release:
Available now on Knossos, or via a direct download:


Of course, if you want to download the full game, go to ModDB: Windows MacOS X and Linux

FEATURES:
2 missions with campaign branching, totaling 4 missions.

Countless new ship types.

A capship command.

Introns.

New races.

New HUD interfaces, effects, sound, and music.

And of course, big, epic, badass space battles.

[Nightmare]

The Shattered Stars team

Huh. I thought you were the only one working on it?

[Bryan See]

The Shattered Stars team

Huh. I thought you were the only one working on it?

I am the only one at the moment, and as such, I am the project head.

[Mito [PL]]

So, uhhhh... I didn't play it yet. However:

• There is not a single VP archive in the installed mod. Everything is just... thrown into data directory.
• You need to have your release topic and download links classified level Omega?
• (Bouncing from the pre-release discussion topic) What do you mean by "FSPort doesn't work at the moment."?
• Why does your mod have inferno core files in its manual download links but everything Knossos uses is in a single main.7z?
• What's with downloading "the full game" via ModDB? Is this something different than Shattered Stars we can get by Knossos? Also, what's with the remaining 12h of wait before these files are released to the public?
• Multiple users report very numerous issues with this mod: it either breaks Knossos when installing (probably due to having it unpack 7686 files in 26 directories), doesn't even launch if installed, spews hundreds of errors into debug logs, and/or crashes during the first couple minutes of gameplay.

Have you even tried to install this mod with Knossos on a fresh FSO, launch it and then play it?

[Bryan See]

So, uhhhh... I didn't play it yet. However:

• There is not a single VP archive in the installed mod. Everything is just... thrown into data directory.
• You need to have your release topic and download links classified level Omega?
• (Bouncing from the pre-release discussion topic) What do you mean by "FSPort doesn't work at the moment."?
• Why does your mod have inferno core files in its manual download links but everything Knossos uses is in a single main.7z?
• What's with downloading "the full game" via ModDB? Is this something different than Shattered Stars we can get by Knossos? Also, what's with the remaining 12h of wait before these files are released to the public?
• Multiple users report very numerous issues with this mod: it either breaks Knossos when installing (probably due to having it unpack 7686 files in 26 directories), doesn't even launch if installed, spews hundreds of errors into debug logs, and/or crashes during the first couple minutes of gameplay.

Have you even tried to install this mod with Knossos on a fresh FSO, launch it and then play it?

Yes, I did.

A VP archive has limitations I do not know yet. Maybe I was thinking some efficient and lighter alternative to the VP format.

"FSPort doesn't work at the moment." means that I haven't tested FSPort, with the Terran and Vasudan species not added to the species defs table.

My mod have inferno core files in its manual download links is a mistake. I've removed it.

It's not something different than Shattered Stars. It's the same thing, except with nightly builds provided. It's standalone, and neither FS2 retail nor the MediaVPs are required to run. The remaining 12h wait is that we wanted to coincide with the December 14th release of the Mortal Engines film.

The fact multiple users report very numerous issues with this mod: it either breaks Knossos when installing (probably due to having it unpack 7686 files in 26 directories), doesn't even launch if installed, spews hundreds of errors into debug logs, and/or crashes during the first couple minutes of gameplay helps developers to find and isolate bugs more quickly. We wanted to improve the FSO engine.

[Nightmare]

Y' know that you can split the mod into several VP files? I mean, they managed to get INF and BP into VPs, don't know which limitations should be there.

"FSPort doesn't work at the moment." means that I haven't tested FSPort, with the Terran and Vasudan species not added to the species defs table.

Why do you want/need to FSPort at all?

We wanted to improve the FSO engine.

Except 1 minor thing these things are all unrelated to the FSO engine.

[HLD_Prophecy]

May I remind us all... The Germans invaded France with their armored forces, spewing hundreds of tanks across the border and crashing French defenses. That helped the French military find and isolate problems more quickly. The Germans just wanted to improve the French system. 

Downloading and playing it now... 

[Bryan See]

Y' know that you can split the mod into several VP files? I mean, they managed to get INF and BP into VPs, don't know which limitations should be there.

"FSPort doesn't work at the moment." means that I haven't tested FSPort, with the Terran and Vasudan species not added to the species defs table.

Why do you want/need to FSPort at all?

We wanted to improve the FSO engine.

Except 1 minor thing these things are all unrelated to the FSO engine.

I see first on whether I should split my mod into VPs...

I wanted/needed to add support for FSPort.

And we wanted to improve the FSO engine, not only for FreeSpace and its mods, but also standalone projects (TCs included).

[Nightmare]

Well if you want to develop Shattered Stars as standalone anyway you put the FSPort stuff directly in there, no need for addontional dependencies.

[Bryan See]

Well if you want to develop Shattered Stars as standalone anyway you put the FSPort stuff directly in there, no need for addontional dependencies.

Thanks for that, aside from issues that I (the Shattered Stars team) need to fix. Shattered Stars is standalone. I can put the FSPort stuff directly there without any additional (you got the wrong spelling) dependencies.

It should be noted that Shattered Stars is not the first FreeSpace mod to be standalone. We have Inferno: Alliance Standalone. But, it is the first released FreeSpace mod ever to be standalone.

[Nightmare]

INFASA hasn't been released, and if it ever gets completed it probably won't be standalone anymore.

[HLD_Prophecy]

I was kinda eager to play it Bryan, but I've got dozens of Unicode errors. FSO just quits to desktop, even after I chose the "debug" button through all errors. 

I mean let's put this in perspective: Don't get me wrong many mods have bugs on release. That's nothing unusual. But this is entirely unplayable and it looks like I'm not the only one. The mod content is probably good but it looks like the data structure needs some work before we can check it out... 

TL;DR: Please fix it I want to play it. 

Oh and BTW I really like the banner on the Knossos page, it's kewl!

[Bryan See]

I was kinda eager to play it Bryan, but I've got dozens of Unicode errors. FSO just quits to desktop, even after I chose the "debug" button through all errors. 

I mean let's put this in perspective: Don't get me wrong many mods have bugs on release. That's nothing unusual. But this is entirely unplayable and it looks like I'm not the only one. The mod content is probably good but it looks like the data structure needs some work before we can check it out... 

TL;DR: Please fix it I want to play it. 

Oh and BTW I really like the banner on the Knossos page, it's kewl!

This is the first standalone mod to use Unicode Mode and to use RocketLib powered high-resolution screens courtesy of m!m and Mjn.Mixael. This is why the reason you said that "the data structure needs some work before we can check it out..."

For the record, I've filed a few issues on Github.

[Colonol Dekker]

The babylon project was standalone. It was very standalone from what I recall.



I'll hold off getting this until it's stable.

[Novachen]

Well, with a debug build i have countless errors on Knossos if i load the first mission.

Missing subsystems for the Shivan Comm Node.
Missing textures for several new shivan ships.
At least one null moment of interia error.

Sorry, that is no fun. Seems to be the trolling revenge for all the trolling that happened in the Dev Thread.

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]

[Nightmare]

TBP, Diaspora and a couple other games are Standalone but none of them is FS related.

Well, with a debug build i have countless errors on Knossos if i load the first mission.

You're trying to run this on Debug builts???

[Bryan See]

TBP, Diaspora and a couple other games are Standalone but none of them is FS related.

Well, with a debug build i have countless errors on Knossos if i load the first mission.

You're trying to run this on Debug builts???

Not really. Try the release builds.

BTW, why aren't any announcements regarding this release be posted there and the main HLP page? I am a project head.

[Nightmare]

I did. 4 errors while loading the game. Crash while loading the first mission.

[Novachen]

TBP, Diaspora and a couple other games are Standalone but none of them is FS related.

Well, with a debug build i have countless errors on Knossos if i load the first mission.

You're trying to run this on Debug builts???

Yes, because the release build stopped with a

Error: Can't open model file <hornet.pof>
File: modelread.cpp
Line: 1057

Error...

Debug Build changed nothing in this unfortunately ... but created a purely mess of error messages. Attached a log file in the previous post.

Interestingly there is no error if i start the game for me, maybe because i enforce the english language setting with my language switcher or the Audio options in Knossos... but i do not reach the first mission at all.

Will check the manual download version later... maybe this is because of wrong dependencies in Knossos... i had the same error in the "Public Alpha", which i was able to play after i launched SS as an FS2 mod based upon MVPs 3.8.

[Bryan See]

Well, with a debug build i have countless errors on Knossos if i load the first mission.

Missing subsystems for the Shivan Comm Node.
Missing textures for several new shivan ships.
At least one null moment of interia error.

Sorry, that is no fun. Seems to be the trolling revenge for all the trolling that happened in the Dev Thread.

For the Shivan Comm Node, ask the creators behind it. Maybe the LODding mechanism. That one's beyond my control.

As for missing textures for new Shivan ships, these are tilemapped ones. They may be eventually be replaced with UV'd ones.

The null moment of inertia error can be resolved by PCS2.

TBP, Diaspora and a couple other games are Standalone but none of them is FS related.

Well, with a debug build i have countless errors on Knossos if i load the first mission.

You're trying to run this on Debug builts???

Yes, because the release build stopped with a

Error: Can't open model file <hornet.pof>
File: modelread.cpp
Line: 1057

Error...

Debug Build changed nothing in this unfortunately ... but created a purely mess of error messages. Attached a log file in the previous post.

Interestingly there is no error if i start the game for me, maybe because i enforce the english language setting with my language switcher or the Audio options in Knossos... but i do not reach the first mission at all.

Taking a look into it. I'll see if I can resolve this.