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Thargoid Mission to Hotice 1


CmdrMerrick
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Not sure if anyone else as had this trouble but when i took on the mission to get the INRA Mycoid vaccine from Hotice 1 i never expected not to see the base that im supposed to destroy to get this, but unluckily for me ive not been able to locate this base even though ive flown round the planet numerous times but polar wise and equitorial and stil not found anything. If someone can enlighten me on this i would be extremely grateful


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Pinback
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Dont know 🙂

Check here although it may be a bug remember that the game is still a w.i.p.

http://www.jades.org/ffefaq2.htm#whathand


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CmdrMerrick
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Oh well, just gonna have to wait until its a work finished then i think


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Potsmoke66
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remember the code for the game is really aged (1993/95) and some bugs still remain (they will forever i think) and sometimes mission targets, like other things vanish (in a black hole? 😆 ) or they simply not exist.

remember space is deep......

i play frontier since 95, first on my amiga 4000 now on a rotten PC 😡

still the best space sim, known to me, even when the graphic lacks for todays standarts


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CmdrMerrick
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It might have aged but ive played this mission before on FFE and completed it so im just wondering why the dot and star which point you to what you have to destroy isnt there.....and yeah ive been playing Frontier too since it came out back in '93, clocked 25yrs game time on that version on my old A1200 and loved it to bits coz of it being open ended. End of the day though graphics doesnt mean its a good or bad game coz i always have and will go on how it plays, im just glad these people on this site have took time out and made 1 of the best games of all time look 1 of the best space sims really look the part


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s2odan
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The missions should be playable with JJFFE. FFED3D is based on JJFFE I think, so they should work.

I remember playing all through the plot missions on JJFFE and GLFFE. You might be able to find the base by zooming in on the planet with the Navigation thingy (I forget the name 🙂 )


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SilentPhoenix
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I had this issue last night. I think the navigation map doesn't show the little star markers on the surface for these types of building in FFED3D. Couldn't see the building from orbit, despite flying round and round and round the planet.

I saved the game whilst still at the Thargoid station, loaded the save in GLFFE (put up with the retro ggraphics) and travelled to Hotice. I could then target the building in the map, blow it up, save and then Reload in FFED3D. Was able to continue the mission from there in FFED3D.

Hope this helps,

SilentPhoenix


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MrPeanut
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You should post this bug and send your savegame to the FFE3D team. It is probably a very minor fix.


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SilentPhoenix
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I think this bug is for all planet based installations that aren't named. Had the same problem on a bombing run. The little stars on the planets surface don't seem to show up in FFED3D.

Will try and post over at the other forums; if I can register.

Cheers,

SilentPhoenix


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Potsmoke66
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i tink it's a issue of model use in ffed3d, in fe2 planets surface is "transparent" (remember?) and points for cities or other objects have been shown allways, depending only on distance to it, now we have even a "solid" atmosphere surrrounding each planet which covers some objects from far (by the call for a asteroidal body, planet or star atmosphere is allways loadet, i think), transparency and cullmode used in ffe could even play a part.

the thing is in fe2 models, polys are single sided, so only one side is solid, which is drawn clockwise (usually, but can be inverted in other cases, thats why some models are on the "left" side, like a too quickly pulled off shirt), objects produced through commands and arrays are usually "transparent" in fe2 (so is the ball array for planets), this is also the reason why you never see a "sunken in" ship in fe2/ffe but on "solid" ffed3d this happens often (you can say arrays are allways(?) drawn behind solid models, no matter how near or far). poly use of ffed3d is double sided even if directx models have actually only single faced polys (i think they choosed this to easier cover appearing insides of models), arrays are outputed now as solid models and do not longer lay allways behind.

i think this gives some problems and is also the reason why cullmode settings have no effect in any way, general i think it ends up in CCW which means a any (clockwise or conterclockwise winded) poly viewed through a single sided transparent ( counterclockwise, culled) poly, will be invisible until you put a second transparent (culled) between, therefore all polys underlayed will have there face frontwards after (winded). usally used by car modellers to reproduce a proper inside of a model, when you use double sided faces ❗ (double sided faces can give also the advance of a possibly glossy or matte side as a simple material spec.). in ffed3d this leads to various transparency issues this could be one of them.

while i was checking how to make proper windows in ffed3d i discovered many strange behaviours and i still don't understand some of them. one is if i do a model one time out of a vrlm file, transparency works correctly like i described above and the interior of a ship will be displayed correctly (take a look at my new stud-city shuttle,studcityshuttle01.jpg, if you look close you'll see that the scanner tip still "holes" everything than the background, even if the're different parts and the tip is only parented to the scanner body to follow his movement).

but if i do the same model out of a 3ds file some parts of the model will allways be blendet out and you see allways completly to background of the "world"(in ffed3d the milky way horizon), no matter how many transparent polys i shift in. really this gives me a headake, cause the problem persists even when i strip all material and extra verts from the directx model, i think polys in a x-file have no material flags (or do they?) so what's left is hierarchy, but i haven't found a tool/script to manage hierarchy of a model in blender to make it proof and the hierarchical structure must be represented in the x-file, that it would make a difference, but i'm not shure if it does (vrlm does).

i wonder who will read all this 🙄


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Potsmoke66
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btw upload savegames of problems you encountered, so it will be easy for others to check if they have the same problem (and maybe find a solution?).

i wrote this, cause i remember i had some transparency drawing differences when i switched from g-force to radeon (now again g-force), my old g-force drawed the transparency not in the same way like later radeon which leads to some blanked out cockpits in nfshs (you could see from the back window right down to the street). even fog handling/emulating routines could affect transparency. finally, don't use graphic card tweakers, if it's not a must to evade some problems with certain games, most time you will mess up your graphic card instead of gaining a little performance, cause setups made by developers are already balanced and i experienced that in some cases, settings done are irreversible 😯 (it's allways the same in physics and maths; gain some here, loose some there). i.e. a wrong fog emu could lead to no (not all) objects are visible in the game, or objects vanish before they do "physically" (drawn to far, to close, have wrong normals to be drawn, polys have wrong winding order and card or software decides to not draw them. especially options like "do not draw unseen polys" are dangerous. how do you think a machine decides which polys are visible (a machine has no idea how a object has too look, even if its just a sphere), i think only through normals and/or winding order as well as world orientation or light direction. to keep it up with frontier, david choosed a simple expression to "not draw unseen" (i must say "draw only visible" in this case) depending on the normals angle (like; draw object if normals are n) that's why in fe2 sometimes certain drawings vanish to early and you can see "holes" in the object when its rotating on its axes.

so this could be, with a very low chance, a hardware related problem, but i didn't think so.


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Vladel
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i haven't been able to find any bases on the old dosbox versions


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s2odan
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Vladel wrote:
i haven't been able to find any bases on the old dosbox versions

You mean your running the original through dosbox? If so why is that? You should really play JJFFE or GLFFE which fix lots and lots of bugs. The thargoid missions are completable in both those versions.


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Vladel
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i've tried JJFFE as well but to no avail, i actually play 3D but can't complete the thargoid missions for this reason


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 Anonymous
Joined: 54 years ago
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FFED3D is the only version (for me) where the bombing/reconnaissance targets don't appear. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the way round it is to save your game before you hyperspace into the target system, make the jump in glffe or jjffe, save again and re-load into D3D. The base should then appear when you get close to the planet.

The target should always appear in ffe/jjffe/glffe, provided you've got labels switched on and cruise around the planet for a while until it comes into view.


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 Anonymous
Joined: 54 years ago
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How do you get back to Polaris from Miacke? I have just got the Hotice 1 mission from the Thargoids but the thargoid craft that took me there doesnt take me back when I go back inside it. Surely i'm not expected to travel the 700 light years or so by myself (which is impossible since military fuel cant be scooped).


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 Anonymous
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You needed to stock up on military fuel (at least 300t).


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paelleon
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Hi, I recently discovered FFED3D. A great endeavour indeed! 😀 Some of the new models are truly great (the Viper craft especially).

Unfortunatly I have to confirm this bug. The new models or textures used on the planets seems to prevent mission ground installations to appear. This way recon and bombing missions cannot be completed, even the Thargoid one. It's truly a shame, but I understand that the game is still (i hope) WIP. 😐

I will try to make GLFFE working, but the hi-res console is missing, I have to play with the old one.


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 Anonymous
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paelleon wrote:
Hi, I recently discovered FFED3D. A great endeavour indeed! 😀 Some of the new models are truly great (the Viper craft especially).

Unfortunatly I have to confirm this bug. The new models or textures used on the planets seems to prevent mission ground installations to appear. This way recon and bombing missions cannot be completed, even the Thargoid one. It's truly a shame, but I understand that the game is still (i hope) WIP. 😐

FFED3D is no longer WIP. If there's a bug you'll just have to live with it 😥

At least the bug you mention has a work-around 🙂


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Potsmoke66
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could it be possible to replace the "marker" asterisk with something solid? something that get's drawn allways?

btw, it could be a even text problem, some characters are wrong in FFED3D. steve fixed some allready now but i have no idea if this affects the mission targets, i guess not because he overhauled all strings as i've recognized.

the asterisk * is usually a percent % in FEE's character set (i guess).

btw, i found my aged stuff for FFED3D including the character table i made once.


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