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Flashlight Questions
gammadelta2
Member Posts: 117 Arc User
I'm not going to necro a thread but I have a question
Someone (kirksplat if I remember correctly) posted that he's creating a mission that requires flashlights. But my question is how do you get them. Would you have to tell the player to play the "What lies benieth mission" or at least the start of it, before playing yours?
It seems that it would turn off a few players having to do pre-work like that. Is that the only way to get them?
Thanks,
Someone (kirksplat if I remember correctly) posted that he's creating a mission that requires flashlights. But my question is how do you get them. Would you have to tell the player to play the "What lies benieth mission" or at least the start of it, before playing yours?
It seems that it would turn off a few players having to do pre-work like that. Is that the only way to get them?
Thanks,
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by gammadelta2 on
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That and you don't "need" them for dark maps it's simply a convenience.
My character Tsin'xing
My lighting on my computer is set to normal levels, so unless this is a glitch I'm going to need a flashlight.
This is a picture with a different backdrop only.
My character Tsin'xing
This is the same as what I found by experience: the "starbase incursion" flashlight stays, but the one from What Lies Beneath will disappear most times, unless you equip it on a boff. However, if you have your display options tweaked to see around somewhere like Drozana anyway, then the flashlight is more of a distraction than a help.
The issue is with the computers that people play on. While a majority of players use machines that can actually render a dynamic light, projected from the player's perspective, some cannot. Older machines, and laptops, simply don't have the processing power to calculate dynamic lights. As such, if you're playing on one of those low end systems, and have a flashlight on, what you see as "the light" is actually just a texture being projected out into the world, which mimics the effects of a proper light, but it isn't nearly as effective. So when we (Cryptic) make a flashlight mission, it will almost always have enough light to at least see your way around major obstacles.
Without knowing the exact percentage, I'd wager there's a rather large contingent of players on "older hardware" who would be summarily left out in the cold by such a decision. There's a reason a game like WoW has been so successful for so many years, and that is despite improvements to the graphics engine, they still maintain support for hardware dating back many many years. If they were to say that it now "Requires Windows 8/8.1" for example, I'd bet at least 50% of their subscriber base would suddenly disappear. Likewise with STO, which I'm certain doesn't have a huge player base as is.
The UI bottlenecking the performance and the optimization problems make impossible to play STO in a low-end computer. Any computer that can actually run this game over 25 fps, can render dynamic lights.
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
This is absolutely false. People play on old Laptops, with the lowest possible settings, so they can get a good framerate, but everything in game will look very old/mushy.
And no, we aren't going to be cutting of DX9. Trust me, I'd love to, it would make my job a ton easier, but we have a sizable percentage of players on old machines.
And this is an over-generalization on your part.
I have a machine that has more than enough horse power to run ANY MMO at maximum settings without any issues whatsoever. But if I try to crank up the settings beyond Medium, for Ground Maps, it slows to a crawl. On Space Maps, I can go maximum settings, and it looks really nice. But as soon as I enter a Ground Map with the same settings, it's like running in molasses.
just reduce what your computer will generate for items. I have mine reduced, and it's funny walking around complex maps like ESD.
It is not just old machines that do this pretty much what you do for like the elachi mission where you use a flashlight for that que. Putting it on the lowest possible settings removes the darkness so you don't need the flashlight lol.
At what point does this kind of thinking become 'disadvantageous' for the game?
Microsoft has stopped supporting all versions of WINDOWS up through XP, I'm sure there's still folks out there trying to run on older versions, but they do so at their own peril with no support from the company.
At what point should the larger part of the STO Community, who most likely upgrade their computers semi-regularly to keep up with the pace of technology, have to put up with an inferior performance level of the game?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just curious about PWE/Cryptics ideology on this.
:cool:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
@druhin. Taco has to deal in generalities. He can't tailor the game to each person's specific system's quirks. Nobody can do that. My system can run STO, SWTOR, Starcraft 2, and all sorts of other games at max settings, but it chokes sometimes when I play Lord of the Rings Online. I have to reduce some settings there even though it predates my hardware by a good four years.
If you are having trouble with the game when you think you should be able to run it at max settings, i suggest you make a post detailing your system (hardware, drivers, OS, etc.) and exactly what you are experiencing down in the tech support forums and see if anyone has any suggestions.
With a FX 8320 overclocked to 4.3ghz, 8 gigs of ram and a amd R270x, playing with medium settings my fps drop to 30 in CCE or starbase fleet defense. I hardly believe this game is playable in a low-end computer (except maybe for do the featured episodes from lvl 1 to 50). I pay for a video of a low-end computer an stable 30frames in CCE.
The curious part is that i disable the UI with alf+f12, the fps skyrock (from 30 to 70 in CCE for example). The UI rendering is more heavy than the entire game with all the dx11 fancy effects lol
I can play AAA titles like battlfield 4 at framerates over 100, and in sto can't get an stable 60fps
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
What is sizeable percentage just out of curiosity ?
Love the TI-82 on there.
If I upgrade from a ti-82 to a ti-83 plus could we get better frame rate if we drop the gray scale and go straight monochrome?
Edit: Better yet can we do better if we drop graphics all together and create and ASCII engine to render it in and stream it over telnet? Might help with bandwidth issues and it worked for Star Wars Episode 4.
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
And that, my friends, is why he's on the art team.
The new GTX 10.000 cards will turn you into space salamanders. But only when in SLI.
My character Tsin'xing
You could use aalib to render OpenGL as ASCII, so it's doable.
http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/
ASCII Quake II for example.
http://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/
This thread is win now.
Joined January 2009
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