Over the course of the past few months modding some more recent games, I've found out
a lot about codecs & drivers.. not to mention .Net overrides (that some games install.. bad fallout3.. bad
)
I even got so curious as to run Vanilla Freelancer.. with and without ENB and check the logs, seems some of
the errors i thought were caused by XLR's addons are existent without the presence of the mod, on my PC at least..
Now keeping in mind im a Vista Home Premium user.. & that makes my system "natively" DX10.. still 32 bit (yay) Even my GFX card
is DX10 ready... & FL is DX8.. so some cross DX errors will show with most DX7-8 games. (i get errors in Doom3 & JKA console logs as well about outdated DX runtimes.. ect running on newer .dll's) Freelancer's "correct" drivers & codecs.. are now so old its not funy.. & most break a newer app in some way. A tip i found from Fallout3.. Klite codec pack (full install) its made a few apps run better just by switching the codecs around per app.. nice proggy, and gives full control over what uses what codec (some prior knowledge of what they actually mean & do helps though! )
Now.. onto this texture problem i've seen elsewhere.. a brief, PS works with .dds as we all know.. but have you ever tried to use layers & preserve the alpha of what your merging down... fail! I learnt this by altering the Icon map in Stalker (its one big .dds with all the icon gridded out) It would "look" like it was working fine.. but after saving my work and looking at in in various viewers.. the problem was most apparent.. it seriously screwed up the alpha channel making most of my merges a mess.. generally saving half.. but not all of the alpha channel.. i had a big black/white stripey mess where there should have been blank space..
Solution.. easy.. i switched to Gimp for the main heavy work.. still use Paint.Net for light stuff (glow & hue mainly).. then save the proper "mipped" .dds via GIMP. Problem solved for stalker.. Still looking at where Freelancer can benifit from the whole experience.. lately there have been stirrings of bumpmaps & we all know about glowy alpha textures.. both are my exact "wants" for Freelancer in the way of what a ship or station should look like when it's "finished" (i know it can do it.. why settle for less?)
Oh.. and for LAN i normally use Ioncross m8 with shell.. but lately i haven't even been doing that just plain FLserver & the new hook as its just me lol & im normally just testing a hook feature.. I never got Biocross to work on my PC.. sadly
Something just clicked.. Them lockups on ship purchases/viewing... Im noticing a trend.. switching from one class to another.. ie: Fighter-Elite, Fighter-Trader.. Fighter-Fighter & Trader-Trader seems oki & would explain why i haven't seen much of this bug.. as i normally stick to a class when testing.. the shipclasses where changed recently both via .dll addon (adoxa) & some coding from my end.. but im yet to finish the whole shiparch.ini .. maybe the game's engine is getting mega confused on whats what.. as with most of the CTD's ive seen i checked the loadout & goods.. markets, and have found nothing obvious to flag such behavior.
